Ethnic identity-Seeking and the Politicization of Ethnicity in the Kurdish Regions

Ethnicity and ethnocentrism, specifically in it,s instrumental and politicized form, constitute one of the most troublesome issues preoccupying social scientists. The Kurds constitute the fourth largest ethnic bloc in the Middle East after the Arabs, Persians and Turks (Olson, 2003: 6). The Kurdish ethnic movement in the four countries of Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria has always posed a problem for the central governments in these countries, so much so that, it could be described as an issue at the Middle East scale. Ethnicity-based nationalism among the Kurds emerged first among the Iranian Kurds (McDowell, 2004: 395). In recent years, the Kurdish movement has become more of a "social resistance" and has become a symptom of Kurdish culture and identity in most Kurdish regions of Iran, and is being revived as a basis for action in the public domain. Admitting the fact that the Kurds have historically been considered as defending Iran's land, people and culture, the question arises as to how the state of ethnocentrism, in the current political, cultural and economic context could be described. What are the factors influencing ethnic identity-seeking changes? What solutions could be worked out for the rational and practical management of ethnic identity-seeking? The most important assumption of the present research is that ethnic identity-seeking is a social-political construct, although the characteristic features of the community and the ethnic group have an old-fashioned nature.
Materiel & Given the diversity and extent of the topographical arrangement of the Kurdish regions, in this study, a cross-sectional survey method has been used for describing and explaining the two goals. The Kurds in Iran are mainly residing in the provinces of Kurdistan, West Azarbaijan, Kermanshah and Ilam. In this research, the choice of statistical society has been done in two stages. In the first step, attempts were made to determine the ethnic gravity points (research site). In the second stage, in terms of the level of development of the Kurdish regions, the statistical population of the research was selected from developed, underdeveloped and undeveloped urban areas among the ethnic gravity points in the Kurdish regions. Accordingly, the cities of Sanandaj, Ghorveh and Baneh (located in Kurdistan province), Paveh and Javanrood (located in Kermanshah province), Sardasht and Mahabad (located in West Azarbaijan province) were selected as the statistical population of the study. With regard to population size and Cochran formula, and coping with coverage defects and undecidedness, and the diversity of the population, the sample size was 1103 people. To access the samples, a multi-stage cluster probability sampling method was employed.
Discussion of Results and According to the results of this research, ethnic identity indices have been prominent in the current research field, with the mean of ethnic identity in the Kurdish regions being higher than the average. Ethnic identity-seeking is more intense among the Sunni Kurds, and this indicates the activation and aggravation of the ethnic divide in Iranian society. The escalation of the ethnic identity among the Sunni Kurds and in the developed regions could be interpreted as confirming the cultural division of resources and amenities in the Iranian society, which has escalated the feeling of relative deprivation and the irritability threshold among the Kurds. The results showed that the highest mean of ethnic identity index was in non-developed regions. The results of regression analysis showed that the variables of ethnic solidarity, ethnic elite modeling, feelings of discrimination, inter-ethnic relations, consumption of domestic and ethnic media, and the level and type of religion, inter-ethnic relations, and education level explain 67.3% of the changes in ethnic identity-seeking. Given the multicultural nature of the Iranian society, it is going to prove essential for cultural diversity to be the basis of policy making. Among the policy-making issues in the multicultural society of Iran is the transition from cultural nationalism to civilian nationalism, or constitutional patriotism (in the sense of Habermas), and reliance on citizenship, to strengthen social integration and national unity