This week the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced the opening in Erbil of the first Armenian Orthodox church. At the opening ceremony, KRG spokesman Safeen Dizayee stated that “The opening of this church itself is laying another foundation stone for a peaceful coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups in the Kurdistan Region.”
If this were one isolated event, a token gesture to multiculturalism by the KRG, cynics might justifiably dismiss it as little more than public relations. The fact of the matter, however, is that a wide spectrum of religious and ethnic groups have not only found safety in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (as well as Rojava under a different de facto autonomous Kurdish government), but freedom to thrive as well. Ankawa, the majority Christian district of Erbil, bustles with many different Christian communities, beautiful churches and a large number of Christian religious events every year. The people there – many of them Christian refugees from other parts of Iraq – do not fear for their safety and feel no pressure at all to keep a low religious profile.
The KRG’s Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs has proven open to other religions as well, including a directorship for Yezidi affairs and even a representative for Kurdistan’s Jewish community. Although almost all of Kurdistan’s Jewish community was expelled by decree from Baghdad in the 1950s, the KRG today still insists on not forgetting them and still speak fondly of Kurdish Jews. Other non-Muslim religious groups in the Region, whether Zoroastrians, Yarasan (also called “Kakai” or “Ahl-e Haqq”), atheists or others, all enjoy the freedom to practice their religion free from government harassment or persecution.
Non-Kurdish ethnic groups in the Kurdistan Region likewise enjoy rights that equivalent minorities in neighboring areas can only dream of. Turkmen in Kurdistan send their children to school in Turkish, even while Kurds in Turkey continue to fight for a similar right. Arabs, including a very large number of recent arrivals fleeing turmoil in Mosul, Baghdad and elsewhere, send their children to school in Arabic and feel next to no pressure to learn Kurdish, even after spending several years in Kurdistan. Some might even argue that the relaxed approach of the KRG might be too permissive for such cases, given policies in many countries (including this columnist’s native Quebec) that do pressure new arrivals to learn the local language.
The Kurdish approach, after so many years of attempted linguicide by Arab, Turkish and Persian states, apparently cannot even contemplate imposing a language on anyone. This even holds true for different dialects of Kurdish: while Sorani remains the primary dialect of the governorates of Erbil, Sulaimani, Halabja and Kirkuk, Kurmanji prevails in Duhok. KRG authorities remain unwilling, however, to declare Sorani the Region’s official language or dialect, leaving standardization of the language of government and education in a bit of a quandary.
In a Middle East so infamous for intolerance towards minority religious and ethnic groups, the people of Kurdistan can justifiably take pride in their government’s openness towards multiculturalism. The KRG (as well as the cantons in northern Syria) remains a true bulwark of tolerance and liberalism on these issues.
If there is a shortcoming worthy of mention on the issue, it comes not from intolerance towards different ethnic groups or religious groups, but rather good old fashion politics in a general sense: KRG authorities (from both the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)) often try to intervene politically in Turkmen, Assyrian, Arab or Yezidi community leadership contests, supporting and bolstering Christian, Yezidi, Turkmen and Arab leaders of their choice. One can thus find pro-KRG Yezidi, Christian, Turkmen or Arab groups, as well as pro-Baghdad ones (or pro-Ankara Turkmen groups, for instance).
If this kind of patron-client political game were not occurring, then one would truly have to wonder if Kurdistan is in the Middle East or not. In the meantime, one can at least be grateful that when it comes to the much more important issue of ethnic and religious coexistence, Kurdistan offers a light in the regional wilderness.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.