SARAH GLYNN SKRIFAR OG TALAR: KÚRDAR ÚT Í KULDANN

Það eru í raun engar nýjar fréttir að Kúrdum sé gert margt til miska. Sarah Glynn sem starfar að málefnum Kúrda í Strasborg hefur einstakt lag á að koma mörgu til skila í fáum orðum. Hún bæði skrifar og les pistla sína sem eru örstuttir.
Hér fáum við yfirferð yfir stöðu mála í Sýrlandi, Íran, Tyrklandi og Írak. Alls staðar er nú þrengt að Kúrdum. Í nýrri heimsmynd Bandaríkjanna sem nú um stundir hafa mesta burði til að ráðskast með heiminn, er ekkert pláss fyrir Kúrda.

Listen to Sarah Glynn reporting on the situation for the Kurds in Syria, Iran, Turkey and Iraq. Interesting and to be recommended, analytical and concise.
Use the following link for the written word and spoken:
No room for Kurds in the American world order – News From Kurdistan

Á eftirfarandi slóð má komast inn á síðu með safni undangenginna greina.

Here you can approach earlier reports:

https://newsfromkurdistan.wordpress.com/

Every day brings new threats from America’s new world order; however, for most of us, life goes on as usual and they appear as a distant nightmare. There are economic impacts, but these are creeping and hard to connect to their cause, and even the rise of the far right is downplayed and normalised by a political and media establishment preoccupied with maintaining its position. For the Kurds, no evasion of reality is possible. They are always among the canaries of the political coalmine, and today they are under serious pressure in all four parts of Kurdistan. Even in Iraq, where the relative autonomy of the Kurdish region is itself under threat.

The autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) was midwifed by the United States, who saw the Kurdish Peshmerga as a useful check on the Iraqi government. And the nature of its birth gave rise to hopes of similarly fortuitous developments in other parts of Kurdistan.

Syria

When the power vacuum created by the Syrian civil war enabled the establishment of Kurdish autonomy in Rojava, and American airpower supported Kurdish ground forces in the fight against ISIS, Kurds were ready to see history repeat itself in US support for continued Kurdish autonomy. But, as we have seen, America had other plans – with Turkey-backed former al-Qaeda leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa – and showed no compunction in telling the Kurds they were no longer needed and must integrate their Autonomous Administration with al-Sharaa’s autocratic centralised Syrian state.

Firat News Agency’s latest assessment of the integration process observes that “The measures being implemented by Damascus appear to be aimed at the liquidation and submission of the Autonomous Administration system.” Among the many issues unresolved – and despite prisoner exchanges – Syrian government forces still hold Kurdish prisoners, who they seem to regard as bargaining counters.

Kurds had hoped that their Autonomous Administration could provide a model of interethnic inter-religious cooperation for the whole of Syria. But that was not to be, and other ethnicities are suffering under the al-Sharaa regime, especially the Alawites who are held collectively responsible for the actions of Alawite Bashar al-Assad and his group of Alawite supporters. Syrian Justice Archive continues to report killings and abductions of Alawites, and also a campaign for a complete economic and social boycott.

Iran

Notoriously, there was also much talk about American support for Kurdish groups struggling against the Islamic government in Iran – groups whose potential appears to have been exaggerated by Israel in order to persuade President Trump to join Israel’s war against Iran. But, unlike in Iraq, there were no promises of air protection, and there was also adamant opposition from the KRI’s own parties, who didn’t want to see their region, which hosted the exiled groups, become a target for Iran. The Iranian Kurds held back, but that didn’t prevent the discussion of their possible role from making them even more of a target for the Iranian government than they were already. After words from Turkey, Trump very publicly withdrew from any potential collaboration with the Kurds, while blaming them for not carrying out a suicidal mission, and accusing unspecified Kurds of taking weapons destined for the resistance. If he had set out to make Kurds hated by Iranians of all sides, he could hardly have done more, though in reality he simply couldn’t care about Kurdish futures.

Meanwhile, Iran and their allied militias continue to “disappear”, torture and kill Kurdish activists and to bombard the camps of the Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraq. Rojhelat Info talks of “a wave of political prisoner executions”, with at least forty “political and security prisoners” executed in Iran between 17 March and 3 June. The Community Peacemaker Teams NGO reports that “Although the ceasefire announced on 8 April 2026 led to a significant reduction in the overall number of attacks, targeted strikes continued across the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and became predominantly concentrated on Iranian Kurdish opposition groups.” There is fear that if the United States and Iran achieve a peace agreement, the Iranian Government might turn their firepower against the Kurds as a lesson to them and to anyone else who dares to question the government’s total authority.

