Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T15:14:40.236Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Kurds and Kurdish Nationalism in the Interwar Period

from Part II - Regional Political Developments and the Kurds in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2021

By
Metin Yüksel
Edited by
Hamit Bozarslan ,
Cengiz Gunes  and
Veli Yadirgi
Hamit Bozarslan
Affiliation:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Cengiz Gunes
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
Veli Yadirgi
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Get access

Summary

Taking a world historical perspective and postcolonial critique as its point of departure, this chapter goes into a survey of the state of the Kurds and Kurdish nationalism in the interwar period. The analysis is organized along the lines of the states under whose rule the Kurds came to reside; namely, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the USSR. The dissolution of empires and the emergence of nation-states that were politically, culturally and economically subjected to the Western-centred world economy since the nineteenth century was the main feature that characterized the interwar period. Kurdish reactions to the shifting borders comprised a wide array of responses ranging from assimilation to armed uprisings. Turkey and Iran adopted policies of Turkification and Persianization alongside the forced resettlement of the Kurds in interior regions. In Iraq, they were promised official recognition on paper yet it remained unfulfilled in reality. Syria under the French Mandate was home to Kurdish nationalist political and cultural activities. In the USSR, the earlier categorization of the Kurds as a ‘small nation’ later shifted to that of an ‘enemy nation’, which led to the first wave of their deportation in 1937. The chapter concludes that the interwar period in Kurdish history thus has a defining legacy in the formation of subsequent Kurdish nationalist discourses and movements.

Keywords

KurdsKurdish nationalisminterwar periodcolonizationassimilation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Kurds , pp. 205 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adıvar, H. E. (2010). Zeyno’nun Oğlu. Istanbul: Can.Google Scholar
Alakom, R. (2011). Hoybûn Örgütü ve Ağrı Ayaklanması. Istanbul: Avesta.Google Scholar
Ali, O. (1997). The Kurds and the Lausanne Peace Negotiations, 1922–1923. Middle Eastern Studies, 33 (3), 521–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altinay, A. G. (2004). The Myth of the Military-Nation: Military, Gender, and Education in Turkey. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altuğ, S. (2011). Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, land and violence in the memories of World War I and the French Mandate (1915–1939). Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Asgharzadeh, A. (2007). Iran and the Challenge of Diversity: Islamic Fundamentalism, Aryanist Racism, and Democratic Struggles. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Atakuman, Ç. (2008). Cradle or crucible: Anatolia and archaeology in the early years of the Turkish Republic (1923–1938). Journal of Social Archaeology, 8 (2), 214–35.Google Scholar
Atatürk, M. K. (2000). Nutuk I, II, III. Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları.Google Scholar
Aytürk, I. (2011). The racist critics of Atatürk and Kemalism, from the 1930s to the 1960s. Journal of Contemporary History, 46 (2), 308–35.Google Scholar
Bayat, K. (1374/1995). Shoorash-e Kordha-ye Torkiya va Tasir-e an bar Ravabet-e Khariji-ye Iran (1307–1311). Tehran: Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran.Google Scholar
Bayrak, M. (2009). Kürtlere Vurulan Kelepçe: Şark Islahat Planı. Ankara: Özge.Google Scholar
Beşikçi, İ. (1990). Devletlerarası Sömürge Kürdistan. Istanbul: Alan.Google Scholar
Beşikçi, İ. (1991). Türk Tarih Tezi, Güneş-Dil Teorisi ve Kürt Sorunu. Ankara: Yurt Kitap-Yayın.Google Scholar
Beşikçi, İ. (1992). Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi. Ankara: Yurt Kitap Yayın.Google Scholar
Boyîk, E. (2019). Çanda Kurdên Sovêtê. Istanbul: Peywend.Google Scholar
Bozarslan, H. (2002). Kürd Milliyetçiliği ve Kürd Hareketi (1898–2000). In Bora, T. (ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: Milliyetçilik (pp. 841–70). Istanbul: İletişim.Google Scholar
Bozarslan, H. (2008). Kurds and the Turkish state. In Kasaba, R. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. 4: Turkey in the Modern World (pp. 333–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, S. (2000). Hegel and Haiti. Critical Inquiry, 26 (4), 821–65.Google Scholar
