User:GPinkerton/sandbox/Syrian Kurdistan



Syrian Kurdistan or Western Kurdistan (Rojavayê Kurdistanê), often shortened to Rojava, is regarded by some Kurds and some regional experts as the part of Kurdistan in Syria. In this conception, Syrian Kurdistan is joined by southeastern Turkey (Turkish Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan), and northwestern Iran (Iranian Kurdistan). The term Syrian Kurdistan is often used in the context of Kurdish nationalism, which makes it a controversial concept among proponents of Syrian and Arab nationalism. There is ambiguity about its geographical extent, and the term has different meanings depending on context.

Syrian Kurdistan is one of the Lesser Kurdistans that comprise Greater Kurdistan and is also known as Western Kurdistan (Rojava Kurdistanê). As such, Syrian Kurdistan is one of the four territories into which Kurdistan is divided by the boundaries of sovereign states, alongside Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhilatê Kurdistanê) and the neighbouring Turkish Kurdistan (Bakurê Kurdistanê) and Iraqi Kurdistan (Başûrê Kurdistanê).

The territory consists of three discontinuous areas on the northern border of Syria, in the Aleppo and al-Hasakah Governorates of Syria. In the extreme east of Syrian Upper Mesopotamia (الجزيرة), al-Hasakah Governorate (historically al-Jazira Province) is adjacent to Iraq's Sinjar District, part of Iraqi Kurdistan, and has been Kurdish-majority "since official records began". Ayn al-Arab District in the Aleppo Governorate is centred on Kobanî (عَيْن الْعَرَب), which like the nearby town of Jarabulus is on the border with Turkey's Şanlıurfa Province, part of Turkish Kurdistan. The Afrin District, also in the Aleppo Governorate, includes the town of Afrin (Efrîn) and the Kurd Mountains (Kurd Dagh) at the north-eastern corner of Syria's border with Turkey's Hatay Province.

Al-Hasakah, the seat of the governorate of the same name, stands at the confluence of the Jaghjagh River and the Khabur, two tributaries of the Euphrates, while Ras al-Ayn lies upstream of the Khabur at the point where the Syria–Turkey border intersects the river. Jarabulus, in the Jarabulus Subdistrict, stands on the border with Turkey where the Euphrates enters Syrian territory, while Kobanî, likewise on the border, stands between the Euphrates valley and the Balikh River. The Kurd Mountains, outside the Euphrates–Tigris Basin, constitute a detached extension of the Anatolian Plateau on the edge of the Anatolian Plate.

History
Sharafkhan Bidlisi's 1596 epic of Kurdish history from the late 13th century to his own day, the Sharafnama, describes Kurdistan as extending from the Persian Gulf to the Ottoman vilayets of Malatya and Marash (Kahramanmaraş), an wide definition that counts the Lurs as Kurds and which takes an extreme expansionist view of the south. Lying to either side of the Gulf–Anatolia line were the vilayets of Diyarbekir, Mosul, "non-Arab Iraq", "Arab Iraq", Fars, Azerbaijan, Lesser Armenia, and Greater Armenia. Ahmad Khani's 1692 epic Mem û Zîn offers a similar conception of geography. In the 19th century poetry of Haji Qadir Koyi, literary Kurdistan extended across the north of later mandatory Syria, including Nusaybin and Alexandretta (İskenderun) on the Mediterranean Sea's Gulf of Alexandretta. This is the location of the Syrian Gates, the traditional western terminus of Syria, though with the rest of the sanjak of Alexandretta it was eventually incorporated into Turkey as Hatay Province.

At the beginning of the 17th century, land on either side of the Euphrates was settled by Kurds forced to migrate there at the Ottoman Sultans' behest from lands elsewhere within the empire. The area on the river's right bank was the main focus of settlement, especially around Kobanî. In the 18th century, some of the Kurdish tribes of Syria (or Bilad al-Sham) remained closely related to those of neighbouring areas of Kurdistan, but some others were assimilated with local Arab tribes.

The late 19th-century Chambers's Encyclopaedia referred to "west Kurdistan" as bordering Iran in its entry on that country. A German gymnasium text book from Sorau (modern Żary) describes Diyarbakır as being "on the upper Tigris, in West Kurdistan". , who travelled over much of the Ottoman Empire, also referred to "West Kurdistan" in his Der Orient of 1882, while, in his Allgemeine Erdbeschreibung, also mentioned "West Kurdistan" in 1848. "West Kurdistan" was referred to by Mark Sykes in his 1908 paper in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute as being in part of Kurdistan conquered by Selim I ((r. 1512 – 1520)). Sykes, having undertaken a 7500 mile journey through the Ottoman Empire, published one of first surveys in English on the Kurdish tribes. In 1907, he had written in The Geographical Journal that "the Kurds are a very little understood people, whose history has yet to be written, and even whose distribution is at present but little known".

