[happyathome]

“I’m all for a free Kurdistan, but let’s not forget that Kurds volunteered to help the Ottoman Caliphate punish (slaughter) Armenians in World War 1.”

True. And it didn’t start with the Armenian genocide in 1915 - the Kurds were the Ottomans’ proxies in pogroms against the Armenians throughout the last 25 years of the 19th century.

That said, the Kurds now appear to be good allies. They’ve set up a functioning democracy in their part of Iraq and are pro-American. Both of these facts are oddities in the Middle East.

Longer range, as Turkey slowly slides into the Islamist mire, having the Kurds as allies could become very important.

[rmlew]

I'm all for a free Kurdistan, but the problem is that their territory is split among Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
8 years ago, I hoped that Pan-Turkism would be a wedge in the Islamic world, counterbalancing Iran, Sunni Jihadis, Russia and China. Sadly this was not to be. And I suspect that Kurdistan would likely follow in the Islamist path, given time. Just ask the Christians (Kurd and Assyrian) and Yazidis (Kurdish Zoroastrians) in the Kurdish areas.