Review. Entessar, Nader. Kurdish Ethnonationalism. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992.
The Middle East is a patchwork of competing and intersecting ethnic groups, of which the Kurds are a significant representative, both as a whole and as a compilation of internal factional interests. They are also a significant representative of the repeated and programmatic failure of the international community to acknowledge the viability of Kurdistan as a nation-state in the twentieth century. This monograph is a well-organized account and analysis of the Kurdish nationalistic movements in the Middle East, which closes with a projection of the likelihood that the Kurds can create and sustain a national entity in the form of Kurdistan. Focusing on the Kurds of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, Entessar looks at the way in which Kurds, who are dispersed in these three countries and parts of Syria and Armenia, provoked each of the nation-states into meaningful policy discourse with them, with the overarching object in view of establishing a territorial Kurdistan. On the whole, the analysis of the condition of the Kurds appears to be most apt. However, the implication that the nationalistic ethnic consciousness of the Kurds points inevitably to the formation of Kurdistan is more problematic.
Entessar essentially argues that the Kurdish strategy was to foster domestic agitation in each of the countries, while fostering sometimes complicated alliances among international and regional factions, under an umbrella of ethnic consciousness. This is the background for the thesis that, despite anticipation of difficulties and resistance on the part of existing nation-state adversaries, Kurdish ethnonationalism, over the long haul, should have the uncommon power to absorb and contain historic and factional differences among the Kurds.
The religious nationalism of the Middle East is a powerful antagonist to Kurdish nationalistic aims. In one sense,...