Self Determination For The Kurds?

The right of self determination is the right “of cohesive national groups (‘peoples’) to choose for themselves a form of political organisation and their relationship to other groups.” At the time of the creation of the United Nations the organisation had 51 member States; today, it has 192. Most of these new member States have exercised the right of self determination and consequently statehood after the Second World War. However, there are still numerous no-independent minorities and peoples under the sovereignty of other States and nations. The question for a legal right to self determination for these non-independent peoples and ethnic minorities is of paramount importance. Do all peoples and ethnic groups have a legal right to determine their own political future, namely a legal right for self determination? Many scholars seem to agree that, in general, the right of self determination today is a legal right but there seems to be disagreement on how far this right should be extended. The evidence that the right of self determination is a legal and an inherent right in contemporary international law is overwhelming, as analysed below, and is opposed to the idea that the right might be conditional. However, what is unclear is that, although this right is often argued to be a legal and an inherent right, not all peoples have been able to benefit from it. It is not offered to all peoples and therefore the scope of its application is not clear. For instance, does this legal right extend to the Kurds, whose homeland of Kurdistan is divided mainly between the states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria? This article will seek to further clarify the right of self determination in contemporary international law by analysing several examples with a particular examination of the Kurdish issue. It will suggest that in the contemporary world arena the right of self determination has developed into a legal inherent right and may well have become a rule of jus cogens: and thus is applicable to all peoples.