Kasaba R. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 4, Turkey in the Modern World

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ham

it bozarslan

The Kurds in Turkey

I will ﬁrst provide some brief information concerning the Kurds and the Kur-

dish regions, also known in the academic literature as Kurdistan of Turkey

or Turkish Kurdistan. Most observers estimate the number of Kurds in the

Middle East and in the diaspora to be close to 30 million (between 12 and

15 million in Turkey; more than 8 million in Iran; 5 million in Iraq; more

than 1 million in Syria; and almost 2 million in Lebanon and other Middle

Eastern countries, the former Soviet Union and Europe). The impact of divi-

sion along state borders, multiple afﬁliationist policies such as assimilation,

voluntary or forced displacement and mixed marriages, as well as internal

religious and linguistic differentiations, make it impossible to postulate that

there is one exclusive Kurdish identity. In Turkey, for instance, while most of

the Kurds are Sunni Muslims, a notable minority is Alevi. Some Kurds are Zaza

speakers, while the others speak Kurmandj

ı. Moreover, some provinces, such

as Elazı

g, Malatya and Erzurum, are ethnically and religiously mixed, with

various combinations of Turks, Kurds, Sunnis and Alevis. These mixtures

lead geographers to think more in terms of Kurdish-inhabited areas than of

Kurdistan.

The Kurdish-inhabited areas are among the least developed regions in

Turkey. While the eastern provinces’ share of GNP was 10.3%in1965, it did

not exceed 7.68%in1986.

By 2000 it had increased to 10.2% (with a population

increase rate of 14.5); as Mustafa S

onmez points out, however, this increase can

only be explained by the state’s massive fund transfer in order to ﬁnance its

military expenditures due to the war, as well as by the salaries of its increasing

number of security personnel.

In 1992, while the GNP per capita was $2,032

in Turkey, it was only $300 in many eastern provinces.

In 2001, the GNP per

capita was $2,941 in Turkey as a whole, and between $3,000 and $6,165 in cities

such Istanbul and Kocaeli; but in some eastern cities the amount was seven

times lower. In 2004, while the GDP per capita was $2,146 in Turkey, and

$3,063 in Istanbul, it hardly exceeded $1,000 in the Kurdish provinces ($1,008

in Urfa, $1,312 in Diyarbakır, $1,216 in Batman, $1,111 in Siirt, $963 in Mardin,

$855 in

gdır, $836 in Hakkari, $795 in Bing

ol, 730 in A

grı, $646 in Bitlis, $578

1 David McDowell, A Modern history of the Kurds: I. B. Tauris, (London 1996).

2 Jean-Franc¸ois Peroutz, La Turquie en marche. Les grandes mutations depuis 1980 (Paris: de la

Martini

ere, 2004).

3 Mustafa S

onmez, Gelir uc¸urumu. T

urkiye’de gelirin adaletsiz b

us¸

u (Istanbul: OM, 2001),

p. 68.

4 Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question (Lanham, MD: Rowman

& Littleﬁeld, 1998), p. 188. See also Mustafa S

onmez, Do

gu Anadolu’nun hik

ayesi (Istanbul:

Arkadas¸, 1990).

334

Kurds and the Turkish state

in Mus¸, and $568 in Kars).

While the rate of doctors per capita was 888 in

Edirne in the end of the twentieth century, it was 2,506 in Bitlis and Hakkari

during the same period. According the state’s own account, in 1996 a third of

the region’s population lived below the level of poverty.

Given the important

gaps between ‘west’ and ‘east’, some observers have developed the concept

‘under-under-development’ to describe the economic situation of the Kurdish

provinces.

Until the end of 1970s, most of the Kurdish-inhabited provinces had an

overwhelmingly rural population with strong tribal afﬁliations

and weak

economic integration with the rest of the country. The serious economic

crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, the violence of the 1970s and the guerrilla war-

fare and consequent forced or voluntary displacements in the 1980s and 1990s

have tremendously accelerated the urbanisation process, undermining the

rural economy without replacing it with industrialisation or a viable economy

based on services. The gigantic GAP project (covering almost 73,000 km

)

has increased the country’s energy supplies, but has not notably improved

the region’s economic conditions. The region’s economy is nowadays based

primarily on trans-border commerce, legal or illegal, and the informal

economy.

