Republican News · Thursday 27 March 2002

Sinn Féin only party to back Kurdish self-determination

During last week's Dáil debate on the government motion pledging Irish support for the war on Iraq, it became clear that Sinn Féin was the only party willing to back the call for Kurdish self-determination.

The Sinn Féin deputies tabled a number of amendments attacking the government motion, including a clause supporting self-determination for the Kurdish people. While the opposition parties were unanimous in their rejection of the government motion pledging continued assistance to the US war effort through overflight and landing privileges, the surprise came when all the other opposition parties - including the Greens - abstained from supporting the Sinn Féin amendment on the Kurds. Only six independent deputies voted with Sinn Féin: Paudge Connolly, Jerry Cowley, Tony Gregory, Marian Harkin, Joe Higgins, and Finian McGrath.

A closer examination of the other parties' amendments explains this apparent anomaly. Without exception, the other parties called for "respect for Iraq's territorial integrity" - a formulation explicitly rejected by Sinn Féin in solidarity with the Kurdish peoples of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq and their struggles for self-determination and an independent Kurdistan.

The break-up of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, created a number of new nation-states, including Iraq - whose borders were drawn by a British civil servant - but did not establish a separate Kurdistan.

Britain divided traditional Kurdistan among neighbouring countries, which included Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Syria. The Kurds have suffered harsh treatment in most of these countries as they have tried to establish levels of independence.

In 1988, Saddam Hussein massacred 5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja with poison gas and Turkey still refers to the Kurds as mountain Turks, denying them their identity. The Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, is currently waging a guerrilla war in South Eastern Turkey.

There are five million Kurds living in Northern Iraq and eight million living in South Eastern Turkey.

By not supporting Sinn Féin's motion, the other opposition parties have shown that it is not only the government that needs to be challenged for failure to recognise the Kurdish people's legitimate aspiration.