Turkey

American geopolitical calculations always take account of Turkey, which was, and continues to be, of major strategic importance in the region. Turkey’s mistreatment of the Kurds has never been allowed to get in the way of this relationship. The US supplied the weapons that were used to clear Kurdish villages, and (together with Mossad) they coordinated the capture of Abdullah Öcalan. And, as in their relations with other states, America is not concerned about Turkey’s ongoing destruction of internal democracy. The United States has always been happy to work with foreign dictators, and Trump’s admiration for President Erdoğan will only be increased by Erdoğan’s autocratic abuse of the judicial system to decimate the political opposition.

As I write this, on Monday night, the Republic of Turkey’s founding party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) is anticipating a fractious parliamentary group meeting. The government has used a corrupted judiciary to delegitimise and oust the party’s elected leader Özgür Özel, and replace him with the unpopular former leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, now acting as a government puppet. Kılıçdaroğlu called a group meeting at a time when Özel was planning to attend the memorial commemoration for a CHP mayor who died a year ago. Özel, who has the support of the overwhelming majority of CHP’s MPs, who recently made him parliamentary group leader, has announced that he will remain in Ankara to attend and speak at an official group meeting that will be convened by his deputy.

The many judicial cases being raised against the CHP are widely understood as an attempt to fatally undermine and divide the party, at a time when President Erdoğan has been losing popular support and would not be expected to win a fair election. This is a massive attack on what remains of Turkish democracy. Ertuğrul Kürkçü, honorary president of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), told Firat News Agency that Turkey was returning to the single party dictatorship of the 1920s, when “the ruling party and the state formed a single entity” and “the state grew like a tumour on society, aiming to devour it.” He praised Özel’s democratic reaction and stressed the importance of solidarity.

For the Kurds, the threat to democracy is compounded by the threat to the negotiations between Öcalan and the government, which they hope will lead to a peace process but are currently referred to simply as the “process”. The DEM Party have always underlined that genuine peace is not possible without democracy, but they are still anxious to achieve an agreement that will allow PKK fighters to return to Turkey and take part in peaceful politics, and they still hope to see an enabling law brought in before the summer recess. There is a clear recognition that the armed struggle was not going to bring Kurds the freedoms that Turkey has always denied them, even while the PKK retain the ability to inflict casualties and to deny Turkey a military victory.

The imperative of not disrupting the process constrains the DEM Party’s freedom of action, but it hasn’t stopped them from declaring support for Özel in his fight for democracy. Ruşen Çakır, editor of Medyascope, argues that if the process achieves the desired law, Özel’s elected CHP has the potential to play a vital role in getting this accepted by the country’s wider population.

Iraq

At the end of May, US ambassador, Tom Barrack, saw his remit officially increased to include Iraq as well as Turkey and Syria. A Turcophile, with an outspoken belief that what the Middle East needs is centralised monarchies and not democracy, he has already been instrumental in destroying Kurdish hopes in Syria and reducing US support for the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga.

The KRI has long suffered from a feudal politics dominated by two family-led parties whose antagonism has previously led to civil war; from difficult unresolved relations with the federal Iraqi government, and from endemic corruption. The impact of all this was softened by international investors who regarded the region as the best location in an otherwise difficult country.

Relations between the two dominant political parties are currently so bad that the region is effectively divided into two administrations separated by a border with customs posts; and the parties have been unable to agree a new regional government since the October 2024 elections, which were themselves delayed by two years.

Budgeting has always been problematic, with long delays to state salaries, and recent years have seen a big increase in the budget deficit.

Budget shortages and internal divisions make the region vulnerable to increasing federal interference. The United States is trying to push for more federal oversite over Iraq’s different military formations, including the peshmerga. Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, has given a firm rejection, but if they can’t pay the salaries, support for their own forces will be increasingly difficult.

At the same time, the KRI’s economic base is being threatened by plans for new trade links that exploit new openings with Syria and bypass the region. Transit between Iraq and Turkey will no longer need to pass through the KRI, which will lose out on customs dues, and be left behind in terms of development. And Turkey will increase their Middle-Eastern dominance.

Despite the KRI’s many problems, its hard-won autonomy is valued by Kurds everywhere, and its loss would have impacts beyond Iraq.

Sarah Glynn

Strasbourg 9 June 2026

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