The Prime Minister announced a "Kurdish Initiative" in August and the country has been abuzz ever since.  The "Kurdish Issue" has been a long standing problem in Turkey, but it can be confusing for the outsider.  Just who are the Kurds, and what's their beef with the government and the government's beef with them?  Our Kurdish friend sheds some light on the issue in a two part article from the Kurdish point of view.

August 11th, 2009 was a very important day in Turkish history. On that day, Prime Minister Erdogan gave a speech which marked the beginning of a new era both in Turkey and in the Middle East.
This speech announced a ‘Kurdish Intervention’. Though the context or the details of this 'intervention' have not been disclosed yet, the speech Mr Erdogan gave was a very important step considering Turkey’s refusal to confront its own history. Only now do officials talk about a community that was once ignored and admit that it does indeed exist in this country and has vital problems to be solved without delay.

(Kurds, incidentally, have a population of 20 million people in Turkey, 10 million in Iran, and 2 million in Syria, yet have no country of their own.)

I will try to summarize the history of the Kurdish problem for you by dividing it into two parts, the early and the modern. In this first part, we will talk about the Kurdish Policies and Rebellions until the end of 1st World War and answer the question of just who we, the Kurds, are, and how we have come to be where we are.

The Medes are the ancestors of today’s Kurds and they appeared in the political arena 3000 years ago. While living under the rule of the Assyrian Empire, they rebelled and founded the Median Empire in 612 BC. However, in the following periods they fell under the Macedonian and Roman Empires. In the Middle Ages, when the Arabs under Islam started invading the Middle East (lots of nations including the Turks and Kurds were made Muslim by the Arabs) they came under control of the Iranian Safavid and Abbasid Empires For most of their history, they lived in unorganized semi-federal tribes.

Generally, the historians called the Kurds as ‘Kordus’ and Kurdistan as ‘Kordu’. The Arabs made the Kurds Muslim in 645 AD. The Kurds rebelled many times during the Arabic invasion and later against Arab rule. Starting in the 11th century, they fought bloody wars with Seljuk Turks, the Mongols and the Turkmen. Although they had many good opportunities to declare their independence, they never managed to do so and stayed under a feudal system. By the end of 11th century, the Kurds were invading north, to the east of Van (eastern Turkey), and in the early 13th century, the Kurdish population was increasing around Bitlis and Ahlat.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, two important powers – The Ottomans and Iranians, appeared in the Middle East. This was the beginning of a new period in the history of the Kurds. These two empires fought many wars for a long time. During these wars, Shii (today’s ‘Alevi’s) Kurds were on the Iranian side while the Sunni Kurds stayed with the Ottomans. In 1514, the Ottomans and Iranians fought the Chaldiran War. The Ottomans won. It was decided that the Kurdish principalities would get their autonomy and fight together with Ottomans in both in their internal and the external wars. This treaty was written by one of the most important Kurdish political actors, Hakim Idris. Yavuz Sultan Selim and Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent accepted the borders of the Kurdish principalities and signed many treaties giving the Kurds the right of autonomy. As a result, the Kurds fought together with the Ottomans and got a share of the booty. 

Ottoman-Kurd relations began to weaken once Murat 4th took Baghdad and declared the end of the war with Iran. This happened on May 17th, 1639 and the treaty was called Qasr-i Shirin. It continues to determine today’s border between Turkey and Iran. After using the Kurds for all those years as a weapon against Iran, the Ottoman decided that they did not need to cooperate with them anymore.

Starting from the beginning of the 19th century, the autonomy given to the Kurds was gradually taken away. Between 1805- 1840, the Kurds faced systematic violence. The reason was the Ottoman Empire had begun to break apart. The Empire started losing its lands and many nations declared their independence. The ‘umma’, meaning the religious union, was being abandoned and a central governing style was accepted instead. The authority of Kurds was no longer valid and the Ottoman sent new administrators to those principalities. This is a time when an organized and important leader – Bedirxan Bey, the prince of Botan--arose as a representative of resistance against the Ottoman Empire.

Bedixan's movement deserves to be mentioned for many reasons. First, Bedirxan Bey set up two small plants for the production of gunpowder and guns in Cizre (Sirnak) and sent young Kurds to Europe for education. During his reign, the relations between Kurds and Armenians got warmer. Making no discriminations betweens religions or nations, he succeeded in organizing the Iranian and Anatolian Kurds and getting the support of the Armenians against Ottoman. He also founded the Kurdish state and declared himself the president.

The Ottomans were none too happy.

 

Bedirxanians

At first, they tried to woo Bedirxan Bey by offering gifts, but when this attempt failed, they attacked in 1841. Bedirxan Bey won the first phase of the war, but lost in the end due to the betrayal of his nephew, the commandant of the left wing of the Kurdish army, Yezdan Ser. Bedirxan Bey died in 1868 in exile but his tribe continued to influence Kurdish history. The reasons Bedirxan Bey lost the war were the difference between the numbers of the soldiers of the two armies, some Kurdish and Armenian quislings guiding the Ottomans and of course, the advantage of Ottoman weapons. One of the saddest results of this war was that the Kurds and the Armenians would be divided from each other for the next 80 years.

