Kurdish Politics in Iran

Abstract

Reflecting on seven decades of the Iranian Kurdish movement, this book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the politicisation of national sentiments within Iran, and the connections the movement made and developed with Kurdish groups in Iraq. Looking at Kurdish-state relations through events taking place across remote, rural and urban areas in Kurdistan, Allan Hassaniyan analyses nationalist as well as non-nationalist aspects of Kurdish politics and history, reading the evolution of Kurdish nationalism through analysing crossborder Kurdish interaction. Paying particular attention to movement mobilisation and different aspects of the collective actions and insurgency deployed by actors, civil society organisations and the political parties of Iranian Kurds during different phases of the movement, Hassaniyan demonstrates how the ethnonationalist movement of the Iranian Kurds was a product of a discriminatory policy pursued by changing Iranian regimes toward non-Persian and non-Shiite communities in the country, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century.

Decolonizing Voices From Rojhelat: Gender-Othering, Ethnic Erasure, and the Politics of Intersectionality in Iran

“…In tandem with such revisionist efforts, Kurdish scholars have produced a burgeoning body of scholarship on the colonial dynamics and mechanics of the Iranian state's assimilatory policy against non-Persian communities (Hassaniyan, 2021;Mohammadpour and Soleimani, 2022;Moradi, 2023). This scholarship demonstrates how the Iranian state since its establishment in 1925 has exhibited many of the key characteristics of internal colonialism such as the construction of national culture (see Weitz, 2015;Holliday, 2016;Wimmer, 2020) through the medium of Persian language, forced assimilation, and the 'annihilation of difference', to use Hinton's (2002) words.…”

“…Jîna's death provoked a countrywide wave of antiregime protests with hundreds of thousands storming the streets for nearly 3 months. Centered around the Kurdish slogan, 3 'Jin, Jîyan, Azadî' (Woman, Life, Freedom), the protests constitute the most widespread and sustained wave of contestation in Iran since the country's 1979 revolution (see Hassaniyan, 2021).…”

Beyond a centre‐periphery approach: Inter‐minority tensions and the development of contested categories of Kurdish mobilization in Iran

“…This is relatively new in the context of the Kurds in Iran, as compared to the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey, where the intra‐Kurdish political division was initiated several decades ago at least (see van Bruinessen, 1994). Consequently, the growing body of literature on the Iranian Kurds, which predominantly adopts the centre‐periphery analytical lens and rarely considers ethnographic or in‐the‐field accounts, often overlooks the role played by intra‐Kurdish divisions in the local political field (see Hassaniyan, 2020, 2021; Mohammadpour & Soleimani, 2021; Soleimani & Mohammadpour, 2019, 2020; Vali, 2020).…”

“…Although the Kurmanji‐speaking tribal leaders played an active role in the formation of the Republic of Kurdistan by providing almost one‐third of its infantry and cavalry, 5 none of them was appointed to key political or administrative positions (Eagleton, 1963: 92–93; Vali, 2014). In the decades which followed the fall of the Republic up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Kurdish movement in Iran declined significantly but managed to survive in various forms, from peasant movements to the students' union in Tehran, as well as being involved in clandestine political activities which would later provide the nuclei of the modern Kurdish parties (see Hassaniyan, 2019b, 2021; Vali, 2020). However, the impacts of such movements barely reached the remote rural residents of the Kurmanji‐speaking regions near Urmia.…”

“…At the same time, the nationalists in exile returned to Iran, mainly from Iraq, and successfully mobilized the Kurds, primarily in the Sorani‐speaking regions. In the immediate post‐revolutionary power vacuum, diverse political groups – from leftist‐Maoist and Kurdish nationalist groups to charismatic Islamic leaders – engaged in politicizing Kurds in the urban areas (Ahmadzadeh & Stansfield, 2010; Entessar, 1984; Hassaniyan, 2021; van Bruinessen, 1986). When tensions between the state and Kurdish militia groups such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) or Komala 6 intensified in the Sorani‐speaking regions of Iran, an asymmetric armed conflict developed which soon spilled over into the Kurmanji‐speaking rural districts, lasting for several years.…”