"D.B.: The Kurds, who straddle three or four countries—Iran, Iraq, Turkey—constitute, I think, the largest single minority in the world that does not have a nation-state. What about the situation of the Kurds, particularly the semi-autonomy that they have achieved in northern Iraq? How viable is that?
N.C.: There are plenty of problems. They have achieved a kind of semi-autonomy in northern Iraq, but, first of all, there’s a lot of repression and corruption there. Furthermore, it’s fragile. And it’s not really viable. They’re landlocked. If they don’t have significant support from the outside, they can’t be sustained for long. And they’re not only landlocked but they’re surrounded by enemies, so Iran on one side, Turkey on the other, Arab Iraq as well. There’s a connection to Syria, but that doesn’t help much. So it exists by the tolerance of the great powers, primarily the U.S., which could be withdrawn.
The U.S. has repeatedly sold them out over the years. They sold them out to Saddam Hussein in the 1970’s and again in the 1980’s. During Saddam Hussein’s atrocities against the Kurds, the U.S. government tried to silence them. The Reagan Administration refused even to acknowledge them. They tried to blame them on Iran. The Kurds have an old saying, which goes something like, “Our only friends are the mountains,” meaning we can’t rely on outsiders for support. If you look at their history, they have plenty of reason to believe that. So I think they have to find some mode of accommodation with the surrounding countries and also a way to deal with their Kurdish population.
The Kurdish population, say, in Turkey, is quite excited about Kurdish semi-autonomy in Iraq."
bir röportajından alıntı. bu arada chomsky'nin tr konjonktürüne hakim olmaması iddiasına neremle gülsem, bilemedim. :)
0