From the 1960s until today, politicians from the left and right alike have

explained the existence of Kurdish unrest as a result of the economic underde-

velopment of the ‘east’, and have proposed integrative measures. Those mea-

sures, however, have never been fully planned, let alone implemented. More

importantly, although economic concerns were among the major grievances

of the Kurdish activists of the 1960s, economic improvements are largely insuf-

ﬁcient to resolve this century-long problem, which has developed its own

internal and regional dynamics, and given birth to a strong nationalist ideol-

ogy and subjectivity.

5 Devlet

Istatistik Enstit

u, T

urkiye istatistik yıllı

gı (Ankara: D

IE, 2004), pp. 354–6.

6 Martin Strohmeier and Lale Yalc¸ın-Heckmann, Die Kurden: Geschichte, Politik, Kultur

(Munich, C. H. Beck, 2000), p. 186.

7 Peroutz, La Turquie en marche,p.109.

8 R. Madjid Jafar, Under-underdevelopment: A Regional Case Study of the Kurdish Areas in Turkey

(Helsinki: Painoprint, 1976).

9 Lale Yalc¸ın-Heckmann, Tribe and Kinship among the Kurds (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991);

Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Sheikh and the State (London: Zed Press, 1992).

10 The South-East Anatolian Project (G

uneydo

gu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP) is an ‘inte-

grative’ project of irrigation and hydro-electric production covering many Kurdish-

inhabited areas, including Urfa, Diyarbakır, Adıyaman, Siirt, Mardin, Batman and S¸ırnak.

It was conceptualised in the 1970s, but gained momentum after 1983. See Ahmet

Ozer,

Modernles¸meveg

uneydo

gu (Ankara:

Imge, 1999).

335

ham

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Emergence of Kurdish nationalism and struggle

in the late Ottoman Empire

Historically speaking, the origins of the Kurdish issue date back only to the

period of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. It is obvious, however, that

throughout the Ottoman centuries, the Kurds had developed some degree

of self-awareness. In 1514, a coalition of sixteen Kurdish emirates, as threat-

ened by the pro-Shiite uprisings as the Ottomans themselves were, negotiated

an alliance and a pact with the Ottoman regime and thereby protected their

autonomy. Some ofﬁcially recognised or de facto autonomous Kurdish struc-

tures survived until the middle of the nineteenth century under Ottoman

rule. Some of these emirates also had subjects or client groups in the Per-

sian Empire that paid them tribute. In 1596,S¸eref Khan, the well-known mir

of Bidlis, wrote a monumental history that, while emphasising the merits of

his own dynasty, interpreted Kurdish history as a uniﬁed entity.

In 1695, the

mystical poet Ehmed-

e Khan

ı advocated Kurdish unity and defended the idea

of a Kurdish state, against the ‘Rums, Persians and Arabs’.

As Hakan

Ozo

glu argues,

this heritage and the constitution of a Kurdis-

tan province in 1846 were decisive elements for the development of a Kurdish

self-awareness. At the end of the nineteenth century, two events further accel-

erated this process of self-deﬁnition as a distinct group: the formation, by the

Ottoman state, of the so-called Hamidiye regiments, primarily consisting of

Kurdish tribes (1891); and the foundation, outside the Ottoman Empire, of

an opposition journal called Kurdistan (1898). The regiments, which consisted

of Kurdish tribal soldiers, were mainly charged with combating Armenian

revolutionary committees. They were, theoretically at least, also in charge of

the protection of the empire’s borders. By creating these regiments, Sultan

Abd

ulhamid II intended to overcome the massive disorder and tribal uprisings

that had followed the destruction of the Kurdish emirates during the Tanzi-

mat era. The co-optation of some sections of tribal authority did not radically

diminish violence in the Kurdish region, but did deprive it of its anti-state

potential. Some of these co-opted tribes, keen to preserve their own auton-

omy rather than defending the state’s interests, later became the most fervent

supporters of the Kurdish challenge to state authority.

