Israel’s new Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar mentioned the Kurdish people in his first speech upon taking office. “The Kurdish people are a great nation, one of the largest nations without political independence,” Sa’ar said at a ceremony marking the handover of the ministry from outgoing Foreign Minister Israel Katz to Sa’ar.
Israel has enjoyed warm relations with the Kurdish people in the region since the early years of Israel’s independence in the region. This has stemmed from the fact that both Jews and Kurds are minorities in the region and often faced persecution at the hands of the same enemies. For instance, Jews suffered persecution at the hands of Arab nationalists and extremists and many of the same groups targeted Kurds, seeking to deny Kurds independence and rights in Iraq, Iran and Syria.
The regime of Saddam Hussein gassed Kurds and committed genocide against them, and also led the region in anti-Israel extremism. The Syrian Assad regime denied many Kurds rights and citizenship and was also at the forefront of opposing Israel. The Iranian regime under the Ayatollahs crushed Kurdish dissident groups.Turkey has been a more complex story because Israel and Turkey enjoyed relations since the 1950s and it is only more recently that Turkey’s government has become extremely hostile to Israel. Turkey has historically suppressed Kurdish rights, even trying to deny their existence and crush their language and remove Kurdish geographical names.
Kurdish roots
Sa’ar described how the Middle East Kurds are divided into four countries today. The Kurdish regions of these four countries are called Bakur, Basur, Rojava, and Rojhilat; in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, respectively. Sa’ar noted that Kurds in Syria and Iraq enjoy autonomy. In Syria, the Kurds live in eastern Syria, where they are in a region mostly controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. This autonomous region has been attacked frequently by Turkey. In addition, Turkey invaded the Kurdish area of Afrin in 2018 and ethnically cleansed 160,000 Kurds from the small mountainous area. Sa’ar called the Kurdish role in eastern Syria a form of “de facto” autonomy.
In Iraq, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is an autonomous region, and Foreign Minister Sa’ar noted that it enjoys rights under the Iraqi constitution. Kurds are “a victim of oppression and aggression from Iran and Turkey,” Sa’ar said. “We need to reach out to them and strengthen our ties. This has both political and security aspects. I also follow the Druze minority in the neighboring countries, in Syria and Lebanon; we have a brave alliance with the Druze citizens of Israel,” he said.
Sa’ar commented in the context of Israel’s desire to follow developments in the region and expand the “circle of peace and normalization” in the region. Israel has had peace with Turkey since the first years of Israel’s independence, and Israel achieved peace with Egypt in the 1980s and Jordan in the 1990s. In 2020, the Abraham Accords brought peace with the UAE and Bahrain and normalization with Morocco, opening doors to Sudan, Chad, and other states. However, this was stalled in part by Iran’s machinations and the October 7 attack.
Talk of normalization with Saudi Arabia has gone on for half a decade. Riyadh has demands on issues such as the Palestinians and wants to see Israel make positive gestures. “I hope we will succeed with Saudi Arabia and other countries,” Sa’ar said. “We have not given up on that. But we also need to carefully examine the area around us and build strong alliances and I want to emphasize other minorities in the space in which we live.” It was in the context of discussing the minorities that he reached out to Kurds and Druze. The incoming minister also said that although Israel is in a difficult war now on several fronts, there are many achievements against the Iranian axis, and the results of the war will be significant for Israel’s future in the region.
Israel’s outreach to minorities in the region has a long history. For many years, Israel pursued relations with countries on the periphery of the Arab world in the 1950s when the Arab states were the most hostile to Israel. In those days Arab nationalism led by Gamal Abdel Nasser helped build Egypt into an impressive state and also invited Soviet arms into Cairo. The Assad regime did the same. It was not until after 1973 that peace with Egypt could be pursued.
Israel worked with the Iranians prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Israel and Turkey were friends. Iran and Turkey are both non-Arab states, modern Turkey being specifically rooted in Turkish nationalism. Early Zionist leaders had studied in Istanbul, and were familiar with the Young Turks and Turkish nationalism, which likely inspired some of their own views on the pathways to a Jewish state.
Meanwhile Israel also reached out to countries in Asia and Africa from the 1950s to today. This resulted in slow and steady diplomatic successes to end Israel’s early isolation. However, setbacks occurred and this left Israel often scrambling to find new friends in a changing region. For instance, the Islamic Revolution ended Israel-Iran ties. Israel had worked on ties with the Kurds in Iraq and these ties bore fruit.
Many Kurds I have spoken to over the years in northern Iraq speak of the days in the 1960s to 1970s when they sought and received clandestine support from Israel during the Cold War. The Kurds were abandoned many times but they felt Israel was a dear and true friend. Kurds in Syria I’ve spoken with described how they felt suppressed by the Assad regime but knew that Israel was a country they could look up to.
Israel’s policy of outreach toward minorities in the region has not always worked well. Outreach to the Maronites and other Christians during the Lebanese civil war didn’t lead to peace to Lebanon. Instead Israel fought for years in Southern Lebanon and Hezbollah rose with Iranian support claiming to “resist” Israel. The present state of Lebanon and Hezbollah’s stranglehold on the country has roots in that era. Similarly, Israel’s close ties to the Kurds have been used by enemies to fight Kurdish independence. During the Kurdistan region’s independence referendum in 2017 some Kurds flew Israeli flags in places like Dohuk and Erbil.
This caught on in the Iranian and Turkish media fueling anti-Kurdish sentiment in Tehran and Ankara. Both states opposed the referendum, claiming an independent Kurdish would be a “second Israel.” In general the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their ideologies of Islamist extremism have opposed Israel and Kurds and often push antisemitic and anti-Kurdish propaganda. Many Kurds say they have no friends but the mountains, a reference to the fact that the 20 million Kurds of the region often live in more mountainous areas. Sa’ar’s speech was intended to show that they also have friends in Israel.
