Continuities and Changes in Kurdish Nationalism

Continuities and Changes in

Kurdish Nationalism

Sina Godamoradpoer

Master Thesis in Political Science

University of Amsterdam

Kurdish Nationalism

Continuities and Changes in Kurdish Nationalism

Author: Sina Godamoradpoer

Student number: 5881706

Due date: 24th of June 2016

Words: 25,600

Master Thesis in Political Science

University of Amsterdam

-- The picture on the First page is of a mural in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq depicting the proclamation of the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad.

Abstract:

In this research it is attempted to explain the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism from the 1920s until the present day, this is done by employing the insights generated by the more important approaches to nationalism. These approaches are primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism. The method employed to this end, is the method of process tracing, which entails that evidence will be used from a detailed historical narrative to explain the outcome of interest. It is contended in this thesis that nationalism has been present in Kurdistan since at least the 1920s, the date that is considered to be the starting point of the politicization of Kurdish nationalism. Yet in those days Kurdish nationalism is not considered to have had a mass presence among ordinary Kurds. It is also observed in this research that there have been two paths that Kurdish nationalism has traversed, leading to two different variants of Kurdish nationalism, which have been named the conservative and the radical form of Kurdish nationalism. The conservative variant, which is represented by the Kurdistan Regional Government, is the type of nationalism that is less compatible with a modernist account of nationalism, the current orthodox approach to questions relating to nationalism. The other type of Kurdish nationalism, the more radical form, represented by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, is considered to have underwent a transformation in the second half of the 20th century due to processes of modernization in Turkey. Therefore, this variant in turn seems to be less compatible with primordialist or ethno-symbolist accounts of nationalism. The central thesis in this research is therefore that it is difficult to account for the existence and overall development of Kurdish nationalism through the existing paradigms alone. All three approaches to nationalism can be seen to have their merits, yet all three also seem only partially correct.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: ------7-9

Theoretical Framework:

Introduction: ------9-12

Primordialism: ------12-16

Modernism: ------16-23

Ethno-symbolism: ------23-27

Conclusion: ------27-28

Methods:

Introduction: ------28

Case study design: ------29-31

Process Tracing: ------31-34

Data Collection: ------34-35

Operationalization: ------35-37

Conclusion: ------37-38

The Analysis of the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism:

Introduction: ------39-41

Kurdish nationalism in Turkey:

Introduction: ------41-43

Koçgiri rebellion: ------43-45

Sheikh Said rebellion: ------45-47

The republic of Mount Ararat: ------48-49

The Dersim rebellion: ------50-52

The PKK and Kurdish nationalism: ------52-56

Conclusion: ------56-57

Kurdish nationalism in Iran:

Introduction: ------58

The Republic of Mahabad: ------59-61

After the republic of Mahabad: ------61-63

Conclusion: ------63-64

Kurdish nationalism in Iraq:

Introduction: ------64-65

First signs of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq: ------65-66

Kurdish nationalism in Iraq as a mass movement: ------67-72

Conclusion: ------72-73

Kurdish nationalism in Syria:

Introduction: ------73-74

The Kurds of Syria: ------74-79

The ‘Arab Spring’ and the Kurds of Syria: ------79-81

Conclusion: ------81-82

Final Conclusion: ------82-85

Bibliography: ------86-89

Introduction:

It was on the sixth of March 2016 that exactly one quarter of a century had passed since the

Kurds in Iraq took to the streets and spontaneously started an uprising that would set the

foundations of what is now the Kurdistan Regional Government or KRG in Iraq (Rudaw

2016). The Kurdistan Regional Government is the as of yet only internationally recognized

Kurdish political entity in the historical geographic region called Kurdistan. Since 2013 however a new de-facto autonomous Kurdish region has established itself in northern Syria called Rojava, meaning there where the sun sets in Kurdish, in reference to the western part of a Kurdish homeland. In the dramatic events that have unfolded since the Arab uprisings and the subsequent struggle of the international community with the regime of Bashar al-

Assad as well as numerous terrorist groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

(ISIS), Jabhat al-Nusra and others, the Kurdish people have gained international attention for their struggle against these aforementioned actors.

Yet not only have the Kurdish people attracted attention for their struggle against

enemies that have gained worldwide notoriety for cruel behavior, in which case Kurdish

female fighters are presented in the starkly contrasting picture of heroines fighting these

enemies by international media (CNN 2014, BBC 2014, TIME 2015). The Kurds have also

risen in influence and are more powerful an actor in the Middle-East than ever before, with this rise in importance there obviously should also be a concomitant rise of the international community’s understanding of this increasingly important actor.

The Kurdish question goes back longer than the present conflicts in the Middle-East however, indeed the Kurds have since long before revolted against the circumstances under which they have lived and still live. In Turkey, for example, from the 1920s onwards there were various uprisings against the Turkish state and a long running guerilla war has been ravaging the country since 1984. Understanding who the Kurds are and more importantly

what motivates them in their political behavior should provide for a more solid bases for

sound policy towards the Kurds and the geo-strategically important Middle-East. Kurdistan, the geographical area that Kurdish nationalists intend on turning into a state, is approximately the size of France and even though there are hardly any reliable figures on the number of

Kurds in the Middle East, the Kurds are generally considered one of the four largest peoples of that region. Yet surprisingly little is known about the Kurdish people, and even though most Kurdish political movements are referred to as ‘nationalist’ in international media

(despite claims to the contrary by some of the movements concerned) very little is known about Kurdish nationalism too. It is this gap in knowledge that this thesis will try to address, in an attempt to understand Kurdish nationalism, and thereby the collective behavior of the

Kurds, it will be attempted to explain the continuities and changes of Kurdish nationalism since the 1920s (the start of the division of the Kurdish people into the different contemporary states) until the present.

To this end, the following research question will be posed: How can we explain the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism from the 1920s until the present. Using this research question will allow for a better understanding of Kurdish nationalism over the course of its development. For questions concerning the Sykes-Picot agreements, rivalry between the Persian, the Arab and the Turkish states and generally the geopolitical state of affairs in the Middle-East, to name a few, all to some extent relate to the Kurdish nation.

Thus to understand their nationalism is to gain insight in their political behavior, at least to some extent, and to gain insight in the political behavior of the Kurdish people is to understand more of this important region called the Middle-East.

There are of course a lot of theories on nationalism and nation formation, and to explain the continuities and changes of Kurdish nationalism we must place the development of Kurdish nationalism within this debate. With different thinkers having different ideas on

nationalism, it would make sense to evaluate what has been previously discovered about this powerful phenomenon and to use these insights to explain the continuities and changes of

Kurdish nationalism. In short there are three major approaches, or paradigms, that attempt to explain nationalism: primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism and it is the concern of the next chapter, the theoretical framework, to set out these approaches.

Theoretical Framework:

Introduction:

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli

This quote by Machiavelli could well be applied to the Kurdish case in the twenty first century instead of sixteenth century Italy. And it is easy to see that it is indeed extraordinary difficult to start a new country, perhaps even one with an alternative political-economic system, and it is also clear to see that the initiators would acquire the enmity of all who would profit by the old ways. Yet there is one caveat, it must be wondered whether the initiators of a

Kurdish state would find merely lukewarm defenders in those who stand to gain from the new state? For could it be that Kurdish nationalism could compel Kurds to strive for

nationhood with fervor? To answer this question, we must cast a look on Kurdish nationalism

and its state of development, to this end we must first try to understand what nationalism is,

how it can be understood and what has been written about it.

What is nationalism? As a term nationalism is often associated with the sense of

solidarity one has with one’s nation, nationalism being a sentiment, but it can also entail

people striving for sovereignty and self-determination for their national group, nationalism being a political ideology. Apparently first coined by the German philosopher Johann

Gottfried Herder as a term some two hundred years ago, nationalism has become inextricably linked to modern day political legitimacy and an immensely powerful engine for political action. Take for example the second paragraph of the UN General Assembly resolution 1514

(XV) on decolonization of 14 December 1960: “All peoples have the right to self- determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development” (un.org). Or the second line in the

first article and the first chapter of the United Nations’ founding charter, which declares that

one of the purposes of the United Nations is: “to develop friendly relations among nations

based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to

take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace” (un.org). This right to self- determination for all peoples refers to the political sovereignty of nations, the nation being at the core of political legitimacy and the having the sole right to determine its own development as it deems fit. Obviously it has not always been the case that the nation has been at the center of political legitimacy as it is today, with the world being divided into different nation-states and people’s loyalty being primarily to their nation. This is nationalism as a political ideology at work. It is generally agreed upon that the discourse of nationalism is a modern phenomenon and that it did not exist prior to the seventeenth century (Calhoun

1993: 213).

According to Elie Kedourie the discourse of nationalism, or the way nationalists see the world, consists of three basic propositions, namely: “that humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are known by certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only legitimate type of government is national self-government” (Kedourie 1960: 9 in

Calhoun 1993: 213). Thus while political legitimacy prior to the seventeenth century could be drawn from the Church, the tribe or the empire, from the seventeenth century onwards

“nationalism has become the preeminent discursive form for modern claims to political autonomy and self-determination” (Ibid.). Furthermore, according to Anthony D. Smith, in today’s world “the nation, the national state and nationalism have come to occupy the commanding heights of political allegiance and political identity” (Smith 2002: 1). And this for the first time in history, since in human history people have lived in all kinds of communities and have had many different kinds of identities without one identity or form of community becoming pre-eminent globally. Today’s world is different however with the world divided over nations and nation-states. Others would even go so far as to argue that “no single political doctrine has played a more prominent role in shaping the face of the modern world than nationalism” (Özkirimli 2000: 1). Surprisingly however, very little research has been done on nationalism, especially considering the monumental impact it has had and continues to have on human life. For it is only in the last three or four decades that thinking on this important phenomenon has become more substantial (ibid: 2).

The question what nationalism is has much to do with the relation of other forms of identity such as “class, region, gender, race, or religious belief” with the nation (Özkirimli

2000: 58). The degree to which these other forms of identity relate or contribute to the construction of national identities is a source of great controversy (ibid.). Thus while some scholars will consider ‘objective’ criteria, such as language or race as more important for defining nationhood, others will consider ‘subjective’ criteria more important, for example

self-awareness or solidarity (ibid.). Because there are different opinions on what constitutes the nation there are also different answers to questions as to what the relationship is between nationalism and the nation, what the origins of nations are and how national phenomena can best be understood. Yet to answer the question how we can explain the differences and continuities of Kurdish nationalism we must place Kurdish nationalism in the historic process of the development of theory on nations and nationalism.

Therefore, in this theoretical section it will be set out what so far has been theorized on nations and nationalism and how this can be used for understanding Kurdish nationalism,

this will be done by explaining the main theoretical approaches to nationalism, which are:

primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism. By setting out the main ideas that have

been presented by the scholars that can be placed under these umbrella terms we should be

able to gain a fuller picture and make more sense of what is so far known on this elusive

subject.

Primordialism:

Primordialism is considered the earliest paradigm of nations and nationalism, like modernism

or ethno-symbolism it is not a theory but a paradigm or an approach, therefore there are

different explanations for nationalism among scholars that can be considered primordialist.

Even though the theories developed by the scholars that are considered primordialist display

a “bewildering diversity” (Özkirimli 2000: 64) they do have common denominators, for

example: “their belief in the antiquity and naturalness of nations” (ibid.). This grand narrative

of primordialism, as Anthony Smith calls it, holds that the nation is a primordial category,

one that it is found on primordial attachments. Meaning that nations are natural, ancient but

also to a certain extent fixed phenomena (Smith 2002: 2). Thus even within primordialism we

could further classify according to the weight some scholars would ascribe to, for instance, sociobiological, cultural or psychological factors in contributing to the construction of national identity. It will be refrained from doing so in this section however for the sake of clarity and conciseness, what is important here is to elaborate on how thinkers from this strand explain nations and nationalism, and what critiques can be levelled against this approach.

According to primordialists, since nations are natural, ancient and fixed, national identities are a natural part of all human beings and “a man must have a nationality as he must have a nose and two ears” (Gellner 1983: 6). Furthermore, the nation to which one belongs is predetermined and the past is the story of the nation’s perpetual struggle for self- realization (Özkirimli 2000: 66-67). It should come as little surprise then that this is also the view of most nationalists themselves, namely that nations have always existed and that one nation can objectively be told apart from other nations, or that identifying with one’s nation is the natural state of affairs for human beings. Another common denominator of most primordialists is their belief that since ethnic and national ties are given by nature, if you will,

“the strong attachments generated by language, religion, kinship and the like […] are also fixed, or static” (ibid: 75). In other words, these attachments are “transmitted from one generation to the next with their ‘essential’ characteristics unchanged” thus “what we witness today is only a reassertion of the national essence” (ibid.). Thus these strong attachments

(ethnic and national ties) are seen from an essentialist point of view in the sense of their characteristics remaining unchanged, and the national essence having been present all along.

Johann Gottfried Herder was one of the first thinkers on nationalism and is often considered a primordialist thinker on nationalism. As a German living in the eighteenth century his was a Romantic form of nationalism grounded in the German Romanticism of his era. Herder’s theory of nationalism “remonstrated against foreign influences in his time” and

“urged the German people to develop a national culture” a national culture based upon a native foundation (Schmidt 1956: 408). “Looking for the basic historical and natural laws which could serve as a foundation for a philosophy of history” his assertion was that “time, place and national character govern all events that happen among mankind” (Ibid: 408). This is of course a different outlook on nationalism than that of some of the Enlightenment thinkers before him like Rousseau and Montesquieu, for Herder believed in the uniqueness of national cultures, and “in extolling the virtues of the diversities of cultures, Herder’s aim

[was] to repudiate the universalism of the Enlightenment” (Özkirimli 2010: 13). His form of nationalism can be considered cultural nationalism which entails that “the nation was a

natural cultural development to Herder” (Schmidt 1956: 408). Therefore, this form of

nationalism can be considered as a primordial explanation of nationalism since we have come

to see in this section that primordialism holds nations to be natural and fixed, and language,

kinship and territory are considered to be givens.

Another thinker that can be considered a primordialist thinker on nationalism,

specifically the cultural version of primordialism, is Clifford Geertz. In the 1994 essay on

primordial and civic ties Geertz elaborates on the tension between people’s primordial and

civic motives and what it means for states. Geertz claims in that article that people have

primordial attachments that stem from ‘the givens or assumed givens of social existence: kin

connection mainly but also speaking a particular language, being born into a particular

religious community or certain social practices’ (Geertz 1994: 31). He then claims that “these

congruities of blood, speech, custom, and so on, are seen to have an ineffable, and at times

overpowering, coerciveness in and of themselves (Ibid.). What is meant with this here is that

people are bound to one another not because of practical necessity or common interest but

because of natural affinity, in other words: primordial bonds. Thus nations are seen here to be

natural constructs based on the givens of social existence and not necessarily based on

practical necessity.

However, primordialism has its critics and critique too, and no longer the orthodoxy

in studies on nationalism it would be no more than sensible to evaluate some of the critical

points raised against it, and account for its less prominent position in contemporary analysis

of national phenomena. In short the critique of primordialism centers around questions raised

to primordial explanations concerning: the date of emergence of nations and nationalism, the

origins of ethnic and national ties and the nature of these ties (Özkirimli 2000: 75). Or as

Anthony Smith notices: primordialism has the strength to “draw attention to long-term significance of popular attachments, kinship and cultural bonds” yet it has as a downside the failure to account for the “social and cultural changes to which such attachments are subject, and which so often transform the character of the communities which coalesce around them”

(Smith 2002: 2).

As stated primordialists hold belief in the antiquity of nations and nationalism yet one can easily argue in favor of the historic novelty of both concepts since it has historically been the norm for the states and empires in history to rule over diverse and ethnically heterogeneous populations. Nation-states as composed out of a single or dominant ethnic group in which ethnic identity matters as much as it does today are novelties. Empires came and went with peoples being molded together or disbanded depending on whether a certain ruler or an empire would stand the test of time, thus states being based on stable nations are indeed novel. Another critique raised against primordialism has to do with the origins of ethnic and national ties, primordialists would like to contend that “ethnic and national attachments are ‘underived’, hence prior to all social interaction” (Özkirimli 2000: 77). Yet this leaves little room for the construction or reinvention of the national identity by nationalist movements.