11 S¸eref Han, S¸erefname: K

urd tarihi (Istanbul: Deng, 1998).

12 Ehmed-

eXan

ı, Mem

ın, ed. Mehmed Emin Bozarslan (Uppsala: Deng, 1995).

13 Hakan

Ozo

glu, Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loy-

alties, and Shifting Boundaries (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004).

336

Kurds and the Turkish state

The journal Kurdistan, which was edited by Miqdad Midhad Bedirkhan, son

of Bedirkhan Pas¸a, the late mir of Botan,

seems to have circulated among

Kurdish dignitaries and played an important role in the emergence of a cultural

nationalism. During the Second Constitutional Period, other initiatives such

as the foundation of the K

urd Terakki Cemiyeti (Kurdish Progress Society)

and the publication of the K

urd Terakki ve Teav

un Gazetesi (Kurdish Progress

and Mutual Aid Newspaper, 1908–9),

constituted further steps in the devel-

opment of this nationalism. Nonetheless, in this period Kurdish nationalism

still remained Ottomanist in outlook.

The years 1913 and 1914, however, were marked by paradoxical Kurdish

contests and a radicalisation of this still fragile nationalism. The violent anti-

Armenian feelings that followed the Unionist government’s temptation to

resolve the dramatic effects of the Armenian agrarian question

pushed many

Kurdish tribes, including the former Hamidiyeregiments, henceforth renamed

as¸iret s

uvari alayları (tribal regiments), as well as some Kurdish religious men,

towards an open revolt against the central government.

Quite independently

of these anti-Armenian rebellions, the leaders of the Bidlis, Barzan and Baban

revolts, which took place in 1914, formulated clearly nationalist demands,

including the rights to education in Kurdish and regional autonomy.

The

First World War and the genocide of the Armenians (1915–16) marked a new

shift, pushing many Kurdish tribes and some religious shaykhs and urban nota-

bles into alliance with the Unionist government. This alliance was renewed

during the War of Independence (1919–22).

In 1919–20, the mainstream Kurdish leaders welcomed Mustafa Kemal’s

promises concerning the preservation and protection of the caliphate, the

liberation of the former vilayet of Mosul from British occupation and the

Kurdish–Turkish fraternity in the future state to be founded after the war’s end.

They also opposed any kind of secessionist programme. The fear of Armenian

14 Mehmed Emin Bozarslan (ed.), Kurdistan, 2 vols. (Uppsala: Deng, 1991).

15 See Mehmed Emin Bozarslan (ed.), K

urd Teav

un ve Terakki Gazetesi, Kovara Kurd

ı-Tirk

ı-

urdce-T

urkc¸e Dergi (1908–1909) (Uppsala: Deng, 1998).

16 During the 1894–6 massacres at least 100,000 Armenians were killed and many Armenian

villages occupied by the Kurdish tribes; thus large sections of the Armenian peasantry

were displaced. The resolution of this ‘Agrarian question’ became one of the main

concerns of the Armenian revolutionary committees as well as of the European powers.

After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, the new government tried to ﬁnd an amicable

solution to this question: see Hamit Bozarslan, ‘Les relations kurdo-arm

eniennes’: 1894–

1996’, in Hans-Lukas Kieser (ed.), Die armenische Frage und die Schweiz (Zurich: Chronos

Ve r l a g ) .

17 See ibid.

18 Celil

e Celil, XIX. y

uzyıl Osmanlı

Imparatorlu

gu’nda K

urtler (Ankara:

Oz-Ge, 1992); C. Celil,

13 Rupel

en Balkes¸ ji Diroka Gel

eKurd(Vienna: Institua Kurdzaniye, 2002), pp. 113–38.

337

ham

it bozarslan

revenge pushed many of them to give priority to the alliance with fellow

Muslims. At the same time, however, an independence movement emerged,

structured around the Kurdish clubs and the K

urd Teali Cemiyeti (Society for

Kurdish Elevation) in Istanbul, which also edited a journal called J

ın (Life).

The ofﬁcial delegate of the Cemiyet, S¸erif Pas¸a, negotiated with the Armenian

delegation to assure the independence of the two countries, and the S

evres

Treaty (1920) opened the way for the future formation of a Kurdish state.