Cabi, M. (2017). Clash of national narratives and the marginalization of Kurdish-Iranian history. Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 4 (4), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chehabi, H. E. (1993). Staging the emperor’s new clothes: Dress codes and nation-building under Reza Shah. Iranian Studies, 26 (3/4), 209–29.Google Scholar
Chen, X. (1992). Occidentalism as counterdiscourse: ‘He Shang’ in post-Mao China. Critical Inquiry, 18 (4), 686–712.Google Scholar
Cleveland, W. L. and Bunton, M. (2009). A History of the Modern Middle East. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Cronin, S. (2007). Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921–1941. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cronin, S. (2009). Re-interpreting modern Iran: Tribe and state in the twentieth century. Iranian Studies, 42 (3), 357–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crosby, A. W. (2009). Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dehnavi, N. (1386/2007). Esnādi az Ravābet-e Iran va Torkiya (1922–1937). Tehran: Markaz-e Esnād va Tārikh-e Diplomasi.Google Scholar
Deringil, S. (2003). ‘They live in a state of nomadism and savagery’: The late Ottoman Empire and the post-colonial debate. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45 (2), 311–42.Google Scholar
Dirlik, A. (1996). Chinese history and the question of Orientalism. History and Theory, 35 (4), 96–118.Google Scholar
Dirlik, A. (2002). Rethinking colonialism: Globalization, postcolonialism, and the nation. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 4 (3), 428–48.Google Scholar
Dodge, T. (2006). The British Mandate in Iraq, 1920–1932. The Middle East Online Series 2: Iraq 1914–1974. Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Edmonds, C. J. (1968). The Kurdish war in Iraq: The constitutional background. The World Today, 24 (12), 512–20.Google Scholar
Elling, R. C. (2013). Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini. New York: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elphinston, W. G. (1946). The Kurdish question. International Affairs, 22 (1), 91–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esenbel, S. (2004). Japan’s global claim to Asia and the world of Islam: Transnational nationalism and world power, 1900–1945. The American Historical Review, 109 (4), 1140–70.Google Scholar
Eskander, S. (2001). Southern Kurdistan under Britain’s Mesopotamian Mandate: From separation to incorporation, 1920–23. Middle Eastern Studies, 37 (2), 153–80.Google Scholar
Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove.Google Scholar
Fontana, G. (2010). Creating nations, establishing states: Ethno-religious heterogeneity and the British creation of Iraq in 1919–23. Middle Eastern Studies, 46 (1), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forbes, R. (1931). Conflict: Angora to Afghanistan. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gelvin, J. L. (2011). The Modern Middle East: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gingeras, R. (2011). Gangsters, kidnappers, killers and other patriots: The writing of a new social history of the Turkish War of Independence. In G. D. Brockett (ed.), Towards a Social History of Modern Turkey: Essays in Theory and Practice (pp. 39–57). Istanbul: Libra Kitap.Google Scholar
Gorgas, J. T. (2007). Le Mouvement Kurde de Turquie en Exil: Continuités et Discontinuités du Nationalisme Kurde sous le Mandat Français en Syrie et au Liban (1925–1946). Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Gorgas, J. T. (2014). The Kurdish cultural movement in mandatory Syria and Lebanon: An unfinished project of ‘national renaissance’, 1932–46. Iranian Studies, 47 (5), 839–55.Google Scholar
Gorgas, J. T. (2018). Making borders from below: The emergence of the Turkish–Iraqi frontier, 1918–1925. Middle Eastern Studies, 54 (5), 811–26.Google Scholar
Guha, R. (2002). History at the Limit of World-History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Gunes, C. and Zeydanlıoğlu, W. (2014). Introduction: Turkey and the Kurds. In Gunes, C. and Zeydanlıoğlu, W. (eds), The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation, and Reconciliation (pp. 1–20). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hall, S. (2008). The West and the rest: Discourse and power. In Hall, S. and Gieben, B. (eds), Formations of Modernity (pp. 275–320). New Hampshire: The Open University.Google Scholar
