Implications of An Independent Kurdistan?

The Kurds are probably the biggest group of people without a formal nation, how would the world have changed if Kurdistan had become an independent state at any point during the 20th century post WW1?
kurdistan4.jpg
 
A pretty awful mess. The Kurdish that Kurds in Iran speak has about as much in common with the Kurdish that Kurds in Turkey speak as Algerian Arabic does with Yemeni Arabic. It's difficult for all Kurds to understand each other without working out some sort of compromise dialect beforehand.

And that's just the language. The economic and political situation of Kurds in Turkey is different from that of Kurds in Iran which in turn are different from that of Kurds in Iraq. You try to unify them in a single national-state and you'll be tossing together radically different groups and hoping they somehow stick together just because they all share the same ethnonym.
 
A pretty awful mess. The Kurdish that Kurds in Iran speak has about as much in common with the Kurdish that Kurds in Turkey speak as Algerian Arabic does with Yemeni Arabic. It's difficult for all Kurds to understand each other without working out some sort of compromise dialect beforehand.

And that's just the language. The economic and political situation of Kurds in Turkey is different from that of Kurds in Iran which in turn are different from that of Kurds in Iraq. You try to unify them in a single national-state and you'll be tossing together radically different groups and hoping they somehow stick together just because they all share the same ethnonym.

That assumes one were to do it today, if this was done say after WW1, then their would be few if any economic differences and they could agree on a dialect.

That said though, I doubt Kurdistan would be anywhere near as large as the one in the above map, which seems to just include areas Kurds lived, and thus would have a very, very large minority of Turks and Armenians and smaller minorities of Persians, Arabs, Turkmen and some others.
 

Morty Vicar

Banned
Interesting. It was very close to happening, the 'blame' really lies with the British (as usual). Although I personally support Kurdistan, it is worth mentioning that that the region shown on the map is not solely comprised of Kurds, there are also Turks, Arabs, Assyrians to name but a few of the multitude of peoples in the region. So I think there would still be violent conflicts ongoing, even if the power structure was different. Another question worth asking is, considering the currently active Kurdish groups, would Kurdistan be leftist, or tend towards an Islamic state? The latter scenario is less likely imo, considering the multitude of religions in the region (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Yazdani). And although opinion is split among Kurds, would the Kurdish government support Israel?
 
The below is (more orless) the most probable/realistic border for Kurdistan with a PoD before 1950.

Modern borders are denoted by light grey while the 'Kurdish Territories' of each of them are denoted by their GCS colors.

Probable Kurdistan.png
 
What about several Kurdish speaking states based on dialect?

Kind of like how we have numerous Germanic and Romance states in Europe.
 
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