From Kurdistan to Texas, Scots inspiring separatists

STEENOKKERZEEL, Belgium — For Kurt Ryon, the mayor of Steenokkerzeel, a Flemish village 10 miles northeast of Brussels, watching the Scottish independence campaign in the final days before the referendum is like watching a good game of soccer. “They were losing for the first half and most of the second half,” he said, “but now we’re in the 85th minute and they could be winning.”

Ryon, who wants his native Flanders to split from Belgium, is rooting for Scotland to do the same from Britain.

From Catalonia to Kurdistan to Quebec, nationalist and separatist movements in Europe and beyond are watching the Scottish independence referendum closely — sometimes more so than Britons themselves, who seem to have only just woken up to the possibility

that Scotland might vote next Thursday to bring to an end a 307-year union. A curious collection of left and right, rich and poor, marginal and mainstream, these movements are united in the hope that their shared ambition for more self-determination will get a lift from an independent Scotland.

In the separatist-minded Basque Country, an autonomous community in northern Spain, the leader of the governing nationalist party has been known to dress up in a Scottish kilt and jokes that Basques would rather be part of an independent Scotland than remain part of Spain, which has ruled out any kind of vote. In Veneto, a region of northern Italy, nationalists have held a Scottish-inspired online referendum and now claim that 9 in 10 inhabitants want autonomy.

Busloads of Catalans, South Tiroleans, Corsicans, Bretons, Frisians and “Finland-Swedes” are headed for Scotland to witness the vote. Even Bavaria (which calls it- self “Europe’s seventh-largest economy”) is sending a delegation.

“It would create a very important precedent,” said Naif Bezwan of Mardin Artuklu University in the Kurdish part of Turkey. Across the Iraqi border (“the KurdishKurdish border,” as Bezwan puts it), where a confluence of war, oil disputes and political turmoil has renewed the debate about secession, Kurds pine for the opportunity of a Scottish-style breakup. “Everyone here is watching,” said Hemin Lihony, the web manager at Rudaw, Kurdistan’s largest news organization, based in Irbil, Iraq.

Whatever the outcome of next week’s referendum, many nationalists say Scotland has already won.

“They have the opportunity to decide their own future,” said Andoni Ortuzar, the president of the governing Basque Nationalist Party, who wore a kilt in the 2012 carnival to celebrate the announcement of a Scottish referendum that year.

“That’s what national self-determination is,” he said. “That’s all we ask.”