Riad al-Shaqfa, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, recently stated that they “clearly oppose the ambitions of establishing a Kurdish entity in Syria.” He added that “The Kurds in Syria do not constitute more than 5 percent” and that there is no “Kurdish region” in Syria. For good measure, he also offered that “There is no one single purely Kurdish area in Syria and the Kurds are a minority in northeastern areas since they live with other components of Syrian society there.”

This statement follows a long series of similar ones from leaders of the primarily Sunni Arab opposition groups in Syria. Even some prominent Kurdish members of the Syrian National Council, who have presumably assimilated the Syrian Arab viewpoint on the issue, made similar statements during the past year. They adopt this perspective for reasons probably having as much or more to do with Turkey’s preferences than anti-Kurdish chauvinism or anything else. It’s a familiar refrain to Kurdish ears, and not just in Syria. For almost a hundred years, similar arguments plagued the political landscape of Turkey, Iraq and Iran (although the latter two at least recognized the existence of a Kurdistan region within their states).

In response to this denial of any measure of self-determination for Kurds, many a worthy, well reasoned and eloquent rebuttal was made by Kurdish leaders. As I type this, I have one such rebuttal on paper in front of me, in the original French text: “Memorandum sur les revendications du peuple Kurde,” which was General Chérif Pacha’s submission to the Paris Peace Conference on March 22, 1919. Chérif Pacha submitted the memorandum as virtually the only Kurdish representative able to attend the conference. In the document, he makes a powerful case for the existence of a Kurdish people in the region they have called Kurdistan for fourteen hundred years, citing Encyclopedic references to them and an array of older Ottoman and European documents establishing their presence there as Kurds. He shows evidence that the Kurdish inhabited lands exist between at the Caucasus mountains and Ziven in the North, Erzurum, Erzinjan, Kemah, Arabkir, Behismi, and Divick in the West, Harran, Sindjiar, Tel Asfar, Erbil, Kerkuk, Suleimani, Akk-el-man, and Sinna in the South, and Ruwanduz, Bach-Kale, Vizir-Kale, and Mt. Ararat in the East. He also demonstrates that in much of this area, Kurds form a majority and have enjoyed self-determination in the past. Citing American President Wilson’s call for self-determination of nations, he makes an eloquent case for the Kurds.

Although many Kurdish nationalists fondly cite the Treaty of Sèvres (which was the result of the Paris Peace Conference, as international recognition of Kurdistan), most of the area discussed by Chérif Pacha was allotted to the Armenians, Britain and France. Provinces with a strong majority of Kurds (in some cases as a result of the terrible massacres of 1915 and before that eliminated the Armenians) were to become part of Armenia and new British and French created states. The vaguely defined future Kurdistan was described in the Treaty of Sèvres as a possibility only. Sèvres inflicted equally unjust provisions on Anatolia and the Turkish heartlands, which led to Kemal Ataturk and his “Kemalists’s” war of liberation to reject its provisions. In this war, Ataturk enjoyed the willing partnership of the large majority of Kurds.

We know what happened after the war, however. Instead of fulfilling their promises to the Kurds (partnership, autonomy and so forth), the Kemalists formed a mono-ethnic Turkish state that denied their existence. The Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the now defunct Treaty of Sèvres, made no mention of the Kurds or Kurdistan. Kurdish revolts aimed at rejecting the new state were systematically crushed by the Kemalists, who enjoyed the connivance of Iran, France and Britain in the process. To the south, the British crushed Kurdish revolts in their new Iraq, while Kurds in the French’s new Syria vainly hoped to secure their ambitions by participating in the political process (until they were brutally thrown out in 1963). In the East, Kurdish revolts in Iran likewise suffered repression and defeat.

I think a bitter lesson emerges from this story, which has repeated itself too often in the course of history. An eloquent defense of a people’s just rights – based on reason, precedent, logic and modern principles of national self-determination – falls on deaf ears if not accompanied by the political, economic and military means to make it heard. The European colonial powers would have completely ignored Turkish and Kurdish rejection of Sèvres had Kemal Ataturk not forced them to abandon the treaty. After that, however, even a partnership in a difficult military campaign with the Kemalists did not earn the Kurds, as Kurds, a place at their table. With the termination of hostilities with Europe and the elimination of the Armenian and Greek threats, remaining Kurdish military, economic and political power could not force the Kemalists (or those to the East, South and West of Kurdistan) to see the justness of their claims.

If this story plays out differently in today’s Syria, I doubt it will be because the Kurds finally convinced Syrian Arabs of their just claims by presenting them more eloquently than ever. Rather, Western Kurds will do better to conserve and build their military, economic and political power while the Syrian regime and the opposition continue to exhaust themselves in their bitter feud for control of the state. So let the likes of Riad al-Shaqfa think or say whatever they like about the Kurds and Kurdistan, just make sure they can’t do whatever they like to the Kurds and Kurdistan...