The Kurdish Fight Against ISIS: Realizing the Virtual Kurdistan Through Factionalized Politics in a Fragmented Homeland

Abstract

The fight between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has engendered some new trends in Kurdish politics in the Near East. These trends are likely to bear impact on the course of Kurdish politics in the coming years. On the positive side, these trends can be grouped under the following headings: the emergence of a common Kurdish public sphere; the emergence of a fragile common Kurdish politics; the emergence of a non-state actor, ISIS, as the Kurdish political identity’s constitutive other; the enhanced emphasis on the secular nature of Kurdish politics; and the enhanced need for a security sector reform in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Nevertheless, these largely positive trends are not the only ones that have been unleashed as a result of the fight between the Kurds and ISIS. Thus, beneath the euphoria and much vaunted hype of Kurdish unity as a result of the Kurdish fight against ISIS, the seeds of discord and dangerous rivalry have been planted as well. This rivalry, which is reminiscent of the old bloody and perilous rivalries in Kurdish politics, is taking place along two axes: within the regional setting between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and within the context of the KRG between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Yet, it is eventually the regional context, and the will and deftness of Kurdish politics that will decide as to which scenario will prevail in the Kurdish politics in the region.