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Islam and Competing Nationalisms: the Kurds and the Turks in the Late Ottoman Era

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Islam and Competing Nationalisms: the Kurds and the Turks in the Late Ottoman Era Islam and Competing Nationalisms: The Kurds and the Turks in the late Ottoman Era Kamal Soleimani A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Kamal Soleimani All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Islam and Competing Nationalisms: The Kurds and the Turks in the late Ottoman Era Kamal Soleimani Islam and Competing Nationalisms: The Kurds and the Turks in the late Ottoman Era is a work, which traces how religion was intimately intertwined with nationalism during the crucial period of the late nineteenth century in the Modern Middle East. In this approach, I call into question the extent to which the principle of secularism and ethnicity serve as the only foundations of the modern nation state. Within the context of the late Ottoman Empire, my research foregrounds the differences between interpretations of Islam at the center and the myriad understandings of Islam adopted by those on the margins. I demonstrate how diverse Muslim communities (Arabs, Kurds and Turks) have linked their interpretations of 'authentic' religion to claims of 'ethnic superiority' during the process of nation building. I contend that this tension between the normative State interpretation of Islam and alternative visions was critical in shaping modern nationalism in the Middle East. This is significant for establishing how nationalism can in turn affect the range of religious interpretations. My work thus provides a new historically grounded theoretical foundation for recent debates on nationalism that have emerged in recent decades. My dissertation is based on a close examination of British archival records, Ottoman state records, Ottoman journals and other primary sources in Arabic, Kurdish (both Kurmanci and Sorani dialects), Persian and modern Turkish -- most of which I obtained during my yearlong field research as a Fulbright scholar. Contents Abbreviations....…………………………………………………………………………………iii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………….vi Introduction ………………….…………………………………………………………………..1 Part I Chapter 1 Religion and Nationalism ……………………………………………………..……23 Eurocentric Context of the Study of Nationalism…....…………………………………… 29 Socialization, Religion and Nationalism……………………………………………………34 Modern Islamic Political Thought, “Islamism” and Nationalism…………………………..42 Chapter 2 The Politics of the Khilafa, Old and New………………………………………….58 The Emergence of the Caliphate (632) and Ensuing Debates……………………………..59 Theological roots of the late Ottoman Caliphate………………….……………………….66 Part II Chapter 3 Ottoman/ Turkish “Official Nationalism”………………………………..……….83 Chapter 4 Official language and Turkification……………………….……….…………….107 History of Educational and Linguistic Turkification………………….………...………129 Nationalism and the Politics of Pan-Islamism……………………………….………….159 Part III Chapter 5 The Kurds and “Crafting of the National Selves”…………….…….………......181 i The Rise of Rival Nationalisms ………………................................................................182 Chapter 6 Exclusionary Islam and Kurdish Nationalism………………………..…………201 The Rise of Sheikh Ubeydullah…..…………………………………………………….....202 The Kurds’ Religion is Different……………………………………………………….…209 A Kurdistan-Centered Islamic Revivalism………………………………………………..217 The Kurds under the Gaze of Others……………………………………………………...225 The Kurdish Nation is a people apart……………………………………………………...254 Chapter 7 Kurdish Nationalism and Khilafa in Nursi’s Pre-exile Writing………………....270 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….….291 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..301 ii ABBREVATION A AMD Amedi Kalemi A MKT MHM Sedaret Mektubi Mühimme Kalemi A MKT MVL Meclisi Vâlâ A MKT NZD Sedaret Mektubi Kalemi Nezaret ve Devair A MKT UM Umum Vilâyet A MKT Mektubi Kalemi BOA Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi BEO Bâb-ı Âli Evrak Odası, Sadaret Evrakı (A) HR MKT Hariciye Nezareti Mektubi Kalemi HR SYS Hariciye Siyasi ID İrade Dahiliye IH İrade Hariciye IM İrade Mesail IMM İrade Meclis-i Mahsus MV Meclisi Vükelâ Mazbataları MVL Meclis-i Vâla Evrakı Hülasa Kayıt Defterleri PRO FO Public Reord Office, Foreign Office Y A HUS Sadaret Hususi Mevzuat Evrakı Y A RES Sadaret Resmi Maruzat Evrakı YEE Yıldız Esas Evrakı Y MTV Yıldız Mutenevvi Mâruzat Y PRK A Sadaret Mâruzatı Y PRK ASK Askeri Mâruzatı Y PRK BSK Mabeyen Başkitabeti iii Y PRK DH Dahiliye Nezareti Mâruzatı Y PRK M Mütefferrik Y PRK MYD Yaveran ve Maiyyeti-i Seniyye Erkâni Harbiye Dairesi Y PRK NMH Nâme-i Humayunlar Y PRK PT Posta ve Telgraf Nezareti Y PRK TNF Ticaret ve Nafia Nezareti Y PRK TŞF Teşrifat-ı Umumiye Dairesi Y PRK UM Umum Vilayetler Tahrirati Y PRK Yıldız Perakende Evrakı iv Acknowlegments Any