Pffffffffft. Let's me rephrase that: pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft. Difficult topic.
Ok Deniz makes a good point in general, makes a couple good arguments and a couple weak ones. Generally though it feel as though Deniz is just shooting at the sky in hopes of making something stick. I've tried to work at the problem from a different point of view, the problem is that you run into the issue that Europe is the vantage point and it's difficult to understand what a country even is when you are used to the idea of the nation-state.
So, what is a country? Well, a country is usually defined as some territory or polity that is sovereign. That's about it. You will see talks about nations, states, possible lack of sovereignty etc, but generally all that is just fluff.
We generally understand a country to roughly mean either a nation or a state, or indeed a nation-state. What is a state? It's a political organizational structure that generally has monopoly on violence and monopoly on law. It is tied to a territory and it ties the people living on that territory. What is a nation? Well this is where the magic happens, as a nation is exactly that broader imagined community of people that share this common informational framework we call culture, often encompassing similar language, customs, stories, history.
Now, when we are looking at regions normally we sort of demand for there to be some sort of 'state', like with Palestine and Hong Kong clearly there is a state. They aren't countries, but they are country-like. It's perhaps not totally sovereign, but there's a large degree of autonomy. For both it's pretty obvious they also function as a nation, but this does not seem to be the reason for why they were accepted.
What then is Kurdistan? Kurdistan is NOT a country. It's not even country-like. Kurdistan is a nation, not much more but certainly nothing less. It is a people living on a more or less stable territory, it has this shared culture, it operates quite unified on a cultural level. So why then is it not a state? Well because of the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Ottomans and the French and the British AND the Americans and blahblah people just got dealt a really bad hand. They are literally like the Poland of the Middle East. You want to go from Baghdad to Istanbul or Damascus you have mountains to the northeast, desert to the southwest and Kurdistan in the middle. No one with sway in the region ever trusted a country to just exist in such a strategic location. It's not for lack of trying. We see Kurdish political structures existing within other countries, we see how they try to establish sovereignty, we see how active and vibrant this process is. And as Deniz also points out referenda are very much positive about independence and while there is ample reason to doubt the specific numbers, there is no reason to doubt which way the pendulum goes. The Kurds support this movement. Should we really disallow a nation that is trying to become a state and has tried for so long?
So yeah I'm very much in favor of allowing Kurdistan, I just feel like it's morally unjust to sort of punish the Kurds for what are essentially historical wrongs that the Kurds did not ask for. As long as we aren't going to allow any single region where there's some cry for autonomy I don't see the issue. However, HOWEVER, if we do this....
Europe did a bad baaaaad doodoo once. I'm not touching it with a stick. Kurdistan is one apple with a worm in it. There are warehouses full of cans full of worms waiting for us beyond Cairo. I don't have answers here. Just go case by case? Just hope no one is going to go full bonkers in Africa? If we go down one step into the unknown by allowing Kurdistan we have to wonder what step is going to take us into a deep dark forest. I don't think we there yet, but it's looming.