In short a major point of critique that can be directed at both primordialists and

nationalists alike is the “historical novelty of both the concept of the nation and the forms of

political units now called nation-states” (ibid: 81). Since many of the historical empires and

states that have ruled parts of the world were hardly ethnically homogeneous, with empires

ruling diverse populations and often rulers having a different ethnicity than the population

they ruled. Yet this fact, that rulers and the subject population did not have the same

ethnicity, was not in itself a reason for revolt, nor was a shared ethnicity a ground or cause for

solidarity. Thus the idea that ‘the national and the political unit should be congruent’ to go

along with Gellner (1983), or that a nation should rule itself, was not dominant among

people. This brings us to the contention that nations and nationalism could be modern

constructs, an account espoused by the modernists.

Modernism:

As stated before modernism, as an approach, is the current orthodoxy in studies concerning nationalism. Although modernism is quite diverse an approach (for example the main

explanatory focus being on socio-cultural, economic, political, or other factors in different

theories) all modernist approaches have a few things in common. Namely, modernists

consider nationalism as an “explicitly modern ideology and movement”, that is from the eighteenth century onwards (Smith 2002: 4). As “a social structure and cultural system” the nation too is considered to be explicitly new and modern. The same can be said about the international system of nation states. And finally, all three: nationalism, nations and the international order of nation states are seen to spring from “specifically modern conditions; namely, capitalism, bureaucracy, industrialism, urbanization, secularism and the like. This is what makes them qualitatively distinct from any form of community or belief system in pre-

modern epochs.” (ibid.).

In his book ‘Theories of Nationalism’ (1983) Anthony Smith claims in the third

chapter, acidly called ‘The Religion of Modernization’, that “contemporary sociological

theories of nationalism start from the notion of ‘modernisation’” and that “most of them see

the movement as a subspecies of ideologies which erupt from and expand this overall

process, …” (Smith 1983: 41). Modernization to Smith is in short “the more or less painful

transition from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ type of society” (ibid: 42). In this

abovenamed chapter Smith quotes from the works of Eisenstadt and Smelser who assert that,

as Eisenstadt claims, nationalism “links the community’s tradition with the modernising

process.” And does so “by forging roles which unite universal with particularistic orientations

to underpin the civil order” (ibid: 43). This occurs of course in a stage in society where the

process of modernization and the concomitant rapid changes produce dislocation and conflict.

Or as Smelser’s account attests to in the words of Smith, “The experience of rapid change

brings inevitable conflicts and violent discontinuities. It is people who are most dislodged

from the securing ties of the traditional order who feel particularly drawn to collective

movements, and this is because their promise of a new dispensation and ideal harmony is

designed to short-circuit the very real problems of the situation. One such promise is

nationalism. As an impetus to economic development it is more potent than the protestant

ethic” (Smith 1983: 43). This may all sound quite abstract, but an example would be the

industrial revolution where people who were dislodged from ‘the securing ties of the

traditional order’ got drawn to collective movements such as the national movement. And in

this way the ‘promise’ of national harmony and belonging or the idea of nationalism soothing

and ‘short-circuiting’ the ‘inevitable conflicts and violent discontinuities’ that the experience of rapid change brought with it.

Obviously there are other thinkers on nationalism with modernist inclinations too,

according to Anthony Smith the most forthright and original exponent of modernism has

been Ernest Gellner, whose “overall purpose has been to demonstrate the sociological

necessity of nations and nationalism in the modern world” (Smith 2002: 4). It is Ernest

Gellner who formulated the by now famous maxim that nationalism is “primarily a political principle which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent” (Gellner

1983: 1). Considering nations as necessary in a given historical epoch, namely that of modernity, to Gellner the reason we live in a world of nations is to be found in the type of society that modernity brings forth: “an industrial growth-orientated kind of society” (Gellner

1964, chapter 7 in Smith 2002: 4). Gellner poignantly notes in the opening sentence of another article ‘Nationalism’, written in 1981, that there “is almost an inverse relationship between the importance of nationalism in the modern world and the amount of scholarly attention it has received.” (Gellner 1981: 753).

As stated Gellner considers nationalism a consequence of modernizing societies, therefore, in his 1981 article he lists certain traits that he believes have led to the rise of nationalism, traits that relate to modernization. Some of these traits are: ‘political

centralization’, ‘high economic specialization’ and ‘inter-career mobility’. While it would make no sense to discuss all of the traits that Gellner lists, it could prove worthwhile to dwell on the above traits to clarify why to Gellner there is a necessity for nations and nationalism in the modern world.

The first of these traits, political centralization, relates to industrial societies always

being centralized, and with centralization is meant that there is a “monopolization of

legitimate violence by some political center.” (ibid.). In other social forms of human

societies, there have always been different loci of violent legitimization and the maintenance

of order, think for example of feudal or tribal society, where feudal lords or tribes together

with a possible center could hold power too. Something which is obviously a far cry from

modern society which has only one center of power, only one force with a monopoly of

violence: the central state.

The second trait concerning high economic specialization is also a recognizable

feature of modern society. For according to Gellner it is not only security that is the

specialization of a few, but the productive activities undertaken in society also entail a very

high degree of specialization. The trait inter-career mobility comes down to the point that

“while specialization is great, so is inter-specialist cooperation, and hence the need to be able

to communicate.” (ibid: 757). This inter-specialist cooperation and the need to be able to communicate obviously have important consequences for the educational system, and according to Gellner: “a large part of our quite essential training consists of acquiring a kind of shared base, which enables us to retrain quickly when changing jobs, and also to communicate with each other when engaged in our work.” (ibid.). This in turn leads to the potential of nationalism to be able to thrive in modern society since a shared education to

certain extent is an economic necessity that at the same time creates a shared base for people.

It becomes clear now that to Gellner we live in societies that are “fairly homogeneous

internally in a cultural sense.” (Gellner 1981: 761). This cultural homogeneity that has been

induced by these above mentioned traits is the same as the idea that nationalism is a

consequence of societies modernizing. Or the idea that these mentioned traits consequently

bring about nationalism. With the above mentioned in mind it becomes clear why to Gellner

there is a ‘sociological necessity for nations and nationalism’ in the modern world.

Another influential thinker on nationalism that can be considered modernist, yet who

has a different take on the matter, is Benedict Anderson. In his highly acclaimed book

‘Imagined Communities’ Anderson claims that nations are imagined political communities in

the sense of being inherently limited as well as well as sovereign (Anderson 2006: 6). Any

account of theories of nationalism would we woefully inadequate without an explanation of

the claim by Anderson that nations are “imagined communities”.

What this by now famous statement means comes down to, are the following features:

nations are imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most

of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion” (Ibid.). Another feature is that even the largest of nations have finite boundaries “beyond which lie other nations” (Anderson 2006: 7), every nation is delineated at a certain point and there are no nationalists who would like their nation to encompass all of humanity. Thus there are boundaries that limit nations. Furthermore, nations

are imagined as sovereign since there is not a single authority that can legitimately hold sway

over different nations. Enlightenment and Revolution have destroyed the legitimacy “of the

divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm” (Ibid.).

With being imagined as a community Anderson points to the observation that

“regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is

always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that

makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to

kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings” (Ibid.).

According to Eric Hobsbawm, also an influential modernist thinker on nationalism, in his seminal work ‘Nations and nationalism since 1780’ most of the important literature on nations and nationalism has “turned to the question: what is a (or the) nation?” (Hobsbawm

1992: 5). Concerning this question, for Hobsbawm the ‘chief characteristic’ of attempting to

classify groups of people as a nation is that there is no satisfactory criterion for deciding

which human collectivities can be considered nations. In other words, the often made

attempts at establishing objective criteria for nationhood a priori have failed (Ibid.). The

reason Hobsbawm gives for the failure of objective definitions lies in the simple fact that

“since only some members of the large class of entities which fit such definitions can at any

time be described as ‘nations’, exceptions can always be found” (Ibid: 5-6). Furthermore,

according to Hobsbawm, the criteria used for the purpose of objectively determining what a

nation is, such as language or ethnicity are themselves ambiguous concepts, ever shifting and

not suitable for the intended purpose.

An alternative that Hobsbawm recognizes is to identify nations in a subjective

manner, “whether collective (along the lines of Renan’s ‘a nation is a daily plebiscite’) or

individual, in the manner of the Austro-Marxists, for whom ‘nationality’ could attach to

persons, wherever they lived and whoever they lived with, at any rate if they chose to claim

it” (Ibid: 7). Hobsbawm also warns that “defining a nation by its members’ consciousness of

belonging to it is tautological and provides only a a posteriori guide to what a nation is”

(Ibid: 7-8). Also to take consciousness as the criterion of nationhood is to “subordinate” the

many complex ways in which humans define themselves as members of groups to only a

single option, namely “the choice of belonging to a ‘nation’ or ‘nationality’” (Ibid: 8). Yet if

there are no objective criteria to define nations, then nations and nationalism must be modern

constructs as opposed to objectively definable and ancient nations. Since the criteria for nationhood themselves are ambiguous and ever shifting. It must also be noted that

Hobsbawm, along with Gellner, considers nationalism to be ‘primarily a principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent’ (nationalismproject.org 1999-

2007). And since nationalism belongs to a definite modern epoch, they are invented in these modern times by people and nothing natural, thus it is not nations that make states and

nationalisms but the other way round (ibid.).

These are the ways in which, some of the more important thinkers on nationalism that

have been commonly considered modernist have described and explained nationalism. To

recapitulate: Gellner considers nations and nationalism to be a sociological necessity of

modern societies and certain features of an industrial growth orientated society have led to

cultural homogeneity and the rise of nationalism. Benedict Anderson claims that nations are

inherently imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most

of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them. Therefore, nations are to

Anderson nothing primordial or natural but socially constructed by people, they are an imagined communion in the modern age. Hobsbawm finally, considers nations to be definable only subjectively, rejecting objective criteria. Hobsbawm claims that criteria such as language or ethnicity are ever shifting and not suitable for defining a nation, thereby

opening the door for the construction of national identity as opposed to the ancient, natural

and objectively different nature of nations as seen by primordialists and some nationalists.

Of course modernists have had criticism too, let us review some of the criticisms

levelled at Gellner and Anderson, two leading modernist scholars who at times have been labeled reductionist. According to Umut Özkirimli many scholars consider Gellner’s theory to suffer from a stark functionalism (Özkirimli 2000: 137). Since nationalism is a necessity for modern industrial society which could not function without it, in Gellner’s theory,

“nationalism is unintended by the actors producing modernization” and “the causal relationship between nationalism and modernisation is not recognized by agents operating in modernising societies” (O’Leary 1996: 85). In this theory it is contended, processes occur as if they were beyond the understanding of human beings and in which consequences seem to precede the causes, furthermore nationalism is considered by Gellner to be an effect of modernization dictated by economic necessity (ibid.). A critique of Benedict Anderson is that his theory is culturally reductionist. As explained, Anderson considers nations to be imagined

communities brought about by print-capitalism, yet if cultural affinities are constructed by

print-capitalism it becomes difficult to explain why people are willing to make colossal

sacrifices for their nations, or to explain the role wars have in shaping national consciousness

(Balakrishnan 1996: 208-211 in Özkirimli 2000: 153).

Much of the critique of modernism has come from ethno-symbolists, of whom a

leading proponent is Anthony D. Smith, one of Smith’s claims is that “modernist approaches underestimate the significance of local cultures and social context” (Özkirimli 2000: 124).

Ethno-symbolists tend to place more weight on the ‘preexisting ethnic ties’ among people than modernists do, and have as such critiqued modernists for underestimating these factors in the creation of nations and nationalism. Let us now turn to the ethno-symbolist approach.

Ethno-symbolism:

The name ethno-symbolism is a reference to the importance attached to the symbolic legacies of pre-modern ethnic identities for modern day nations. Uneasy with both the primordialist and modernist accounts of nationalism, ethno-symbolists have tried to tread the middle ground of these two paradigms (Özkirimli 2000: 168). Ethno-symbolists tend to claim that nations have formed over the course of many centuries, and that any analysis of nationalism should examine the formation of nations and nationalism over this timespan (Armstrong

1982: 4 in Özkirimli 2000: 168). John Armstrong for example views “nationalism as the most recent stage of an extended cycle of ethnic consciousness reaching back to the earliest collective experiences in Egypt and Mesopotamia” (Smith et al. 1984: 453). Furthermore, ethno-symbolists claim that today’s nations cannot be understood without taking into account their “ethnic forebears”, in other words to understand nations and nationalism one has to take into account “the larger phenomenon of ethnicity which has shaped nations” (Hutchinson

1994: 7 in Özkirimli 2000: 168-169).

It naturally flows from the assumption that nationalism is the most recent stage of ethnic consciousness that modern nations and their ethnic forebears, those being “the collective cultural units” from which nations have sprung, do not differ that much qualitatively, their differences must be sought primarily in the degree to which they are

different (Özkirimli 2000: 169). In this regard ethno-symbolists differ from modernists who

would like to claim that nations and nationalism are inherently imagined, constructed and a

sociological necessity of modernity. Hence ethno-symbolists suggest that ethnic identities change more slowly than modernists assume, yet once these identities are formed they can be incredibly persistent and durable over the centuries, often withstanding the tests of time

(ibid.). This is of course not to say that ethno-symbolists reject all the arguments of the modernity camp and are really just primordialists in disguise, they do “accord due weight to the transformations wrought by modernity” (ibid.). Ethno-symbolists also reject the assumption of primordialists that there is a strong continuity between the traditional cultural units and modern nations, it is only meant to point out here, once again, that ethno-symbolism attempts to occupy the middle ground of the primordialist and modernist camps and draw attention to ‘symbolic legacies of pre-modern ethnic identities for modern day nations’.

One of the leading scholars of nationalism that is generally considered ethno- symbolist is Anthony D. Smith, therefore it is appropriate to evaluate his contributions to our understanding of nationalism. Smith’s central thesis is that “modern nations cannot be understood without taking pre-existing ethnic components into account” (Smith 1986: 17 in

Özkirimli 2000: 174). This of course resonates with the argument above by Hutchinson on taking into account the ‘ethnic forebears’ of nations in the attempt to understand today’s nations. Furthermore, these ‘pre-existing ethnic components’ are needed for the process of

‘nation-building’, without which there could be serious impediments to the ‘construction’ of nationhood (ibid.). Thus some sort of an ethnic basis is necessary for building a nation, it is important to clarify however what Smith’s exact definition is of a nation.

To Smith a nation is “a named human population sharing a historical territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members” (Smith 1991: 14). Smith claims that this

‘working definition’ of nationalism allows us to better appreciate the “complex and abstract

nature of national identity” (ibid.). When national identity is seen this way other elements of

collective identity come into the equation “class, religious or ethnic” (ibid.) and therefore

“national identity is fundamentally multi-dimensional; it can never be reduced to a single

element, even by particular factions of nationalists, nor can it be easily or swiftly be induced

in a population by artificial means” (ibid.). It should also be clear from this definition of

Smith that national identity is set “clearly apart from any conception of the state” (ibid.).

Of course when nations are considered to have pre-modern ethnic bases and nations are not merely a sociological necessity of modernity, one has to ask the questions why and how nations emerge, or what the causes and mechanisms are of the process of nation formation from these pre-existing ethnic ties (Özkirimli 2000: 175). Here Smith first identifies two types of ethnic communities, or ethnie as Smith calls them, which gave birth to modern nations, the ‘aristocratic’ and the ‘demotic’, which both gave rise to different paths of nation formation (Smith 1991: 53). The aristocratic ethnic communities, which were composed of aristocrats, higher clergy, and sometimes bureaucrats, higher military officials and richer merchants were confined to the upper strata of society and had close links with the upper echelons of neighboring aristocratic ethnic communities, they consequently lacked social depth and their “often marked sense of common ethnicity was bound up with [their] espirit de corps as a high status stratum and ruling class” (ibid.). Conversely, the demotic

ethnic communities were more popular in the sense of “their culture [being] more diffused to

other sections of the population as well” and “a distinctive historical culture helped unite

different classes around a common heritage and traditions, especially when the latter were

under threat from outside” (ibid.).

As noted above these two different ‘ethnies’ gave rise to different paths of nation

formation, the first path, that of the aristocratic ethnie, is called ‘bureaucratic incorporation’

by Smith (Özkirimli 2000: 178). “The survival of aristocratic ethnic communities depended

to a large extent on their capacity to incorporate other strata of the population within their orbit” (ibid.). This has occurred most successfully in the Western European countries of

England, France, Spain and Sweden where through the newly emerging bureaucratic state the dominant ethnie was able to “incorporate the middle classes and peripheral regions into the elite culture” (ibid: 178-179). Thus the dominant culture was diffused down the social scale through citizenship rights, conscription, taxation and infrastructural projects along with the movement towards a market economy and the decline of the clerical order (ibid: 179).

The second route of nation formation, that of the demotic ethnie, is different in the sense of the bureaucracy having a more indirect role (ibid.). Instead their ‘distinctive historical culture’ being based on organized religion, for the process of nation formation there is a primary role for secular intelligentsias transforming “the community of the faithful” into

“the community of historic culture” (ibid.). Thus there is a major role for intelligentsias in the nation formation process of demotic ethnies.

Nationalism then, to Smith is “an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’” (Smith 1991: 73 in Özkirimli 2000: 181). Smith furthermore distinguishes between ‘Western civic-territorial’ and ‘Eastern ethnic- genealogical’ nationalisms, where the first process of nation formation, namely that of the aristocratic ethnie, relates to the Western form of nationalism and the second process of nation formation, that of the demotic ethnic community, relates to the Eastern type of nationalism (Özkirimli 2000: 181-182).

Yet ethno-symbolists have their critics too, and it is important to evaluate some of the more important criticisms against ethno-symbolism. One strand of critique against ethno- symbolists holds that they have underestimated the differences between modern nations and

the earlier ethnic communities, and that not “all ethnic groups had a fully developed group

consciousness and a deep sense of history” (Symmons-Symonolewicz 1985: 219 in Özkirimli

2000: 184). Another critique is that it is not possible to speak of nations and nationalism in

pre-modern eras, since whatever the degree of cohesion and consciousness was between the ethno-religious formations of the past, for example the Armenians and the Greek, they did not make political claims to independence or territory something which only has occurred since

the age of nationalism (Eley & Suny 1996: 11 in Özkirimli 2000: 186).

To recapitulate, ethno-symbolists attempt to tread the middle ground of the

primordialist and modernist approaches by drawing attention to the importance of pre-

modern ethnic identities for modern day nations.

Conclusion:

We have seen now that nationalism as both a sentiment and as a political ideology can be a

very powerful engine for political action. We have also come to see that modern day political

legitimacy or sovereignty ultimately belongs to the nation. However, it also became clear that

it is generally agreed upon that the discourse of nationalism is a modern phenomenon and

that it did not exist prior to the seventeenth century (Calhoun 1993: 213). For the first time in

history one identity, the national identity, overrides all other forms of political identity in its

demand for loyalty, and the world is now divided into nations and nation states.

The study of nationalism, however, remains elusive and understudied, as important as

it may be for understanding modern political behavior. Yet even though the study of

nationalism has only become more substantial in the last couple of decades, there are still

profound differences in the field on the answers to the more important questions raised.

Questions relating to: the date and emergence of today’s nations, the role between nations

and nationalism and the use of objective or subjective criteria for the definition of

nationhood, to name a few.

The answers to these questions are of course answered differently by the different

approaches that make up the field, and we saw that that the field consists primarily of the

primordialist, modernist and ethno-symbolist approaches. The primordialists considered

nations to be natural and ancient, and therefore nationalism, or having a national identity was

considered a natural state of affairs for human beings. Nations were also seen as fixed

phenomena by primordialists, thus not very malleable over time. Modernists, on the other

hand, considered nationalism, nations and the international system of nation states to be

explicitly modern constructs (Smith 2002: 4). Pointing to modernization as the wellspring of

nations and nationalism, modernists hold the belief that it was industrialization, capitalism,

secularism and the likes that led to the creation of nationalism, with nationalism engendering

nations rather than the other way around. Finally, ethno-symbolists, uncomfortable with both

the primordialist as well as the modernist accounts, pointed to the importance of pre-modern ethnic identities for modern nations. Claiming that nations were formed over the course of centuries and that pre-modern cultural units were of importance for any understanding of today’s nations, they denounced the explanation of nations and nationalism as a rigid modern construct.

Thus we have seen that there are profoundly different answers to even the most fundamental questions relating to this powerful phenomenon of nationalism. Yet choices must be made in this research concerning the definitions of nationalism employed and this will be the concern of the methods section.

Methods:

Introduction:

Having completed the theoretical outlines in the previous section, we have now arrived at the

section that deals with the methodological concerns of this thesis. In short this methods

section encompasses three main components, which are: explaining the method that will be

used for answering the research question, clarifying which data will be used for answering

the research question and showing how this data will be operationalized. As for the question

what the most useful strategy is for answering the research question the short answer is that

since this is a case, the case of Kurdish nationalism from the early 20th century up until the

present day, and since we deal with a historical process, the continuities and changes of

Kurdish nationalism in the above mentioned timeframe, it is the method of process tracing

that most readily springs to mind for answering the question. After having presented what it

means to conduct a case study and what the method of process tracing actually is, and above

all how process tracing can fit into a case study, we will continue with explicating which data

will be used for the answering of the research question. And after having discussed which

data will be used this section we will proceed with setting out the operationalization of the

data, so that we will know how the data will be measured, these then are the concerns of the next subsections.

Case study design:

It is according to Pascal Vennesson that “a significant part of what we know about the social

and political world comes from case studies” (Vennesson 2008: 223). This research too

focusses on the case of Kurdish nationalism in the 20th century, since this is a single case, and

not for instance a comparative research, a case study will be most suitable for answering the

research question. Yet what does it mean to conduct a case study? And how will this be

executed? First of all, the definition of a case that will be handled in this thesis is that: “a case

is a phenomenon, or an event, chosen, conceptualized and analysed empirically as a

manifestation of a broader class of phenomena or events” (ibid: 226). In other words, a case

is an occurrence, or a phenomenon, that is chosen by the researcher as something deviating

that challenges the established theories on the subject, yet at the same time it can also

contribute to existing theories when put into relation to other cases. Or in the words of

Vennesson “In sum, confronted with the case, the challenge is to acknowledge and uncover its specific meaning, while extracting generalizable knowledge actually or potentially related

to other cases” (ibid.).

So far the case as such, but how do we conduct a case study? And is it also necessary

for the purpose of this research to extract generalizable knowledge related to similar cases?

According to Bennett and Elman (2007) case study designs have a considerable advantage in

studying the complex phenomena that make up International Relations (IR), and this is the

main reason why they have played such a key role in IR research, or in their own words: “the

prominence of qualitative methods in IR thus reflects these methods’ advantages in studying

complex and relatively unstructured and infrequent phenomena that lie at the heart of the

subfield” (Bennett & Elman 2007: 171). It is not difficult to see that these attributes of a case

study design can also be useful for studying the case of Kurdish nationalism. However, one

of the pitfalls of conducting a case study is that, as skeptics have argued, case studies can

easily become “unconnected, atheoretical, and idiographic” research (ibid.). To cover for

these dangers, it is very well possible to use the method of process tracing within this case

study in order to conduct a solid research. Thus by using the method of process tracing this

case study will be conducted, and we will see in coming subsection that it might not even be

necessary, as Vennesson claims, to extract generalizable knowledge related to other cases for

the purpose of this research. What process tracing is, how we can use it in this case study and

why it is chosen as the method of choice for this research will be the concern of the next

section.

Process Tracing:

Now what is process tracing? And how does it fit into conducting a case study? According to

Bennett and Checkel process tracing comes down to “… the use of evidence from within a

case to make inferences about causal explanations of that case” (Bennett & Checkel 2015: 4).

And as such process tracing must have been around for a very long time since “it is nearly

impossible to avoid historical explanations and causal inferences from historical cases in any

purposive human discourse or activity” and therefore it could very well be the case that

“related forms of analysis date back to the Greek historian Thucydides and perhaps even to

the origins of human language and society” (ibid.). Yet how does process tracing differ from telling a historical narrative? And how do we use process tracing without stepping in the pitfall of using a general buzzword without explicating how it works in practice and setting out the proper mechanisms we need for process tracing? Or as Checkel (2006) correctly

notices: “Proponents of process tracing should be wary of losing sight of the big picture, be

aware of the method’s significant data requirements, and recognize epistemological

assumptions inherent in its application” (Checkel 2006: 363).

To Vennesson, even though there are different variants of process tracing, in general

process tracing differs from ‘telling a story’ or a pure narrative in three ways: first of all,

process tracing is focused, which entails that “it deals selectively with only certain aspects of

the phenomenon” (Vennesson 2006: 235). This naturally means that parts of the story are lost

on the researcher and that not everything can be taken into account. Secondly, “process tracing is structured in the sense that the investigator is developing an analytical explanation based on a theoretical framework identified in the research design” (ibid.). The third difference between a historical narrative and process tracing is that “… the goal of process tracing is ultimately to provide a narrative explanation of a causal path that leads to a specific outcome” (ibid.). Thus the point is to explain a specific outcome, through the explanation of a causal path.

Yet there are of course different variants of process tracing, however, according to

Beach and Pedersen (2013): “the state of the art treats process-tracing as a singular method, resulting in murky methodological guidelines” (Beach & Pedersen 2013: 9). According to these authors “there are three different research situations in which process-tracing methods can be used, resulting in three distinct variants of process-tracing” (ibid.). The central claim of Beach and Pedersen is that most of the time process tracing is used in a case-centric way that the authors have termed “the explaining-outcome process-tracing” while “most methodological works prescribe a theory-centric version of process tracing that involves the deductive testing of whether a generalizable mechanism is present in a single case” (ibid.). So according to Beach and Pedersen certain accounts of process tracing “treat process-tracing as a single method, often defining it as a deductive tool to test whether causal mechanisms are present and function as theorized” (ibid: 10).

Thus to prevent a discrepancy between the objectives for process tracing set out in this methods section and the way process tracing is actually carried out in this research, where we want to account for outcome of a particular puzzle (in this case the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism) we should take into account the different variants of process tracing that the aforementioned authors recognize. And as such refrain from treating process tracing as a singular method, instead choosing carefully how in this research process tracing

should be carried out. What then are these different variants of process tracing?

To Beach and Pedersen first of all we can differentiate between theory-centric process tracing on the one hand and case-centric process tracing on the other. With theory-centric process tracing being further dividable between theory-testing process tracing and theory- building process tracing. Within theory-centric process tracing the theory-testing variant of process tracing is all about testing whether ‘a causal mechanism is present and functions as theorized’ (ibid: 12). As such theory-testing process tracing is not about whether we can infer a new theory from this technique, rather it is meant to test a causal mechanism. This is different in theory-building process tracing where it is the explicit goal to find out what the causal mechanism is between X and Y. Therefore, this variant of process tracing is better suited to build theories than the previous model.

Finally, different from both variants of theory-centric process tracing is case-centric process tracing where the goal is to “explain a particularly puzzling historical outcome” (ibid:

11). According to Beach and Pedersen the most common variant of process tracing in practice, the aim of case-centric process tracing is not to test or build theories but to “craft a sufficient explanation of the outcome” in other words: “instead of studying mechanisms that cause war (Y), the analysis would focus on explaining a particular outcome such as World

War I” (ibid.). Central to this position is the belief by case-centric researchers that “the social world is very complex, multifactored, and extremely context-specific” (ibid: 13). Therefore, the aim is to explain a certain outcome in their specific contexts, or how something came about, “the ambition is not to prove that a theory is correct but instead to prove that it has utility in providing the best possible explanation” (ibid.).

It seems from this analysis that case-centric process tracing will be most suitable for the purpose of this thesis, namely to explain the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism from the early 20th century until the present day. Therefore, the case-centric

variant of process tracing will be the type that will be used in this research, and the choice to do so will be consciously made, this entails that it will be necessary to clearly keep an eye on the purpose of the methods throughout the thesis and not to get lured into the morass of theory building or theory testing endeavors.

As noted, the theory-centric forms of process tracing have the quality to serve as tools in determining whether there is a presence or an absence of a certain mechanism, whereas

‘explaining-outcome process tracing’ is more useful in making inferences on whether there is a sufficiency of the explanation that is made (ibid: 14). To employ the case-centric variant of process tracing the causal mechanisms that have led to a specific historical outcome need to be combined as a “eclectic conglomerate mechanism” in order for “a minimally sufficient explanation” to be made (ibid: 19). This all connotes in plain English that explaining- outcome process tracing will resemble historical research in some ways, with the term causal mechanism being used in broad terms, and while it is the intention to set out the causes of a particular historical outcome, it is nevertheless the case that more “generalized theoretical claims” are involved than is generally the case in historical research (ibid.). Furthermore, the theoretical merits research employing this method have can reach beyond the single case under study, thus this form of research can still be considered social science research rather than pure historical scholarship (ibid.).

Data collection:

Since we deal with an in depth historic case, the case of Kurdish nationalism, it is important to take into account what already has been written on Kurdish nationalism, what already has been analyzed. In order to do so it is necessary to primarily use secondary data in this research, that is other works on the topic. Yet since the research question on explaining the

continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism is a novel question, which has not been

answered satisfactorily in previous research, this thesis will not be a repeat of previous works.

Therefore, building on other research on this topic it should be possible to come up with new

insights. The data collection instrument of this thesis will therefore primarily consist of reviewing secondary literature. Although having multiple methods of data collection, for example conducting surveys and interviews together with documental research, can enrich the data and indeed increase the validity and reliability of the data, it is beyond the practical limits of this research to conduct other forms of research too.

Operationalization:

Before we can explain the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism we need to

operationalize the concept of Kurdish nationalism. We have defined nationalism conceptually

in the theoretical section, that is on an abstract level, by showing how some of the more

important thinkers on nationalism have understood the phenomenon. It is important now

however to give the operational definition of Kurdish nationalism as meant in this thesis or in

other words to operationalize the concept of Kurdish nationalism, or how we will ‘measure’

the concept of Kurdish nationalism (Adcock 2001: 531).

The definition of Kurdish nationalism in this thesis is understood to be: ‘an

ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf

of the Kurdish nation’. This of course is quite similar to the definition of nationalism given

by Anthony Smith (1991) as set out in the theoretical section. The dependent variable in this

definition is Kurdish nationalism. The independent variables or causes of nationalism are, as

set out in the theoretical section, ambiguous and contested by the scholars dealing with the

topic. Some scholars give primordialist explanations for the rise of nationalism while others

give a modernist or ethno-symbolist account for its occurrence. Nevertheless, careful choices must be made in choosing the right independent variables for explaining the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism. The choice for the independent variables will be informed by, and compatible with, all three of the approaches elaborated on in the theory section, namely: ethno-symbolism, primordialism and modernism. This is considered necessary for a critical theory informed analysis and for the eventual answering of the research question.

The independent variables are: ‘ethnicity’, ‘modernity’, ‘ethnic group consciousness’,

‘intelligentsias’ and a ‘common history and shared myths’. The operational definitions then become the following: with ethnicity is meant that people belong to the same social group in the sense of sharing a cultural tradition. The choice for a shared culture is deliberate so that ethnicity in this research will not entail racial homogeneity or identifying with a state, this will allow this research to better grapple with the term ethnicity in a region where assimilation into dominant cultures by tribes and peoples has been widespread. This definition of ethnicity will also allow to evaluate the importance of ‘ethnic identity’ to be examined for a stateless people, thus ethnicity refers to a group of people sharing a cultural tradition. The variable of ethnicity is, as we have seen, important for many primordialist accounts considering nationalism.

Modernity refers in this research to the process of transition from the traditional type of society to the modern type of society, key in this transition is industrialization.

Industrialization is often a state led process of transiting a traditional society into a growth orientated society marked by a lot of industry and high economic specialization as opposed to a traditional society with little economic specialization and little industry. Also of importance is the centralization of power that comes with modernity, that is a single monopoly of power by the state. This variable is of course inspired by Gellner’s theory, and it seems quite important to account for, or investigate, the impact that modernity has had on Kurdish

nationalism.

Ethnic group consciousness relates to the ethnic group’s awareness of a common

culture being shared among the members of the social group. Questions to ask are whether

the group considered to share a common culture by outsiders, for example neighboring

nations or experts, are aware of it themselves, or in other words whether commonly the

members of the group consider themselves to share a culture.

The operationalization of intelligentsia is: the intellectual ‘class’, or groups of people

with well-established or developed ideas on nationalism and the Kurds, the intellectual elite

of the Kurdish people so to say. With the operationalization of a common history and shared

myths it is attempted to evaluate the importance of the ‘symbolic legacies of pre-modern

ethnic identities’ for today’s nations. Common history therefore is understood to be the

historical memory of a people and with shared myths is meant the beliefs and traditional

stories held by a group of people. With the variables of ethnic groups consciousness,

intelligentsias and a common history and shared myths the ethno-symbolist considerations on

nationalism are also taken into account. Finally, the period over which the data will be analyzed concerns the 1920s until the present day. Thus the secondary data sources named in the previous section will be critically scrutinized for containing the mentioned variables in the above named operational definitions.

Conclusion:

In the introduction the claim was made that the most useful strategy for answering the

research question would probably be the method of process tracing since this case is a

historical process. We also saw that the observation has been made by some scholars that a

lot that we now know about social and political processes comes from case study research.

Having defined a case as “a phenomenon, or an event, chosen, conceptualized and analysed empirically as a manifestation of a broader class of phenomena or events” (Vennesson 2008:

226), we subsequently concluded that a case study design can have many properties that are serviceable for studying the relatively complex phenomena of International Relations. We also came to the realization that to prevent the research from becoming “unconnected, atheoretical, and idiographic” (Bennett & Elman 2007: 171) and to lay the methodological foundation this research required, the method of process tracing would be best suited.

We then saw that the method of process tracing, that is: “… the use of evidence from within a case to make inferences about causal explanations of that case” (Bennett & Checkel

2015: 4) came in different variants, with the ‘explaining-outcome’ variant of process tracing being considered the most useful version for this research. Since it was the aim of explaining- outcome process tracing to “explain a particularly puzzling historical outcome” (Beach &

Pedersen 2013: 11), the choice was clearly made to choose for this form of process tracing and not to engage with theory-building or theory testing endeavors. It was also decided that the data collection instrument of this thesis would consist of conducting secondary literature research, although acknowledging that multiple data collection instruments within the same research was preferable, it was consciously decided to conduct literature research only, out of practical necessity. Also the concept of Kurdish nationalism was defined as: ‘the ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of the

Kurdish nation’. With the indicators to look for when measuring and explaining Kurdish nationalism to be: ‘ethnicity’, ‘modernity’, ‘ethnic group consciousness’, ‘intelligentsias’, and a ‘common history and shared myths’. Having set out the methods it is now time to explain the continuities and changes of Kurdish nationalism in the 20th century with this methodological framework and the theories on nationalism explicated so far.

The Analysis of the continuities and changes in Kurdish nationalism:

Introduction:

This research focusses on an important yet also understudied phenomenon in the Middle East, namely Kurdish nationalism. Why is this an important phenomenon one might ask. One answer could be that Kurdish nationalism, just like the German, Polish or Italian nationalisms in 19th century Europe, has the potential to challenge the existing geo-political balance of power in its home region, the Middle East. What is important to explore however is how we can explain Kurdish nationalism, or even to what extent Kurdish nationalism can be compared to the 19th century nationalisms of the above mentioned nations. Kurdish nationalism could be a somewhat different occurrence. What is certain is that the Kurds are struggling politically, as a non-state force and a stateless people, to have a greater say in their own affairs thereby challenging the authority of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria over them. A central ingredient in this struggle has historically been, as we shall come to see in the next sections: nationalism. Furthermore, these are countries located in a strategically important region in the world and a change in the Kurdish question, for example Kurdish autonomy, could have major implications for the region.

The political struggle of the Kurdish people has historically not been led by a single unified Kurdish state, but rather by individuals, tribes or political parties depending on the time and place, as such the struggle of the Kurdish people represents that of a stateless nation against the dominant states and their state-centered nationalisms as well as the nationalisms of the dominant peoples in these states. Or as Benyamin Neuberger puts it in the second chapter of the book ‘The Kurds: Nation Building in a Fragmented Homeland’ (2014), “In

Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, the Kurds are involved in a conflict with both the territorial

nationalism of the state and the nationalism of the ruling ethnonational groups—Turks,

Arabs, and Persians” (Bengio 2014: 17). In this sense Kurdish nationalism is rather incompatible with the idea that it is nationalism that creates the nation (Hobsbawm 1992: 10), rather than the other way around. For if nations are inherently constructed, or even a sociological necessity of modernity and have no basis in ‘pre-modern ethnic identities’ as the modernists would like to claim. One has to wonder why the Kurds have not assimilated on masse into the dominant states and their ethno-nationalisms. The question must be raised why there is still a Kurdish question and why the Kurds have not been incorporated into the fabric of the dominant states and their nationalisms. We shall see however that this is not the whole story of the Kurdish question, modernity has been a factor, although in a different way than in

19th century Europe, with grievances against the inequalities and disruptions of traditional life

causing a backlash in the form of rebellions against the state and in a strengthening of

Kurdish nationalism.

Thus it can be claimed that Kurdish identity has been repressed in the states of

Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria and that these states had their identity based on the dominant

people of that particular state, the ‘staatsvolk’, who also controlled that state and repressed

other identities (Romano & Gurses 2014: 3-4). However, it is also obvious that the repression

and assimilationist policies of these states have failed to deliver the intended results, since

there are still a Kurdish people and a Kurdish question. And while “enemies of the Kurds

unfailingly tried to discount the Kurdish nationalist component of each uprising” it should be

realized that “denying the Kurdish nationalist component of the rebellions probably has to do

with politics more than an honest attempt to understand the episodes in question” (ibid: 5).

The Kurdish issue has also meant the creation of ‘security states’ in these aforementioned countries, which entails that democratization in these countries has been compromised since “the security state requires mechanisms of repression, authoritarianism,

and intelligence gathering that readily get transferred from one issue (containment of the

Kurds in this case) to others, such as suppression of dissidence in general” (ibid: 6). In this

way the assimilationist policies by these states have also hindered the democratization of the

Middle East. A resolution of the Kurdish issue would therefore open the door for more

democratization in the Middle East. Yet the resolution of the Kurdish issue seems to be

related in no small measure, at least on the part of the Kurds themselves, to the amount of sophistication of Kurdish identity and nationalism, making it worthwhile to cast a light on this phenomenon. Since Kurdish nationalism as an ideology and as an emotion seems to be stronger now than it used to be some decades ago it seems legitimate to inquire on its overall development up until now.

An expert on the Kurds, Ofra Bengio, asserts that: “… in contrast to a more passive stance and fragmented vision throughout most of the twentieth century, the Kurds seem to have become much more assertive, dynamic, and more unified in their vision, including their view of a Greater Kurdistan, at the beginning of the twenty-first century” (Bengio 2014: 7).

This is of course exemplified by current events in the Middle East such as Kurdish autonomy in Syria, the more powerful position of the Kurds in Iraq and a generally more powerful position of the Kurds in these countries overall, which make it all the more important to understand this understudied yet important phenomenon called Kurdish nationalism.

Kurdish nationalism in Turkey:

Introduction:

This research traces the politicization of the Kurdish issue to the 1920s, when the present states of the Middle East were formed, and when concomitantly the Kurds were denied a state of their own. Kurdish self-awareness and expressions of ethnic Kurdish identity can be

discovered in, for example, the chronicle Sharafname written in 1595 by Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, which traces the “history of the Kurds through the prism of the dynasties of the Kurdish emirs and rulers in southern and eastern Kurdistan” (Bengio 2014: 50). Another famous example would be the epic Mem u Zîn by Ahmadi Khani first published in 1695 of which the basic narrative is a love story but which “nonetheless may be considered to include distinct expressions of Kurdish protonational identity” (ibid: 48). These could be the shared myths and common histories and perhaps also the ethnic group consciousness, at least among some

Kurds, that ethno-symbolists stress, the pre-modern ethnic identities which may have been the building blocks of modern day Kurdish nationalism.

Yet Kurdish nationalism as a modern political ideology is considered in this research to take of in earnest since the formation of the present borders of the Middle East and the subsequent repression of Kurdish identity. One of the more important events in this story is the breakup of the Ottoman empire after the first World War and the subsequent formation of the Turkish republic along with the protectorates of Syria and Iraq. Turkey, which held the largest Kurdish population of all these states, went to the most extreme lengths to suppress any form of Kurdish identity culminating into the bizarre laws that prohibited Kurdish and the official adage of the Turkish state that there were no Kurds in Turkey, simply mountain

Turks who had forgotten their language and roots.

Since the founding of the Turkish republic numerous uprisings have taken place which accelerated and solidified the formation of Kurdish nationalism. As Icuygu et al. claim

“Since its founding in 1923, the Turkish Republic has pursued aggressive assimilationist policies towards its Kurdish minority. The new republic was based solely on Turkish culture and identity, and hence did not permit the expression of Kurdish identity and language within its borders” (Icuygu et al. 1999: 993). Yet while these authors claim that “these early rebellions, according to most observers, were probably more religious and tribal in nature

than ethnic nationalist” (ibid.), others are, as discussed in the introduction to this chapter, less convinced of the lack of nationalist sentiments in these uprisings. Romano and Gurses state that: “denying the Kurdish nationalist component of the rebellions probably has to do with politics more than an honest attempt to understand the episodes in question” (Romano &

Gurses 2014: 5). Therefore, to track the development of Kurdish nationalism since the beginning of the 20th century until now compels us to have a look at the suppression,

resistance and revival of Kurdish identity and nationalism in Turkey.

The Koçgiri rebellion:

Some three months after the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres, in November 1920, one of the

first in a series of major uprisings took place in Kurdistan, “often called the Koçgiri rebellion

after the tribe that played a major role in it” (Olson & Rumbold 1989: 41), this uprising was

led by tribal leaders and sheikhs but also by young Kurdish nationalists organized in Kurdish

Nationalist Societies (ibid: 47). This rebellion, that took place in a region called Dersim, can

be considered to have had the aim of increasing Kurdish autonomy in Anatolia or even an

independent Kurdistan, for example it is stated by Olson, referring to young Kurdish

nationalists involved in the uprising, that “… young Kurds continued to organize the tribes

with the goal of obtaining an independent Kurdistan” (ibid: 42). What is seen here is that

Kurdish nationalist intellectuals, or the intelligentsia class, have played an important role in

even the earliest political upheavals. With ethnically Kurdish tribal leaders and spiritual

sheikhs also playing a major role. This gives support to the claims by primordialists and

ethno-symbolists on the role of pre-modern ethnic identities, and the role played by

intellectuals in the path to nationhood traversed by the ‘demotic’ ethnic community (Smith

1991: 53).

By the summer of 1920 parts of this region of Dersim were under the control of the

Kurds, who started attacking Turkish police stations and forwarded their demands to the

Ankara government. The Kurds demanded that statements should be made by the Ankara

government on their position on Kurdish autonomy and their attitude towards a Kurdish

administration, that Kurdish prisoners should be freed, Turkish officials be withdrawn from

Kurdish majority areas and Turkish military forces would be withdrawn too (Olson &

Rumbold 1989: 43). Even though this rebellion had been crushed by 1921 it had demonstrated that the struggle for Kurdish autonomy and independence was all too real and

turning away from Kurdish nationalist organizations in distant cities, and from interest by

intellectual elites only, to Kurdistan itself or as Olson states: “the first Kurdish nationalist

organization not established in a foreing (sic) city or in Istanbul was begun in Erzurum in

1921 (ibid: 47). The above, demanding autonomy and a withdrawal of Turkish military

forces, together with young nationalist Kurds working together with tribal leaders for

independence, could very well hint at the existence of ethnic group consciousness among

Kurds at the time.

Yet it must be clarified that even though “some of the Kurdish activists wanted to

proclaim publicly the independence of Kurdistan” (ibid: 43), to Olson this rebellion in 1920

“also demonstrated convincingly the weaknesses of the Kurdish nationalist movement, some

of which the leaders themselves were aware when they addressed the reasons for their

failure” (ibid.). Some of the leaders of the rebellion ostensibly claimed that the “tribal nature

of Kurdish society did not provide the necessary unity for a war of independence” and that

among others religious and sectarian differences compromised the amount of trust among

Kurds necessary for independence (ibid.). A lack of unity caused by pre-modern tribalism

and a lack of trust due to religious and sectarian differences as the reason of failure for

Kurdish nationalism at the time, is of course in line with the modernist claims on the

necessarily modern condition for the construction of nationhood and nationalism as a mass ideology. Yet this was not to be the last upheaval in the region and the ethnic ties that held the Kurds together proved to be resilient.

It is impossible to list all the reasons for the failure of the Koçgiri rebellion here, however important lessons were learned by Kurdish nationalist intellectuals that were taken into account for future revolts. Namely that religious sheikhs were more reliable to the

Kurdish cause than tribal leaders who also did not have the same supra-tribal connections but also that the sheikhs were more nationalistic and less easily coopted by the Turkish authorities (ibid: 48). Valuable lessons learned by the Kurdish nationalists of those days but lessons which also give insight in the nature of Kurdish nationalism during that time, namely a nationalism which was led primarily by tribes, spiritual leaders and nationalist intellectuals.

The Sheikh Said rebellion:

Another revolt that has turned into a powerful symbol of Kurdish nationalism today is the

Sheikh Said rebellion of 1925. Led by Sheikh Said, the rebellion “was not originally his idea but rather that of the clandestine Kurdish nationalist organisation, Azadi (Freedom), which wanted to set up an independent state of Kurdistan” (Van Bruinessen 1981: 6). Van

Bruinessen further writes about the Azadi organization, which consisted mainly of “military officers with tribal backgrounds”, that “their nationalism had been awakened as a reaction to the Turkish nationalism that was rampant within the army, and by anxieties that the Kurds were in for a similar fate to that of the Armenians” (ibid: 6-7). It may be important to note here that the claim is made that Kurdish nationalism at this stage developed, at least among

Azadi members, not only because of oppression or anxieties over a possible genocide of the

Kurds but also as a reaction to Turkish nationalism, which apparently had the power not only to define Turkish-ness but also the Kurdish other and to make at least some Kurds aware of

themselves as Kurdish nationals.

We can see here that coming into contact with Turkish nationalism, be it in the

military or through education or other ways had the effect of creating self-awareness among

Kurds. A claim also made by Van Bruinessen elsewhere: “Kurdish nationalism has developed to a large extent in reaction to political and cultural domination by Turks, Persians and Arabs and to these attempts at assimilation (Van Bruinessen 2000: 44), when referring to the nation building and assimilation policies of the involved states to assimilate other ethnic groups into the dominant nation. “Among these states” according to Van Bruinessen “Turkey has always been the most radical in its attempts at “nation building”, and most actively (and violently) attempted to destroy Kurdish national identity” (ibid.).

However, considering the Sheikh Said uprising, among the Kurdish masses a national

Kurdish identity may not have been predominant at that particular time as Van Bruinessen also states that: “Despite their nationalist fervour, Azadi’s members were well aware that they did not as yet have the support of the Kurdish masses, and that they lacked the power and appeal necessary to enlist mass support. They therefore approached influential traditional leaders in various parts of Kurdistan” (Van Bruinessen 1981: 7). What we see here is that

Kurdish national identity was, at this stage, not the predominant identity of all social strata of

Kurdish society or at least very salient to all strata. Other markers of identity, such as religious, regional or sectarian markers, had equal if not more significance to some Kurds.

And as we have seen in the theory section, Modernists not only consider nationalism a modern phenomenon overall, but also link it among others to the dislodging of people from their traditional way of life and to societal upheaval or as Smith calls it: “the more or less painful transition from the ‘traditional’ to the ‘modern’ type of society” (Smith 1983: 42).

This assertion is relevant in the sense that not only societal upheaval in order to modernize society may induce nationalism among lower strata of society but perhaps also social

upheaval to root out a different national identity. However, this is to say that nationalism as a modern ideology may have not been predominant among Kurds, obviously “there has for centuries been a strong awareness, among the Kurds as well as their neighbours, of an overarching Kurdish identity – as is well attested in Ottoman sources from the 16th century on” (Van Bruinessen 2000: 10).

Even though not all Kurds were unified in furthering Kurdish nationhood it would also be erroneous to consider the Sheikh Said rebellion as merely a reactionary and religious backlash aimed at resisting modernization, as many Turkish officials and scholars have done.

In this thesis the Sheikh Said rebellion is considered as a nationalist uprising in line with

Olson’s account who claims that: “In my study of the emergence of Kurdish nationalism and the Sheikh Said rebellion, written after van Bruinessen's study, I emphasized, as opposed to van Bruinessen, the nationalist motivations were more important than the religious factors

(Olson 2000: 69-70). Thus it can be claimed with certainty that nationalist considerations were definitively present in the earliest Kurdish uprisings against Turkish rule, and according to some analysts, nationalist inclinations were more important than religious overtones. This is something which actually would contradict a strictly modernist account of nationalism and nation formation, since we can witness here nationalism in a premodern society.

The crushing of the Sheikh Said uprising was not the end of Kurdish resistance to the

Turkish state however, and according to Olson many Kurdish uprisings and rebellions took place after the defeat of Sheikh Said uprising all the way to the Mount Ararat rebellion which started in 1930 (ibid: 79-80). Or according to Olson in his own words: “In the unstable and constantly rebellious atmosphere in eastern and southeastern Turkey from the Sheik Said rebellion in 1925 to the Mt. Ararat revolt in 1930 and up to the Dersim rebellion of 1937-38, the Turkish government was constantly confronted with the problems of controlling, restraining, and crushing various Kurdish insurrections, rebellions, and revolts” (ibid: 88).

The republic of Mount Ararat:

The Mount Ararat rebellion (also known as the republic of Mount Agrî or in Kurdish:

‘Komara Agiriyê’) started in 1930 around the Ararat mountains and had as one of the main

results the declaration of the republic of Mount Ararat.

This rebellion started with Kurdish nationalists in exile forming a Kurdish nationalist political party called ‘Khoybun’ (meaning independence in Kurdish) with the aims of avoiding the mistakes of the past, giving the Kurdish national movement better coordination, planning and organization and quite concretely “put together a viable liberation movement”

(McDowall 1997: 203). Having established a permanent headquarter in Aleppo the plan was to “send a revolutionary army to establish itself in the mountains of northern Kurdistan, proclaim a government and unify the local tribes under its leadership” (ibid.). What we can observe here is that once again nationalist intellectuals attempted to establish an independent

Kurdistan by working together with tribes, intelligentsias working together with their ethnic brethren in a premodern society. Khoybun’s activities were banned by the French in the summer of 1928 after strong pressure from Ankara, yet in the very same year the revolution was started in the Ararat region “because the local tribes were already in revolt there” and because of the favorable strategic location, in the sense of consisting of inhospitable mountainous terrain and being close to the Soviet border (ibid: 204). Under the leadership of

Ihsan Nuri a small group of trained men went to Ararat to join the tribes already in revolt there and who already had booked successes against the Turks having inflicted several defeats on them, something which attracted more support for the rebels (ibid.).

In the meanwhile, Khoybun tried to develop another front far away from the Ararat region in north-eastern Syria and “although some tribes supported the government forces, the nationalists were heartened by attacks on Turkish troops in different parts of Kurdistan”

(ibid.). “By the autumn of 1929 the Kurdish forces dominated an area from Ararat as far

south as Khushab, south of Van” (ibid: 205), while being resupplied by tribal kinsmen across

the border in Iran. It must be noted here that not all tribal Kurds supported the nationalist cause, with some being clearly pro-government, and that the tribes that had joined the uprising where supported by their tribal kinsman, not necessarily by other Kurds for being

Kurdish. Having said that, tribal loyalties were not the only factor of cohesion for the rebels, obviously a Kurdish nationalist organization was at play here working together with the tribal leadership, so nationalism too was a factor, if only for a minority of Kurds.

After a series of major yet indecisive military encounters between the two sides, in which the Turks used 15.000 men, artillery and airplanes, the Kurds started a major counter offensive with help from tribal kinsmen from the Iranian side of the border and marched on

Diyarbakir (the unofficial capital of Kurdistan). Yet after a series of encounters the Kurds were driven back and by the end of August 1930 some 3000 Kurds were surrounded on

Mount Ararat by a Turkish army which was by now 50.000 strong (ibid). By now successful in their fight against the rebels the Turkish army began to take revenge on the Kurds for the

“reported mutilation and killing of those captured by the Kurds” and in addition of shooting the 1500 Kurds they had captured “by the end of August they had destroyed over 3000 non- combatants, men, women and children …” (ibid: 206). A law (No. 1850) was even passed to make sure that no one could be prosecuted for excesses in the killings, these executions and deportations were to continue until 1932 (ibid.). Kurdish tribalism, dependence on Iran willfully turning a blind eye and the Turks superiority in logistics were the factors that sealed the Kurds’ fate. However even this episode did not prove to be the last event in the history of

Kurdish uprisings, for a couple of years later in 1937 the rebellion of Dersim would begin.

The Dersim rebellion:

The Dersim rebellion that took place in 1937 and 1938, again in the restive region of Dersim, is considered to have ended in genocide according to some, though not all, scholars concerned with the matter (see: Van Bruinessen 2007: 1, 6-7). This is again an important event in the shaping of Kurdish nationalism since the Dersim rebellion has become a powerful symbol of wrongdoings against the Kurdish people and defiance by the Kurds. And as McDowall claims: “Dersim was notoriously defiant” and “no fewer than eleven military expeditions had tried to quell its inhabitants since 1876” (McDowall 1997: 207-208). It must be noted however that some consider the people of Dersim not to be Kurds proper, as Van

Bruinessen claims: “Dersim was a culturally distinct part of Kurdistan, partly due to ecological-geographical factors, partly to a combination of linguistic and religious peculiarities” (Van Bruinessen 2007: 2). Most inhabitants of this region also speak Zaza which is also considered to differ from Kurdish proper.

From the 1930s onwards the Turkish state began a policy of deportation and forced resettlement of the population of Dersim yet according to Van Bruinessen: “Dersim was, by the mid-1930s, the last part of Turkey that had not been effectively brought under central government control. The tribes of Dersim had never been subdued by any previous government; the only law they recognized was traditional tribal law” (ibid.). This policy of deportation and forced resettlement of the population of Dersim that started in the 1930s “in a manner which resembles the operations against Armenians in 1915” (FO 371/14580

Matthews to Clerk, Trebizond, 15 November 1930 in McDowall 1997: 208), was meant to bring this region under control of the Turkish state, it would only be a matter of time before this unruly region would bear the brunt of full scale military operations. Full scale military operations began in spring 1937 when 25.000 Turkish troops had surrounded Dersim, only to be resisted by some 1500 Kurds (McDowall 1997: 208).

The leader of the resisting tribes, the Alevi cleric Sayyid Riza, explained to Britain’s

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden the reasons for their resistance when appealing for help. He claimed that the government had tried to assimilate the Kurds for years, oppressing, executing, and deporting Kurds to uncultivated areas of Anatolia, banning the Kurdish language and persecuting those who spoke Kurdish, while imprisoning non-combatants and hanging and shooting intellectuals, “Three million Kurds” according to Sayyid Riza “demand to live in freedom and peace in their own country” (FO 371/20864 Sayyid Riza to the British

Foreign Secretary, Dersim, 30 July 1937 in McDowall 1997: 208). This of course is a thoroughly nationalist vision on events by Sayyid Riza, yet it should also be taken into consideration that the repression handed out to the population of Dersim, as attested to by

Sayyid Riza, had its own effect in fostering nationalist sentiments in a region that did have its differences with other Kurdish inhabited areas. Hence another argument in favor of the modern construction of Kurdish nationalism.

Not able to hold out through the winter however, Sayyid Riza surrendered and was immediately executed, while others chose to bear the aerial bombardments, gas and artillery barrages until 1938 by which time in August a total of 50.000 Turkish troops had been amassed around Dersim, in addition to 40 airplanes (McDowall 1997: 208-209). Thousands of Kurds perished in the ensuing military operations and it would mark the end of the ‘tribal’ revolts against the Turkish state (ibid: 209), according to McDowall “Turkey had unmistakably intended genocide of the Kurdish people” it was only in practice that “its intentions were defeated by the sheer size of the task” (ibid: 210). It would take until 1984 for a new Kurdish movement to resurface and to start a new uprising against the Turkish state, yet by that time a major transformation had occurred: “Kurdish nationalism” and “Kurdish folk Islam” diverged paths, and “when both resurfaced” the sheikhs leaned to the right and were generally conservative while the Kurdish nationalists leaned to the left and “each, in the

fullness of time, was destined to become a bête noir for the other” (ibid: 211).

This transformation and divergence between folk Islam and Kurdish nationalism is

difficult to connect to the ethno-symbolist account of the formation of Eastern ethnic- genealogical nationalism, for in the ethno-symbolist theory there is a large role for secular intelligentsias transforming ‘the community of the faithful’ into ‘the community of historic culture’ as we saw was attempted, unsuccessfully, in the early days of Kurdish nationalism. It

is important to be aware of this transformation however if the continuities and changes in

Kurdish nationalism are to be explained.

The PKK and Kurdish nationalism:

Any analysis of Kurdish nationalism, especially of the last three decades, would be

inadequate without taking into account the role that the most radical of all Kurdish political

parties has played, namely the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan, better known as the PKK.

Founded in 1978 by a group of students from Ankara university who had Leftist tendencies and were involved with the Turkish Left, “the obvious leader” at that time was a Political

Science student named Abdullah Ocalan (Van Bruinessen 2000: 240). It was mostly out of

Ocalan’s vision, also known widely by his nickname ‘Apo’ meaning uncle in Kurdish, that the PKK’s rise had been born (McDowall 1997: 418). The ‘Apocular’ as they were known initially decided to start a Kurdish national liberation movement based on Marxism-

Leninism, to this end they withdrew from Turkish territory into Kurdistan, and decided to sever all connections with the Turkish Left (ibid.).

The major difference of the PKK with all previous Kurdish groups and movements was that they “were drawn almost exclusively from Turkey’s growing proletariat” (ibid.).

“More strongly than either the PUK in Iraq or Komala in Iran, the Apocular imbued Kurdish

nationalism with the idea of class war” (ibid: 418-419). McDowall writes about the virulence of the PKK’s nationalism that it is possible that they “sought to recreate an identity they felt they had lost” because of the modernization and homogenization processes that were eroding traditional identity, not just in Turkey but across the Middle East (ibid: 419). This is where we see modernization processes having a serious effect on Kurdish nationalism, since not only was this new organization drawn from the lower social strata, they also ‘sought to recreate an identity they felt they had lost’ due to modernization processes. Thus, the modernization processes had the effect of making ethnicity more salient, by creating a situation of shared interest for these lower strata, who were immiserated economically but also politically, and allowing for a reinvigoration of a ‘common history and shared myths’ by the PKK who felt that the Kurds had lost or were losing their ethnic identity.

For the liberation struggle of Kurdistan that the PKK intended, they first identified the enemies of Kurdistan, which for the PKK were the Turkish colonialists consisting of the

Turkish ruling classes, but also the Kurdish collaborators who were considered to be cronies of the Turkish colonialists (Van Bruinessen 2000: 251). Turkish fascists known as the

Greywolves and the Turkish Left who had subordinated the Kurdish question to the leftist revolution were also to be considered enemies of the Kurdish people (McDowall 1997: 419).

The latter would be driven out of Kurdish areas, regardless of whether they were ethnic

Kurds or Turks, while the landlord class was to be dealt with especially severely (ibid.).

These landlords were the same people that had together with nationalist intellectuals led the uprisings against the Turkish state a few decades before, but were now considered by the PKK to be conservative collaborators and enemies of the Kurdish people. It is this divergence between nationalist intellectuals and traditional society, or Kurdish folk Islam, that McDowall points at when he speaks of the transformation in Kurdish nationalism. The first attack that the PKK conducted was in 1979 on a landlord and local Justice Party deputy

for the town of Siverek named Mehmet Celal Bucak (ibid.), which led to a “protracted armed

conflict” in that region (Van Bruinessen 2000: 251).

During those days the PKK caught the attention of the state and following the coup of

1980, which “was followed by a well-orchestrated campaign to destroy the Kurdish

movement and renewed efforts to assimilate the Kurds” (ibid.), the PKK was meted out the

harshest treatment of any Kurdish or Leftist group. While during the coup hundreds of

thousands were arrested and around 50.000 were brought to trial the largest number of mass

trials and death sentences were against the PKK with a total of 129 death sentences in

addition of the numerous PKK activist who were shot dead when resisting arrest (ibid).

According to McDowall “1,790 suspected PKK members were captured, substantially more

than from any other single Kurdish group” (McDowall 1997: 420). However, the PKK was

the only Kurdish group that, despite of the severe treatment it received from the Turkish

authorities, was not completely destroyed, instead regrouping themselves in the country side

while the leadership slipped into Syria where they set the stage for a comeback (Van

Bruinessen 2000: 251, McDowall 1997: 420).

While the PKK lay relatively low during the years of military rule from 1980 until

1983 with only an occasional killing of soldiers on the border, the real guerilla war started in

August 1984 with the PKK declaring the war of liberation for Kurdistan (ibid, ibid). Yet

while at the time the attacks caused little real damage it was the psychological impact that

was greatest, by challenging the military and showing that it could not defend itself or at least was not unchallengeable. By shooting landlords and soldiers the PKK send shockwaves through Kurdish society who since the last revolt in 1938 seemed, at least militarily, so thoroughly subdued, yet nothing could have been further from the truth since the social mood in the countryside was changing. “For a number of years there had been a growing dissatisfaction with the Aghas [landlords] who controlled so many facets of country life and

still acted as mediators with local and central government” (McDowall 1997: 420). And by

killing these landlords who were difficult to confront for ordinary villagers they not only

showed the limits of the capacity of the state but also posed themselves as an alternative to

the Turkish state.

According to both McDowall and Van Bruinessen, both respected authorities in the

field of Kurdish related studies, by provoking repression by the Turkish side and making

ordinary Kurds pick a side in the conflict the PKK amplified Kurdish nationalism (Van

Bruinessen 2000: 252, McDowall 1997: 421). “The PKK created a climate of fear”,

McDowall claims “It struck ruthlessly in the heartlands of conservatism in Kurdistan, and

seemed to preach an irreligious creed of atheism and social revolution” (McDowall 1997:

421), in this way politicizing the Kurdish question more than ever and on a different social

basis. These were no landlords, sheikhs or other affluent members of tribal Kurdish society

but the most disenfranchised members of Kurdish society, who had least to lose and most to

gain from a new and different order. Furthermore, Van Bruinessen claims that this strategy of

forcing the Kurdish population to pick sides was indeed very successful “due largely to the

brutality with which the Turkish security forces have operated in the region. Unable or unwilling to distinguish between PKK partisans and ordinary villagers, the military and special forces, hunting for guerilla fighters, made life in many Kurdish mountain villages miserable. It was from such villages that the PKK recruited many of its new fighters” (Van

Bruinessen 2000: 252).

Because of these heavy handed tactics of the state and “in spite of its [own] methods”

the PKK acquired a considerable amount of goodwill and sympathy among many Kurds

during the first five years of its guerilla campaign (ibid: 254). And by the early 1990s the

PKK was ready to change tactics and move to a popular urban uprising (Serhildan). However,

the Kurdish population was also progressively radicalized due to socio-economic reasons,

with younger members of rightist and religious families gradually turning away from the

traditional order of the Kurdish areas (McDowall 1997: 427). Thus modernization together

with the struggle of the PKK had the effect of strengthening Kurdish nationalism in a time

where the traditional segments of society were no longer politicizing Kurdish nationalism, or

at least to a far lesser extent.

This transformation could no longer be ignored by the state, for example, in March

1990 “for the first time, families of PKK martyrs dared collect the corpses for burial from the

authorities and arranged public funerals which rapidly became opportunities for mass protest”

(ibid.). This was all followed by mass demonstrations by Kurds in Kurdish towns, which did

not go unchallenged by the state authorities who repeatedly opened fire on demonstrators,

with the death toll of March 1990 exceeding 100 persons, up from ‘only’ 16 in the first three

months of 1989 (ibid.). Yet some concessions had to be made and on the 21st of March 1992,

Newroz, the Kurdish new year’s day, could finally be celebrated publicly in Turkey. “In the

Kurdish-inhabited parts of Turkey, large crowds thronged the streets, singing and dancing

around bonfires that are traditionally part of Newroz celebrations, brandishing flags in the

Kurdish colours, and delighting in being able to express their Kurdishness” (Van Bruinessen

2000: 249).

Conclusion:

This chapter started by tracing the politicization of Kurdish nationalism to the collapse of the

Ottoman empire and the state forming processes in the Middle East. We have seen that from

the early days of establishing contemporary Turkey, the Kurds have resisted assimilation into

the Turkish nation. Violent political upheavals and tribal unrest were the results. Contrary to

the official Turkish narrative, this constantly rebellious and unstable atmosphere was not the

result of reactionary sheikhs resisting modernization with the intent of establishing the

‘caliphate’. Rather, Kurdish nationalism was a driving factor for the rebellions. Religious

considerations were quite clearly also present, yet to the nationalist intellectuals who intended

to set up an independent Kurdistan, they were of secondary importance and a means to the goal of an independent Kurdish state. For the Sheikhs too, nationalism had a greater weight in determining their behavior than did religion, or as Sayyid Riza Claimed: “three million Kurds demand to live in freedom and peace in their own country”. This of course speaks in favor of primordialist and ethno-symbolist accounts of nation formation processes and the role of nationalism in these processes. For what we have seen so far is the existence of nationalism, ethnic group consciousness and intelligentsias prior to the advent of modernity.

Yet there was also a caveat, these uprisings were unsuccessful in the end, and as attested to by some of the rebels, this was due to the tribal nature of Kurdish society causing division, or preventing unification on a national basis. It was not until modernization processes across the Middle-East set in a transformation of society in Kurdistan, and eroded the traditional ties that held people together, that nationalism was embraced on a more popular scale. This transformation also had the effect of changing the nature of Kurdish nationalism, pushing it away from its traditional base in the more affluent segments of society to the lower strata of Kurdish society. This division seems to persist in Turkey until this day, with Kurdish nationalists leaning to the left and conservative, Islamist and rightist Kurds adopting a pro-government stance. Kurdish nationalism in Turkey, it seems, has metamorphosed from a ‘pre-modern’ type of nationalism restricted primarily to the elite, to a modern political ideology capable of imagining a Kurdish nation on the basis of a ‘horizontal comradeship’ and thereby galvanizing millions into action.

Kurdish nationalism in Iran:

Introduction:

After Turkey the largest number of Kurds in the Middle East are to be found in Iran, yet

compared to the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and nowadays even Syria, very little is heard about the

Kurds of Iran. At first glance it might seem that the Kurds in Iran are inactive politically or

that their nationalism might not be as well developed as that of the Kurds in neighboring

countries, although there is a certain truth to these claims it is not the whole story.

Interestingly enough the first declaration of an independent Kurdish state in Iran, the republic

of Mahabad, occurred on the 15th of December 1946 (McDowall 1997: 241).

According to “an influential body of opinion on Kurdish historical writing” the origins of the nationalist movement in Iranian Kurdistan can even be traced to the late nineteenth century, when Shaikh Ubaidollah rebelled against the Ottoman Empire and the rebellion consequently spilled over to Iranian Kurdistan thereby planting the seeds of modern nationalism in that region (Vali 2011: 1). In this research however Kurdish nationalism in

Iran will be evaluated from 1946 onwards, that is from the establishment of the Mahabad republic until the present day, this is not to say the years before the republic of Mahabad have been unimportant, it will merely be argued that the republic of Mahabad has had an influential effect on Kurdish nationalism in not just Iran but in the wider region. Therefore, it

makes sense, to the purpose of studying Kurdish nationalism, to start from the Mahabad

republic.

The republic of Mahabad:

It is perhaps no coincidence that the republic of Mahabad was declared in 1946 after the

Second World War, a time of major upheaval in Iran too, when the Soviet Union occupied the northern part of Iran and Britain the southern part (McDowall 1997: 231). Yet to describe the republic of Mahabad as a Soviet conspiracy to dismember Iran and create disorder and chaos would do no justice to the internal and international dynamics influencing events in

Iranian Kurdistan, for it seems that “Kurdish society, like neigbouring societies, was in a phase of accelerating transition at the time of the Second World War” (ibid: 237). Economic changes and repression by the Iranian state, for example, were leading to a rapid decline in nomadism, towns were growing and a newly educated urban class was growing alongside of it (ibid.). This of course is very similar to the process of modernization in Turkey, together with the repression by the state that went along with it, that had the effect of fostering

Kurdish nationalism there.

This newly formed educated urban class would play an important role in the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iran, albeit in a different way than say the Kurdish nationalist movement Azadi in the 1920s in Turkish Kurdistan, since the members of this new class were no tribal leaders, not tied to the notable class and “seem to have been motivated solely by ethnic nationalism” (ibid.). It was in September 1942 that in a private home in the town of

Mahabad a political party was established that would realize the “dream of an independent

Kurdish state”, this political party was named Komalay Jiyaneway Kurdistan (the Society for the Revival of Kurdistan) or in short Komala (ibid.).

At the inaugural event members of Kurdish nationalist groups from Iraq were also present, and by 1944 contacts were made with Kurdish groups in Turkey as well as Iraq

(ibid), however, Komala would only have a brief life: being transformed into the Kurdistan

Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) on the 15th of August 1945 (Vali 2011: 25). It is important

to note here that the KDPI had as its objective to assure autonomy for Iran’s Kurds rather the

achieving the goal of independence that the Komala intended (ibid: 26-27), which can be

considered to be a less radical stance in ethno-national politics. Be as it may, in 1946, under the watchful eye of the Soviet Union, independence was declared formally for the republic of

Mahabad (which was named the republic of Kurdistan) by the KDPI under the leadership of

Qazi Muhammed. The relative safety of the Soviet zone and the protection of the Red Army effectively kept the Iranian army outside of its jurisdiction (ibid: 49). Previously, at the end of

1945, the Iranians also lost control of Eastern Azerbaijan province to a movement called the

Azerbaijan Democrat Party (McDowall 1997: 241).

As a sign of cross border ethnic Kurdish cohesiveness “the most credible fighting force” of the republic was led my mullah Mustafa Barzani (a Kurd from Iraq) who with a thousand fighters and their families had joined the newly established republic after a failed rebellion in Iraq (ibid: 241-242). And in the Mahabad republic schools began teaching in

Kurdish while a newspaper, monthly journals and magazines in Kurdish also appeared. These are of course signs of ethnic consciousness if not outright nationalism, for not only was there cross border ethnic solidarity, a serious attempt was made at setting up an independent

Kurdistan and ‘building the nation’ through education.

The reason that there was a moderation of demands from independence to autonomy however, had to do with the changed nature of the KDPI compared to Komala, as McDowall explains that while “virtually all the founding members of Komala were included in the administration, [of the Kurdish republic] … the weight of power had now shifted decisively in favour of the established families of Kurdistan” (ibid.). The KDPI was different from

Komala in that it did not only include the urban educated class acting out of ethnic nationalism but also important families who had different objectives and ideas. Once again, in similar fashion to the early events in Turkish Kurdistan, nationalist intellectuals were

working alongside of traditional leaders, or in this case were eventually overshadowed by the

traditionally powerful.

The republic of Mahabad would last some eleven months before being recaptured by

Iranian forces who had the president of the republic, Qazi Muhammed hanged in the town

square. The main reasons for the eventual failure of this republic lay in the fact that when

“Komala was dissolved, nationalist cohesion fell victim to the politics of the notables and the tribal chiefs and to the social divisions, between one tribal section and another, between tribal and urban Kurds, and between urban notables and the lower middle class” (ibid: 246). And being dependent on the tribes for its protection, the republic of Mahabad did not last long when the tribes turned their backs on the Kurdish republic. However, it did prove to be an

inspiration to Kurdish nationalism until this very day by being turned into a national episode or symbol by present day Kurdish nationalists.

After the Republic of Mahabad:

In the conclusion of his 2011 book ‘Kurds and the state in Iran: the making of Kurdish

identity’ Abbas Vali contends that the collapse of the republic is more than just a historical

lesson but also an event “that is living in the present, animating not only memories but also

the discourses and practices that shape the present” (Vali 2011: 137). In other words, by having such a strong event in the past, Kurds in Iran “encounter their present and imagine their future” (ibid.), the republic of Mahabad thus has a lasting legacy which influences the way the Kurds in Iran perceive and act on their nationality question. Or as Hussein Tahiri puts it: “One of the main achievements of the Kurdish Republic was to institutionalize

Kurdish identity and the process of nation building” (Bengio 2014: 258).

McDowall conversely contends that the “ethnic ideal that a growing number of Kurds

seriously began to cherish” only occurred a full 20 years after the collapse of the republic and

this had, according to McDowall, less to do with the “political ideas propagated by the

KDPI” but all the more with the “changed circumstances of life” (McDowall 1997: 249).

With these changed circumstances of life is meant, that aside from the psychological impact

that the continuing of the struggle by the KDPI had on ordinary Kurds (ibid: 254), socio-

economic change i.e. land reform, improved communications, literacy and migration tended

to put the Kurdish peasantry in contact with the outside world and its ideas (ibid: 258). These

above named factors had the effect of “forging a mass Kurdish identity in Iran” at the

expense of tribal or village identity, thus creating an ethnic Kurdish identity (ibid.). This

social transformation that McDowall claims had the effect making the ethnic ideal appealing

to more Kurds, went together with state-led repression but also, as is claimed by Vali, the

historical events that ‘animate the discourses and practices that shape the present’. What we

have is then historical events that animate the nationalist debate and modernization making

this debate accessible to a wider and larger audience.

The Kurdish regions, which together with Baluchistan, lagged behind the rest of Iran economically, saw the economic disparities only get bigger in the 1970s. In time it became obvious for many young Kurds, especially seasonal migrants and others who had the chance to see the rest of Iran, that the Kurdish areas were impoverished and that there were less opportunities for people, which contributed to an even stronger perception of being different.

These disparities in opportunities together with massive population growth and the breaking down of regional and tribal identities served as a powder keg in Kurdistan, the spark was the revolution of 1978, leading the Kurds to demand autonomy on an ethnic basis during the revolution (ibid: 258-262).

Yet their demands fell on deaf man’s ears since the Islamic regime that had come to power in Iran in 1979 refused to grant minority rights on an ethnic basis, instead claiming

that there should be unity among Muslims and that Islamic unity was more important than division on an ethnic basis. Or in the words of Khomeini: “Sometimes the word minority is used to refer to people such as the Kurds, Lurs, Turks, Persians, Balouchis, and such. […]

There is no difference between Muslims who speak different languages, for instance, the

Arabs or the Persians. It is very probable that such problems have been created by those who do not wish the Muslim countries to be united…” (ibid: 271). Since these views of Islamic unity were incompatible with Kurdish demands for autonomy on an ethnic basis for all the

Kurdish speaking areas, civil war broke out between the Iranian state and the Kurds and lasted in some of the more inhospitable and mountainous areas until 1983.

However, even if the new Iranian regime under the name of the Islamic Republic explicitly denounced nationalism as ‘un-Islamic’, implicitly they have promoted Persian nationalism and consistently attempted to assimilate the minorities under their rule (Bengio

2014: 265). Many Kurds may have been hopeful initially that the overthrowing of the old regime in 1978 would have brought them new freedoms “however, the Islamic Republic of

Iran has continued the shah’s policies, though under a different guise” (ibid.). And many of the opposition groups in exile are opposed even to Kurdish autonomy, claiming that autonomy amounts to separatism (ibid.). Thus making it more difficult for many Kurds to envisage minority rights being granted to the Kurds in Iran even after the possible demise of the Islamic Republic. Yet with Kurdish nationalism growing and the Iran still unwilling to consider minority rights there is bound to be more friction in the future.

Conclusion:

This Chapter started with the observation that relatively little is heard about the Kurds of Iran compared with Kurds in other regions. Yet it soon became clear that the Kurds in Iran had an

impressive nationalist history, having even declared their own state in 1946. We saw that the

Republic of Mahabad had an important effect on Kurdish nationalism in not just Iran but also

in the wider region, institutionalizing Kurdish identity and nation building processes at the

time. Yet the Republic of Mahabad was not to last long, being crushed only eleven months

after it was declared.

However, this republic, together with socio-economic changes that took place in

Kurdistan in the 1960s and ‘70s empowered a wider sense of Kurdish self-consciousness and

national identity than previously was the case, leading to an de facto state of autonomy during the 1978 revolution. Kurdish nationalism in Iran was dealt yet another blow however with the

Islamic Republic reasserting power over Kurdistan in the 1980s. The question remains whether the Kurds of Iran are subdued or that tensions are boiling beneath the surface. It could be that in the age of mass communications, political breakthroughs of fellow Kurds in

Iraq and Syria, and continuing economic disparities, the Kurds of Iran are going through a similar transformation as the Kurds of Turkey went in the1980s.

Kurdish nationalism in Iraq:

Introduction:

Arguably, Kurdish nationalism in Iraq seems more entrenched than in the rest of the Kurdish

regions, and the Kurds of Iraq have ruled themselves de facto since at least after the Second

Gulf War in 1991. Since 2003 Iraq is a federal state with the Kurdistan Regional Government

(KRG) in the north of the country being the as of yet only officially recognized federal

region. In fact, the Kurdistan Regional Government has all the trappings of an independent

state, with a centralized government and their own security forces, with the exception

however of international recognition and their own currency.

These bearings of a modern state, one can arguably claim, have affected Kurdish nationalism in the region greatly. Furthermore, if we were to observe closely, we would come to realize that the Kurds in Iraq have a long history of autonomy, practically ever since the

1960s onwards. And ever since the state of Iraq was established in 1921 the Kurds had to be bombed into the confines of the new borders by the British Royal Air Force for rebelling against the new state of Iraq and their British patrons. Although this rebelling often occurred for a mix of tribal and nationalistic reasons (McDowall 1997: 180).

First signs of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq:

The first serious uprising against British Administered Kingdom of Iraq came in 1919 in the city of Sulaymaniya. When sheikh Mahmud Barzanji, an influential man in Kurdish society at the time, and appointed to the position of governor of the Sulaymaniya region by the

British, rebelled against the British. The reason for this short lived rebellion in 1919 seems to stem from an incompatibility between two conflicting systems, namely the institutionalized form of governing and loyalty to the state expected by the British, and the personalized from of governing based on patronage exercised by sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (McDowall 1997:

157).

When steps were taken in1919 to curb the sheikh’s powers he rebelled by imprisoning

British personnel and ambushing British columns, but most importantly the sheikh proclaimed himself to be the ‘Ruler of all of Kurdistan’ (ibid.). Not only did this short lived rebellion become a symbol of Kurdish nationalism, sheikh Mahmud himself was a nationalist too, believing in the establishment of an independent Kurdish political entity and setting out to unite and liberate all of Kurdistan (ibid: 158). Nationalism before modernization in

Kurdistan once again it seems, and once more, in similar fashion to the situation of Kurds in

other regions, nationalism was imbrued with traditional authority.

However, as stated, this rebellion proved to be short lived and when authorities in

Baghdad moved to reassert their authority over the rebellious sheikh, they only had to send

two brigades to defeat him and his retinue of 500 men. Captured and sent into exile in India,

sheikh Mahmud was allowed to return to Iraqi Kurdistan by the British in 1922. This was

done to counter the growing Turkish influence among many tribes by using Kurdish

nationalism. Turkey laid claim to the Mosul Vilayet and not only instigated tribes against

British rule but was also militarily involved in the north of Iraq (ibid: 162).

Sheikh Mahmud however had other plans, concerned more with proclaiming the

Kingdom of Kurdistan, with himself as the king, than with executing British plans. In 1922

hostilities broke out again, with the British having to rely on the Royal British Airforce to

bomb government buildings in the hands of sheikh Mahmud, the sheikh however continued

to be a serious nuisance to the British in the mountains until 1927 with occasional raids, the

interception of tax revenues and the ambushing of nomadic tribes (ibid: 162-163).

The British once again established control over Kurdistan and reintegrated it with

Arab majority Iraq in 1924. The proclamation of the Kingdom of Kurdistan was the first of

the more serious revolts in Iraq, although by no means the last one, for more would follow. It is indeed remarkable that there were numerous accounts of uprisings by Kurds in the whole region, but what is more important is that nationalism was a factor in these uprisings from at

least the 1920s onwards.

Kurdish nationalism in Iraq as a mass movement:

It would not take long before Kurdish nationalism would appeal to a broader social base and engender a mass movement (Van Bruinessen 2000: 54). When colonel Abdul Karim Qassem staged a coup d’état in 1958 against the Royal government which was supported by the

British, he promised real democracy, land reform and national rights for the Kurds (ibid.).

Understandably, many Kurds had great expectations of these commitments. Although

Qassem promised democracy the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) and the Kurdistan Democratic

Party (KDP) were excluded from joining the cabinet which Qasim formed and which included members the United National Front (a union of Liberals, Baathists and others). Yet gestures were made towards the Kurdish population and mulla Mustafa Barzani, who had joined the Mahabad republic, was invited back to Iraq from the Soviet Union where he had lived in exile since the fall of the republic of Mahabad and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in

Iraq was legalized (ibid.). The third article of the provisional constitution under Qassem’s rule even read that Kurds and Arabs are partners in the homeland and that their national rights are recognized (McDowall 1997: 302). The scene seemed set for “resolving the tensions existing between Baghdad and the Kurdish community since 1921” (ibid.).

This situation already led to a rise in Kurdish nationalism according to Van

Bruinessen (2000: 54), but it was when Kurdish expectations were frustrated that a Guerilla war began in 1961, lasting with some interruptions until 1970, and strengthening the Kurdish movement along the way (ibid.). This rebellion was led by the same Mulla Mustafa Barzani who was invited back to Iraq by Qassem, and who was determined to become the leader of

Iraq’s Kurds (McDowall 1997: 302). According to McDowall this new rebellion started due to an interplay of complex problems: “the conflict between rival [Kurdish and Arab] nationalisms, between the civilian and military elements in Baghdad, and between tribalism and ideology in Kurdistan” (ibid.). Several governments fell because of the war with the

Kurds, but things changed when in 1968 Hasan al-Bakr and his younger cousin Saddam

Hussein came to power. While al-Bakr became the fourth president of Iraq Saddam Hussein was to be the vice-president, and in such capacity they made serious concessions to the

Kurds, promising them substantial autonomy in an agreement in 1970 (Van Bruinessen 2000:

54).

Although the 1970 agreement promised autonomy for the entire Kurdish region of

Iraq by the year 1974, in reality attempts were made to Arabize the oil rich regions of Kirkuk and Khaniqin (which represented about half of Iraq’s known oil reserves) before that date

(ibid: 55). Kurds were deported from Kirkuk and Khaniqin and Arabs from the south were settled in those regions. In 1974 the government finally declared autonomy but for an area much smaller than the Kurds laid claim to, and to make matters worse it was administered by a Kurdish administration handpicked by Baghdad (ibid.).

Yet the Kurdish movement led by Barzani and the KDP (which were also often at loggerheads with each other, representing a divide between urban educated Kurds and the tribal leadership) did not feel they had to settle for a compromise and rejected the government’s autonomous institutions (ibid: 55-56). During the course of the 1960s Barzani had established relations with the Shah of Iran who supported the Kurdish insurgency with financial and military means as a useful way to put pressure on Iraq with whom it had border disputes. And when in 1971 Iraq nationalized the Iraqi Petroleum Company which was still owned by Western capital, Western countries installed an economic boycott of Iraq, which then sought closer economic and political ties with the Soviet Union (ibid: 55).

When in 1972 the Soviet Union and Iraq signed a treaty of friendship, Barzani was invited to Tehran and met American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger “who promised him substantial military aid” (ibid.). The Kurds who already controlled large parts of Kurdish Iraq set up their own government, independent form Baghdad yet dependent on Teheran. The

Kurdish guerilla army was supported with CIA-supplied weaponry, aided by Iranian artillery and advised by Israeli and British experts, thereby keeping the Iraqi army at bay and defending a large liberated area in the mountain fastness of Kurdistan (ibid: 56). Many thousands of Kurds from the cities joined the liberated areas and “it was the closest the Kurds had ever been to having a state of their own” (Van Bruinessen 2000: 56).

This was not to last long however, at the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries

(OPEC) conference in Algiers in March 1975, the Shah of Iran concluded an agreement with

Saddam Hussein. In exchange for the cessation of support for Iraq’s Kurds, Iraq would make important concessions to Iran regarding the old border dispute. In the meanwhile, “Barzani’s movement had become so dependent on Iran that it collapsed within days” (ibid.). The

Kurdish movement collapsed in 1975 and perhaps a hundred thousand Kurds fled to Iran while the remainder of the insurgency surrendered to the Iraqi government. It was this historical defeat in 1975 that led to a rupture in the Kurdish political movement in Iraq, dividing the movement into two rival political forces, the dominant and tribal based KDP and the in 1976 established Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). While the KDP has more or less tribal affiliations and is predominantly, although not exclusively, concentrated around Badini speaking regions the PUK is more representative of urban Kurds and the Sorani speaking regions, a division that persists until this very day.

Things did not change for the better for Iraq’s Kurds until the First Gulf War when

Iran opened new fronts against Iraq in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1983 and 1984, although activities by Kurdish guerillas were a constant up until that time. The KDP and the PUK, with the Iraqi army occupied, managed to bring large parts of the more mountainous parts of Iraqi

Kurdistan under their control (Van Bruinessen 2000: 58). And for a while it looked as if Iran would win the war and Iraq as a state would fall apart, with Kurdish autonomy being established in the north, yet in 1988 the tide turned in Iraq’s favor again and the Iraqi army

regained initiative (ibid.). When in March 1988 the Kurdish Peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) captured amongst others the strategic town of Halabja together with Iranian forces, Saddam

Hussein’s army ruthlessly struck the town with poison gasses, killing up to 5,000 of its inhabitants within a matter of ten minutes (us.gov.krd, date unknown).

This was part of a genocidal campaign by the Iraqi authorities in which between 1987 and 1989 approximately 180,000 Kurds perished though executions, disappearances, mass murders and the widespread use of chemical weapons, some 2,000 villages were also destroyed (ibid.). In total 4,000 villages and hamlets were destroyed and 1,5 million people were forcibly displaced, with many ending in concentration camps in central and southern

Iraq (McDowall 1997: 360). Yet the international community chose to remain quiet, knowing very well what was happening in Iraq through PUK press statements and the victims being treated in Europe, the industrialized world nevertheless was “anxious that Iraq should prevail against Iran and was unwilling to jeopardize this objective by the application of international convention” (ibid: 361). Furthermore, in June 1988 Masud Barzani had accused France, Italy and the Netherlands of assisting Iraq in its chemical weapons program, “It was clear that many states of the industrialized world were trading in sensitive materials with Iraq and had little intention of curtailing these arms sales on account of either UNSC 620 or the 1925

Protocol “(ibid: 363).

It was only when Saddam Hussein took the ill-informed decision to invade Kuwait in

1990 that things really changed. Saddam was met by a coalition of 34 nations led by the

United States who destroyed the Iraqi army, safe for the Iraqi Republican Guard Corps, and forced Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Then, when George Bush senior declared that the

Iraqi people should rise up against the dictatorship led by Saddam Hussein, in the north and in the south of the country, the Kurds and the Shi’a respectively, did indeed rise up and government control of these regions was severely weakened. Many regions in the south and

the north of the country came under Shi’a and Kurdish control, and the Kurdistan Front boosted its members to approximately 100,000 men in arms by accepting many Jash

(collaborators) among their ranks and forgiving and forgetting their past.

Control of these regions proved short lived however, when Saddam Hussein send his still intact Republican Guard Corps to combat the Kurds in the north. Although it was prohibited for Saddam to use his fixed winged aircraft against the Kurds and the Shi’a his was still allowed to use his helicopters, tanks, artillery and other military means. So he did, and with deadly results, Saddam’s army started a campaign to attack Kurdish held cities and areas and seized about 100,000 Kurds and Turkoman around Kirkuk, Dohuk and Zakho, of which 20,000 perished in the onslaught (ibid: 373). “Mass panic and flight gripped all

Kurdistan. Over 1,5 million Kurds abandoned their home in a mad stampede to reach safety either in Turkey or Iran” (ibid). When their plight was recorded by mass media, who sent chilling images of the refugees of which approximately 1,000 were dying every day on the snow covered mountains, the international community decided to act with operation provide comfort, creating a safe haven inside Iraq by preventing Iraqi airplanes from passing by the

36th parallel (ibid: 375).

This was to set the stage for the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government coming into existence, although the liberated Kurdish areas did not run parallel to the no-fly zone, with half of the liberated areas falling outside it, and the liberated areas running more in tandem with the higher altitude mountains, the no-fly zone did prove its use to the Iraqi

Kurds. The autonomous Kurdish region that took shape then constituted about half of the

Kurdish populated areas in Iraq. It was legalized through the new Iraqi constitution in 2003 after Saddam’s ousting from power, and would remain about the same size until 2014 when the Islamic State in Syria and the Syria (ISIS) took over Mosul, the Iraqi Army collapsed and

the Kurds incorporated large parts of the remaining Kurdish areas before ISIS could take

them over.

Conclusion:

Starting with the observation that Kurdish nationalism is more entrenched in Iraq than

elsewhere and the fact that Iraq has the as of yet only officially recognized autonomous

Kurdish region, we have seen that the Kurds of Iraq have had a long history of de facto

autonomy. Ever since the Iraqi state was created early in the 20th century the Kurds resisted domination by this state and incorporation into Iraq, although not always only out of nationalistic reasons. We have seen that tribalism, tribes and notables played a significant role in many revolts, although a nationalist undercurrent was also present. Tribal revolts transformed into a mass movement by the 1960s and the political upheaval in Baghdad and rebellious situation in Kurdistan led to regime change in Baghdad. With Saddam Hussein’s ascent to power in the 1970’s the situation turned grimmer for Iraq’s Kurds culminating eventually into genocide. Yet with Saddam now gone, and the Kurds of Iraq firmly established in the region they have taken an increasingly important role in Kurdish nationalism.

What is deviating in the case of the Kurds of Iraq is that the rebellions were eventually successful, or at least set the stage for future success. With tribalism and nationalism not having departed from each other, it is this top down nationalist ideal, in which the higher segments of Kurdish society have a major role, that has become dominant in

Iraqi Kurdistan. This is, as we have seen, different than the path that Kurdish nationalism has traversed in Turkey, traditional authority and Kurdish nationalism did not become each other’s nemesis in Iraqi Kurdistan. This may be the reason that we witness two rival paths to

nationalism in Kurdistan today, the conservative type led by the Kurdistan Regional

Government, and the more radical version led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. With the

PKK’s ideological ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), now strengthening its position in

Rojava (northern Syria) we can witness two rival movements that compete for Greater

Kurdistan. It is to the Kurds in Syria that we shall now turn.

Kurdish nationalism in Syria:

Introduction:

Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava (meaning the West in Kurdish), as it has recently come to be known, had until recently a marginal and little known position within the Kurdish question, perhaps even more so than Iranian Kurdistan. Before the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds of Syria were a little known entity, often seemed forgotten. Yet out of the blue the Kurds of Syria have become one of the most visible actors in the Syrian civil war, with their female fighters and their ideas of gender equality and egalitarianism depicting them in stark contrast with the many jihadists active in Syria, especially those of ISIS. They have also become one of the most, if not the most, indispensable ally on the ground for the American led coalition fighting the jihadists of ISIS. Thus from a marginalized place in Syrian society as a whole and little known position in Kurdish politics, the Kurds in Syria have ascended to become one of the centers of Kurdish nationalism and nation building, by liberating and defending their land and creating their own autonomous institutions. Therefore, they are now the second autonomous

(if not practically independent) Kurdish region, alongside Iraqi Kurdistan.

It is contended in this research, that the way the dominant political party in Rojava, the PYD, acted has led to this result. The PYD being linked to the PKK has enabled it to

benefit from years of political experience, and also the political transformation of Kurdish

nationalism that had already occurred in Turkish Kurdistan. Organizing ordinary Kurds and

appealing to national sentiment on the same social basis of the PKK, the present day

autonomous Kurdish region of Syria therefore represents a different form of nationalism than

that of the KRG. This is not to say that the PYD is strictly a nationalist party, but that Kurdish

nationalism was tapped in the organization of Kurds, and that therefore Kurdish nationalism

played a role in organizing people. Being able to tap into the idea of a Greater Kurdish

national entity, of which Rojava is considered a part, has helped secure people’s loyalties and

commitment. The coming into existence of Rojava has meant a boost for Kurdish identity and it is important to evaluate its impact on Kurdish nationalism.

The Kurds of Syria:

As stated the Kurds of Syria have come a long way, from being practically unknown by the

outside world to capturing the imagination of many, yet it is important here to understand the

history of the Kurds in Syria too. To the end of understanding the former and present position

of Syrian Kurds within Kurdish nationalism we will cast a look on the history of Kurds in

Syria.

When after the First World War the Ottoman Empire was divided among the

victorious Allied powers, the borders that delineate the current lands that constitute Syria

were drawn, and Syria became a French Mandate (Protectorate) until it gained independence

in 1945. These lands included a significant number of Kurds, predominantly residing in the

north of the country, and numbering around ten percent of the total Syrian population

(Bengio 2014: 194). Despite claims to the contrary by the Syrian Baath regime, the Kurds

who were living in this region had done so for a long time, constituting part of the ethnic

fabric of that region for centuries (ibid: 195).

In fact, when the borders were drawn that would come to constitute Syria, they were

drawn right through Kurdish communities and tribes, with sometimes the same families

finding themselves divided by a new border. Although it must be clarified that there were

also migratory flows of people (especially Kurds from Turkey, and Christians from Turkey

and Iraq) to the northeastern part of Syria, known as Hasaka province or the Al-Jazira region,

due to the persecution of these groups (ibid: 196-197). “The demographic situation in the al-

Jazira region, and the fact that from the beginning its connections with the Syrian interior had

been weak” led to suspicion from Syrian Arab nationalists in the capital of Damascus that

this region might be severed from the rest of Syria “as had happened with Lebanon and the

Sanjak of Alexandretta” (ibid: 197).

This situation was to set the foundation for the mistrust and hostility towards Kurds in

Syria, and especially the Al-Jazira region. “The French recognized the benefits they might

reap from this situation by exploiting the tension between the Kurds and the Syrian national

movement” (ibid.). Although favoring Kurds in matters of civil administration and the military, and apparently amplifying separatist sentiments among Kurds, the French authorities were nevertheless cautious in not taking it too far when it came to ‘supporting’ the

Kurds in Syria. Since the French still had to take into account neighboring states such as

Turkey and Iraq which also had significant Kurdish populations, Iraq was then ruled by the

British as a Mandate, and the French were cautious not to upset the British plans for molding together the Iraqi state (ibid.).

Yet even this modest amount of support came to an end in 1936, the year that the

Franco-Syrian treaty of independence was signed. Although the treaty was never ratified by

France, it set the stage for “the imposition of the authority of the Syrian state over Syrian territory, including Jabal al-Druze (Druze Mountain), the Alawite region, and the Kurdish-

populated al-Jazira region, …” (ibid.). Thus where previously the minorities were favored by

France, all of a sudden they were put at the mercy of the Sunni-Arab majority, and according

to Eyal Zisser: “The following years—from the integration of the al-Jazira region into a

Syrian state evolving toward independence—witnessed constant tensions and incidents

between the state and the Kurds” (ibid.). It is claimed by the same author that at the heart of

these tensions lay the attempt by the Syrian state to impose their rule over Kurdish dominated

areas, with the help of the region’s Arab population.

Syria’s independence did little to alleviate these tensions, although in the beginning

there was a relative amount of tolerance towards the minorities in Syria “in an effort to

integrate them into the Syrian state” (ibid: 198). Thus some Kurds were granted positions in

government and the military, for example: “Tawfiq Nizam al-Din, an officer of Kurdish

origin, [who] held the position of chief of staff of the Syrian army in 1955” (ibid.). Other

military rulers during the early days of Syria’s independence such as Husni al-Zaim and Adib

bin Hasan al-Shishakli also held high positions in Syria. al-Zaim would even lead a coup

d’état in 1949, yet it goes without saying that “these figures had no interest whatsoever in

Kurdish affairs, nor did they view themselves as Kurds” (ibid.).

Nevertheless, al-Zaim merely being Kurdish was enough for anti-Kurdish sentiments to be aroused after the coup, and “the Arab press outside Syria, mainly those organs close to

Zaim’s opponents, thus described his administration as an administration of Kurds and accused him of aiming at the establishment of a Kurdish republic” (ibid.). These events give

us some insight into the situation of the Kurds in Syria, yet as bad as the situation might have

been in those days, things were about to deteriorate even further with the coming into

existence of the United Arab Republic (UAR) pact between Syria and Egypt. And later, after

the dissolution UAR, the coming to power of the Baathists under Hafez al-Assad.

The United Arab Republic pact which was closed in 1958 between Egypt and Syria,

and sought unify the two states into an Arab republic, was a cause for apprehension for the

Kurds but also other minorities in Syria. The Kurds and other minorities feared that their

position within the UAR would be compromised since they would come to constitute a

smaller percentage of the population and hence would have less power to decide on their own

affairs. Their concerns were proved right, the UAR under the leadership of Gamal Abdel

Nasser was dedicated to strengthening the Arab identity of Syria, and consequently minorities

suffered at the hands of the security services. The only legal Kurdish political party in Syria

at the time “the Kurdish Democratic Party of Syria was disbanded and dozens, perhaps

hundreds, of its activists were arrested by the local UAR security services, headed by ʿAbd

al-Hamid Sarraj” (ibid: 199). After the dissolution of the UAR in 1961 matters did not change

for the better for Syria’s minorities, the Kurds became an oppressed and persecuted minority

and the Syrian regime practically declared war against “the Kurdish population of Syria in

1962, especially in the al-Jazira region” (ibid: 200). State policies were aimed at demographic

change in northern Syria by expelling Kurds and moving in Arabs and attempting to create an

Arab belt between the Kurds of Syria and the rest of Kurdistan. There was also the infamous

decree No. 49 which at the time stripped 120,000 Kurds of their citizenship together with

another 50,000 Kurds who would even come to lack registration. With these policies the

Syrian state in the 1960s made serious work of persecuting Kurds on a more systematic level

(ibid: 200-201).

Yet with the coming to power of the Baath party in 1963 things would deteriorate

even further for Syria’s minorities. Characteristic of Baathist policy is Mohammed Talib

Hilal’s booklet ‘A Study of the Jazira Province from National, Social and Political Aspects’,

Hilal was the head of ‘political security’ in Qamishli, the largest Kurdish city in Syria, in

1963. Using blatant pejorative and racist claims, Hilal claimed that the Kurds could be considered a ‘malignant tumor’ and proposed plans to remove this threat to the Arab and

Muslim world, in his own words: “The Kurdish question, now that the Kurds are organising

themselves, is simply a malignant tumour (sic.) which has developed and been developed in a

part of the body of the Arab nation. The only remedy which we can properly apply thereto is

excision” (kurdistancommentary.wordpress.com, 2011).

The ‘solution’ Hilal proposed to the Kurdish question in Syria was to cleanse northern

Syria from its Kurdish inhabitants, to which purpose his book made practical

recommendations. Policy recommendations such as demographic change in northern Syria by

expelling Kurds and moving in Arabs and creating an Arab belt, which all started on an even

more severe level in the 1970s when among the Baathists Hafez al-Assad came to power and

became the dominant actor in Syria. Assad’s consolidation of power in Syria turned out to be

a significant development in Syrian political life, since for the first time since independence

there was an effective central government which provided stability, albeit in a profoundly

dictatorial fashion (Bengio 2014: 203). This newly acquired ability to effectively govern

centrally by the Syrian state under the rule of al-Assad also had its implication for the Kurds in Syria, for the policy formulated earlier, by Hilal amongst others, could now be executed more systematically.

And so it did, by the mid-1970s in the north of Syria thousands of Arab families were settled in places where previously Kurds had been expelled, place names were changed from their original Kurdish names into Arabic, for example Kobani into Ayn al-Arab, the use of

Kurdish names for businesses and even for children were proscribed and the official use of the Kurdish language and the opening of Kurdish schools were strictly prohibited (ibid: 204).

However, cynically, the Syrian regime did establish contacts with Kurdish organizations in other countries most notably Turkey and Iraq. The PKK is perhaps the best known example in this regard but hardly the only one, for the KDP under mullah Mustafa Barzani and also the PUK under Jalal Talabani maintained ties with the Syrian regime, were allowed to recruit

among Syrian Kurds and received support from the Baathist regime.

In fact, “the PUK was founded in 1975 at an event held in Damascus under the auspices of the Syrian regime” (ibid.). This is not to say that these organizations were the proxies of the Syrian regime, but that the intention of the Baathist regime “was to exploit the

Kurdish issue as a playing card or a means of applying pressure on the Iraqi and Turkish governments, with which the Syrian regime was in conflict” (ibid.). The PKK and its leader too have benefited from the Syrian regime’s support, finding sanctuary first in Syrian controlled Lebanon, more specifically the Bekaa valley, and later in Damascus. The PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan is even credited with saying that the Kurds of Syria originated from

Turkey and needed to return to Turkey.

It was not until Turkey amassed its troops at the Syrian border in 1998 and threatened

Syria with open war, that Syria decided to expel the PKK’s leader, leading to his eventual capture by Turkey in Nairobi Kenya. However, it must be noted that the policies of the Syrian state seem to have failed since despite, or maybe because of these policies, the Kurds of Syria seem to have “gradually developed a cultural identity, a growing awareness of being an ethnic community, and nationalistic sentiments” (ibid: 205), all culminating in the Syrian

Kurds’ present ascend to becoming one of the more powerful players in the Syrian civil war.

The ‘Arab Spring’ and the Kurds of Syria:

Following the Arab revolts that were dubbed the Arab spring in the West in 2011, Syria too became engulfed in its own political imbroglio with millions of Syrians demanding more political freedoms and democracy. The situation soon turned messy with peaceful protests becoming an armed uprising by what was at the time known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Ostensibly regime soldiers that had defected from the Syrian military, the FSA soon became

overshadowed, or perhaps even morphed into numerous jihadist groups, amongst the likes

were groups like Ahrar al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

(ISIS). These extremist groups soon became more powerful than the mainstream rebels of the

Free Syrian Army, and took over broad swathes of land from the regime turning these lands

into a patchwork of competing sharia states. The most famous of these sharia-based ‘states’ is

of course the ‘caliphate’ of ISIS straddling Iraq and Syria.

Turkey has had a most facilitating role nourishing the Syrian insurgency against the

Assad regime, according to some, to topple the Syrian regime Turkey has been willing to

support even the most radical groups, including ISIS and al-Nusra, and this is documented

(Gunter 2015: 103, see also: huffingtonpost.com Research Paper: ISIS-Turkey Links 2014).

The reason that Turkey has been supporting these groups was not only to topple the Assad

regime but also to crush the newfound autonomy of the Kurds who after the Syrian regime’s

withdrawal from Rojava, established their own autonomous region in northern Syria (Gunter

2015: 103, 107). This newly found Kurdish autonomous region could be another boost for

Kurdish nationalism in the region and especially for Kurds in Turkey, since some Kurds in

Syria and Turkey have family and tribal ties, Rojava is approximate to Turkey’s Kurdish

regions, and perhaps most importantly Rojava’s most powerful political actor is the PYD, an

ally of the PKK. In fact, Turkey has repeatedly claimed that the PKK and the PYD are one

and the same, for Turkey therefore, a PYD led autonomous Kurdish region across the border

would be a nightmare scenario for it could see Kurdish national sentiment amplified in

Turkey by its most dreaded opponent.

The present situation of the Syrian and Iraqi states has meant a lot to the Kurdish question, since not only are the Kurds of Syria now autonomous for the first time in their history, if not practically independent, it has also empowered both Syrian and Iraqi Kurds vis-

à-vis their respective central governments. Some would even argue that the changes affecting

the Middle East today “should be viewed as a second natural transformation following the

Sykes–Picot Agreement (1915–16), given that the Middle Eastern region was an artefact

created by external powers and has been subjected to constant rearrangements” (Charountaki

2015: 338). The battle against ISIS has also tended to unify the Kurdish ranks (Gunter 2015:

105), both the Kurds in Rojava as well as the KRG have worked together to fend off the

threat posed by ISIS in Kobani but also in other places in the Kurdish region.

At the same time the Kurdish struggle against ISIS has tended to put the Kurds in the

international spotlights for resisting this group and as such contributed to the knowledge of

many around the world of the Kurdish struggle.

Conclusion:

It is obvious that the Kurds in Syria have come a long way from the days of the French

mandate over Syria and being used by French to becoming a relatively unified and powerful

actor in the Syrian civil war. When the borders of modern day Syria were drawn by Britain

and France they hardly took into account the wishes of the peoples who happened to live

there, in fact these borders ran right through ethnic communities such as Kurds and Assyrians

dividing tribes and even families among the newly established countries. For the past 90

years, since the drawing of these borders, and later since 1945 the year Syria gained its

independence, the Kurds in Syria seemed to be marginal actors, both in Syria as well as the

wider Kurdish political movement.

We have seen that the Kurds of Syria do not have the same track record of violent and

large scale uprisings as the Kurds in other regions have, even though they were marginalized

by various Syrian regimes. Yet with the Arab spring and the revolts that swept through the

Middle-East region the Kurds of Syria immediately took their chance, tapping into the

organizational skills and the political experience of the PKK. Being repressed by successive

Syrian governments, they developed their ethnic group consciousness as Kurds, and when the opportunity came they had plenty of backing by experienced Kurdish groups. Of course

Kurdish nationalism has its own peculiarities and pathway in every region, and it is not meant to claim that the Syrian Kurds copied the Kurds of Turkey, yet it seems that have benefitted by the development of Kurdish nationalism in other regions. In turn, the Kurds of Syria are contributing to the strengthening of Kurdish nationalism in the wider region, especially the more radical version of Kurdish nationalism inspired by the PKK.

Final Conclusion:

This thesis started with the observation that it was approximately 25 years ago that the Kurds

in Iraq took to the streets in a popular uprising and set the foundations for what was to

become the de facto independent Kurdish entity called the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Attention was also drawn to the fact that since 2012 a new de facto independent Kurdish

entity has been established in Syria called Rojava. Yet we have seen that the politicization of

the Kurdish question predates the current political turmoil in the Middle East and has deeper

roots, going back to at least the drawing of the current borders of the Middle East.

However, it was also noted that when these borders were drawn, Kurdish nationalism as an ideology, was not yet well established among ordinary Kurds. Ideas on Kurdish nationalism were more representative of the worldviews of the notables and the more well to do Kurds. Of course one should not underestimate the sentiments and ideas of ‘ethnic group consciousness’ or ideas on shared ethnicity that some non-notable Kurds in those days have

held. Yet due to the tribal and traditional nature of Kurdish society it was difficult for the

‘national’ ideal to take root among ordinary Kurds.

Indeed, there were many uprisings by Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, and we have seen that these uprisings were not merely reactionary backlashes by Islamist rebels as they were for example portrayed in the official Turkish narrative. Kurdish nationalism was an inherent factor in these uprisings from the beginning, yet more among nationalist intellectuals, or Intelligentsias, than among ordinary people. Often nationalist intellectuals set out to establish an independent Kurdistan and to that end they worked together with tribes, sheikhs and other traditionally powerful men. Even though it was the goal to achieve an independent Kurdish state, it often failed because of the divisions in Kurdish society, nevertheless the aim of independence was present among both the nationalist intellectuals as well as tribal leaders. This account of Kurdish nationalism does indeed have some common ground with the modernist approach which presupposes modernity, mass education and the construction of identity for nationalism to take root on a societal scale.

It was also observed that in the case of Turkey a transformation in Kurdish nationalism took place, Kurdish nationalism departed from its alliance with the traditionally more powerful segments of society, such as tribal lords and sheikhs, if anything these two groups in time became each other’s enemies. And because of the modernization processes that went across the Middle-East the Kurdish movement became tied to the lower echelons of society. This observation is also a conformation of modernist explanations of nationalism and nation formation, since the success of the Kurdish movement in galvanizing ordinary Kurds into movement for a national ideal, was closely related to modernization processes.

Yet it is difficult to account for these early uprisings themselves, of which some also were on a quite large scale, with the modernist approach alone. For it seems that ethnicity, shared symbols and myths and a collective cultural identity among Kurds played a role in the

revolts. Furthermore, the states of the Middle East have gone to great lengths to suppress

Kurdish identity yet have so far been unsuccessful. They have failed to assimilate the Kurds

successfully, which also hints at the importance of the premodern ethnic roots, in not only the

failure of the incorporation of Kurds into these states, but also for the construction of Kurdish

nationalism.

Another observation was that the Kurds in Iraq did not pass through a similar transformation as the Kurds in Turkey. With tribalism and Kurdish nationalism not having departed in Iraqi Kurdistan, the situation of Kurdish autonomy, and even talk of independence, represents a different pathway of Kurdish nationalism than in Turkey. The premodern nation building attempts and uprisings in Iraqi Kurdistan were eventually successful which make this case more compatible with ethno-symbolist or even primordial accounts of nation formation. We can observe the path to nationhood in a premodern society, with clear links between the traditional and the national. Therefore, we now have two types of Kurdish nationalism, which were named the conservative and the radical type of Kurdish nationalism in this thesis, represented by the Kurdistan Regional Government and the PKK

respectively.

This brings us back to the research question, or how we can explain the continuities

and changes in Kurdish nationalism. The answer is that, as we have seen, modernity has had

an important but not decisive effect on Kurdish nationalism, it is possible to account for

Kurdish nationalism without the processes of modernization being the formative factor. In

Turkey, Iran and Iraq, some Kurds had nationalist ideas and sentiments before modernization processes really took root, before the traditional way of life was really disrupted. And even though in Turkey Kurdish nationalism did indeed transform, in Iraqi Kurdistan it did not depart from its early roots, therefore making it possible to account for a ‘premodern type’ of nationalism.

This research therefore inclines more toward the ethno-symbolist accounts of nation formation and nationalism, and considers premodern ethnic identities important for modern

Kurdish nationalism. Yet it remains difficult to explain the continuities and changes in

Kurdish nationalism with any approach alone, since as we have seen modernity played an important role in the dissemination of Kurdish nationalism, or the creation of favorable circumstances for its diffusion, in Turkey. Since nationalist upheaval was already present in

Kurdistan from at least the 1920s onwards, and since in the case of the Kurds of Iraq it is

possible to account for nationalism on a mass scale without previous processes of

modernization, it becomes difficult to strictly adhere to a modernist interpretation of

nationalism. Yet we have also seen that modernization processes did play a role in the

changes Kurdish nationalism has gone through in at least Turkey and Iran. However, in all

four parts of Kurdistan, the common history and shared myths of Kurdish culture proved to

be stronger that the attempts of incorporation of Kurds in these states. Therefore, the

primordial ties that held the Kurds together proved more resilient than we account for through

the modernist approach.

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