Kurdish Nationalism - History

History

The Kurdish nationalist struggle first emerged in the late 19th century when a unified movement demanded the establishment of a Kurdish state. Revolts did occur sporadically but only decades after the Ottoman centralist policies of the 19th century began did the first modern Kurdish nationalist movement emerge with uprising led by a Kurdish landowner and head of the powerful Shemdinan family, Sheik Ubeydullah. In 1880, Ubeydullah, demanded political autonomy or outright independence for Kurds and the recognition of a Kurdistan state without interference from Turkish or Persian authorities. The uprising against Qajar Persia and the Ottoman Empire was ultimately suppressed by the Ottomans and Ubeydullah, along with other notables, were exiled to Istanbul. The Kurdish nationalist movement that emerged following World War I and end of the Ottoman empire was largely reactionary to the changes taking place in mainstream Turkey, primarily radical secularization which the strongly Muslim Kurds abhorred, centralization of authority which threatened the power of local chieftains and Kurdish autonomy, and rampant Turk ethnonationalism in the new Turkish Republic which obviously threatened to marginalize them. Western powers (particularly the United Kingdom) fighting the Turks also promised the Kurds they would act as guarantors for Kurdish freedom, a promise they subsequently broke. One particular organization, the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti (Society for the Advancement of Kurdistan, or SAK) was central to the forging of a distinct Kurdish identity. It took advantage of period of political liberalization in during the Second Constitutional Era (1908–1920) of Turkey to transform a renewed interest in Kurdish culture and language into a political nationalist movement based on ethnicity. This emphasis on Kurds as a distinct ethnicity was encouraged by around the start of the 20th century Russian anthropologists who suggested that the Kurds were a European race (compared to the Asiatic Turks) based on physical characteristics and their language which is part of the Indo-European language group. While these researchers had ulterior political motives (to sow dissent in the Ottoman Empire) their findings were embraced and still accepted today by many. During the relatively open government of the 1950s, Kurds gained political office and started working within the framework of the Turkish Republic to further their interests but this move towards integration was halted with the 1960 Turkish coup d'état. The 1970s saw an evolution in Kurdish nationalism as Marxist political thought influenced a new generation of Kurdish nationalists opposed to the local feudal authorities who had been a traditional source of opposition to authority, eventually they would form the militant separatist Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers Party in English.