The Rise and Fall of The Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad and The Power Distribution Structures at The Regional Level

The purpose of this article is to investigate the role of regional powers in the Middle East, including Turkey and Iraq, according to the structures of power distribution at the regional level, in the establishment and ultimately fall of the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad in 1946. Numerous studies have been conducted on Kurdish movements in the Middle East and, of course, the Kurdish movement in Iran, but the significant point in this study is to examine the role of regional countries such as Turkey and Iraq during the rise and fall of the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad in 1946; which from this perspective has been largely overlooked in political studies. Therefore, the focus of this article is on the study of the role of these two countries in the process of the rise and fall of the Republic of Kurdistan, considering the available sources and documents, libraries, electronic resources and archives with an analytical-descriptive approach. According to governmental and non-governmental documents, sources and archives, the role of regional countries, including Turkey and to some extent Iraq, in the fall of the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad should not be ignored and reduced to the key role of international powers such as Soviet Union, Britain and the United States. In other words, these two regional powers, especially Turkey, as facilitating forces, played a pivotal role in changing the attitude of international powers towards the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad.