The region often referred to as Kurdistan, split between four areas in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, has long played a role as a conflicted buffer zone between larger states. Within these countries, the Kurdish people have, according to Akin Unver, a professor at Kadir Has University and Cipher Brief expert, “developed multiple political and linguistic identities… a state of fragmentation, which has been amply exploited by adjacent empires in the past.” That age of competition between great eastern empires may be over but, looking at the region today, it would seem that Kurdistan remains cursed to be a geopolitical playground for outside powers.
Driven by competing interests in Iraq’s battle against ISIS and the Syrian civil war, regional, international, and transnational actors have rushed to support or oppose Kurdish groups. Yet two countries stand out for both their proximity to war in Syria and Iraq, as well as strained relations with their own fractious Kurdish populations: Turkey and Iran.
Today, as a post-coup Turkey struggles to contain the homegrown Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and violence returns to Iran’s restive Kurdish regions, both sides continue to vie for influence in Kurdish Syria and Iraq. The question is, where does this leave the Kurds?
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq presents an interesting case study for the development of Turkish-Iranian competition in the region and the way that both Ankara and Tehran define “good” versus “bad” Kurds. The Zagros mountain range of northern Iraq has traditionally provided safe haven for PKK fighters from Turkey, offering tactical impregnability, a supportive Kurdish populace, and the fragile but useful diplomatic cover of extra-territoriality
However, since 2007 there has been a striking rapprochement between Ankara and the government of Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud Barzani in Iraq. Indeed, the relationship is now closer to an alliance, underpinned by deep economic ties. The KRG’s only independent oil pipeline to the sea runs through the Turkish port of Ceyhan and, between 2007 and 2013, the KRG jumped from Turkey’s 19th to its 3rd largest export partner. Even during the chaos of the aborted Turkish coup attempt last month, the main border crossing at Zakho remained stubbornly open, and Barzani swiftly condemned the coup plotters.
Many factors drove this transformation in Turkish-KRG relations, but one of the most important has been Ankara’s efforts to curb Iranian influence in Iraq. During the Iraqi parliamentary elections of 2010, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan openly supported the cross-sectarian (but primarily Sunni) al Iraqiya parliamentary bloc led by Iyad al Allawi. When then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki (leader of the primarily Shi’a State of Law Party) defeated al Allawi, relations with Baghdad declined sharply and Ankara has been on its back foot against Iranian influence in the country ever since. Even after al Maliki’s replacement by Haider al Abadi in 2014, bilateral relations between Baghdad and Tehran have strengthened considerably, with Iran providing overt military assistance against ISIS in southern Iraq.
On the other hand, Turkey has found it much easier to maintain relations with Erbil, and Barzani’s KDP-led government offers a critical buffer against Iranian influence in the south. Yet, even here, Erdogan must beware. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani, is a powerful political party in the KRG, which is both more secular and nationalist than the KDP and has shown a tendency toward closer ties to Iran. The PUK’s recent agreement with Gorran (“The Movement for Change”), a PUK offshoot that has become the second largest party in the Kurdish Regional Government, is especially worrying for the KDP.
This dynamic highlights one of key impediments to Turkish influence in Kurdistan. According to Unver, the split between groups that focus on their Sunni religious identity and those that focus on nationalism and ethnolinguistic identity is “the main calculus over how Turkey and Iran side with different Kurdish groups.” This puts Ankara at a distinct disadvantage, because it fears Kurdish groups that emphasize political independence, while only the KDP distinctly emphasizes Sunni identity. Furthermore, the failure of peace talks with the PKK has reignited open war against the group in Turkey’s east. At the same time, the PYG – the PKK’s sister group in Syria – has achieved significant territorial gains against ISIS and other Sunni rebel groups in Syria, some of which have received support from Ankara.
All of this exposes Turkey to both external geopolitical losses and internal security threats. The Assad regime has already exploited these divisions, reportedly granting some 2,000 PKK fighters safe passage from Northern Iraq to the Syrian-Turkish border as early as 2012.
For Tehran, direct support to such groups also comes with its own risks. First, any direct military support to militant Kurdish groups, but especially to the PKK, would risk a complete breakdown in relations with Ankara, which is both a large military power and a significant trade partner. Second, support to any of these groups risks blowback by emboldening Iran’s own version of the PKK, the Party of Free Life for Kurdistan (PJAK), which has been fighting Iranian authorities since 2004.
That civil threat became only too apparent this June when members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), inactive for nearly 20 years, ambushed Iranian soldiers in the western city of Shino. According to Mahan Abedin, Cipher Brief expert and Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, “the continuing political autonomy of Rojava [Syrian Kurdistan] is potentially inimical to Iran’s strategic interests…particularly if the quest for autonomy intensifies to demands for independence.”
The Turks, on the other hand, have their hands full purging the military and civil services of suspected coup plotters, while relations with the United States have deteriorated over the issue of extraditing suspected coup organizer Fethullah Gulen from Pennsylvania. Distracted and paranoid, Ankara has largely turned inward, and for Erdogan, the less external problems the better. According to Unver, that new focus on internal dynamics, and Moscow and Tehran’s early declarations against the coup“has the potential to ease some of the tensions with Russia and Iran over Syria and may diffuse much of the proxy conflict over Kurdish groups.” This kind of rapprochement may cool Turkish-Iranian competition in Kurdistan. What it means for the Kurds remains to be seen.
Fritz Lodge is an international producer at The Cipher Brief.
