Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, the Kurdish people have been living under the Ottoman/Turkish and Iranian/Safanid empires for around 600 years, and even before that, existed only as a group of loosely allied emirates, as opposed to any sort of unified state. This isn't about returning the political boundaries to some historical configuration; it's about creating a nation that has never existed previously on any sort of political level.
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By that logic there should be no arab states either. They didn't exist until the 1940s. Prior to that they too were loosely allied emirates. I think the world is full of examples of nations that were founded from the breakup of larger ones. Creating a states that have never existed happens constantly throughout history. To give legitimacy to Iraq because it has been around since the 40s (and never before that), but deny Kurds a state seems fairly ridiculous.
For the record Kurdish states have existed in the past. The land that Kurds are now claiming has been indeed part of the Ottoman and Persian empires for quite some time. But like I said before, none of the countries in the Ottoman empire existed before the 1940, so I see the lack of existence prior to now as a pretty weak argument.