The Kobani Domino Effect

The fate of the embattled Syrian town of Kobani, located right on the border with Turkey, has become intertwined with Kurdish movement for independence – and perhaps even the future of other stateless ethnic and religious groups in the region.

Kurdish forces are barely holding off Islamic State forces advancing on the town, despite increasingly heavy U.S. bombing of IS positions. The Turks have not only prevented Kurdish fighters from resupplying the fighters in the town and reneged on promises to arm them, they have even held off on allowing U.S. planes from staging bombing runs from their Incirlik air base – the most logical and convenient staging ground for an effective air campaign to prevent the fall of Kobani.

Turkish Kurds have reacted with anger, violently clashing with police forces in Istanbul. The violent arm of the Kurdish independence movement had been in peace talks with the Turkish government. Those talks have broken down.

Despite a clear legal mandate from Turkey’s parliament authorizing military action in an overwhelming 298-98 vote, Turkish leaders have said it’s “unrealistic” that Turkey should intervene “alone.”

More: How hope for a Kurdish independent state vanished overnight

That’s a mockery of reality. With over 400,000 active duty personnel, almost double that of France, Turkey has one of the largest armies in NATO and the best equipped force in the region. Also, with U.S. airstrikes already in full swing, Turkey’s military would hardly be alone.

It seems that Turkey is more afraid of Kurdish aspirations to self-rule than of an ISIS take-over of Kurdish lands. This may prove to be a historic miscalculation. For Kobani’s tragic fate could have a domino effect across the region –propelling the Kurds firmly on the path towards independence, and inspiring other groups to follow suit.

In truth, by failing to act, President Erdogan of Turkey may have cemented the Kurds’ conviction that independence is the only long-term goal that makes sense.

Analysts have long viewed the prospect of Kurdish independence as a threat to regional stability. Perhaps it is time to revisit this premise. With the potential fall of Kobani, all bets are off when it comes to the future of Turkish-Kurdish relations.

As the courageous new UN envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, warned of an impending “Srebrenica” style massacre (referencing the 1995 murder of some 8000 Bosniaks by Serbian militia forces), the Kurds in Turkey, who have been protesting for days, sometimes violently, against their government’s inaction in the face of danger, are beginning to voice greater faith that the only way for their people to defend themselves in the future is to rule themselves to begin with. In light of this recent deterioration, Masrour Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish intelligence chief, told The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins: “We need our own laws, our own rules, our own country, and we are going to get them.” In truth, by failing to act, President Erdogan of Turkey may have cemented the Kurds’ conviction that independence is the only long-term goal that makes sense.

There you have it, the best possible argument for Kurdish independence, handed to them on a plate by Turkey’s president.

Kurdish self-rule has been a fact of life in Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. And it was beginning to be a fact in Syria too, until ISIS launched its killers against Kurdish towns. Turkey had two choices:  help out and cultivate a positive relationship with the Kurds. Or watch Kobani burn.

Erdogan has chosen the latter. History helps explain why Turkey fears autonomous Kurdish regions on its borders with Iraq and Turkey. But it doesn’t justify it.

In principle, the international community already promised the Kurds an independent state in the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920, following the end of World War I. In carving up the Ottoman Empire, the treaty recognized the Kurds’ right to statehood, but no state was ever established. The first problem was that the Kurds themselves disagreed on how to delineate their territory. And a large independent country called Kurdistan ended up not being so attractive to the allies after all, as they became busy carving up oil-rich “protectorates” all over the region.

After Kemal Ataturk’s rebellion managed to reclaim the entire Turkish Peninsula from the Western allies, a peace deal was signed in Lausanne, which no longer made any mention of a Kurdish state. Political convenience had  superseded the right of self determination for the Kurds, as indeed it had for other ethno-religious groups in the region.

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The fact is that Arab domination in what are considered today to be Arab countries, from the very beginning, was established through the threat of the sword and the imposition of taxes and other measures against non-believers. The notion that “infidel women” could be enslaved, as proclaimed by ISIS in the latest volume of its “magazine” is not new. Before they converted to Islam, the Berbers of North Africa were well aware of the danger.

The Kurds are not the only group aspiring to self-rule. Remember, for example, the Druze of Southern Lebanon, the Chaldean and Nestorian Christians of Syria and Iraq, or even the Yazidis and the Zoroastrians. ISIS’ actions have given new legitimacy to the independent aspirations of all these groups.

Everybody should have the right to self-defense. If the states the Kurds live in won’t defend them, they will just have to declare one of their own.

And it has reminded us of the danger in standing by as the safety of one minority is compromised.

"Kobani has been besieged for 22 days, and we've been calling everybody to help, and everybody is seeing what's going on,” said Salih Muslim, the leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) which rules locally in Syria's Kurdish region, during an interview with Foreign Policy’s David Kenner.  “So everybody will be responsible if a massacre happens."

The same could be said of the Holocaust, which ultimately provided the impetus for the rebirth of the Israeli state. While the scale of the massacres in Syria, both by the regime and by ISIS and the Al Nusra Front, cannot compete with those of Adolf Hitler, the vile nature of them do. The Holocaust museum this week featured images of tortured and killed Syrians, to remind the world of the nature of the challenge confronting us there.

Everybody should have the right to self-defense. If the states the Kurds live in won’t defend them, they will just have to declare one of their own. Will it destabilize the region? Considering how unstable the region has already become, it may be far more destabilizing down the line to bet against the Kurds – one of the only consistent voices for ethnic and religious tolerance in the vicinity of ISIS.