Abstract
By the end of 2013, Iran was being cautiously embraced by Western powers, if not by Arab Gulf states and Israel, due to the progress made by the new Iranian President Rouhani—referred to by some excitable observers as perhaps being the “Iranian Gorbachev,” such was the rapidity with which developments occurred concerning the Iranian nuclear program in the aftermath of his surprise election victory in June 2013.1 However, within Iran, significant segments of the population had little cause to share in the optimism of the international community. Indeed, for those opposed to the regime—whether in its more moderate incarnation or otherwise—and particularly for those peoples who were not as deeply tied to the Persian-dominated national project that has underpinned the narrative of the Iranian state since the 1920s, the heavy hand of the regime was being felt as restrictively as ever before.
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Notes
Agence France Presse (AFP), “Iran Hangs 16 in Reprisal for Pakistan Border Killings,” October 26, 2013, published in in New Straits Times, http://www.nst.com.my/world/iran-hangs-16-in-reprisal-for-pakistan-border-killings -1.427139, accessed on December 9, 2013.
Ali Ansari argues convincingly that the origins of a modernist tendency and the rise of a Persian-associated form of Iranian nationalism had roots that reached back into the nineteenth century. See Ali Ansari, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 40–41.
Abbas Vali, Kurds and the State in Iran: The Making of Kurdish Identity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 1–2.
For an initial presentation of the possible trajectories Iran may take in future scenarios, see the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute conference proceedings, The United States and the Middle East: Avoiding Miscalculation and Preparing for Conflict (Washington DC: The Brookings Institute, September 11, 2013).
Some of the most insightful books in these areas include Anoushiravan Ehteshami, After Khomeini: The Iranian Second Republic (London: Routledge, 1995);
Ali Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change, 2nd edn. (London: Chatham House, 2006);
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Iran in World Politics: The Question of the Islamic Republic (London: Hurst, 2007);
Fakhreddin Azimi, The Quest for Democracy in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008);
and Ali Ansari, The Politics of Nationalism in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
See, for instance, Martin van Bruinessen, “Kurdish Tribes and the State of Iran: The Case of Simko’s Revolt,” in Richard Tapper (ed.) The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London: Croom Helm, 1983), pp. 364–400;
Farideh Koohi-Kamali, The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: Pastoral Nationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003);
Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005);
David Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
Kerim Yildiz and Tanyel Taysi, The Kurds in Iran: The Past, Present and Future (London: Pluto Press, 2007);
Charles MacDonald and Carole O’Leary (eds.) Kurdish Identity: Human Rights and Political Status (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007);
Hashem Ahmadzadeh and Gareth Stansfield, “The Political, Cultural, and Military Re-Awakening of the Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Iran,” Middle East Journal 64 (Winter 2010), pp. 11–27;
Abbas Vali, Kurds and the State in Iran: The Making of Kurdish Identity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011);
Rasmus Christian Elling, Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
See Hakan Özuğlu, Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Loyalties, Competing Identities, and Shifting Boundaries (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2004);
Sabah Ghalib, The Emergence of Kurdism with Special Reference to the Three Kurdish Emirates within the Ottoman Empire, Unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Exeter: Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, 2011).
The term “meme” was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who used the term (which is a play on the word “gene”) to describe a unit of cultural transmission. For a full account of the term, see Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804–1946 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 5, quoted in Entessar, 2007, p. 189.
See Abbas Vali, “The Making of Kurdish Identity in Iran,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 4 (Fall 1995), pp. 1–22;
Abbas Vali, Kurds and the State in Iran: The Making of Kurdish Identity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 1–24;
Abbas Vali, “The Kurds and Their ‘Others’: Fragmented Identity and Fragmented Politics,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 18.2 (1998), pp. 82–95.
For the definition and discussion of “ethnies,” see Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
Andreas Wimmer, “Dominant Ethnicity and Dominant Nationhood,” in Eric Kaufmann (ed.) Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 40–58, 45. For an extended presentation of the concept of dominant nationhood,
see Andreas Wimmer, Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflict: Shadows of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 5.