Hamelink, W. and Baris, H. (2014). Dengbêjs on borderlands: Borders and the state as seen through the eyes of Kurdish singer-poets. Kurdish Studies, 2 (1), 34–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassanpour, A. (1992). Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918–1985. San Francisco, NC: Mellen Research University Press.Google Scholar
Hirsch, F. (2005). Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hitchins, K. (2018). Kurdish elites and nationhood in Anatolia, 1890s–1938. In Bozarslan, H. and Scalbert-Yücel, C. (eds), Joyce Blau: l’éternelle chez les kurdes (pp. 81–99). Istanbul: Institut français d’études anatoliennes.Google Scholar
Hodgson, M. G. S. (1970). The role of Islam in world history. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1 (1), 99–123.Google Scholar
Houston, C. (2009). An anti-history of a non-people: Kurds, colonialism, and nationalism in the history of anthropology. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15, 19–35.Google Scholar
Issawi, C. P. (1982). An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Keddie, N. R. (2003). Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Khoury, P. S. (1987). Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, J. (2000). Proverbial nationalism: Proverbs in Kurdish nationalist discourse of the late Ottoman period. The International Journal of Kurdish Studies, 14 (1/2), 7–26.Google Scholar
Köksal, Y. (2006). Minority policies in Bulgaria and Turkey: The struggle to define a nation. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 6 (4), 501–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koohi-Kamali, F. (2003). The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: Pastoral Nationalism. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Kühn, T. (2003). An imperial borderland as colony: Knowledge production and the elaboration of difference in Ottoman Yemen, 1872–1918. The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, 3 (Spring), 4–16.Google Scholar
Kurt, M. (2019). ‘My Muslim Kurdish brother’: Colonial rule and Islamist governmentality in the Kurdish region of Turkey. Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 21 (3), 350–65.Google Scholar
Leezenberg, M. (2015). ‘A people forgotten by history’: Soviet studies of the Kurds. Iranian Studies, 48 (5), 747–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loomba, A. (2005). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Makdisi, U. (2002). Ottoman Orientalism. The American Historical Review, 107 (3), 768–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maksudyan, N. (2016). Türklüğü Ölçmek: Bilimkurgusal Antropoloji ve Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Irkçı Çehresi 1925–1939. Istanbul: Metis.Google Scholar
Manoto TV. (2014). Mostanad: Reza Shah. [Documentary film.]Google Scholar
Martin, T. (2001). The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Matthee, R. (2003). ‘Transforming dangerous nomads into useful artisans, technicians, agriculturalists’: Education in the Reza Shah period. In Cronin, S. (ed.), The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (pp. 128–51). London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
McDowall, D. (2004). A Modern History of the Kurds. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Meiselas, S. (2008). Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (Historical Introductions by Martin van Bruinessen). Chicago, IL, and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mikhail, A. (2016). Climate and the chronology of Iranian history. Iranian Studies, 49 (6), 963–72.Google Scholar
Minawi, M. (2016). The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohammadpour, A. and Soleimani, K. (2019). Interrogating the tribal: The aporia of ‘tribalism’ in the sociological study of the Middle East. The British Journal of Sociology, 70 (5), 1799–824.Google Scholar
Olson, R. (1991). Five stages of Kurdish nationalism, 1880–1980. Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs Journal, 12 (2), 391–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özbilge, N. (2020). Çekirgeler, Kürtler ve Devlet: Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemine Yeniden Bakmak. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları.Google Scholar
Özoğlu, H. (2004). Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Pahlavi, R. S. (1386/2007). Safarhā-ye Reza Shah-e Pahlavi bih Khuzistān va Māzandarān. Tehran: Kamāl-e Andishah.Google Scholar
Pehlivan, Z. (2020). El Niño and the nomads: Global climate, local environment, and the crisis of pastoralism in late Ottoman Kurdistan. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 63, 316–56.Google Scholar
Pohl, J. O. (1999). Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949. Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Pohl, J. O. (2017). Kurds in the USSR, 1917–1956. Kurdish Studies, 5 (2), 32–55.Google Scholar