intellectual work is a collaborative one. It is built on the previous works and expanded by borrowing from existing scholarship and the exchange of ideas in the community surrounding the author. The current work has gone through a similar process. I am greatly indebted to my professors for their constant help and support. Professors Gil Anidjar, Partha Chatterjee, Katherine Ewing, Janet Klein and Nader Sohrabi have not only guided me in my academic endeavors, but also helped me to endure the extraordinary difficulties I faced in my last two years at Columbia University. Their support and friendship went far beyond a formal student and mentor relationship. I am also equally grateful to the help and support of many colleagues and friends. Sabri Akgunul, Owen Miller and Metin Yüksel who, in addition to their generosity in offering their insights, facilitated my access to various archival documents and manuscript to which otherwise access would not have been possible. Sabri spent almost a month collecting Ottoman state records from Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi in Istanbul, documents that came to constitute the bulk of what I have used in Chapter four. Owen kindly shared all the documents he had gathered from various sites around the world. Metin Yüksel read a chapter and introduced me to various manuscripts. He also mailed me photocopies many of non-English books, documents, and manuscripts from Iran and Turkey. Jonathan Cleveland has been a friend with whom I have constantly discussed my thoughts. Also, throughout my writing I have relied on his insight, suggestion and corrections. I am also indebted to Hasan Azad, Tony Shin, Costantino Pischedda, Mostafa Hefny, Ajay Chaudhary, Hiroaki Abe and Auditi Suri, all of whom have read portions of my dissertation and have offered their invaluable insights and corrections. I am immensely v grateful to all of them. I am also grateful to Abbas Vali for his constant and productive questioning of my ideas about the possibility of a fusion of religion and nationalism. His was also immensely generous in more material way; alongside Necmettin Kizakaye and Ercan Gür, he provided wonderful hospitality while I was in Istanbul. I am thankful to my brother Asad Soleimani for mailing various books and documents from Iran. There is one person to who I am unable to find the right words to express my gratitude. This is my beloved daughter, Jiwana Soleimani. When I was writing my dissertation, my little Jiwana involuntarily had to live like a university student with me and put up with my hardships. Yet, with her hard work and resilience, Jiwana was able to finish the seventh grade as an honor student. vi Introduction What is called nationality ‘milliyet’ is [rooted in] the depth of the past, the vast deserts of the present and future. [It is rooted in] the Kurdish prodigies’ [voices] like that of the son of Zal, Rustam, and of Salah ad-Din Ayyubi’s, gathered as one family in a tent on the mountain top…commending you all to turn into a single soul who embodies the unity of nation for the sake of its protection and happiness… [It is ] with the emergence of the national sentiment that [one’s] morality evolves. 1 - Bediüzzaman Said Kurdi or Nursi Islam appeared as a protest against idolatry. And what is patriotism but a subtle form of idolatry; a deification of a material object. The patriotic songs of various nations will bear me out in my calling patriotism a deification of a material object. Islam could not tolerate idolatry in any form. It is our eternal mission to protest against idolatry in all its forms. What was to be demolished by Islam could not be made the very principle of its structure as a political community. The fact that the Prophet prospered and died in a place not his birthplace is perhaps a mystic hint to the same effect. -Muhammad Iqbal2 Scholarship on late Ottoman society, including on the Kurds, in general, tends to present Muslim history with a certain uniformity. It is only after World War I and with the rise of Kemalism that the history of Muslim nationalist thought is treated as a fact in the related historiography. The historical disparity among the various “Muslim people of Asia Minor” and their assumed “lack of ethnic self-consciousness”3 is presented as an indisputable historical fact and the idea that nationalist tendencies among Muslims existed before World War I is vehemently rejected. In this discursive construct of the past, the emergence of Turkish 1 Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, İçtima-I Dersler/ Social Lessons(2009), 189. 2 Muhammad Iqbal, Stray Reflections (Iqbal Academy, 1910), 35. 3 See, Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey(London, New York,: Oxford University Press, 1961). 1 nationalism is equated with the birth of the “modern Turkish state.” The same period is also treated as the birth date of Muslim nationalisms
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