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Whose Kurdistan? Class Politics and Kurdish Nationalism in the Middle East, 1918-2018

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Whose Kurdistan? Class Politics and Kurdish Nationalism in the Middle East, 1918-2018 LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE Whose Kurdistan? Class Politics and Kurdish Nationalism in the Middle East, 1918-2018 Nicola Degli Esposti A thesis submitted to the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. London, 13 September 2020 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 98,640 words. 2 Abstract This thesis is a study of the different trajectories of Kurdish nationalism in the Middle East. In the late 2010s – years of momentous advance for Kurdish forces in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria – Kurdish politics was deeply divided into competing movements pursuing irreconcilable projects for the future of the Kurdish nation. By investigating nationalism as embedded in social conflicts, this thesis identifies in the class basis of Kurdish movements and parties the main reason for their political differentiation and the development of competing national projects. After the defeat of the early Kurdish revolts in the 1920s and 1930s, Kurdish nationalism in Iraq and Turkey diverged along ideological lines due to the different social actors that led the respective national movements. In Iraq, the Kurdish national movement that emerged in the early 1960s was largely dominated by the tribal and landowning elite and primarily interested in preserving existing social hierarchies, while middle-class progressive nationalists were systematically sidelined. Conversely, in Turkey, as the Kurdish traditional elite had been co-opted into the Kemalist state in the 1950s, the nationalist struggle was resumed in the late 1970s by a generation of Kurdish students of peasant extraction that framed their project as an anti-colonial struggle and that violently opposed both Turkish security forces and Kurdish landlords. The thesis argues that these opposing trajectories of Kurdish nationalism were influenced by the evolving class structure of the newly established states of Turkey and Iraq, and by their location in the international state system and within global capitalism. The analysis of the social origins of competing ‘nationalisms’ provides a novel approach to the study of nationalism based on Historical Sociology and Political Economy and offers a materialist reading of the history of Kurdish politics. 3 Acknowledgements First of all, I need to thank my supervisor Dr Katerina Dalacoura who, in the best LSE tradition of theoretically engaged and empirically grounded scholarship, tried to teach me for the past four years how to think as a social scientist. I am indebted to my friends and colleagues at the IR Department, the Middle East Centre, and the Contentious Politics Workshop, for all their valuable feedback and advice. Andrew Delatolla, my PhD buddy, was of great support to my early disoriented months on campus. I am particularly grateful to my cohort mates, Eleonore Heimsoeth, Alessandro Guasti, and Jackie Majnemer because of what I learnt from them and, most importantly, for never letting me panic alone. My fieldwork in Kurdistan was a greatly enriching experience and I would like to thank all the people I met and interviewed there. Particularly, Mera Jasm Bakr for his help organising and translating my interviews, and for his friendship. I was very lucky to find, as I landed in London, great old friends like Lorenzo D’Agostino and Marwan Shehadi, and to immediately meet new ones, like Luke Rees, Tom Seal, and a handful more. Good friends do not grow on trees and I could only make it through this PhD because they let me forget about it once in a while. I am also grateful to the friends and comrades left in Faenza, Bologna, Leiden, Ankara, Istanbul, and Sulaymaniyah, for the countless nights of smoke, wine, and politics which somehow led me here. I would like to thank my family for their support, my sister Federica, her partner Lanfranco, and my new-born niece Emilia. My parents Donatella and Piero worked days and nights to give us the opportunities they never had. They passed on to us their values, taught us to be curious about the world and to stand up for our ideas. Finally, the biggest thanks of all goes to Evelyn Pauls, the most important encounter I had during this PhD journey. Her intelligence pushes me every day to question what I know and what I think, and her support makes me believe a little more in myself. This thesis is dedicated to my grandmother Lucia who passed away while I was in London. I could have never imagined that this PhD on Kurdish nationalism would make me think so much about her life and my own family history of urbanised landless peasants. That she could be proud of me, despite the oceanic distance separating what I do from her long life of toil in the field, the factory, and the house, is for me the greatest honour and motivation to continue. 4 Table of content Declaration .................................................................................................................................................. 2 Abstract ....................................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of content .......................................................................................................................................... 5 List of images .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Maps ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 Tables ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................... 9 Kurdish Organisations and Institutions ................................................................................................. 9 Non-Kurdish Organisations and Institutions ....................................................................................... 10 Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 12 The Purpose and Questions of this Thesis ......................................................................................... 12 Kurdish Nationalism and the Kurdish Question .................................................................................. 15 The Kurds and Kurdistan ...................................................................................................................... 18 The Literature on Kurdish Nationalism ................................................................................................ 26 Methodology and Methods .................................................................................................................. 33 The Structure of the Thesis ................................................................................................................. 38 Chapter 2 Nationalism and Class Politics ............................................................................................... 41 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 41 Diffusionism and Eurocentrism ............................................................................................................ 42 Is Nationalism an Autonomous Force? ................................................................................................ 49 Culture, Ideology, and the Struggle for State Power ......................................................................... 53 Studying Class ...................................................................................................................................... 59 Sketches of Nationalisms ..................................................................................................................... 65 Classical Bourgeois Nationalism ..................................................................................................... 66 Middle-Class Nationalism ................................................................................................................ 68 Feudal Nationalism ............................................................................................................................ 71 Nationalism and the Subaltern Classes .......................................................................................... 73 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................
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