Foreign Policy of the U.S. Towards the Kurds in Turkey and Syria: An Analytical Framework

Abstract

Kurds are one of the ethnic nationalities in the Middle East. Middle East is a principal location of majority of the Kurds’ ethnic nationality and they form important minority group in both Syria and Turkey. The region has been their natural abode from the earliest time; and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War had a lasting impact on the political emancipation of the Kurds in the Middle East, notably in Turkey and Syria. With the collateral collapse of the empire under which the Kurds had been ruled for centuries, they were unnaturally conditioned to belong to different national entity in the Middle East. Such unwilling disintegration of Kurds into many states in the Middle East has been a crucial political and social issue in the region. The seemingly unending agitation for political emancipation has been a perennial political issue bothering both regional and global powers who have their interest to protect in the region. One of such major powers is the U.S. who has been making its presence felt in the region since the period of First World War. This article is an extension of boundary of knowledge on how the Kurds political agitation in the region has been inextricably interwoven with the national interest of the U.S. in both Turkey and Syria. In doing this, the researchers rely on the existing government records, online media reports and existing scholarly writings. In making use of these sources, latent content analysis is employed to mine the data.

Keywords: Kurds; Foreign Policy; Middle East; National Interest; U.S.

DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/75-03

Publication date: August 31^st 2019