This treaty however, was vehemently rejected by most Kurdish dignitaries

and became obsolete following the success of the Kemalist forces.

The period of radicalisation and revolts (1923–38)

The activities of the K

urd Teali Cemiyeti were not the only signs of a possible

Kurdish radicalisation. The Koc¸giri revolt, which took place in 1921 in the

Alevi Dersim area,

also threatened the Kemalist–Kurdish alliance. The severe

repression of the Kurdish rebels, which led them to fear suffering the same

fate as the Armenians, provoked widespread negative reactions, including

within the pro-Kemal camp. It is true that this revolt did not mobilise the Sunni

Kurds. Following the proclamation of the Republic, however, many Sunni

Kurdish dignitaries gradually followed the path of the Kurdish Alevi insurgents.

Their path to opposition was not necessarily the result of the coercion of

the new Kemalist state. Many documents suggest that in fact the Ankara

authorities were largely unaware of the growing Kurdish opposition and did

not take seriously the alarming messages sent by their local representatives.

The main reasons for the rupture seem to be linked to three factors. First,

it was obvious by the end of 1923 that Turkish nationalism would become

the country’s ofﬁcial and hegemonic ideology, as the Kemalists considered the

Turkish Republic to be the outcome of the victory of the Turks over the other

peoples of the former Ottoman Empire. The new ideology deﬁned linguistic

difference as a real or potential threat to the country’s existence. Many Kurdish

dignitaries, including those who had participated in the extermination of the

Armenians between 1915 and 1916, came to fear that they might experience the

same fate.

The second reason was linked to the abolition of the caliphate, one

19 Hans-Lukas Kieser, Les Kurdes al

evis face au nationalisme turc k

emaliste: l’al

evit

e du Der-

simetsonr

ole dans le premier soul

evement kurde contre Mustafa Kemal (Koc¸giri, 1919–1921)

(Amsterdam: Middle East Research Associates, 1993).

20 Hamit Bozarslan ‘The Kurdish nationalism in Turkey: from the tacit contract to rebellion

(1919–1925)’, in Abbas Vali (ed.), Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism (Costa Mesa:

Mazda, 2003).

338

Kurds and the Turkish state

of the main pillars of the Kurdish–Kemalist alliance. Exceptfor the objections of

some Turkish intellectuals who considered the caliphate an important symbol

of continuity with the Ottoman past, this act did not inﬂame strong reactions

within the Turkish population. Kurdish religious dignitaries, however, reacted

vehemently to the abolition of the caliphate, considering it the end of the only

remaining common ground between Kurds and Turks. S¸eyh Said, the leader

of a future revolt, argued that the Kurds should take up the banner of Islam,

which had been abandoned by the Turks.

Finally, Kurdish leaders were angry

that the War of Independence had ended without the liberation of southern

Kurdistan, which was left to the British, contrary to Mustafa Kemal’s earlier

promises. The ﬁnal status of the vilayet of Mosul would not be ﬁnalised until

1926; but it was obvious by 1924 that the Kemalist state would not undertake a

new phase of the war to fulﬁl the promises of the Misak-ı Milli (National Pact)

of 1920.

The most signiﬁcant result of the end of the Kurdish alliance with the

Kemalist state was a succession of revolts from 1924 to 1936. Three of them,

the S¸eyh Said revolt in 1925, the Ararat revolt of 1930 and the Dersim revolt of

1936–8, left a deep imprint on both the history of Kurdish nationalism and that

of the Turkish Republic. The 1925 revolt was initially organised by the Azadi

(Liberty) Committee, whose leadership was composed of Kurdish intellectu-

als and ofﬁcers who had been arrested in 1924.

The revolt, which was led

by a Kurdish religious dignitary – the Naqshbandi S¸eyh Said of Piran – seri-

ously threatened the Republic before it was crushed at the gates of Diyarbekir

(renamed Diyarbakır). Ankara mobilised some 50,000 soldiers and spent nearly

a third of its annual budget, as well as having to negotiate with the French

authorities to gain use of the southern railways, in order to suppress the revolt.

