Kurdistan and The Kurds A Divided Homeland and a Nation without ...

without, however, the involvement of Kurdish workers
in it. This has been carefully devised in order to prevent
the creation of a socially more conscious Kurdish working
class than the farmers and the inhabitants of the region.
In order to realise this Turkey has set the example of
extracting the Kurdish petroleum and transporting it via
pipelines to Turkish ports where it is distilled and
processed away from the Kurdish work force. This led to
the absence of a Kurdish working class on the one hand,
and to the exploitation of petroleum by foreign petroleum
companies and colonising governments in Kurdistan. This
also prevented the emergence of a national Kurdish
industrial bourgeoisie.
Other industries such as mining did not experience
any noticeable growth while the same applies to the
traditional domestic industries with the exception of carpet
weaving industries and consumer industries. As for
agriculture, it constitutes the main economy in Kurdistan,
along with animal husbandry, whereby together they form
the most important part of agricultural production at 64%
of the national income and industry. While petroleum
production guarantees 26% of its income, the remaining
branches of economy together represent only 10%. These
percentages give us a clear idea about the weakness of
the industrial sector in Kurdistan and the extent to which
the Kurdish people is unable to benefit from its own
petroleum industry.
Therefore, it is possible to say that Kurdistan is an
agricultural land that has excellent quantities of raw
material and that it is governed by the exploitative
relationships of its colonisers ideologically, politically
and economically, whereby the Kurdish cities have
become profitable markets. Thus, they acquire the raw
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