At the end of the fighting between the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Arab Revolt, the territory of modern-day Syria and Iraq had been occupied by the Allies, and a Kurdish political and territorial entity was proposed. However, since neither Britain nor France was willing to withdraw from occupied areas of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, the territory allotted to the Kurds was to be located wholly in areas still under Turkish control at the time of the first partition of the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920. By the time of the Treaty of Lausanne after the Turkish War of Independence, no such state had been set up, and besides the changed status of French Hatay State to Turkish Hatay Province, the border between Turkey and Syria was thereafter fixed, with the Syrian part of Kurdistan consisting of discontinuous areas in the extreme north and northeast of first the State of Aleppo and then the First Syrian Republic, whose borders are largely coterminous with the modern Syrian Arab Republic, and which succeeded the short-lived State of Syria and Syrian Federation.

At the end of World War I, Kurdish-populated areas of the partitioned Ottoman Empire were divided from one another and from the rest of Kurdistan by the establishment of the border of the French Mandate, which was given authority over three Kurdish-populated areas left on the southern side of the new line, namely the areas of the Kurd Mountains (or Kurd-Dagh), Jarabulus, and the French Mandate territory in Upper Mesopotamia (the Northern Jazira). From the beginning of the Syrian state under the French Mandate, the geographical discontinuity of the Kurdish territory, as well as its relative smallness compared with the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Turkey, shaped much of the region's subsequent history. According to Jordi Tejel, "These three Kurdish enclaves constituted … a natural extension of Kurdish territory into Turkey and Iraq".

In late 1919, the French Armed Forces had arrived in the Kurd Mountains, which they were able to pass through without much difficulty. In the Jazira, French troops were resisted more effectively. By the end of the Franco-Turkish War with the Treaty of Ankara in 1921, which established a provisional border between the new Turkish polity and France's new mandate territories, France and Turkey were cultivating relations with the area's tribes in the hope of establishing territorial claims. French military efforts were hindered by propaganda favouring Turkey distributed among Kurdish and Arab tribes. Resistance to the French in the Jazira continued until 1926. By 1927, the Kurdish-majority villages of the area numbered 47. (The numbers of Kurds and Kurdish villages grew significantly in the Interwar period.)

During the 1920s, use of the Latin alphabet to write the Kurdish languages was introduced by Celadet Bedir Khan and his brother Kamuran Alî Bedirxan and became widespread in Syrian Kurdistan, as it did in Turkish Kurdistan. Early French Syria's Kurds were predominantly speakers of Kurmanji, a northern Kurdish language. Besides the main three Kurdish enclaves, there were other Syrian Kurds outwith Syrian Kurdistan; primarily these were resident in the major cities of Aleppo (like the Alawite Kurds) and Damascus, though Yazidi Kurds inhabited Jabal Sam'an and others were nomads. Just as their districts were fragmented, the Kurdish inhabitants of Syria in the French mandatory period were heterogenous, and refugees arriving from Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan helped foster Kurdish political consciousness, engendering a "pan-Kurdism" that complemented pre-existing Kurdish identities. The immigration from other Kurdish areas outside French control increased the Kurdish component of the population in Upper Mesopotamia greatly.

By the 1960s, after the eventual settlement of the borders of the successor states after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Kurdistan was frequently divided into four regions corresponding to the Kurdish-majority areas of four adjacent modern states: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Syrian Kurdistan appeared alongside Persian (or Iranian), Iraqi, and Turkish Kurdistan as one of the principal regional divisions of Kurdish-inhabited territory in the Middle East. Three discontinuous areas Kurdish-inhabited areas on the Syria–Turkey border constitute Syrian Kurdistan, or the Kurdish regions of Syria: the Kurd Mountains (or Kurd-Dagh), the area around Kobanî, and Upper Mesopotamia (Northern Jazira). In these areas were concentrated the roughly half a million Kurds in Syria in the 1970s. At that time, Kurds represented around 10% of Syria's population, living mainly in these "well-defined areas" on the northern border. These areas are adjacent to Turkish Kurdistan to the north and Iraqi Kurdistan to the east.

