The announcement Thursday night that former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton would replace Gen. H.R. McMaster as President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor confirms the arrival of a new, distinctive voice in the Trump administration.
On no issue will Bolton’s firm stance present a bigger departure from establishment dogma than his support for an independent Kurdistan.
Bolton has vocally, consistently supported the establishment of an independent Kurdish state, arguing that the Kurds have proven their ability to govern themselves and earned the support of the United States through their reliable cooperation with Washington against a number of jihadist threats, most prominently the Islamic State (ISIS).
The Kurdish people are divided among territories belonging to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, making enemies of all these governments. For decades—and in particular recently, when all four countries faced a growing ISIS presence threatening their stability—Kurds of a variety of factions have proven willing to risk the lives of their armies to defend overlapping interests with America. They take their alliance with the United States seriously and rely only on support from Israel among their neighbors.
Yet despite early hope that the Trump administration would support Kurdish aspirations to become independent of the Islamists in Baghdad, Tehran, Ankara, and Damascus, Trump’s Washington has proven fickle. In Iraq, President Trump vowed not to “take sides” between the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iran-backed Shiite militias that have repeatedlythreatened to kill Americans. In Syria, America has stood back while Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered Turkish troops to launch an ethnic cleansing operation against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ). The Kurds of Turkey have long been under the heel of an on-again/off-again military occupation in Diyarbakir while Erdogan has arrested any politician who voiced concern for them. It is important to note that, unlike the Peshmerga or the YPG, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the violent Kurdish faction in Diyarbakir, is a Marxist, U.S.-designated terrorist organization. READ MORE
