L’évolution des relations entre les États et les espaces kurdes : quel impact sur les modes de gouvernance locaux ?

Lieu : Institut français du Proche-Orient, Erbil

Programme provisoire

9h-9h20 : Introduction de la journée d’étude (directions Ifpo et Ifea)

9h25-13h00 : Premier panel : pratiques politiques dans les espaces kurdes

• 9h25 : Introduction et médiation de Jean François Pérouse, Ifea
  Olivier Grojean : « S’adapter à son environnement politique : les transformations du PKK depuis les années 1980 » (20 min.) 
  Cuma Cicek : « L’impact de la création du KRG sur le mouvement politique kurde en Turquie » (20 min.)
  Serkan Yarali : “Institutionalization of the Kurdish movement through municipalities. A case study : Sur Municipality of Diyarbakir” (20 min.)
• 10h30-11h15 : Discussion avec la salle
• 11h15-11h30 : Pause Café
• 11h30 : Introduction et médiation de Hosham Dawood, Ifpo
  Sardar Aziz : “The evolving relations between nation-states and Kurdish areas : what impact on the modes of local governance : the case of Goran mouvement” (20 min.) 
  Dimitri Deschamps : “The "double circle" pattern of the politico-economic governance system in Iraqi Kurdistan: a "win-win" strategy ?” (20 min.)
  Leila Porcher : “How to oppose Islamic republic of Iran ? Everyday political practices of Kurdish Iranian militants in Iraq” (20 min.)
• 12h30-13h15 : Discussion avec la salle

13h14-14h30 : Déjeuner à l’Ifpo

14h30-16h45 : Deuxième panel : Gouverner et contrôler le territoire

• 14h30-14h35 : Introduction et médiation de Jothiar Mahmoud, Université Salaheddin
  Melisandre Genat : “Settlement policy of the Iraqi State in the Kurdish regions in the 70’s” (20 min.)
  Juliette Duclos : “Occupy Sinjar : The compromises tied to the access to water resources” (20 min.)
  Dylan O'Driscoll : “Non governance in Kirkuk” (20 min.)
  Bénédicte Bonzi : « L’évolution des relations entre les États et les espaces kurdes : quel impact sur les modes de gouvernance locale ? » (20 min.)
• 15h55-16h45 : discussion avec la salle

16h45–17h15 : Conclusion de la journée d'étude, par Myriam Catusse, Ifpo

Présentation des interventions

Premier panel : pratiques politiques dans les espaces kurdes

• Cuma Cicek : « L'impact de la création du KRG sur le mouvement politique kurde en Turquie »
  PhD candidate in the Political Science/Political Sociology and Public Policies in the Sciences Po (Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris)

• Serkan Yarali : « Institutionalization of the Kurdish movement through municipalities. A case study »
  EHESS - Paris, Territoires, sociétés et développement, Graduate Student

  This article focuses on the institutionalization of the Kurdish movement through municipalities in the Kurdish region since the late 90s. The framework is a Kurdish municipality, Sur, in the city of Diyarbakır, where the Kurdish movement is well organized. By taking part in the legal political system, Kurdish activists accessed resources that allowed them to expand their repertoire of contention and to create a counter-power through institutions. Becoming an institutional power gives Kurdish activists the opportunity to impose their standards and practices. However, having become a norm-making power, Kurdish municipalities' pathes cross those of other norm making powers. We start by analyzing the state-society relations in the Kurdish region of Turkey. Afterwards, in the framework of the case study, the article then identifies the change of Kurdish movement through municipality and new Kurdish institutions emerging in the region. It also studies the process of standardization / normalization of the counter-power vis-à-vis the central power. In conclusion, the article argues that despite some limits to the full integration of the Kurdish movement into the political system, the Kurdish movement is integrated within municipalities. Yet, it gives rise to the contention among the different groups within the movement on the one hand and on the other hand expands their repertoire of contention as a whole.

