Why did they split Kurds into 4?

[u/Dangerous-Cancel-603]

Why didn't they annex all the kurdish areas into one state instead of splitting us into different borders when we are the same people? I can't help but always think about how much better it would be if all of us Kurds at least lived within the same borders. I feel like a lot of these conflicts you see today likely wouldn't have happened. It's heartbreaking that the people that share the same blood, heritage and language as me either have a better quality of life with more opportunities and a better passport, or worse quality of life and worse passport all because of westerners carving out borders on our behalf. Or there are now Kurds who speak Arabic in their daily lives and Kurds who now speak Turkish or Persian in their daily lives. There are tribes and even families who live on opposite sides of the border. Look at the border between Niseybin and Qamishlo and tell me that's not sad lol. Look at the kolbars in Iran and how they have to smuggle across to Iraq to make a living because their area is the poorest in Iran, if they aren't shot dead or freeze to death in the mountains. I cried so much when I saw a video of when they found a young man that froze to death just trying to get food on the table.

I know very, very well that we're not the only ones that suffered as a result of border splits but I think that our example is definitely up there. I wish my people weren't split up by foreigners and then tried to be assimilated in their newly-formed states.

Edit: You successfully managed to downvote my post so much to the point where the percentage of downvotes was higher because I talked about Kurds. I didn't disrepespect nor critique any other country or any ethnic group yet you all flocked to downvote this. SubhanAllah you have managed to let your ethno-nationalism blind you this much and you have the audacity to wonder Kurds are like this.

[u/Head_Welder_2506]

Due to French and British colonialism, the modern Middle East was shaped in ways that disregarded ethnic and cultural identities. In 1916, the French and British secretly negotiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the region into spheres of influence with little consideration for the people living there. When Arab states eventually gained independence through major resistance, most of those colonial borders were retained (with some exceptions). To this day, those artificially drawn borders by that stupid agreement continue to fuel conflicts and instability in the Middle East. I suggest you look into it.

[u/Reda_E]

It's called divide and conquer.

[u/Absolutely_Cool2967]

The Sykes-Picot nonsense affected our regions

[u/rkozik89]

Remember when the Kurdish areas were nearly 50% Assyrian, you know the 1800s? The idea that Kurds were always the dominant peoples from these regions is a work of fiction. The truth is it became this ways because of ethnic cleansing backed by a failing Ottoman state. 

[u/No-name1234567890 → u/rkozik89]

can you give me sources to read. I'm not kurd and I didn't know about it.

[u/Dangerous-Cancel-603 → u/No-name1234567890]

He's not going to respond to you because he's oversimplyfying and erasing history according to his emotions. You can ask chatgpt to evaluate this objectively. It's not the best I know, but he will not respond to you.

[u/Dangerous-Cancel-603 → u/rkozik89]

I'm sorry but that is just outright false. Yes, there were in fact many towns or villages that were Assyrian majority in the past however if we consider the total population, Assyrians were always a minority among the other groups of the area and the population did not get close to 50%. No city in the ottoman period had an Assyrian majority. You can't make a sweeping statement for all the Kurdish-populated areas ike this and try to portray us all as some sort of killers when a lot of our areas never had Assyrians living in them. Those were a few tribes and their men who were involved. The vast majority of our ancestors had nothing to do with any of that. Even if you consider the entire Nineveh which is considered the Assyrian heartland, they were always a minority unless we're talking more than 1000 years ago. You can be mad and you have every right to be. But your claims are simply untrue. The fact that Assyrians were a minority is exactly what allowed the ethnic cleansings to take place. You can come forward with sources if you want to claim Kurds were never a dominant people in their areas. Unless you want to specify which area you are talking about, erasure doesn't work like that unfortunately.

[u/Habdman]

We should be having much more economic and political integration for the region as a whole not just kurdish populated regions, you could argue the same for Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians. It is this divide and conquer, and divide and rule policies that European colonial powers and later US projected over our region that caused this much political and economic discrepancies.

[u/PossibleGazelle519]

That is speciality of European colonial powers to make weird maps with no understanding of local culture.

[u/asakuranagato]

1) Europeans intentionally cut up everyone into weird pieces to sow discord for the future.

2) nobody deserves anything. You work on it.

3) Unity upon Islam. Nothing else.

