{"id":33411,"date":"2024-06-14T09:15:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T07:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=33411"},"modified":"2024-06-14T09:15:13","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T07:15:13","slug":"how-to-write-about-kurdistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/how-to-write-about-kurdistan\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Write About Kurdistan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
When writing about the Kurds, make sure to dismiss the \u2018alphabet soup\u2019 of their complex politics, downplay their culture, and project all your own political ideas onto their \u201ctragic,\u201d \u201cabandoned,\u201d and \u201cstateless\u201d homeland. And don\u2019t forget to mention the moustaches, writes our contributor.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matthew Broomfield<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Did you know there\u2019s an ancient Kurdish proverb: \u201cno friends but the mountains\u201d? <\/span>What<\/span><\/a> better<\/span><\/a> way<\/span><\/a> to<\/span><\/a> title<\/span><\/a> you<\/span><\/a>r<\/span> piece<\/span><\/a>? And never mind that this melancholy, melodramatic, supposedly \u201cancient\u201d bit of wisdom is of <\/span>recent and quite possibly Western origin<\/span><\/a>, seldom appears in Kurdish, and was popularized just in time to soften the way for the USA\u2019s first intervention in the region.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thereafter, make sure to use: \u201cdivided,\u201d \u201cdoomed,\u201d \u201ctragic,\u201d \u201cabandoned,\u201d \u201cstateless\u201d (never \u201canti-state\u201d). Or, if you feel differently: \u201cfierce,\u201d \u201cstatelet,\u201d \u201cmountain people,\u201d \u201cnomad,\u201d \u201cterrorists,\u201d \u201cMarxists,\u201d \u201cwarriors\u201d (never \u201csoldiers\u201d). And if you\u2019re feeling particularly literary, throw in a \u201cmoustachioed\u201d or two.<\/span><\/p>\n

Make sure to emphasize how difficult it was for you, the only true friend-but-the-mountains, to fly into Iraqi Kurdistan\u2019s international airports. Describe the <\/span>\u201cintent and logic\u201d<\/span><\/a> with which you navigated workaday bureaucracy, your <\/span>\u201cdaring mission\u201d<\/span><\/a> across the Syrian Kurdish border (waiting politely for 20 minutes in a reception room while drinking juice), or simply <\/span>pose with an AK-47<\/span><\/a> and write the story about yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little harder to get away with par-for-the-course Orientalism in Jerusalem or Istanbul these days, but Kurdistan is ideal. It remains \u201cremote,\u201d \u201chard-to-access,\u201d the <\/span>\u201cWild West\u201d<\/span><\/a> but also safely, uniquely \u201cpro-Western.\u201d So feel free to trot out to the \u201cbarren deserts,\u201d \u201cinhospitable peaks,\u201d \u201cbustling bazaars,\u201d \u201cover-sweetened tea,\u201d and all the rest of it. By even visiting Kurdistan, you\u2019re\u00a0 doing the Kurds a favor, after all. Who cares if you get a few details wrong?\u00a0 (Perhaps, like the author of this piece, you might even smugly condemn clich\u00e9s and stereotypes you\u2019ve been guilty of yourself).<\/span><\/p>\n

More likely, you won\u2019t travel to the region at all. What\u2019s the point? You can file your story from Istanbul \u2014 or Washington. You\u2019ve seen a map, drawn up by a think-tank, which can help readers understand the basics. Just <\/span>\u201cwho are\u201d<\/span><\/a> the Kurds, anyway, and <\/span>why are they making such a fuss<\/span><\/a>? Good question, even though you\u2019ve already settled on an answer, and even though it normally only comes up when the Kurds are <\/span>already being ethnically cleansed<\/span><\/a>, by which time it might seem a bit late.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s complicated, and you don\u2019t want to bore your readers \u2014 make sure to <\/span>apologize<\/span><\/a> for the <\/span>\u201calphabet soup\u201d<\/span><\/a> of Kurdish political organizations. Feel free to mangle the official names and acronyms of these trivial, semi-recognized entities and \u201cquasi-states.\u201d Why can\u2019t they all just get along? Conflicts between Kurds are childish squabbles, fratricidal foolishness.\u00a0 As such, you\u2019ll focus solely on politics \u2014 never culture, literature, or history \u2014 without actually discussing Kurdish politics at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Kurdistan is not a country, but the map of the Kurdish region includes the geographical region in the Middle East wherein the Kurdish people have historically established a prominent population and unified cultural identity (courtesy The Kurdish Project).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Kurds are all \u201cpro-Western imperialists,\u201d paid to destabilize the region \u2014 though Turkish Kurdish militants have been fighting NATO for forty years, and the CIA was in fact funding Saddam Hussein as he conducted genocide against the Iraqi Kurds. Or else they\u2019re all \u201cseparatist Marxists\u201d \u2014 though they abandoned the struggle for a socialist Kurdish state decades ago. The Syrian Kurds are \u201cstealing Syrian oil\u201d \u2014 to feed other Syrians in Syria, as it happens. Kurdish women are inherently emancipated \u2014 despite battling honour killings, tribalism and patriarchy within their own communities. They\u2019re defenders of (white) Christendom against barbaric Muslims \u2014 and never mind that the Kurds are primarily Sunni Muslim themselves. They\u2019re precisely your personal, chosen flavor of eco-feminist-anarchist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, you have no idea what diverse Kurdish political perspectives on Marxism, capitalism, the state, the West, Islam or women\u2019s liberation actually entail. You\u2019re unlikely to speak Kurdish, or read Kurdish political theory. It\u2019s all propaganda, anyway. Propaganda is what Kurds do: the Turks send out press releases. <\/span><\/p>\n

