SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Paris attack puts spotlight on the Kurdish question

The deadly attack on Kurds in Paris last week has highlighted the long plight of the non-Arab ethnic group of between 25 and 35 million people who remain stateless.

Paris attack puts spotlight on the Kurdish question
Demonstrators hold portraits of victims as they take part in a march to pay tribute to them and in solidarity with the Kurdish community in Paris (Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP)

The Kurds inhabit largely mountainous regions across southeastern Turkey through northern Syria and Iraq to central Iran. They are often described as the world’s largest people without a state.

Many have been internally displaced in the Middle East because of decades of bitter conflicts, while others have been forced to flee persecution to the West, especially Western Europe.

After three Kurds were shot dead and three others injured on Friday in the 10th district of Paris, home to a large Kurdish population, the community is once again fearful.

The shooting has deepened raw wounds, coming less than 10 years after three Kurdish women activists were gunned down in the same area.

The community’s anger has spilled over with protests and tribute rallies to the victims where demonstrators have chanted: “Our martyrs do not die” in Kurdish and demanded “truth and justice”.

The community wants justice for the 2013 unsolved murder of three activists who belonged to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), proscribed by Turkey and its Western allies as a “terrorist” organisation.

Around 150,000 Kurds live in France.

Demand for a nation

The greatest number of Kurds live in Turkey, where they account for around 20 percent of the overall population.

Predominantly Sunni Muslims, with non-Muslim minorities and often secular political groups, the Kurds live on almost half a million square kilometres of territory in the Middle East.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I opened the way for the creation of a Kurdish state in the post-war Treaty of Sevres.

However Turkish nationalists, led by army general Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, opposed the harsh terms of the treaty and launched a new war.

It resulted in a new accord, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the boundaries of modern Turkey and effectively drew a line under international support for an independent Kurdistan.

Kurds have long demanded their own nation but the countries where they are settled often see them as a threat to their territorial integrity.

Despite sharing the goal of their own state, Kurds are divided among themselves into different parties and factions.

These groups, sometimes split across borders, can be antagonistic towards each other, and frequently used by neighbouring powers for their own ends.

Battle against jihadists

In Syria, Kurdish groups adopted a neutral position at the start of the civil war in 2011, before benefiting from the chaos and establishing an autonomous administration in the north.

Kurdish fighters also dominate the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which led the fight against the Islamic State extremist group.

The United States’ support for the SDF has angered its NATO ally Turkey as Ankara says the Kurdish fighters are a Syrian offshoot of the PKK.

Since 2016, Turkey has launched multiple military operations and air raids against Kurdish fighters, most recently striking targets last month in northern Syria and Iraq.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month threatened to launch another offensive in Syria against Kurdish fighters.

Turkey-France tensions

The Kurdish issue is one of many causing tensions between Turkey and France.

One particularly thorny subject is the 2013 killings. The victims’ families believe Turkish spies ordered the hit.

The only suspect who was due to go on trial died in December 2016 from brain cancer but a French judicial investigation into the killings continues today into a possible terrorist attack.

There have been violent incidents in the past involving Kurds in France.

In April last year, four men of Kurdish origin were beaten with iron bars in a Kurdish cultural association in Lyon, eastern France, in an attack blamed on the ultra-nationalist Turkish Grey Wolves group that was later banned.

“There are direct threats, Kurdish political, cultural and diplomatic representations in France are right to be scared,” Adel Bakawan, director of the French Research Centre on Iraq, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

After last week’s clashes between police and demonstrators, Bakawan however feared some limited incidents could “tarnish” the feeling of solidarity from the French public towards Kurds.

For the Kurdish community, however, the attack was not an isolated racist crime by a white 69-year-old man. They have blamed Turkey, although French investigators have not given any indication of Ankara’s involvement.

Turkey has slammed France over the protests and blamed the PKK for the unrest.

On Monday, the Turkish foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador to Ankara and “expressed our dissatisfaction with the black propaganda launched by PKK circles”, a Turkish diplomatic source said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

SHOW COMMENTS