• Olivier Grojean : « S'adapter à son environnement politique : les transformations du PKK depuis les années 1980 »
  Maître de conférence en science politique, Aix-Marseille Université – CERIC/UMR 7318

  Si l’État turc a longtemps nié l’existence même d’une population kurde, la situation a changé depuis le début des années 1990 avec la reconnaissance de la présence d’une population kurde sur le territoire turc, et l’amorce d’un débat sur le caractère multiethnique du pays. Une décennie plus tard, l’arrivée au pouvoir de l’AKP a permis l’exclusion des militaires de la vie politique, le développement de nouvelles relations avec les Kurdes d’Irak, ainsi que l’ouverture de perspectives autour du statut de la minorité kurde de Turquie. Ces événements ont débouché sur l’ouverture de négociations concrètes avec le PKK en 2012, avec l’objectif affiché de mettre fin à un conflit violent qui dure depuis maintenant près de 30 ans.

  Toutes ces évolutions ont eu des conséquences importantes sur le mouvement kurde de Turquie, et notamment sur son acteur de référence, le PKK. Le système d’interaction du parti d’Öcalan a en effet été profondément bouleversé, qu’il s’agisse de ses relations avec les autorités étatiques (reconnaissance politique de fait mais répression continue en Turquie, prise pour cible des autres États via un certain nombre d’organisations sœurs), de ses relations avec son milieu partisan (les différents partis kurdistes légaux sont devenus des éléments moteurs et non uniquement « suiveurs »), ou de ses relations avec ses associés/rivaux turcs ou kurdes irakiens (nouvelle radicalisation de la gauche turque, concurrence assez hostile d’un nouveau pôle kurdiste représenté par le PDK). Au delà, et du fait de la construction d’une mouvance PKK différente de l’organisation stricto sensu, les interactions internes à l’organisation se sont également sensiblement modifiées. 
  On assiste ainsi depuis quelques années, et encore davantage depuis 2012, à une recomposition importante du système d’interaction du principal parti kurdiste de Turquie, qui a eu et a toujours des conséquences sur les répertoires d’action, sur les pratiques militantes et les répertoires discursifs de l’organisation. A travers une lecture critique (et sans doute moins optimiste) d’un certain nombre d’études sur la résolution des conflits, il s’agira donc dans cette communication de mieux cerner ces évolutions locales et régionales, de mieux caractériser les reconfigurations instables des rapports de pouvoir entre le PKK et les États, et surtout d’observer ce que les perspectives d’ouverture et de paix, mais aussi les blocages, induisent sur les opportunités et contraintes des différents acteurs impliqués.

• Sardar Aziz : “The evolving relations between nation-states and Kurdish areas : what impact on the modes of local governance ?”
  Political consultant and Columnist, Gorran Movement Research Chamber, Awene newspaper

  Why did Kurds suddenly become visible in the Middle East? Answering this question requires answering the prior question, which is why did Kurds become invisible in modern history? According to the Sykes-Picot agreement in the post-Ottoman Empire Middle East, the region restructured in a potential nation-state structure. The newly emerged states contained Kurds within their borders (Taylor, 1994). The borders crossed Kurds. To become a nation-state these states embarked on a modernization process. The process was driven by a utopian missionary zeal (Naiden, 2007). As a result, Kurds became invisible : their existence was denied, their space of existence turned into an exceptional space under a permanent state of emergency (Agamben, 2002, Watts, 2009). However these state never achieved a normal and stable situation. Now there are two lines of diversion. Firstly, nation-state is eroding to a pre-nation-state in the case of Syria and Iraq. Secondly, the nation state aims to leap into post-nation-state in the case of Turkey. Both erosion and leaping signify the crisis of the nation-state structure in the region. Through this crisis, this crack, Kurds are emerging and becoming visible. This weakened and strengthened state is approaching Kurds, albeit in different manners. In this paper, I aim to analyze this change in central states and its ramification on the emerging Kurdish peripheral authorities. I argue that the current nation-state is in crisis. The crisis can be categorized into two main categories : those who failed to modernize namely Iraq and Syria, and Turkey as the modernized one. As a result of failed modernization both Iraq and Syria are struggling to maintain their unity (existence) whereas modernized Turkey aims to be more than just a nation state. The weakened Iraq and Syria allow Kurds to appear and strengthened Turkey needs Kurds to achieve its new aim.