Feel free to report on anything Turkish officials say about Kurds\u00a0 \u2014 but remember the \u201cright of reply\u201d applies only to the victims of state violence, never its executors. If you absolutely have to include a Kurdish perspective, make sure it\u2019s a military commander, never a politician, and certainly not anyone from civil society. Speak only of a \u201cbattleground,\u201d the \u201cfrontlines,\u201d and \u201chideouts,\u201d never of diverse cities home to millions of civilians.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time as you refuse to speak to any political or civilian representatives, make it crystal clear the armed representatives are illegitimate, \u201coutlawed,\u201d a \u201cdesignated terrorist organization\u201d \u2014 but never explain who imposed that designation, or that a European court found it was nonsense. Did you know that \u201cthe Turkish-Kurdish conflict has left 40,000 dead?\u201d It\u2019s equally mandatory to include that <\/span>dubious statistic<\/span><\/a> (a Turkish government claim, which hasn\u2019t been updated for over two decades) somewhere in the opening paragraphs \u2014 but make sure you use the passive voice, and never state who\u2019s actually to blame for the bulk of those killings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly, there must be two species of Kurds: the news agencies know the Kurds can only ever be terrorists, but the feature writer and movie-maker are up in the mountains, meeting a different sort. To them, the Kurds are \u201cgood guys\u201d in a \u201cbad neighborhood.\u201d In particular, their women are \u201cAmazons,\u201d <\/span>\u201cbadass,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201c<\/span>Angelina Jolie\u201d in fatigues<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

