INTRODUCTION TO KURDISH PROBLEM

The total surface of Kurdistan almost to be equal with France, there is no exact population. The number of Kurds could be about 40 million. The main Kurdish problem is water essential which means the Tigris and the Euphrates, the two long rivers watering Iraq, Syria and Eastern Turkey, have their sources in the Kurdish part in Turkey. For a long time the Syrian president, Hafez el-Assad had sheltered the staff and the basis of PKK, Kurdistan party workers because Turkey put pressure on neighbours with dams that will deprive Syria and Iraq of water. Another important problem is the rich petrol on the Kurdish soil. The reason why Kurds are in conflict with Arabian, Persian and Turks at the same time is because Kurdistan has a strategically situation between Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia. Also, Kurdistan is one of the wealthiest Eastern countries in raw material. We must not forget the embargo ordered by United States, Iraq was the fourth producer of petrol in the world and 70% of this petrol was existed in Kirkuk, the Kurdistan of Iraq.

Kurdish problem is not recent. Kurdish people could not be independent after separation of Ottoman Empire by group of Nations and the treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and were divided by four countries three of which practices an ethnical nationalism (ba’athism and Kemalism) that necessitate them to fit in to the Arabic and Turkish "races" a citizen's duty. The Kemalist creed that sings each morning the Turkish pupils, "I am Turk, Great is my race" has its corresponding in Syria and Iraq. But the situation and the oppression of Kurds are not the same in previously mentioned states. Iran, for example, federates since millenniums a mosaic of people and though under the reign of the Shah, the cultural rights of the Kurds were restricted and at present, the Kurds, Sunnite at 95% should live under a Shiite rule, the Kurd-Iranian conflict is essentially politic.