• Dimitri Deschamps : “The "double circle" pattern of the politico-economic governance system in Iraqi Kurdistan : a "win-win" strategy ?”
  PhD candidate, EHESS

  Since the fall of the Baath regime in 2003 and the subsequent lift of national and international sanctions, the Iraqi Kurdistan region has undergone substantial economic growth. Its economic system operates according to a clientelist model: Kurds tend to mainly seek and find jobs within large networks developed by the two main Kurdish political parties prevailing in the region since its de facto autonomy in the 1990s. As a consequence, with a government that has become the largest employer in Kurdistan, private entrepreneurship has not been encouraged. At the same time, however, with the recent opening of the borders, numerous foreign investors have taken advantage of this lack of dynamism from locals in the private sector, as well as of the lack of skilled indigenous manpower and of the liberal policy conducted since the 1990s, to come to the region and grow their business. They have been favored in this by the 2006 Investment Law, law that is illustrated in practice by a foreign takeover of a major part of the Kurdish economic activity. Important local players though, being closely bound to the political parties, have also imposed themselves in this system ; they have become precious intermediates between the regional administration and the international investors, handling the otherwise outsized administrative procedures imposed on the latter. At first glance, everyone seems to find this configuration, which can be modeled as two interconnected circles, satisfactory. The popular layers of the society, at first, often see in this system an easy way to get a salary or a pension. Foreign companies, then, benefit from wide gaps in large economic sectors, where they can fruitfully invest. Finally, and most significantly, Kurdish elites see their political and economic position strengthened : they benefit from the gratitude of the population in times of election and collect a significant share of the profit generated by private investors, through the practice of partnership.

• Leila Porcher : “How to oppose Islamic republic of Iran ? Everyday political pratices of Kurdish Iranian militants in Iraq”

  Unlike what’s happening in Turkey, Syria or even Iraq, the situation of Kurdish populations in Iran seems to be at a standstill. The repression has been reinforced after the recent election of Rohani. Historically, and like other Kurdish areas, the Kurdish Iranian opposition is held by political parties leading a nationalist struggle against the central state. However today, the guerilla fight is over and DPKI and Komala are back up in Kurdistan Region (KRG), Iraq. So, in this particular context marked by the freeze of the guerrilla warfare, the everyday life in camps in Iraq and the Iranian government’s violent repression, how do kurdish militants practice politics? How do they oppose the Iranian regime in Iran and in Iraq?
  In this presentation, I would like to step back from the official declarations given by elites and political leaders, in order to focus on political parties’ grassroots, rank and file actors and everyday practices from an anthropological point of view. I’m interested in understanding how do Kurdish militants think and understand their opposition to Iranian government? What are the practices they aim to build in such a context of exile? 
  In a first section I’ll define what militants mean by “politics”, exploring the differences between “political work”, “party’s work” and “social work”, and boundaries between what is said political, what is understood as political and infrapolitics practices toward government policy. Then, I will describe the repertoire of contention selected consequently and everyday political practices.
  These reflections are based on two fieldworks inside Komala and PDKI camps in KRG during 4 months in 2012/2013 and two months in 2014. Therefore, I will mobilize interviews as well as observation notes collected during this ongoing research.

Deuxième panel : Gouverner et contrôler le territoire

• Melisandre Genat : “Settlement policy of the Iraqi State in the Kurdish regions in the 70’s”
  Doctorante - EHESS

  Beginning in the seventies, the Ba’ath regime of Iraq actively sought to manipulate the settlement pattern inside the Kurdish region (Duhok, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah governorates). Toward this end, 88 mujamma’at (collective towns) were built to resettle the population of the region’s widely spread mountain villages. While the Ba’ath party began collectivization within a ‘modernization’ framework for the Kurdish region with the creation of state farms and cooperatives as part of their land reform agenda where the collective towns were designed as a tool of modernization on the Algerian socialist villages model, it gradually changed course after the failed 1974-1975 Kurdish insurrection and the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war to reflect its counterinsurgency objectives against the growing Kurdish rebellion. This contribution will examine the curious mix of continued development policy with punitive resettlement that exemplifies the ambivalent approach of the Ba’athist regime toward the three Kurdish governorates during the seventies, and how the gradual change of policy - that produced a brutal and chaotic transition from traditional social structures to entirely unfamiliar urban modes of organization -traumatically altered the Kurdish social fabric as a whole. A reconfiguration of the traditional categorization of urban and rural identity emerges from this period whose influence on Kurdish identity endures.

