The national conservative party the Democrats of Norway wants an independent Kurdish nation. For more about the Kurdish flag, click here.
In light of the migrant crisis, the Kurdish question has been swept under the carpet. However, the national conservative party, the Democrats in Norway, thinks it is time to focus more on the struggles of the Kurdish nation in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
The Kurdish people has been split by artificial borders following the Sykes–Picot Agreement after World War I. We demand that the Kurdish people finally gets their own country, and we demand that the regimes in these countries reciprocates Kurdish attempts for peaceful negotiations.
However, before such a state can come into existence, we demand that the authorities in Iran grant the Kurds autonomous status. But we realize that this can only happen under a democratic government, and therefore we expect independent countries of the world and international organizations to follow up on the Kurdish question. A democratic Iran does not seem likely in the near future.
In Iran the suppression of Kurds, 15 percent of the Iranian population, has been forgotten by Western media and politicians. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the Kurds in Iran have been tortured, apprehended and suppressed systematically by the Iranian revolutionary guard and other government structures.
International media organization have focused on the Iranian Shia sectarian battle against the Sunni Islamic terrorists, for example represented by the so-called Islamic State, and thus, the Iranian regime has been allowed to suppress the Kurds of Iran without scrutiny.
After a defeat against the PDKI Peshmerga, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been terrified after the population in several villages has stood together with the Peshmerga forces. This is according to the Kurdish news agency Kurdistan Media. Together with the local population, the PDKI have forced the Revolutionary Guard to leave their positions in several villages. The PDKI Peshmerga is the armed wing of the political party Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, PDKI. Now, the Iranian government has started to move heavy military equipment like tanks and artillery from big cities in Iran to the Kurdish parts.
On June 30, according to the local population, the Revolutionary Guard moved eight tanks and several artillery pieces into the road between Mahabad, Naghedeh, Piranshehr og Serdesht. According to the same news agency, the Revolutionary Guard has bombarded the villages around the town of Serdesht with heavy artillery and destroyed the landscape totally.
Now, the Tehran regime also started to attack areas in Northern Iraq where they claim PDKI have their main bases. Previously we have seen that the Shia-led Baghdad government protested against Turkish soldiers in Iraq, but we in the Democrats in Norway regret that Baghdad has not protested against Iranian breaches of Iraqi sovereignty.
For a year after the Iranian Islamic revolution, the PDKI tried to oppose the new theocracy in Tehran with democratic and peaceful means. However, this was impossible after the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini started a jihad, a holy struggle based on orthodox Shia Islam, against the PDKI and the Kurdish people in Iran.
Thus, the PDKI had no other option but to defend themselves and their families with arms, but during the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 and the wars in Iraq from 1990, the Kurdish struggle in Iran has been ignored and forgotten by the world.
Last fall, after the Turkish downing of a Russian fighter jet over Syrian territory, the Democrats in Norway called for Turkey’s exit from NATO. The Turkish leadership, and especially president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is completely reckless and a danger for world peace. Under the guise of being a NATO ally, Turkey has pretended to fight Sunni Islamic rebels like the Islamic State in Syria, but we have seen that the real target and Turkey’s real enemy has been their own Kurdish population and Kurds in the neighboring countries.
Therefore, we demand that the Turkish government resumes peaceful negotiations with the Kurdish minority immediately and refrain from labeling democratic opposition and legitimate criticism as terrorism.
In Iraq, the Kurds have had de facto independence for many years, and the Kurdish authorities has proven that they are not enemies of the government in Baghdad. It is time for formalize this independence into a de jure Kurdish state.
The Democrats in Norway calls for the great powers of the world, led by sensible politicians in the USA and Russia, to be real peacemakers. We have seen that Western powers have invaded Syrian territory to fight the Islamic state, but they should have spent much more energy in talking to President Assad about a sensible solution to the Kurdish question.