You can focus pruriently on their sexual politics, <\/span>suggesting<\/span><\/a> the fact these women don\u2019t want to marry, drink alcohol or have sex proves they must be in a \u201ccult.\u201d If Kurds sacrifice their lives for freedom, they must have been brainwashed. But don\u2019t take their <\/span>unique ideology<\/span><\/a> seriously \u2014 it\u2019s just a smokescreen, hiding the fact men are still the real commanders. Everyone, even the feminist-military complex, knows women can\u2019t <\/span>really <\/span><\/i>fight. Instead, if you\u2019re <\/span>making a movie<\/span><\/a>, add some personal motivation, <\/span>a lost relative<\/span><\/a> who the Kurdish militant wants to find. That\u2019s the only reason a woman would ever fight at all \u2014 unless they were seduced by a <\/span>\u201cKurdish lover boy<\/span><\/a>,\u201d of course.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In movies, Kurds serve best as sidekicks, loyal helpmeets to American soldiers, willing to sacrifice themselves to protect \u201cus.\u201d Make sure they never get to explain what they\u2019re fighting for, or why. You might find it convenient to <\/span>replace Kurdistan with another, made-up \u201c-stan\u201d altogether<\/span><\/a>; you can explain you wanted to \u201cuniversalize\u201d your message, and so you had no choice but to drop the politics, make your protagonist an international volunteer with Kurdish forces, or quite simply a foreign ISIS militant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The same goes for documentaries. Try to only ever interview foreign ISIS members about their plight. Let them freely blame \u201cthe Kurds\u201d for their mistreatment, rather than speaking to the young Kurdish women who vanquished them and now secure and care for them each day on behalf of global powers which <\/span>turned their backs as soon as the bombs stopped falling<\/span><\/a>; don\u2019t risk repeating the Kurds\u2019 call for international support to help them solve this global crisis. Too political. And never mention that countless local Kurds and Arabs are living in equally grim conditions just down the road. If you did that, you\u2019d have to admit that you consider everyday life in Kurdistan a punishment in itself \u2014 fine for local Kurds, but not for Western ISIS fighters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Kurdish-Iranian
Kurdish-Iranian born writer and former prisoner Behrouz Boochani, who spent six years in an Australian-run Manus Island detention center, poses for a photo in Christchurch, New Zealand, November 19, 2019 (photo Martin Hunter, Reuters). An asylum seeker from the Kurdish city of Ilam, Boochani arrived in Australia by boat in 2013. He was immediately captured and transported to one of the country’s offshore immigration processing centers, located on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. His debut autobiographical novel No Friend but the Mountains<\/em> was published in 2018. It recounts his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat and imprisonment on the Manus. The book won several literary awards in Australia, including the Victorian Prize for Literature.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you can, omit your subject\u2019s Kurdishness altogether, representing them as a \u201cSyrian refugee\u201d or \u201cIranian woman\u201d \u2014 even when it\u2019s <\/span>literally in their name.<\/span><\/a> That way, it will be even easier to represent Kurdistan as a <\/span>\u201cno man\u2019s land<\/span><\/a>,\u201d a space <\/span>\u201cwithout people and owners<\/span><\/a>,\u201d a blank canvas waiting for neocon intervention. Perhaps you can even get <\/span>Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/a> on board as a producer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kurdish survival is contingent on whether the Americans stay or go. After all, the Kurds have always been hapless, subjugated victims. Kurdish politics only started with the American intervention in Iraq in 1991, or else with the American intervention against ISIS in 2014. So there\u2019s no point asking where the Kurds came from, or how their society was organized before Ba\u2019ath socialism and Kemalism. They just lurked in the mountains, robbing caravans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Omit the fact the Kurds have dialects so distinct they would count for different languages if they only had an army (or a state), or the political and cultural differences between these regions. In particular, y<\/span>ou are unlikely to mention Iran\u2019s Kurds at all \u2014 the Iranian opposition is uniformly monarchist and liberal feminist. So while you might make use of the popular slogan \u201cWoman Life <\/span><\/i>Freedom,\u201d you\u2019ll <\/span>gloss over its militant origins.<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

For while there are <\/span>\u201cgood and bad Kurds,\u201d<\/span><\/a> the Kurds are nonetheless a monolithic bloc. By relying on the convenient shorthand \u201cthe Kurds\u201d or \u201cour Kurdish allies,\u201d you can omit the reality of multi-ethnic <\/span>Kurdish-Arab alliances<\/span><\/a>; and evade the inconvenient truth that the \u201cbad Kurds\u201d who struggle against NATO and capitalism are the same ones who defeated ISIS and <\/span>saved the Yazidis from genocide<\/span><\/a>. In general, it\u2019s safest to show the \u201cgood,\u201d capitalist, nationalist Kurds as the heroes, even in <\/span>battles they took no part in<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you do raise Kurdish political vision for the Middle East, make sure to discount it outright. As we all know, for example, the \u2018Syrian revolution\u2019 has failed \u2014 and never mind that millions of Kurds and their allies are still living outside Syrian regime control, insistently claiming that the revolution is alive and well in Syrian Kurdistan. In fact, the so-called <\/span>\u201cKurdish question\u201d<\/span><\/a> is a command to the Kurdish people, instructing them to expect no change. There isn\u2019t supposed to be an answer. It\u2019s a \u201cGordian knot,\u201d after all, best resolved by think-tankers with <\/span>close relationships<\/span><\/a> to the Turkish state.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span> You might avoid these difficult questions altogether, concluding with the gnomic reflection that <\/span>\u201cone man\u2019s terrorist is another man\u2019s freedom fighter.\u201d <\/span><\/a>But in that equation \u2014 who exactly is the \u201cman\u201d sorting Kurds into categories? And who cares what he thinks, anyway?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inspired by Binyavanga Wainaina\u2019s<\/span> How to write about Africa<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>via Lily Lynch\u2019s <\/span>How to write about the Balkans.<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A writer’s satirical guide on how to write about the hapless, subjugated Kurds, if you’re not already filming them for a 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