Challenges, Political Unity and Mutual Acceptance

The “Kurdish Question” in the Middle East:

From Sèvres to Lausanne, Revisiting a Century of Opportunities and Challenges

An international scientific conference hosted by the Department of History - Soran University

This conference is a scholarly endeavour to address the opportunities and challenges that the Kurdish Question has experienced since the Sèvres and Lausanne treaties. The Treaty of Sèvres recognized Kurds as an ethno-political entity and acknowledged their right of self-determination. Lausanne Treaty on the other hand largely overlooked and abandoned the concept of Kurdish self-determination right. Kurdish self-determination right was thus denied and ignored by the regional and international powers almost to the last decade of the twentieth century. Kurdistan was effectively dismembered, and without the consent of its people, the sovereignty of new nation-states was forcefully imposed. The Kurds, thus become the largest stateless ethnic group in the world as a result of this denial. Nevertheless, the Kurdish Question has becomes among the world’s biggest unresolved questions with impacts that go beyond national and regional borders.

Despite a century of denial of Kurdish self-determination, the last century witnessed substantial challenges as well as genuine opportunities for Kurdish self-determination right on domestic, regional, and international scale. Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria have always lived with a dream to have a state of their own. However, successive regimes in these countries have seen Kurdish aspiration for freedom and independence as a threat to their own national security and regional stability. As a result, for the foreseeable future, the effects of the treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne will continue to pose a serious challenge to the regional and global stability.