Shéhérazade Elyazidi

The Interrelation between the Kurdish Iraqi National Identity and the Kurdish Iraqi Family Law (Doctoral Dissertation, ongoing)

Family law, which delineates the rights and responsibilities of family members, constitutes a significant component of the legal architecture underpinning nation-building efforts for at least three reasons. First, access to a nation's resources is shaped by gendered boundaries, influenced by both biology and culture, which further maintain differences in the roles and status of men and women within families. These boundaries reflect and strengthen the different treatment of men and women in family matters. Second, the family as a social institution and its legal structure reflect power relations that influence the broader polity. Laws regulating family affairs, including marriage, divorce, marital property, maintenance, child custody, and inheritance, not only determine power dynamics within families but also across civil society, the economy, and the political arena. Third the emblematic representation of family, and the associated legal constructs, play a significant role in the quest for national identity, which frequently occurs alongside the process of nation-building.     

Starting from those postulates, this research tries to analyse the interrelation between family law and the creation, reinterpretation and implementation of a national identity. To illustrate this interdependence, I focus on the Personal Status Law of 2008 enacted for the Kurdish Region of Iraq, especially the legal institutions of disobedience, polygyny and divorce. 

The encounter of family law and national identity in the Kurdish case study is fascinating for several reasons: First, the Kurds represents the largest nation without their own state. They are divided in a quite homogeneous territory stretching between four nation-states: Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. The history of the Kurds is defined by both complementarity and resistance to Arab, Persian, and Turkish linguistic cultures, indicating that Kurds are characterized by both diversity and unity. On one hand, the division of Kurds in nation-states leads to various political cultures and structures, as well as specific histories within each respective nation-state. Despite this division, a form of "Kurdish national unity" emerged during the formation of nation-states in the Middle East, partly due to the development of a national discourse. A connected historiography of the entire Kurdish region, the dream of Greater Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds, a Kurdish flag, and a national anthem are part of this discourse. Interestingly, the diversity existing within the Kurds – a religious diversity with Jesidi, Christian, Sunni and Shiitte Kurds as well as a linguistic one – did not alter the essentialisation of the Kurdish identity around ethnicity. 

Second, the Iraqi Kurds, based on this constructed ethnic identity, built a quasi state after the US-invasion of Iraq in 2003. Thus, through the enactment of a new constitution in 2005, the Kurds gained significant political and legal autonomy, granting them the authority to enact and enforce their own laws. In response, the Kurds reformed the Iraqi Personal Status Law of 1953 (PSL) to align it with Kurdish Iraqi society and to address the demands of the Kurdish Iraqi women's rights movement. This law, reflects the desire to shape a genuine national identity within Kurdish Iraqi territory, with ere gender equality at its centre. It is noteworthy that the narratives acclaiming the strength of Kurdish women, unlike those of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish descent, have been well-established since the end of the Ottoman Empire. Reforming the PSL represents, therefore, an important step to distinguish the Kurdish Iraqi identity from other ethnical, in particular Arab identity. Against this background, my PhD explores the following question: What is the interrelation between the Kurdish Iraqi national identity and the Personal Status Law of 2008 for the Kurdish Region of Iraq?