Shadowing Practice: Why This Country Was Erased From History - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Up in the Zagros Mountains have long lived a people called the Kurds.
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There are people with a centuries-long history of fighting back against invaders who have crossed through their lands,
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resisting conquest in the name of defending their shared cultural identity, some living as nomads, a people with no friends but these mountains.
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Eventually, the Ottoman Empire did take over all of this territory.
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But even then, the Kurds maintained large amounts of autonomy and freedom in their land.
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Then came World War I, when the European powers defeated the Ottoman Empire and conquered all of this.
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The winners got together and discussed how they would carve it up between them.
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If you look back at old European maps, you'll see that all of this area would be labeled Kurdistan, an area where the Kurdish people lived and had some self-rule.
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So while drawing these lines, the British wanted to mark all of this as Kurdish territory, paving a way for an independent country for the Kurds.
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But the new leader of Turkey opposed this plan.
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He didn't want to give all this land and resources to the Kurds.
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So he pushed the European forces out of Turkey.
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They gave up on this plan to give the Kurds their own land.
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And in the end, instead of drawing borders around the Kurds, the Europeans drew borders through them.
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What could have been Kurdistan was now five different territories.
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The Kurds split between them.
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But at first, these were just lines on a map, and the Kurds continued to move through this region.
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Eventually, the Europeans left, and these became independent countries with leaders who wanted to consolidate and centralize power.
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So these lines hardened, restricting the Kurds' movement and their livelihood in this region.
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But even still, across this region, the Kurds didn't give up on their idea of someday gaining independence,
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self-rule, or maybe even a country of their own.
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I don't like the feeling of being spied on, but we all are kind of spied on, some of us by governments,
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but almost all of us are spied on by corporations who collect our information, it on these data broker lists
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and sell it on an open market to people who want to make money off of us.
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And that brings me to the sponsor of today's video, Incogni, which is a personal information removal service.
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What you do is you sign up for Incogni
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and you give them permission to go out on your behalf and to take you off of all of these lists.
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They audit like how many lists you're on.
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They go find it and they show you on this dashboard like you are on hundreds of different information lists.
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And then they go through the process of of requesting that you be taken off that list.
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And if anyone pushes back, like one of the corporations, like makes it harder, Incogni follows through with the process to make sure that you get off of all of these lists.
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The people who want this information aren't just marketers who want to sell you like new tennis shoes, but it's like people search sites, which are becoming a thing
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that use this data to like put you on these people search sites so people can find your information.
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Health insurance companies will sometimes buy some of this data so
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that they can use like your web browsing history to like jack up your health insurance bill?
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Luckily, Incogni exists, and I am genuinely grateful for that.
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Like unrelated to the fact that they're sponsoring today's video, which like I'm very grateful for that too.
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So if you wanna get in on Incogni at a discount, there's a link in my description.
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It's incogni.com slash Johnny Harris.
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When you click the link, it helps support the channel and it gets you 60% off their annual plan.
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Use the code Johnny Harris in the checkout box and you'll get a discount.
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Thank you, Incogni, for sponsoring our journalism.
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And now it's time to dive into this mapping story.
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Throughout the 1900s, the Kurds in each of these new countries took different approaches to fight for an independent Kurdish state.
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Some Kurds would use politics, others would use violence.
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The early uprisings were crushed by the leaders of these new countries, who saw the Kurds as a threat to their efforts to unify their country around a common language and culture.
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Like in Iran, where the Kurds had some political rights, but they fought for more.
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They wanted autonomy and independence.
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The government of Iran wouldn't have any of this.
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They would crack down with violence on the Kurds, often supported by Western powers.
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By the 1970s Iran was going through a revolution and the Kurds tried again to rise up.
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But this new regime had no tolerance for a group that would challenge the leadership of the ruling religious leader.
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So once again, they were put down.
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Over in Iraq, Kurdish fighters fought hard against the government throughout the 20th century.
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Until the 1970s, when this new regime came in and made a deal with the Kurds,
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saying that they would be recognized as an ethnic group and would be guaranteed political representation.
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It seemed like a huge deal for the Kurds, but it turned out to be a false promise.
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The Iraqi regime, now led by Saddam Hussein, would continue to repress the Kurds, the Kurds, eventually dropping deadly chemical weapons on Kurdish towns in Iraq,
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systematically killing thousands of Kurdish civilians in a genocide supported by American-made supplies that were sold to Saddam.
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Over in Syria, the Kurds were treated decently under the French-controlled government.
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They were citizens and had some rights.
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But after the French left in the 40s, the regimes that came after oppressed the Kurds, And by the 1970s, the Syrian government was arresting and deporting them,
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taking their land and giving it to Arabs.
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In total, the Syrian government would remove 140,000 Kurds from the country.
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Decades later, Syria and the United States would both find the Kurds in Syria useful for their political goals.
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But first, let's talk about Turkey.
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There's more Kurdish people here than in any other country.
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The same government that had fought against a Kurdish state early on continued to oppress the Kurds, denying them citizenship, outlawing their language,
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and keeping them out of politics, all with the goal of wiping out their culture from Turkey as a part of this Turkification campaign
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which tried to unify Turkey under one culture, targeting the Kurds and other ethnic minorities.
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Some Kurds fought back against this in the early years, but were quickly crushed by the Turkish state,
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leading to the creation of an armed insurgent group with communist ideology.
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They're called the Kurdish Workers' Party, or PKK, and it would become one of the biggest Turkish resistance movements.
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The PKK would use violence, like suicide bombings and improvised explosives, as well as youth militia fires against the Turkish government — tactics
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that they say are the only way to fight back against such oppression.
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And as a result, Turkey and most Western powers consider the PKK a terrorist group.
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So that's how the Kurds in these four countries became locked in a conflict with their governments.
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They all have different struggles, but they're all unified by the dream of some version of Kurdish independence.
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But it doesn't take long for these regimes to see that they could use the Kurds as a tool, as a weapon.
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One of the earliest examples of this happens at the end of World War II,
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when the Soviet Union sees an opportunity to gain land and access to oil by supplying and arming the Kurds in Iran,
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allowing them to rise up against the government and declare their own country, supported by the Soviet Union.
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But it didn't work.
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The US pressures the Soviets to leave, and now without support, the government of Iran, which is backed by the US and UK,
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go on to crush this movement of Kurds in their country.
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The Kurds are back to being repressed by the government.
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In the 1980s, Syria uses the Kurds as a weapon against its rival Turkey
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when it allows the PKK to start operating within Syria, giving them money and weapons so that they can hurt Turkey.
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Syria is doing this in spite of having spent years removing hundreds of thousands of Kurds from its own country.
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This escalates the conflict between these two, and Turkey threatens to invade Syria.
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So Syria backs down and kicks the PKK out to avoid being invaded,
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showing once again how the Kurds' willingness to fight can easily become a pawn in the geopolitics of the region, discarded once they aren't useful anymore.
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In the 1980s, Iran and Iraq both use the Kurds at the same time as a weapon to hurt each other.
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Even as both countries are cracking down on Kurds in their own country,
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Saddam Hussein funds and arms the Kurds in Iran while Iran funds the Kurds in northern Iraq,
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both sides hoping to spark a Kurdish uprising that will distract and weaken their enemy.
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In Iraq, Saddam Hussein retaliates against the Kurds in his country with
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that genocidal chemical attack we talked about earlier that killed at least 50,000 Kurdish people and probably much more.
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Once again, the Kurdish dream of independence was used by outsiders as a weapon, and the Kurdish people paid heavily for it.
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The U.S would get involved when, in the 90s, they would come to this region fighting against Saddam Hussein for the first time.
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The U.S rallies the Kurds, calling for them to overthrow Saddam.
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George Bush Sr. literally calls them to action with television and radio broadcasts throughout the country.
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That the Iraqi people should put him aside and
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that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist
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and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace-loving nations.
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And it seems to work.
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It sparks an uprising that looks successful at first.
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The US had instigated this uprising, and they have forces in the region that they could send to support the Kurds, but they do nothing.
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This allows Saddam to regather his forces and crush this coup, and to increase this oppression, ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again.
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Now, the US and UK do eventually step in to create this no-fly zone, meant to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south.
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This gives the Kurds some autonomy over their region and protects them from further airstrikes by the Iraqi army.
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Soon the US is back in Iraq.
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It's 2003 and the Bush administration decides to invade and remove Saddam from power.
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The Kurds in Iraq hope that the US presence in this region will mean finally they will get their own state.
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They will be independent.
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They join the US in fighting against Saddam and his loyalists, battling insurgents and later against ISIS.
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The Kurds would even go on to hold a vote, showing that 92% of the population was in favor of independence.
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But the U.S won't support this, worried that it might destabilize this new Iraqi state that the U.S just propped up.
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Even when the Kurds fight on the side of the U.S
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and their interests, U.S support for their cause still remains very limited.
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They still look the other way as Turkey bombs their towns in Iraq, hunting for the PKK.
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This same pattern has continued in recent years in the country of Syria, a country that descended into civil war around 2011.
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This chaos looked like an opportunity for the Kurds in Syria, a chance to establish real control over what they see as a part of Kurdistan.
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The PKK in Turkey helps create a new Kurdish militia called the People's Protection Unit, or YPG.