It is admittedly misleading to refer to these leftist, nontribal associations, as “new” because, as Martin van Bruinessen notes, “[i]t should not be assumed that at any period in the past all Kurds were ‘tribal’. There have always been large numbers of Kurdish ‘non-tribal’ cultivators (variously called kurmanj, guran, rayat, misken), with no autonomous social organization beyond shallow lineages.” The “new” aspect referred to in my analysis above refers to the politicization of these nontribally aligned clusters and their articulation of nonfeudal positions, nationalist narratives, and leftist discourses. See Martin van Bruinessen, “Kurdish Tribes and the State of Iran: The Case of Simko’s Revolt,” in Richard Tapper (ed.) The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London: Croom Helm, 1983), p. 374.
For a comprehensive, empirically rich, account of the events that surrounded the emergence of the Kurdish Republic centered on Mahabad, see William Eagleton, The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963). For a fascinating eye-witness account written by an American military attaché to Tehran,
see Archie Roosevelt, “The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad,” Middle East Journal 1 (July 1947), pp. 247–269.
James Clark, “Oil, The Cold War, and The Crisis in Azerbaijan of March 1946,” Oriente Moderno, Nuova Serie 23 (3, 2004), pp. 557–574, 557.
Also see Mark Lytle, The Origins of the Iranian–American Alliance, 1941–1953 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987).
See Martin van Bruinessen, “The Kurds between Iran and Iraq,” Middle East Report 141 (July–August 1986), pp. 14–27.
This chapter does not address in great detail the chronology of political events vis-à-vis the Kurds and Iran occurred in 1980s as they tended to be more of an internal ordering of Kurdish affairs, within a context of limited political space that was the norm in this period. Writings that cover this period in more detail include Nader Entessar, Kurdish Politics in the Middle East (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), Chapter 2 and Romano, 2006, Chapter 7.
For details of Iran’s targeting of Iranian Kurds based in Iraqi Kurdistan, see Jalil Gadani, Penja Sal Khabat [Fifty Years of Struggle], Vol. 2. Raniya (Kurdistan Region of Iraq) (Hiwa Press, 2004), pp. 273–277, quoted in Ahmadzadeh and Stansfield, 2010, p. 21.
There is a significant literature on the emergence and development of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which endured a difficult and violent 1990s before consolidating into a stable and increasingly influential federal region of Iraq in the period following the removal of the Ba’th government in March 2003. For works specifically on the development of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, see Michael Gunter, The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999);
Gareth Stansfield, Iraqi Kurdistan: Political Development and Emergency Democracy (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003);
Denise Natali, The Kurdish Quasi-State: Development and Dependency in Post-Golf War Iraq (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010);
and Ofra Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2012).
For a detailed account of the Khatami period, see Ali Ansari, Iran, Islam and Democracy: The Politics of Managing Change, 2nd edn. (London: Chatham House, 2006).
See Toby Matthiesen, Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013)
and Frederic Wehrey, Sectarian Politics in the Gulf: From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
See Danish Refugee Council, Iranian Kurds: On Conditions for Iranian Kurdish Parties in Iran and KRI, Activities in the Kurdish Area of Iran, Conditions in Border Area and Situation of Returnees from KRI to Iran: 30 May to 9 June 2013 (Copenhagen: Udlændingestyrelsen (Danish Immigration Service), 2013).
See Gareth Stansfield, “The Unravelling of the Post-First World War State System? The Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Transformation of the Middle East,” International Affairs 89 (March 2013), pp. 259–282.
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© 2014 David Romano and Mehmet Gurses
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Stansfield, G. (2014). Kurds, Persian Nationalism, and Shi’i Rule: Surviving Dominant Nationhood in Iran. In: Romano, D., Gurses, M. (eds) Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409997_4
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