Liberation.fr - By Kendal Nezan *

On 25 September, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan, all tendencies and all confessions combined, massively returned to the polls to decide on its future. Nearly 93% opted for the independence of Kurdistan.

The ballot, as well as the referendum campaign that preceded it, took place peacefully, without major incident and in accordance with a transparent democratic procedure.

This is a miracle because we are not in Switzerland but in a Middle Eastern country still at war with ISIS and threatened by neighboring states who have not skimped on threats, intimidations and various maneuvers aiming at dissuading the population from voting.

In an ideal world, abided by law and justice, the international community should have welcomed the courage and political maturity of a historically battered people who have suffered so many tragedies that peacefully express their aspirations, their attachment to democratic standards and values and take the initiative to accompany this process of achieving independence.

But we are in a world where the words justice, international law, the right of peoples to self-determination are manipulated by the great and middle powers, according to their interests in a spirit where cynicism is disputed with hypocrisy.

For example, Turkey, which created a "Turkish republic" for some 200,000 Turkish Cypriots in its Cypriot occupation zone, denies the 7.5 million Iraqi Kurds right to an independent state. Its Islamist president, who demands the lifting of the blockade against Gaza, threatens to close its border with Iraqi Kurdistan, to prevent its oil exports or even to intervene militarily. This, despite the fact that for 25 years autonomous Kurdistan has proved that it does not constitute a threat to the security of its Turkish and Iranian neighbors and that it has even become, according to the years, the second or third market for Turkish exporters. Between mutually beneficial economic interests and an anti-Kurdish ideological obsession, Ankara seems to choose the latter from fear, it seems, that the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan may encourage the 18 to 20 million Kurds of Turkey who don’t even have the right to have schools teaching in their language, do claim one day the same status. After nearly a century of conflicts, so costly in human lives and ressources, Turkey has yet to realize that the best way to combat Kurdish separatism is to win the battle of hearts and minds by recognizing cultural and linguistic rights ​​of its Kurdish population and then becoming the protector of the Kurds of neighboring countries.

Iran, which already controls the Shiite regime in Baghdad and which also has a population of about 12 million Kurds with a large Sunni majority, does not want a democratic, secular, pro-Western Kurdistan on its borders. Shocked that in the month of Shiite mourning of "Moharram", the referendum gives rise to large, festive and joyful demonstrations in the main cities of Iranian Kurdistan, it coalesces with its regional Turkish rival to try to intimidate and asphyxiate Iraqi Kurdistan. He also loudly waves the specter of "creating a second Israel" to rally Arab countries to his anti-Kurdish crusade pretending to ignore that the idea of ​​a united and independent Kurdistan dates back to the Kurdish national epic Mem and Zin, written in 1697, and that the first General History of the Kurds, the Cherefnameh or Splendours of the Kurdish Nation, written in 1596 in Persian, preceded by a few centuries the creation of Israel. Moreover, the first Kurdish Republic of history was founded in 1946 in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan.

As for the poor Iraq, or what remains of it, it has tried to show authority by taking the only retaliation within its reach, the closure of Kurdistan airports to international flights. A measure that affects both Kurdish civilians, businessmen and humanitarian and volunteer personnel who come to help the estimated 1.8 million refugees and displaced, for a large majority of Sunni Arabs, to whom Kurdistan has generously offered its hospitality. According to Baghdad, the Kurdistan referendum would be "unconstitutional". Former US Ambassador Robert Ford, who is not suspected of kurdophilia, noted in a recent article that the Iraqi government has not respected key provisions of the 2005 Constitution, such as the creation of a Senate representing the regions and governorates, the banning of militias, the organization of a referendum in the so-called disputed territories before the end of 2007, the allocation of 17% of the budget to the Kurdistan region, etc. For its part, Former Iraqi Foreign Minister and Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari in an article published by The Telegraph of London, states that the Iraqi regime had violated 55 of the 144 articles of the Constitution and had not respected US-led power-sharing agreements between the Kurds and successive Iraqi Prime Ministers, Mr. Maliki and Mr. Abadi.

This policy of centralization of power, marginalization of the Sunni Arabs favored the emergence first of Al Qaeda and then of ISIS. As a result, the Kurds no longer want to be part of an Iraq led by a sectarian Shiite power under Iran’s yoke.

The Arab countries, which rightly claim a Palestinian state, refuse the same right to the Kurds who constitute a historical nation, whom they honor from time to time as "descendants of Saladin, the savior of Islam". They are not short of contradiction and anachronism. But how can they associate themselves with their Iranian and Turkish rivals! Understand who can.

However, the most incomprehensible remains the position of our democracies. They constantly talk about human rights, religious tolerance, democratic values ​​and seem to oppose the clearly expressed will of a people who, in a Middle East devoted to autocratic and sectarian excesses, honors and practices these values, which has created an island of peace, religious tolerance, pluralism, stability and relative prosperity in a chaotic regional environment. Will we support the Turkish-Iranian-Iraqi Holy Alliance to punish our best regional allies, those who bravely fought ISIS and sacrifice them on the altar of short-term interests and Realpolitik? In a world where Iranians support the Shiites everywhere, the petro-monarchies the Salafi Sunnis, the Russians the Orthodox, should our democracies not defend their values ​​and those who, like the Kurds, make unspeakable sacrifices?

In 1918, the great American President Woodrow Wilson, in the name of his principles of nationalities and for a fair and lasting peace, had advocated the creation of a Kurdistan ratified by the 1920 International Treaty of Sèvres, which was never applied. This failure or "improvidence", as the head of the Kurdish delegation General Sharif Pasha pointed out, plunged the Kurdish people into a century of misfortune.

In 1991, another great statesman, François Mitterrand, during the Kurdish refugee crisis following the Gulf War, braved the skepticism and hostility of his allies and seized the Security Council to adopt the famous Resolution 688 which created a safe haven that evolved towards present-day autonomous Kurdistan.

Today, threatened by its neighbors, but calm and determined, the Kurdish people hope that France, which enjoys a huge capital of sympathy in Kurdistan, will take up its defense again using all its influence first to reduce tensions and prevent neighboring states from suffocating Kurdistan, and then offer its good services in Baghdad and Erbil for a peaceful settlement of the crisis. It should also address this issue, which seriously threatens peace and regional stability before the Security Council. It is the only one to be able to do so because in this world as it is organized, the Kurds have neither seat nor voice at the UN whereas a myriad of islands, emirates, confetti of empires sit and vote there.

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* President of the Kurdish Institute of Paris.