Events in Iraqi Kurdistan and the discovery of oil in Syrian Kurdistan in the 1960s coincided with a marked worsening for the Kurdish population. In August 1961, the government decreed an extraordinary census of al-Jazira Province, which was undertaken in November, by which time the uprising for Kurdish autonomy in Iraq had begun. As part of this census, 120,000 Kurds in the province were stripped of Syrian nationality and civil rights, on the pretext that they were foreigners – the August decree stated that Kurds were "illegally infiltrating" from Turkish Kurdistan into Syria, aiming to "destroy its Arab character". The following year, the Syrian government adopted the Arab Belt (al-Hizam al-Arabi) policy in order and "save Arabism" and defeat the "Kurdish threat" by expelling all the Kurdish inhabitants from the area of the Syria–Turkey border, dispersing and resettling them, and replacing them with Arabs. Oil had been discovered at Qaratchok, and the desire the control the Kurdish region's resources was connected with the policy. The Kurdish situation worsened again when, in March 1963, Ba'ath Party of Michel Aflaq took power in Damascus. In November the party published Study of the Jezireh Provnce in its National, Social, and Political Aspects, a pamphlet written by the al-Jazira Province's chief of police, Mohamed Talab Hilal. An Arab nationalist, Hilal claimed to use "anthropological" reasoning to "prove scientifically" Kurds "do not constitute a nation". His view was that "the Kurdish people are a people without history or civilization or language or even definite ethnic origin of their own. Their only characteristics are those shaped by force, destructive power and violence, characteristics which are, by the way, inherent in all mountain populations". It was also his opinion that "The Kurds live from civilization and history of other nations. They have taken no part in these civilizations or in the history of these nations." Hilal produced a twelvefold strategy to achieve the Arabization of the al-Jazira Province. The steps were:


 * 1) batr (dispossession)  eviction and resettlement of Kurds
 * 2) tajhil (obscurantist)  deprivation of all education for Kurds, including in Arabic
 * 3) tajwii (famine)  removal of Kurds from employment
 * 4) extradition  expulsion of refugees from Turkish Kurdistan into Turkish custody
 * 5) encouragement of intra-Kurdish factionalism in order to divide and rule
 * 6) hizam (Arab cordon)  Arab settlement of former Kurdish lands, much as proposed in 1962
 * 7) iskan (colonization)  "pure and nationalist Arabs" to be settled in Syrian Kurdistan so Kurds might be "watched until their dispersion"
 * 8) military involvement by "divisions stationed in the zone of the cordon" would guaranty "that the dispersion of the Kurds and the settlement of Arabs would take place according to plans drawn up by the government"
 * 9) "socialization"  "collective farms", (mazarii jama'iyya), to be established in the Kurds' stead by Arab settlers equipped with "armament and training"
 * 10) prohibition of "anybody ignorant of the Arabic language exercising the right to vote or stand for office"
 * 11) Kurdish ulemas were to be expelled to the south and replaced with Arabs
 * 12) "a vast anti-Kurdish campaign amongst the Arabs" to be undertaken by the state

Though the 120,000 Kurds of al-Jazira Province deemed non-Syrians were unable to vote or marry or receive education or healthcare, they were nevertheless eligible to be conscripted for military service, and could be sent to fight on the Golan Heights; they were particular victims of the Arab Belt policy, which continued to set the Kurdish agenda of the Syrian government and many of whose provisions were implemented in the following years. The strategy called for the eviction of 140,000 Kurdish peasants and their replacement with Arabs; possibly even extending the expulsions to the Kurds of the Kurd Mountains was under consideration in 1966. In the decade following 1965, around 30,000 Kurds left al-Jazira Province to find work or escape persecution elsewhere in Syria or in Lebanon. In 1967, the land of the Kurds in al-Jazira Province was nationalized under the Plan to establish model state farms in the Jezireh Province, a euphemism for the Arab Belt concept, and those who had been ordered out refused to leave but the events of the Six-Day War temporarily prevented its implementation from being completed. The construction and flooding of the Tabqa Dam displaced Arabs who were then resettled in Kurdish al-Jazira. 40 "model villages" were constructed in 1975 and populated with 7,000 armed Arab peasant families; these settlements stretched from Amuda to Derik, a town whose Kurdish name was replaced with the Arabic al-Malikiyah at that time. Proceeding slowly to avoid international criticism, the Syrian government suppressed Kurdish culture and harassed Kurdish people, and Kurdish literature and music was confiscated. Members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria were given lengthy prison sentences for "anti-Arabist" crimes. In official government documents, mention of Kurds (along with all other non-Arabs) is omitted, and while there were Kurdish members of the legislative People's Council of Syria, official identity was exclusively Arab.