Although it was mainly – though not exclusively – limited to the Zaza-speaking

Sunni areas, the revolt was a clear sign that the appeal of Kurdish national-

ism had become attractive well beyond the circles of Kurdish intellectuals and

ofﬁcers.

The S¸eyh Said rebellion set a pattern that would dominate almost all the

Kurdish uprisings in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East until the 1970s. It

was initially planned by intellectuals and ofﬁcers who shared the background

and education of the Unionist and Kemalist elites and considered the tribal

chiefs and religious brotherhoods to be mutegallibiyya (usurpers) or obstacles

preventing the Kurds from accessing ‘civilisation’. They rejected the state

21 E. Lindsay to A. Chamberlain, Constantinople, 24 February 1925,no.154 (FO 424/262).

22 Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion (1880–

1925) (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989).

339

ham

it bozarslan

mainly because it was a Turkish – i.e. non-Kurdish – state. On the other

hand, given the weakness of the urban middle classes, they were obliged to

rely almost exclusively on rural forces, which initially rejected the state not

because it was a Turkish state but simply because it imposed and militarised

borders, suppressed the caliphate and abandoned its promises of fraternity.

These rural forces found in the leadership of the intellectuals and ofﬁcers the

organisational experience that they sorely lacked, and in Kurdish nationalism

a vocabulary that allowed them to describe and legitimise their liberation

struggle.

The so-called Ararat revolt,which started in 1927 and culminated in 1930,was

only suppressed after a massive military campaign involving the destruction

of many villages and their populations,

in close cooperation with Iran and

the Soviet Union, and also but less so with Iraq, which was under the British

mandate. The Ararat revolt further developed the pattern set by the ﬁrst revolt.

It was organised by a well-structured committee, Khoybun (Being One-self ),

which in 1927 signed a treaty of cooperation with the Armenian Revolution-

ary Federation, Tachnaksutyun.

Khoybun had two components: a military

one, led by the former Ottoman ofﬁcer

Ihsan Nuri,

and the political one,

based in Damascus, with representatives in many Middle Eastern and West-

ern countries, directed mainly by the Bedirkhan brothers.

The revolt’s forces,

however, emanated from rural areas. Among them were former Hamidiyes

and the tribes that had collaborated with the Kemalist forces, some of which

had supported the state during the S¸eyh Said rebellion in 1925.

The ﬁnal revolt took place in late 1930s in the Dersim area, which had

remained calm and enjoyed a de facto autonomy since the 1921 rebellion. The

revolt started after the so-called ‘Dersim Law’ of 1935, which in fact aimed at

the extraction of this ‘sore’ by dispersing the Kurdish Alevi population and

replacing it with a Turkish population. Once again, intellectuals such as Nur

Dersim

and rural forces led by a religious dignitary, Seyyid Rıza, played a

Ismet

u’n

un s

oylev ve demec¸leri (Istanbul: MB, 1946), p. 218.

24 For the document see Bozarslan, ‘Les relations kurdo-arm

eniennes’, pp. 337–40.

25 For his memoirs see

Ihsan Nouri [Nuri], La r

evolte de l’Agridagh (Geneva: Editions Kurdes,

1986).

26 E g.. Khoybun, Les massacres des Kurdes en Turquie (Cairo: Khoybun, 1927); Khoybun, De

la question kurde. La loi de d

eportation et le dispersion des Kurdes (Cairo: Khoybun, 1928);

Sureyya Bedir Khan, The Case of Kurdistan against Turkey (Stockholm: Sara Publishing,

1995); see also Martin Strohmeier, Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National

Identity: Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

27 For his memoirs, see Nur

ı Dersim

ı, K

urdistantarihindeDersim (Istanbul: Dilan, 1986); Nur

Dersim

ı, Dersim ve K

urt milli m

ucadelesine dair hatıratım, ed. Mehmet Bayrak (Ankara:

Oz-Ge, 1992).

340

Kurds and the Turkish state

decisive role in this revolt, which was suppressed by the massive extermination

of both rebels and civilians.

