The Arab nationalist movement, in its simplest interpretation, was based on the call to merge the existing Arab entities into a promised, unified entity, which would “resurrect" something that supposedly once stood in the past. Although the Kurdish nationalist movement never ceased calling for the “resurrection" of the Kurdish nation, which spans several present-day countries, the facts on the ground forced it to focus on another direction: breaking the centrality of existing entities, either to obtain independent Kurdish states, or achieve some kind of Kurdish self-rule within these entities. The revolutions of the “Arab Spring," and the implicit doubts about the centralist configurations of existing states they carry, if not about existing borders themselves, vindicated the Kurdish nationalist hypothesis – which is no longer vehemently nationalistic – against the Arab nationalist theory. Indeed, only dreamers “think" today about a unified Arab super-entity that joins together the Arab nations, while a massive fire is raging inside each one of those nation-states. For one thing, this betrays a violent and continuous impetus for renegotiating the distribution of powers, and perhaps the re-demarcation of the border itself. Based on such a backdrop, the Kurdish question, or questions, seems to be rising more and more in the region, compared to a decline hitting issues pertaining – or attributed- to Arab nationalism, particularly the ill-fated question of Palestine, long described as the pathway to Arab unification. This is a noticeable first in Iraq, where Kurds, at least since 2003, are enjoying an expanded autonomous region, and acting as the most important element of arbitration balancing the turbulent relationship between Shiite and Sunni Arabs. But no one can say for sure that self-rule is what the ambitions of Iraqi Kurds will stop at, while sectarian relations in the country continue to disintegrate and deteriorate, along with dim prospects for an effective central rule. The odds for such a development only increase in light of the significant détente in the relationship between northern Iraq and Turkey, after years of caution and tension. The Kurds in Turkey, after the recent message the imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan sent out from behind bars, may also join that fast-moving locomotive. Indeed, the Turks themselves are becoming more and more convinced that any positive transformation in their relationship with the 15 million Kurds living in the south east and the south of the country, will only impact positively on Turkey itself, beginning with its anti-regime policy in Syria and not ending with smoothing out its complex path to Europe. Meanwhile, the Kurds of Syria, who were the first to clash with the Assad regime in 2004, have spared no occasion to reaffirm their keenness on their specifism and particularity within the revolution. If it is true that the recent Turkish-Kurdish agreement will weaken Kurdish sympathizers with the Syrian regime, then it is also true that any Syrian future will accommodate a significant Kurdish presence, whose administrative and institutional forms remain subject to debate and speculation. This, in general, is bad news for Damascus, the capital of the Syrian “Arab" Republic. But it may be, over the long term, even worse news to Tehran, whose Kurds remain alone outside events and prospects.
