This is an introduction to the contemporary history of the Kurds in the Middle East. After the first major division of the land of the Kurds between the Safavids and the Ottomans in the Zahaw treaty in 1639, the Sykes-Picot secret agreement of 1916 between Britain and France, dividing the Ottoman territory, came to divide the rest of Kurdistan between the emerging nation-states of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. In other words, the arrival of nationalism as a political movement to the region deprived the Kurds of self-determination rights that other ethnicities of the ottoman empire enjoyed after the great war. Therefore, mainly, over the past century, all the political parties in all parts of Kurdistan were motivated by nationalism. This course will look at the contemporary history of the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria.

Lecturer

Lecturer

Mohammed Mustafa

Independent Postdoctoral Researcher, London. PhD in Ethno-Political Studies, University of Exeter, England. Thesis: (Religious Nationalism in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq). MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies (SOAS)