The revolts of this early Republican period presented several common char-

acteristics. First, they showed the state’s ability to simultaneously suppress

and make use of tribal dynamics, as many tribal leaders were co-opted to lead

paramilitary militia forces, at least in the short term. Second, although almost

all the Kurdish areas were militarily contested at one time or another during

Mustafa Kemal’spresidency, the Kurdish resistance was not ableto mobilise the

entire rural population, and the urban population remained essentially quies-

cent. Third, although they were contained in one part of the Kurdish provinces,

almost all of these uprisings had wide-ranging echoes outside Turkey and

mobilised Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurdish peasantry’s refusal to per-

mit militarisation of the borders also played a decisive role in the emergence

of a trans-border mobilisation. In contrast to the former imperial borders,

the borders of the new state were considered by modern states, including the

Turkish state, to be symbols of national sovereignty and honour and bound-

aries of the national economy, but they divided many tribes and families. Here

again we see a pattern that would dominate the Kurdish question throughout

the twentieth century, closely binding internal and regional dimensions of this

issue. Fourth, thanks to the presence of a Westernised intellectual leadership,

the revolts played a decisive role in the codiﬁcation of the symbols of modern

Kurdish nationalism. The Kurdish elite, under the inﬂuence of Kemalist and

other nationalist inter-war ideologies, used Kurdish history – both mythical,

such as the legend of the Medic origins of the Kurds, and factual, such as the

image of Selaheddin and the past Kurdish emirates, to challenge Kemalism.

While deﬁning the Turks as barbarians, this ideology argued that the history

and contributions of the Kurds to world civilisation gave them the right to

form an independent state.

The uprisings of the early Republican period had a tremendous impact on

the evolution of the Kemalist regime and its Kurdish policy, leading partly

to the closing down of the Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Progressive

Republican Party,henceforth PRP, whichhad been formed by Mustafa Kemal’s

opponents) for collusion with the ‘reactionary’ rebellion of 1925, as well as the

adoption of a law called Takrir-i S

un (Reestablishment of Order), which

marked the end of both political pluralism and the free press. Second, the

I. Bes¸ikc¸i,Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim jenosidi (Istanbul: Belge Yayınları, 1990); Martin

van Bruinessen, Kurdish Ethno-Nationalism versus Nation-Building States: Collected Articles

(Istanbul: Isis Press, 2000), pp. 67–96.

341

ham

it bozarslan

state publicly categorised the insurgents as m

urteci (religious reactionaries)

and accused them of being manipulated by Great Britain.

In the judgment

condemning S¸eyh Said and his friends to death in 1925, however, the judge

focused almost exclusively on the Kurdish threat to Turkish nationalism and

Turkishness.

After 1925, the state developed a double discourse towards the Kurds: on the

one hand, their existence was denied,

whileon the other, the state insisted that

they certainly existed, but only as an oppressive and feudal ethno-class, whose

main aim was to destroy the Turks as an ethnic group and as an oppressed

class.

It was thus important to destroy ‘feudal’ Kurdishness, thereby allow-

ing the ‘assimilated’ Turkish peasantry to regain its original Turkishness and

purity. Secret documents published in the 1990s by Mehmet Bayrak attest

that a third and ‘conﬁdential’ discourse was also widespread: according to the

authors of these reports, the east bank of the Euphrates River was almost

entirely Kurdish and Kurdish nationalism was well entrenched in the hearts

of the Kurdish population. It was thus necessary to reinforce the Turkish

nature of the west bank of this river, and progressively purify and Turkify the

east bank. A series of 1934 laws called the

Isk

an Kanunu (Law of Settlement)

openly aimed at the dispersion of the ‘groups which do not possess the Turk-

ish culture’ through Anatolia and their replacement with ‘groups which are of

the Turkish culture’.

From a purely administrative point of view, the single

party was not represented in the Kurdish regions, having been replaced by

three general inspectorates under the direct command of Mustafa Kemal.

However, many Turkish nationalist organisations, such as Halkevleri (Peo-

ple’s Houses) and Halkodaları (People’s Chambers), had local branches in the

region. The state started an intense programme of construction of modern

schools whose principal aim was to inculcate the spirit of Turkishness in young

Kurds.