Powell, E. M. T. (2003). A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rafaat, A. (2016). The fundamental characteristics of the Kurdish nationhood project in modern Iraq. Middle Eastern Studies, 52 (3), 488–504.Google Scholar
Saleh, A. (2013). Ethnic Identity and the State in Iran. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Sluglett, P. (2007). Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soleimani, K. (2017). The Kurdish image in statist historiography: The case of Simko. Middle Eastern Studies, 53 (6), 949–65.Google Scholar
Soleimani, K. and Mohammadpour, A. (2019). Can non-Persians speak? The sovereign’s narration of ‘Iranian identity’. Ethnicities, 19 (5), 925–47.Google Scholar
Stone, A. (2017). Hegel and colonialism. Hegel Bulletin, 41 (2), 247–70.Google Scholar
Şen, S. (2019). Gemideki Hayalet: Türk Sinemasında Kürtlüğün ve Türklüğün Kuruluşu. Istanbul: Metis.Google Scholar
Tejel, J. (2009). Syria’s Kurds: History, Politics and Society. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
‘The Future of Iraq’. (1926). Advocate of Peace through Justice, 88 (5), 277–9.Google Scholar
Tripp, C. (2000). A History of Iraq. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Trouillot, M.-R. (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Tunçay, M. (1999). Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek-Parti Yönetimi’nin Kurulması (1923–1931). Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları.Google Scholar
Turkyilmaz, Z. (2016). Maternal colonialism and Turkish woman’s burden in Dersim. Journal of Women’s History, 28 (3), 162–86.Google Scholar
Üngör, U. Ü. (2011). The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ünlü, B. (2018). Türklük Sözleşmesi: Oluşumu, İşleyişi ve Krizi. Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları.Google Scholar
Vali, A. (2014). Kurds and the State in Iran. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, M. (1992). Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, M. (2001). From Adela Khanum to Leyla Zana: Women as political leaders in Kurdish history. In Mojab, S. (ed.), Women of a Non-state Nation: The Kurds (pp. 95–112). Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, M. (2006). A Kurdish warlord on the Turkish-Persian frontier in the early twentieth century: Isma’il Agha Simko. In Atabaki, T. (ed.), Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers (pp. 69–93). London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Vaziri, M. (1993). Iran as Imagined Nation: The Construction of National Identity. New York: Paragon House.Google Scholar
Vejdani, F. (2015). Making History in Iran: Education, Nationalism, and Print Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wenner, L. M. (1963). Arab–Kurdish rivalries in Iraq. Middle East Journal, 17 (1/2), 68–82.Google Scholar
White, B. T. (2010). The Kurds of Damascus in the 1930s: Development of a politics of ethnicity. Middle Eastern Studies, 46 (6), 901–17.Google Scholar
White, B. T. (2011). The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. R. (2010). Europe and the People without History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Yadirgi, V. (2017). The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yeğen, M. (2009). Şark Islahat Planı: Cumhuriyetin Rehberi. In Bayrak, M. (ed.), Kürtlere Vurulan Kelepçe: Şark Islahat Planı (pp. 11–17). Ankara: Özge.Google Scholar
Yeğenoğlu, M. (1998). Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yılmaz, H. (2014). The rise of Red Kurdistan. Iranian Studies, 47 (5), 799–822.Google Scholar
Young, R. J. C. (2001). Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Yüksel, M. (2011). Dengbêj, mullah, intelligentsia: The survival and revival of the Kurdish-Kurmanji language in the Middle East, 1925–1960. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Yüksel, M. (2016). On the borders of the Turkish and Iranian nation-states: The story of Ferzende and Besra. Middle Eastern Studies, 52 (4), 656–76.Google Scholar
Zeydanlıoğlu, W. (2008). ‘The white Turkish man’s burden’: Orientalism, Kemalism, and the Kurds in Turkey. In Rings, G. and Ife, A. (eds), Neo-colonial Mentalities in Contemporary Europe? Language and Discourse in the Construction of Identities (pp. 155–74). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Zheen Documentation and Research Center. https://zheen.org/blawkrawe/.Google Scholar
Zukor, A. and Lasky, J. L. (1925). Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life. [Documentary film.]Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×