The systematic violence continued till 1865. In this period, while the Kurdish movement was falling apart, the Kurdish sheiks, who were far from the reach of the central government and also had a significant influence over Kurdish society, started to play an important political role. This was the birth of the next Kurdish movement. The first revolt was the Sheik Ubeydullah rebellion. Except for the Zaza and Alevi Kurds, most tribes supported him (he had solved many problems between different tribes) and revolted. He kept the anger against the Ottomans alive. Although that rebellion didn’t succeed, the idea of independence was carried by Kurdish democrats to future generations.

In 1880-1905, Sultan Abdulhamit followed a different policy than the previous sultans. He established the first modern Ottoman army. During his administration, a spy organization was also founded; Abdulhamit was the kind of man who would make an agreement with a spy one day and have him killed the next. Needless to say the Kurds were exposed to this cruel policy. Sultan Abdulhamit was aiming to set the Kurds against the Armenians by enflaming Islamic fanaticism.

Unfortunately, he succeeded.

By giving power and authority to the Kurds, he was honoring the Kurds while provoking them against the Armenian people. In 1891, the ‘Hamidiye Troops’ each of which consisted of 36 militias with 200 Kurdish soldiers in each militia, was founded. These soldiers were used against the Armenian and Kurdish movements and also against the Russian invasion. While small tribes were getting bigger, the bigger ones were dividing into different forces. Being filled with Islamic fanaticism and being composed of only Sunni Kurds, the ‘Hamidiye Troops’ especially ravaged the regions where the Armenians and Alevi Kurds lived. These soldiers were paid by the government who took charge of all their expenses. The Hamidiye Troops were disbanded in the beginning of the following century.

There is another point that we should not forget to mention. The Armenians founded the Dashnak Party in 1877 after losing their last hope for independence in the final Ottoman-Russian war. With this, they aimed to stand against the Kurds and the Ottomans. In 1895, about 200.000 Armenian people were killed in order to stop their rebellion. Unfortunately, the Kurds were manipulated by the Ottomans into carrying out the massacres, even though the Kurdish intellectuals told them not to.

After Sultan Abdulhamit’s despotic administration, in 1908, with the declaration of the Second Constitutional Monarchy, the Kurds and the Armenians were relieved for a short time. Kurdish political actions resumed. In Istanbul, they founded; ‘Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti’ (the Society of Kurdish Support and Development), a school for Kurdish children and a student union named ‘Hévi’ (hope). The Kurds were requesting to benefit from the ‘Wilsonian Principles’ just like the Armenians did at that time. The Committee for Union and Progress Party (CUP) was founded during the Constitutional Era under the slogan of ‘freedom, equality and brotherhood’ and was embraced by the Kurds. In the following periods, the party would become solely an instrument of Turkish nationalism. However, the Kurds had no idea that the party would change its policies.

While the Kurds living in the cities were happy with the CUP, the Kurds living in the rural areas believed that the constitutional government was a Christian movement and that the Armenians would get their independence. They weren't far off; the CUP and the Dashnak Party had signed agreements and the CUP made Armenians several promises. These agreements were dropped when the Ottomans lost the Balkans, so the Armenians created a front in 1913. Unfortunately, 1.5 million Armenian people were erased from history in order to block this movement.

When the First World War started, the Ottomans had decided that it did not want to see any radical demands from different nations living in the Ottoman lands. One of the most powerful and ‘potentially dangerous’ nations had been the Armenians. Since the Armenians were no longer a threat to the Ottomans, it was time to eliminate the Kurds, another very affective and big society that could cause troubles for the Empire. The Empire thought that the Kurds could easily create a front; so the CUP passed an immigration law and the Kurdish people were exiled to the west in mass. Losing many people in wars and many more during the migration, the Kurds were dragged into a deep misery which has lasted until today.

The Mondros Treaty, signed at the end of I. World War in 1918 announced the end of the Ottoman Empire. Most of the Kurdish lands were placed under the authority of Britain. The war accelerated the organization of the Kurds. Like many other nations under Ottoman rule, the Kurds were inspired by the President Woodrow Wilson's 14 principles. Although the Kurdish people were coming together and trying to organize, they lacked a detailed roadmap. The British, French and the American officials in Istanbul were in contact with Kurdish organizations, sharing ideas. The Kurds tried to explain that there was a Kurdish issue, just like they do now, to the modern world. In that period,  we see the formation of the “Kürt Teali Cemiyeti” (Committee of Kurdish Progress), “Hévi” (which means hope and was made up of young students), “Kürt Kadinlari Teali Cemiyeti” (Committee of the Progress of Kurdish Women) as the most important Kurdish organizations. All these structures used the Jin (Life) magazine as their mouthpiece.  Thus, the modern voice of Kurdish Nationalism appeared.

None of these foundations lived long because the government shut them down after a short time. The names of the Kurdish towns were changed from Kurdish to Turkish and that created a distance in the relation between CUP and the Kurds. Additionally the Kurdish population, already distributed to the different areas in Turkey, was placed inside the Turkish population and kept to under %5 in any one place. The purpose was to assimilate The Kurds in Turks and ‘modernize’