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They seize large swaths of land in the north and they declare self-governance.
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Around this same time, the terrorist group ISIS is taking huge swaths of territory in the north and east of the country, creating their so-called caliphate.
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And here comes the U.S once again, asking the Kurds for help, hoping that they will fight against ISIS on the ground for them.
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But because this group is allied with the PKK, which they consider a terrorist group,
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the US asks this militia to rebrand themselves to the Syrian Democratic Forces, which obscures their connection to the PKK.
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The US then trains, funds, and arms them to fight ISIS.
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The Kurds are once again the US's weapon.
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This plan works, and with help from US airstrikes, this Kurdish militia kicks ISIS out of more and more land.
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But Turkey hates this.
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All they see is a potential Kurdish state right on their southern border a safe haven for the PKK
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that will allow more attacks against the Turkish military.
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But Turkey can't attack this branch of the Kurds while they're being supported by the United States.
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Lucky for them, there's a new president in the White House, and he's promised to pull the U.S out of the war in Syria.
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And in 2019, to the dismay of the Kurds, he makes good on this promise.
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With the U.S out of the way, Turkey invades, launching airstrikes and artillery against the Kurds in this border region,
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saying that their plan is to create a 32-kilometer deep safe zone right here along the border, and that no Kurdish forces are allowed to be here.
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The plan was to then resettle Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.
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It's a brutal campaign that looks a lot like what Syria was doing to the Kurds in the 70s.
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The US completely abandons the Kurds, even after using them to fight their enemy ISIS.
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Turkey, a NATO and US ally, continues to bomb them, using weapons from the United States.
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They spend the next four years sending drone strikes and air strikes into Syria and Iraq, anywhere they think the PKK has a presence.
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This map shows all of their attacks during this time.
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You can see that it's not just against the Kurds in Turkey, but across this whole region.
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Today, the Kurdish groups in this region vary more widely than ever, each with different values and visions for the future,
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forged from each of their unique struggles and traumas.
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Kurdish groups still fight the government in Iran, with the goal of creating their own state.
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new Iraqi constitution.
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But it doesn't seem like this autonomy will last, as recently the Iraqi army is fighting with the Kurds to
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maintain control over the oil resources in this area to keep the Kurds economically dependent on the central government
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so that they never break away.
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Once again the U.S is not supporting the Kurds in this fight.
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Turkey continues its offensive against the PKK and other Kurdish groups in the region
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and they continue to crack down on the Kurds politically, arresting Kurdish politicians and activists,
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censoring journalists to intimidate the Kurdish people from participating in the election.
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The Kurds in Syria face a new and uncertain future.
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They do have some autonomy up here in the north, but are surrounded by enemies, no longer counting on any support from the U.S.
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The story of the Kurds is the story of a people who are willing to fight like few others, all in the name of their culture and identity.
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That willingness to fight has presented a threat to regional governments, bent on control of their people and the resources within their borders.
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That willingness to fight has also been hijacked by outside powers, turning the Kurds into a pawn to fulfill geopolitical objectives.
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Each time, showing how willing these powers are to use the Kurds, and then abandon their cause.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you’ll practice English speaking using a fascinating video about the Kurdish people’s history. You’ll focus on understanding narrative flow, historical terms, and conversational transitions—all while improving your pronunciation and fluency with the shadowing technique. Whether you’re new to shadowspeaks or refining your skills, this video’s mix of storytelling and explanation makes it perfect for english speaking practice. You’ll learn to follow complex ideas, mimic natural speech patterns, and pick up new vocabulary in context.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Autonomy: The right to self-govern. Example: "The Kurds maintained autonomy in their land."
- Consolidate: To strengthen or unify. Example: "Leaders wanted to consolidate power."
- Carve up: To divide territory. Example: "European powers carved up the Ottoman Empire."
- Crack down: To take strict action. Example: "Governments cracked down on uprisings."
- Nomads: People who move from place to place. Example: "Some Kurds lived as nomads."
Practice Tips
The video’s tone is conversational but informative, with a moderate speed—ideal for shadowing. Here’s how to practice: Pause the video after 2-3 sentences, then repeat aloud, matching the speaker’s rhythm and intonation. Focus on words like "eventually" and "but" to capture natural transitions. For tricky phrases, like "paving a way for an independent country," break them into chunks. Shadowspeak daily with this clip to build muscle memory for connected speech. Remember, the goal is to mimic not just words, but the emotion and emphasis in the storytelling. This is a great way to learn english with videos while mastering the shadowing technique—you’ll be surprised how quickly your fluency improves!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | would be labeled · being spied · are spied |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who want · Incogni, which is · Iran, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have crossed · has continued · has presented |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.