In 1976, the policy of the Arab Belt, never fully realized, were abandoned, with Hafez al-Assad preferring "to leave things as they are", remitting the official harassment and ceasing to build new settlements. Existing Arab colonies and settlers remained in place, and while Kurdish music was again heard, the position of Kurds in Syria remained dependent to developments in relations between Syria and Iraq. The descendants of the 120,000 continued to be denied passports and documents and were still nevertheless the subject to conscription into the 21st century.

Etymology
The idea of a Syrian territory being part of a "Kurdistan" or "Syrian Kurdistan" gained more widespread support among Syrian Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s. Several smaller Kurdish political movements in Syria, amongst them the Yekiti and the Azadi, began to organize manifestations in cities with a large Kurdish population demanding a better treatment of the Kurdish population while advocating for an recognition of a "Syrian Kurdistan". This development was fueled by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that strengthened Kurdish nationalist ideas in Syria, whereas local Kurdish parties had previously lacked success in promoting "a clear political project" related to a Kurdish identity, partially due to political repression by the Syrian government. Despite the role of the PKK in initially spreading the concept of "Syrian Kurdistan", the Democratic Union Party (PYD) (the Syrian "successor" of the PKK). generally refrained from calling for the establishment of "Syrian Kurdistan". As the PKK and PYD call for the removal of national borders in general, the two parties believed that there was no need for the creation of a separate "Syrian Kurdistan", as their internationalist project would allow for the unification of Kurdistan through indirect means. Some observers see Syrian Kurdistan as a concept emerging from the ongoing Syrian Civil War. The concept of a Syrian Kurdistan gained even more relevance after the Syrian Civil War's start, as Kurdish-inhabited areas in northern Syria fell under the control of Kurdish-dominated factions. The PYD established an autonomous administration in northern Syria which it eventually began to call "Rojava" or "West Kurdistan". By 2014, many local Kurds used this name synonymously to northeastern Syria. Non-PYD parties such as the KNC also began to raise demands for the establishment of Syrian Kurdistan as separate area, raising increasing concerns by Syrian nationalists and some observers who regarded these plans as attempts to divide Syria. As the PYD-led administration gained control over increasingly ethnically diverse areas, however, the use of "Rojava" for the merging proto-state was gradually reduced in official contexts. Regardless, the polity continued to be called Rojava by locals and international observers, with journalist Metin Gurcan noting that "the concept of Rojava [had become] a brand gaining global recognition" by 2019.

Extent
"Syrian Kurdistan", as understood in the modern sense, has no clearly defined territory. According to the Crisis Group, the term "refers to the western area of 'Kurdistan'", namely those in Syria. Although the concept of an independent Kurdistan as homeland of the Kurdish people has a long history, the extent of said territory has been disputed over time. Kurds have lived in territories which later became part of modern Syria for centuries, and following the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish population before living in the Ottoman Empire, was divided between its successor states Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Local Kurdish parties generally maintained ideologies which stayed in a firmly Syrian framework, and did not aspire to create a separate Syrian Kurdistan. In the 1920s, there were two separate demands for an autonomy of the areas with a Kurdish majority. One of Nouri Kandy, an influential Kurd from the Kurd Dagh, and another one of the Kurdish tribal leaders of the Barazi confederation. Both demands were not taken into consideration by the authorities of the French Mandate. According to Tejel, until the 1980s Kurdish-inhabited areas of Syria were mainly regarded as "Kurdish regions of Syria".

In the 20th century, Kurdistan was usually only included areas in Turkey and Iraq. The Kurdish-inhabited areas in northern Syria are adjacent to "Turkish Kurdistan" in the north and "Iraqi Kurdistan" in the east.

By 2013, "Rojava" had become synonymous with PYD-ruled areas, regardless of ethnic majorities. For the most part, the term was used to refer to the "non-contiguous Kurdish-populated areas" in the region. In 2015 a map by Kurdish National Council (KNC) member Nori Brimo was published which largely mirrored the Ekurd Daily's maps, but also included the Hatay Province. The claimed map includes large swaths of Arab-majority areas.

Climate and agriculture
All of Syrian Kurdistan, including the cities of Qamishli and Afrin, is part of a warm climactic zone within which are also situated the cities of Diyarbakir, Siirt, Mardin, and Urfa in Turkish Kurdistan; Sinjar, Sulaymaniyah, Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan; and Qasr-e Shirin, Ilam, Gilan, and Pahla in Iranian Kurdistan.

