6 - Khodmokhtari: the Focal Point of Kurdish–Regime Dispute

Summary

The Kurdish national movement in Iran following the Iranian Revolution and regime change in 1979 entered into a new era of mobilisation and challenge to the newly established Islamic Republic. The post-Revolution relations between Kurds and the regime resulted in a period of unpredictability and instability, conceptualised in this chapter as the ‘no war yet no peace’ Kurdish Condition. In this period the Kurdish claim for khodmokhtari (autonomy) and Tehran’s rejection of this claim was the focus of conflict with the regime. Through this period the Kurdish region witnessed some of the fiercest examples of regime brutality in Kurdistan, resulting in many massacres, executions and considerable internal displacement, with the Bloody Newroz of Sanandaj (March 1979) as an example among many others. On the other hand, Kurdish civil society has through this short era expanded drastically, resulting in the establishment of many civil society associations and organisations.