‘People without a State Also Must Live’ language and historiography, 67 assertions of Kurdish or other non-Persian identities are perceived as a threat to the Iranian nation state. 68 However, the exclusion of Kurds in Iran has manifested itself differently than in Turkey, Syria and Iraq, as ‘[t]he post-1980 Iranian Kurdish formula was based on the notion that Kurds and Iranians shared special ethnic, cultural, and linguistic ties that could not be constructed among Arabs, Turks, and Kurds’. 69 Although crucial aspects of Kurdish culture and identity were prohibited, Kurdish identity was accepted to a greater extent than in Turkey. 70 Furthermore, it has been argued that division in Iran has largely been on socio-economic terms and that Kurds in Iran considered themselves to have more in common with other oppressed groups within the country than with Kurds elsewhere in the region. 71 Consequently, Natali argues that although Kurdish nationalism became ethnicised in response to the restrictions and militarisation of Iranian political space, Kurdish nationalism operated predominantly alongside other opposition movements in Iran. 72 Kurdish ethnic identity and nationalism are here understood as being situated within particular nation state contexts and conceptualised in response to the lines along which Kurds experience exclusion from the national community. Natali suggests that [e]thnicity became the basis of Kurdish identity not because it was rooted in some premodern past, but because it was the category of political identities used by central governments to determine inclusion and exclusion in the modern state system. 73 Locating ethnicised Kurdish identity formation and nationalism within the citizenship regimes of the Middle Eastern states in question, Natali explains that ‘Kurdish communities “Kurdified” what the state elite Arabized, Turkified, and Persianized’. 74 Thus, Kurdish ethnicity ought to be understood, not as an essentialised feature, but as a response to the lines along which exclusion of Kurds has been articulated. C Citizenship in the Netherlands The status of Kurds within the Netherlands necessarily differs from that within the nation-state contexts discussed above, as Kurds’ presence in the Netherlands is intricately linked to migration and diaspora, rather than to the concept of homeland and claims to territory. As the Kurdish diaspora constitutes a significant proportion of the Kurdish population, it is important to recognise this difference in context without detracting from the ongoing processes of exclusion experienced by Kurds in countries such as the Netherlands. Within the Netherlands, citizenship is thought to be increasingly culturalised and virtualised — shifting from being a status recognised through formal legal status to one dependent on the citizen’s degree of assimilation to dominant Dutch norms and values in order to be seen as 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 Kamal Soleimani and Ahmad Mohammadpour, ‘Can Non-Persians Speak? The Sovereign’s Narration of “Iranian Identity”’ (2019) 19(5) Ethnicities 925, 928–36. ibid 928. Natali (n 49) 153. Karlsson (n 52) 185. ibid 203; Natali (n 49). Natali (n 49) 149, 159. ibid xxvi. ibid 180. 293