HELP PSLSSS.. THANKS

Question

Question	Response
Who got to decide where the modern borders in the Middle East were drawn?
What were the consequences for the Kurds?
What do you think governments owe to the Kurdish minorities in their borders?
Should the Kurds get to have their own state? What benefits could there be from creating an independent state for the Kurds? What could be some of the challenges?

Answer 1

Also late, but I'll try to answer to the best of my ability.

1. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, European powers - most notably Great Britain and France - divided the remains of the empire under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The lines they drew made the modern borders of countries like Iraq and Syria.
2. Like colonial land divisions in Africa, the Sykes-Picot agreement did not take into account ethnic and cultural boundaries already present. In doing so, many cultural groups were arbitrarily divided by distant powers with little to no understanding of them.
3. This is... a complicated question to answer. The countries that came out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire are now all sovereign nations. From a realist perspective, they have no obligation to acknowledge a part of their population as an extant ethnic group. A Turkish Kurd, to the Turkish government, could easily just be called a "Turkish Citizen" as opposed to a Kurd (though I admittedly am not very knowledgeable on intergovernmental views on the ethnic group in these countries). From a more liberal perspective, it would be conducive for these countries to provide aid to the ethnic group in their countries in order to ease possible tensions.
4. Again, a complicated question to answer. For a Kurdish country to exist, multiple countries would have to willingly cede territory under their control to a new power. This is herding cats with just one country (just look at the civil war preceding South Sudan's sovereignty from Sudan), and wrangling multiple countries in this way would be a challenge at the best of times. Imagine threading the state of Texas through the eye of a needle and you'd probably get close to the difficulty of the topic. However, an independent Kurdish state would also enable the Kurdish people to prioritize their needs separate from those in each country. A nation united under Kurdish culture may prove beneficial to its people. Though I can't say what this would do for the greater region as a whole.

Like I said, this is about seven months late. Still, hope this helps!