Genealogies of the Kurds.
Abbas Vali

The concept of Kurdish nationalism deployed in contemporary nationalist historical and political discourse is essentialist. It refers to the multiplicity of discourses and practices which define the Kurds as a uniform nation with sovereign rights to their homeland, Greater Kurdistan, currently ruled by the four sovereign states of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. These discourses and practices are forms of articulation of the “national” claim as well as the means of its realization. The concept designates a common national “origin”, the foundation of a political community with a uniform identity given to history, and a political project involving state formation. Although nationalist discourse recognizes the current fragmentation of the nationalist political project resulting from the division of Kurdistan, it retains the notion of uniform community and identity, conceived as expressions of the common origin, which supersede the existing political boundaries and the structural diversity of Kurdish societies in the region. This transcendental national origin informs the historicist narrative and essentialist conceptual structure of nationalist discourse. The essentialist definition of Kurdish nationalism has also found currency in academic discourses on Kurdish history and politics, which have proliferated since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and especially since the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
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