The lowlands of Syrian Kurdistan is productive arable farmland, giving the region the appellation of the "granary" of Syria. Similarly, the adjacent Iraqi Kurdistan is known as the granary of Iraq.

Demographic background
Northern Syria is an ethnically diverse region. Kurds constitute one of several groups which have lived in northern Syria since antiquity or the Middle Ages. The first Kurdish communities constituted a minority and mostly consisted of nomads or military colonists. During the Ottoman Empire (1516–1922), large Kurdish-speaking tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from Anatolia. Until the beginning of the 20th century, parts of al-Hasakah Governorate (then called Jazira province) were "no man's land" primarily reserved for the grazing land of nomadic and semi-sedentary tribes. The last years of Ottoman rule witnessed extensive demographic changes in northern Syria as a result of the Assyrian Genocide and mass migrations. Many Assyrians fled to Syria during the genocide and settled mainly in the Jazira area.

Starting in 1926, the region saw another immigration of Kurds following the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion against the Turkish authorities. Waves of Kurds fled their homes in Turkey and settled in Syrian Al-Jazira Province, where they were granted citizenship by the authorities of the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. The number of Kurds settled in the Jazira province during the 1920s was estimated at 20,000 to 25,000 people, out of 100,000 inhabitants, with the remainder of the population being Christians (Syriac, Armenian, Assyrian) and Arabs. According to Michael Gunter, many Kurds still do not see themselves as belonging to either Turkey or Syria, but rather as one who originates from "above the line" (Kurdish: Ser Xhet) or "below the line" (Kurdish: Bin Xhet).

French mandate authorities gave the new Kurdish refugees considerable rights and encouraged minority autonomy as part of a divide and rule strategy and recruited heavily from the Kurds and other minority groups, such as Alawite and Druze, for its local armed forces. French Mandate authorities encouraged their immigration and granted them Syrian citizenship. The French official reports show the existence of at most 45 Kurdish villages in Jazira prior to 1927. A new wave of refugees arrived in 1929. The mandatory authorities continued to encourage Kurdish immigration into Syria, and by 1939, the villages numbered between 700 and 800. The French authorities themselves generally organized the settlement of the refugees. One of the most important of these plans was carried out in Upper Jazira in northeastern Syria where the French built new towns and villages (such as Qamishli) were built with the intention of housing the refugees considered to be "friendly". This has encouraged the non-Turkish minorities that were under Turkish pressure to leave their ancestral homes and property, they could find refuge and rebuild their lives in relative safety in neighboring Syria. Consequently, the border areas in al-Hasakah Governorate started to have a Kurdish majority, while Arabs remained the majority in river plains and elsewhere. The population of the governorate reached 155,643 in 1949, including about 60,000 Kurds. These continuous waves swelled the number of Kurds in the area who represented 37% of the Jazira population in a 1939 French authorities census. In 1953, French geographers Fevret and Gibert estimated that out of the total 146,000 inhabitants of Jazira, agriculturalist Kurds made up 60,000 (41%), semi-sedentary and nomad Arabs 50,000 (34%), and a quarter of the population were Christians. Due to the successive immigration waves, the population of northeastern Syria has seen several unnatural, big jumps (as shown in the table) fueled by the arrival of Kurds from Turkey. For example, the Jazira population jumped by 42.7% between 1931 and 1932. Likewise, the population jumped by 45.8% between 1933 and 1935. Another very significant jump happened in 1953 when the population swelled by 30.8% compared to the year before. The French geographer Robert Montagne summarized the situation in 1932 as follows: "We are seeing an increase in village establishment that are either constructed by the Kurds descending from the Anatolian mountains (north of the border) to cultivate or as a sign of increasing settlement of Arab groups with the help of their Armenian and Yezidi farmers."

These successive Kurdish immigrations from Turkey have led the governing Ba'ath Party to think about Arabization policies in northern Syria, settling 4000 farmer families from areas inundated by the Tabqa Dam in Raqqa Governorate in al-Hasakah Governorate Mass migration also took place during the Syrian civil war. Accordingly, estimates as to the ethnic composition of northern Syria vary widely, ranging from claims about a Kurdish majority to claims about Kurds being a small minority. In addition, the Kurdish population of Syria has been highly segmented due to the different backgrounds and lifestyles of Kurdish groups.