[u/NEX4TE]

Maybe I'm being too pedantic here, but Kurdistan isn't actually the poorest region in Iran. I do agree with you that Kurdistan is being neglected by the government and while that is a tragedy, it's not unique to Kurdistan. Depending on the metric you're looking at, Kurdistan will rank differently. Some metrics might place Kurdistan or more specifically, Ilam at the bottom of the charts, such as in assessments of infrastructure. Others, like measures of social health, might place it near the top. So while I agree that Kurdistan generally falls in the lower half across many metrics, if I had to pick the most neglected and poorest province overall, I’d have to go with Baluchestan.

[u/Good-Concentrate-260]

Borders of nation states were drawn by European powers after WWI. Leaders of the countries that Kurds lived in wanted that land and viewed Kurdish nationalism as a threat to their territory and national security. I’m sorry for what happened to your people as they have been oppressed by their governments, but I’m not sure that another ethnic national state in the Middle East would fare any better, and it might result in ethnic cleansing or population transfers as in the case of Israel and Palestine or Greece and Turkey after WWI.

[u/rkozik89 → u/Good-Concentrate-260]

You might want to read up on the Assyrian genocide and the other massacres that took place in the decades prior to it. These, "Kurdish lands" have only been dominantly Kurdish since they, with the backing of the Ottomans, ethnically cleansed these lands.

[u/Good-Concentrate-260 → u/rkozik89]

Wow, I didn’t know about that. It is really terrible, at the same time undeniably the Kurds have been persecuted by other nation states more recently. I’m not saying that everyone is either a victim or an oppressor, sometimes people can be both in different circumstances.

[u/Dangerous-Cancel-603 → u/rkozik89]

There have been Kurdish lands for centuries historically. You are oversimplifying and erasing history due to your emotions. This is an objective fact. Claiming all of our Kurdish lands once had an Assyrian majority and didn't exist is erasure. That's disgusting coming from you.

[u/asdsadnmm1234]

Because speaking same language doesn't automatically make people a "nation" or it makes people to feel sense of nation. For example look at Arabs, They have strong sense of nation you can even see sense of nation in early islam. Persians were called Ajam(non-Arab) literally means mute since they can't speak Arabic. They clearly felt nation of sense since they distuinguish people as Arabs and non-Arabs. Same can be attributed to Turks. For example Turks also used similar distinction between Turks and non-Turks which mostly called as "Tat"s(also means mute or person who can't speak properly).

However i feel like(you can correct me if i am wrong since i am just telling my observation) Kurds didn't really have strong sense of nation unlike Arabs and Turks until Kurds came up with reactionary Kurdish nationalism against Turkish nationalism and Arab nationalism. Kurds weren't like Kurdish speaking nation but rather Kurdish speaking tribes. Even today elections in KRG feels like they are choosing between tribes Barzani(KDP) vs Talabani(PUK) rather than parties of nation.

I find this very similar to Mongol tribes before Genghis Khan. They also lived close to each other as Mongolic speaking tribes but they really became a Mongol nation when Genghis gathered them under his banner.

[u/Nervous-Cream2813]

1. Divide and conquer which is why Syria was given to the French and Iraq to the British

2. They got their asses WHOOPED by the Turks during the war of Turkish independence and lost the Kurdish parts of Turkye which originally was also going to be divided by the French and British.

3. Iran like always was total anarchy at the time and then united by the Reza "Maxim" Khan who made a army that the British did not want to bother fighting (tbf it was in the mountains and the Shah predicted the British would attack so he had plans prepared too.... just not for a 2 front war) the British were also too busy trying not to lose the land they just gained cause of the Iraqi uprising in 1920.

4. The later Kurdish movements obviously could not manage to create their own land because they were trying to create a nation within nations that were already entrenched and established, altho there WAS some minor success here in there but they didn't reach the scale of "uniting all Kurdish lands".

5. Finally in today's modern times there is alot of complexities such as a unified network of infrastructure which if you remove a entire state from they would lose lets say electricity for example, then there is collective cause some people don't want a Kurdish state they want to remain part of Iran or Iraq, these countries are also desperate for geopolitical security so they would not hesitate to eradicate a entire town if it means less trouble, they are stubborn basically and for a good reason too.

From top to bottom it just gets more and more complex, we have basically reached a point where in the current socio economic and geo political situation it is not possible to establish a Kurdistan with all their lands.