Uneven trajectories and connected politics beyond borders: Bashur, Rojhelat and the Kurdish movement in Iran

This article challenges the methodological nationalism underpinning much scholarship on Kurdish politics in Iran by foregrounding cross-border dynamics linking different parts of a non-state Kurdistan. Drawing on uneven and combined development (UCD), it uses Kurdish-language publications, archives, secondary literature, and semi-structured interviews to examine how political and cultural developments in Bashur/KRI (the Kurdistan Region of Iraq) reshaped the Kurdish movement in Iran and Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan). It also analyses how these developments reconfigured state–society relations amid the regional transformations following 1991. The article proceeds in five parts. First, it argues that the UCD of Kurdish movements provided a sociological foundation for Kurdish politics in Iran. Second, it examines the divergent trajectories of Rojhelat and Bashur. The third and fourth sections analyse how cross-border social relations, economic exchanges, cultural and intellectual networks, and media flows interacted with Rojhelat’s socio-political structures to produce forms of civic and political resistance distinct from both party-centred politics in the KRI and Persian-centric political fields within Iran. The final section considers the implications for Kurdish studies, transnational politics, and analyses of non-state national movements. The article demonstrates how UCD illuminates the relational, cross-border, and historically uneven formation of political movements across fragmented national spaces.