Did Erdogan's UN speech set the stage for Kurdish independence?

Michael Rubin | American Enterprise Institute

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan touched upon three main themes.

The first was the demonization of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and concurrent embrace of Hamas; the second was advocacy for the independence of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus; and the third, his usual demand for United Nations Security Council reform.

Erdogan likes to describe himself as a peacemaker. Perhaps the international community should take him at his word and apply the precedents Erdogan embraces toward conflicts involving Turkey.

Begin first with his reading of international affairs. Erdogan stated, “Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by the ‘alliance of humanity.’” Erdogan misremembers history.

Turkey remained neutral in the fight against Hitler and the Nazis until late February 1945, long after the Allied liberation of Paris and just weeks before the Allied invasion of Germany. Had Turkey not supplied the German war machine with chromite and other military industrial materials, Hitler’s end might have come even sooner.

In the Middle East today, Erdogan is the most analogous to Hitler. Israel fights a defensive war; in the World War II analogy, it is more like Poland, democratic but surrounded by countries that seek to wipe it off the map. Turkey is irredentist, laying claim to Greek, Bulgarian, Iraqi, and Syrian territory; it treats northern Cyprus like the Sudetenland.

In March 2024, Erdogan lamented that Turkish troops had not pushed further into Cyprus during the 1974 invasion. “Perhaps if we had pushed south, and I say this as a child of the present,” Erdogan said, “there would be no more south and north and Cyprus would be ours only.”

Erdogan views Cyprus only through the lens of Turkish imperialism, but his statements set precedents far beyond the island. At the United Nations, he declared, “There are two separate states and two separate peoples on the island. … Today, I once again call on the international community to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and establish with it diplomatic, political, and economic relations.”

Fair enough, but if two peoples exist in Cyprus, then what about in Somalia? Somaliland was independent briefly in 1960 and has been de facto independent since 1991. Its people want international recognition, yet Turkey sells weaponry to Mogadishu and intervenes diplomatically to undermine Somaliland’s freedom.

In reality, Erdogan’s understanding of Cyprus falls flat. Turkish settlers are not synonymous to Turkish Cypriots. When the settlers and the Turkish troops leave, reintegrating the island as a cosmopolitan gas and banking hub for the Mediterranean becomes easy. There is wisdom to Erdogan’s philosophy, however, but only if applied closer to home.

Turkey’s Kurds are increasingly a people apart. Erdogan may be correct that the world never recognized Kurdistan, but the Kurds have more claim to distinct territory and culture than Palestinians historically have. Kurds have long identified themselves as Kurds; prior to 1948, Palestinian Arabs largely considered themselves Syrian.

That Kurdistan was never independent no longer matters, however. If Turkey can recognize Palestine’s borders retroactively, so too can the international community recognize Kurdistan from Mardin to Malatya and Urfa to Igdir, with a capital in Diyarbakir. Erdogan might complain such a move rewards Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorism, but that argument does not fly when Erdogan embraces Hamas.

Erdogan’s argument for U.N. reform has reticence. The world has changed greatly since the United Nations’ 1945 founding. Perhaps the world could meet his “world is bigger than five” demands halfway. Turkey might have close to 90 million people today, but after Kurdistan’s independence, it will be a shadow of its current self.

Greece, however, is the successor to an ancient culture and could represent the Eastern Mediterranean well as a permanent member of the Security Council. Israel’s inclusion could also add needed balance and reorient the U.N. toward peace rather than rhetorical pogroms.

So, yes, Mr. Erdogan. Thank you for your ideas. The best way to test the virtue and merit of your ideas is to implement them elsewhere. Perhaps you might even visit the Diyarbakir Citadel when Abdullah Öcalan raises the Kurdistan flag over the world’s newest independent state.

Michael Rubin is a former Pentagon official whose major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy. He is author of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter, 2014). He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Kurdish society.

The article first published at aei.org

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.