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About 80 people attended a one-day conference on July 24 at Victoria University on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and its consequences for the Kurdish people. It was organised by the Federation of Democratic Kurdish Society — Australia.

Several historians, writers, political analysts and academics — including Behrouz Boochani, Dr John Tully, Jino Victoria Doabi, Dr Vicki Sentas, Professor Costas Laoutides, Dr William Gourlay and Shukriya Bradost — gave presentations on the history and significance of this treaty that rendered the Kurdish people without a state.

Nilüfer Koç, the foreign affairs spokesperson of the Kurdistan National Congress, sent a video address from Kurdistan.

After World War I, Britain and France, which became the leading powers in the Middle East, began creating nation states that would serve Europe’s interests; they divided up Kurdistan between four new national states. This, Koç said, was the “denial of the existence of the Kurdish people” and it gave the green light to these states to “become the hunters of the Kurdish people”.

This put the Kurds at war against the Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian regimes, which have used brutal force against them. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used poison gas to kill 5000 Kurds in a single day and about 70,000 have been disappeared in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan.

However, Koç said, “in 102 years the Kurds have never given up their rights to exist as a nation; the right to speak their language; and the right to live to their own customs and culture”.

“Ours is a history of resistance,” she said. In northern Kurdistan alone, there were 29 Kurdish uprisings against Turkish occupation.

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Nilüfer Koç. Photo supplied

Koç said the Kurdish diaspora’s contribution to the struggle since the 1990s has also been significant in gaining international reach.

The winning of a constitutionally recognised autonomous region in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the fall of the Hussein regime, and de facto autonomy in north and east Syria (Rojava) during the “Arab Spring” were important gains. However, in response, Turkey supported ISIS and other jihadist groups in an unsuccessful attempt to eliminate these gains.

Koç said Syria should learn from Rojava’s democratic confederalism, which has united all the ethnic groups, including Kurds, Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. She said the lesson of this “most important victory in Syria” is that “we can survive together if we keep together”.

This unity is based on a democratic model that respects women and their rights and provides autonomous spaces to develop. Women drove the democratisation in all the ethnic groups.

“We believe women are the key to democratic development overcoming any patriarchal traditions and this is why Rojava has survived for the last 13 years despite all forms of [foreign] interventions,”said Koç.

“Turkish bombs and drone strikes, interventions through the US, European states, the so-called International Coalition and the Arab states have all been trying to prevent us from going further with this new democratic model, but it has survived.”

[Nilüfer Koç will be a guest speaker at the  conference in Naarm/Melbourne, September 5–7.]