29 This thesis has been contested both by

Ismet

u in his memoirs (Ulus, 31 March 1969)

and by British documents published by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (e.g. Bilal

N. S¸ims¸ir,

Ingiliz belgelerinde Atat

urk (1919–1938), vol. IV: Ekim 1921–Ekim 1922 (Ankara:

urk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1973)).

30 See Les massacres des Kurdes.

31 See Mesut Yegen, Devlet s

oyleminde K

urt sorunu (Istanbul:

Iletis¸im Yayınları, 1999).

32 Mehmet Bayrak, K

urtler ve ulusal demokratik m

ucadeleleri. Gizli belgeler – aras¸tırmalar –

notlar (Ankara:

Oz-Ge, 1993); Mehmet Bayrak, Ac¸ık-gizli/resmi-gayriresmi Kurdoloji bel-

geleri (Ankara:

Oz-Ge, 1994); Osman M. Kansu, ‘Ararat Eteklerinde’, Cumhuriyet, 18–22

July 1930.

33 For the ofﬁcial texts, see

I. Bes¸ikc¸i, K

urtlerin mecburi isk

anı (Ankara: Yurt, 1991).

34 The fourth general inspectorate was based in Thrace: see Cemil Koc¸ak, Umum

ufettis¸likler (1927–1952) (Istanbul:

Iletis¸im Yayinları, 2003).

342

Kurds and the Turkish state

The period of silence (1938–61)

The 1936–8 Dersim rebellion was followed by almost two decades in which

resistance to the central state was absent, to the point that a French observer

could write: ‘Insofar as one can judge, the Kurdish issue is really one of polic-

ing.’

This period has yet to be studied in detail. However, at least three factors

seem to explain this silence. First, a massive campaign of state coercion had

broken the armed resistance, whose main leaders were either killed or exiled.

Second, the outbreak of the Second World War, which marked a period of

fear in Turkey, also affected the Kurdish areas, as the main Kurdish nationalist

groups in Syria and Lebanon became more involved in Allied propaganda and

cultural activities than in political activities stricto sensu.

Kurdish nationalist

groups attempted, after the foundation of the United Nations, to draw the

attention of the major powers to the fate of the Kurds.

Their efforts, how-

ever, were in vain. The military crackdown on the Barzani rebellion in 1943

in Iraq and the end of the autonomous experience of the Mahabad Republic

in Iran in 1946 further weakened Kurdish resistance in the Middle East and in

Turkey.

The third and most important reason seems, however, to be linked to the

transition to political pluralism in Turkey itself, which opened new windows of

opportunity for the Kurdish rural elite. The Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti,

DP), which was founded in 1945 and rose to power in 1950, replaced coercion

with an integrative policy. It allowed many Kurdish deportees to return, and

closed down the general inspectorates in 1952. It also sought to broaden its

constituency among the Kurdish tribes, and co-opted many religious ﬁgures.

For instance, Abd

ulmelik Fırat, the grandson of S¸eyh Said, who represented

in the eyes of the Republic the double threat of K

urdc¸

uk (‘Kurdism’) and

irtica (obscurantism), was promoted to the position of deputy of the national

assembly.

Other Kurdish nationalist ﬁgures, such as Mustafa Remzi Bucak

and Ziya S¸erefhano

glu, were elected on the DP ticket and took their seats in the

Turkish parliament. Although these representatives had to be very careful in

expressingtheir opinions and accepted some degree of allegiance to Kemalism,

35 P. Gentizon, quoted in Paul Rambeau, Les Kurdes et le droit (Paris: Editions du CERF,

1947), p. 37.

36 In contrast, however, S¸erif Pas¸a was close to Italy during the war: see Mirella Galetti,

‘Deux letters de Cheriff Pacha

a Benito Mussolini’, Etudes Kurdes 2 (2000).

37 Memorandum on the situation of the Kurds and their claims, summary of the memorandum

presented by the Kurdish delegation to Trygve Lie, secretary general of the United

Nations, Paris, 1949.

38 Ferzende Kaya, Mezopotamya s

urg

u: Abd

ulmelik Fırat’ın yas¸am

oyk

u (Istanbul: Alfa

Yayınları, 2005).

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