• Juliette Duclos : “Occupy Sinjar The compromises tied to the access to water resources”
  M2 - EHESS

  This paper will cover the compromises that tie the mainly peaceful population of the Sinjar province of Irak to the forces remaining close to the Kurdish democratic party who’s priority is to maintain the district under their control. The aim of this paper is to bring into light a rising paradox : the “problem of water” acting as the starting point of an exchange between the government and the “public” peasant, even though resolution would not imply resolution of the “water problem”. We shall suggest an insight into the mechanisms tied to the progressive rise of a “public” as used by John Dewey. How do the peasants of Sinjar problematize “what is happening to them” leading to the rise of a community of common interest ; yet embryonic ? How they perceive their situation in respect to the power in place in the area ? What meanings can be given to the compromises that tie the population and the power in place together for access to water resources ? The paper first explain, the production conditions of this study, and the link appearing between the production of the study and a hypothesis enabling a formalization of the interpretation. Subsequently the paper sets out to restitute the precariousness of the underlying balances between this “public” and the power in place : resolving the “problem of water” through mechanisms of symbolic and monetary compensation, guaranteeing a relay for the occupation of the land. To do so, I would draw from the results (and mishaps) of ethnographic fieldwork carried out, over two-tier period, in the Sinjar district, between September 2013 and April 2014.

• Dylan O'Driscoll : “Non-Governance in Kirkuk – A Result of KRG/Baghdad Relations”
  BA (Bath Spa), MA, PhD (University of Exeter)

  Since the United States led invasion of Iraq in 2003 there has been an intensification of the confrontations between the rival ethnonationalisms for the control of Kirkuk city and province. As a result, many commentators claim that Kirkuk is a ‘tinderbox’ waiting to explode and that the current situation is a ticking time bomb. The Iraqi State and the KRG have done little to ease these tensions and have instead let their personal battle for control over Kirkuk affect the governance of the province.
  This paper aims to examine the actions of both the Iraqi State and the KRG in Kirkuk and to explore the negative affect that these have had on the population.

• Bénédicte Bonzi : « L’évolution des relations entre les États et les espaces kurdes : quel impact sur les modes de gouvernance locale ? » Choc Therapy for the Kurdish Agricultural Model. An Anthropological Enquiry in Post-war Iraq
  EHESS - Paris, Master en Ethnologie et Anthropologie Sociale, Department Member

  Iraqi Kurdistan as a part of Mesopotamia belong for 10000 years to the cradle of agriculture, especially for thousands wheat varieties. Today, after wars, scorched earth policy, Anfal, embargos, and occupations, this part of the world has become dependent for 80% of its food on imports. Only seven varieties of wheat continue to be grown. Thus although Iraq has given to this region a certain autonomy since 1991, by dint of money from oil revenues, considering autonomy in terms of food sovereignty raises the question: What kind of autonomy are we talking about when people become dependent for their food on imports? 
  As an anthropologist, I’m going to focus on the mechanisms that transformed subsistence farming into agriculture dependent on global chemical inputs and seed supplies, and on what it means for the inhabitants in terms of culture and identity. I intend to examine the issue of seed sovereignty over the time period from 1958, until after the revolution, and up to now. 
  I will base my analysis on the Bremer order 81, which imposed intellectual propriety rights over seeds during the American occupation, and will refer to different texts written by the USAID, in particular “the new agricultural program for Kurdistan”.
  My focus is on the ways in which international governance is translated into local policies using standards and ‘security’ rules. I would like to show to what extent the changes in the agricultural model are not only a question of technical choice but have the political consequence of extinguishing agricultural knowledge and skills (poly-culture, crop rotations, water distribution networks) that were the very basis for the Kurdish claims for cultural identity and political “autonomy”.