Kardo Bokani,
Until the foundation of the Turkish Republic in the 1921, the Kemalists envisaged a Muslim state composed of Turkish and Kurdish remnants of the Ottoman Empire. At that time the Kurdish population was estimated 4 million out of 13 million population of Turkey. The Kurdish areas are located at the south east of Turkey and have been the battlefields of the Kurdish and the Turkish forces over the course of 20th century. Once Ataturk grasped power in 1921, he turned his forces against Kurdish troops who had previously supported him in driving the foreign forces out of Turkey. After the defeat of the Kurdish troops, he formed a strong central government with the emphasis on “Turkishness” that must have been embraced by all citizens of the republic. Ziya Gokalp, the founder of Turkish nationalism published his seminal book; The Principle of Turkism, in which he argues for assimilating the minorities into Turkish identity. He argues that:
Social solidarity rests on cultural unity, which is transmitted by education and therefore has no relationship with consanguinity… a nation is not a racial or ethnic or geographical or political or volitional group but once composed of individuals who share a common language, religion, morality or aesthetic, that is to say who have received the same education. (Gokalp 1968: 12-15)
The basic idea behind this project was to turn the Kurds in to Turks. This is where all the problems begun and have continued to the present day. As the result of this approach, all references to Kurdistan were excised from official materials; Turkish place names began to replace Kurdish ones. By 1924 these measures reached a climax and the prohibition of the Kurdish language was officially declared. Notwithstanding the Kurds refused to submit to Ankara, and all the attempts by the occupying powers of Kurdistan namely, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria proved fruitless. As Bulloch & Morris put it:
Once the occupiers temporarily crushed a revolt in the eastern part of Kurdistan, another revolt would emerge in the western, southern or northern part of Kurdistan. This does not indicate that the Kurds are a war-like people, but it does indicate their total refusal to submit to slavery. (Bulloch & Morris 1992: 180)
Azadi Movement and the beginning of Kurdish Revolts
As a result of these denials, the Kurdish nationalists established a new organisation in 1923 under the name of Azadi (Freedom) and it spread all over Kurdish areas in south east Turkey. The limit of Azadi’s activities didn’t go beyond the borders of Turkey but its main objective was to establish an independent Kurdistan encompassing all the Kurdish areas in neighbouring countries. The difficulties of communication, co-ordination, secrecy and command were the main disadvantages of Azadi movement. The Kurds were geographically dispersed and fragmented by religious and tribal affiliation as well as socio-economic activity and language. The first attempt of Azadi was very ill-prepared and ended in fiasco. Subsequently all of the movement’s leaders were arrested, imprisoned or executed; virtually all the officers sympathetic to Azadi were purged and it marked downfall of the organisation. But the Kurdish desire for independent was never ended with the termination of Azadi Movement.
The Kurdish nationalists however, view the waning days of the Ottoman Empire and the early days of newly born Turkey as the greatest opportunity for the creation of Kurdish state ever to be missed. Some have argued that even the Great Britain showed her inclination for the creation of a Kurdish state. Notwithstanding the lack of institutionalised political system and many more reasons too well explain as to why the Kurds failed to take advantage of that golden opportunity. Nonetheless the failure of Azadi Movement didn’t deter the Kurds from pursuing their dreams.
Following the Azadi’s defeat some surviving members of the organisation were hoping for mass uprising in 1925. Sheik Said of Palu who was a spiritual leader sought to rally all the Kurds in order to liberate Kurdistan. But he could only attract some certain section of the Kurdish dispersed society. He could only attract the Zaza (one Kurdish dialect) speaking areas. He failed to attract Alevi Muslims since he was himself a Sunni Muslim. He also failed to unite many local tribes. Therefore once the uprising began many people refused to support the movement. The Alevi Kurdish Muslims contributed largely to the defeat of Sheik Said. Despite the fact that the Kurdish uprising in Turkey helped British in their contest with the Kemalists over Mosel in northern Iraq, they failed to provide the rebels with assistance. France was instrumental in aiding Ankara’s military response. Sheik Said and his rebels were left on their own and the only source of arms was leftovers from the First World War and what could be captured from the Turkish troops.
Ankara responded to the revolt disproportionately and proclaimed martial law in virtually all over Kurdistan. The Turkish troops of 52,000 numbers were deployed in the region and they encircled the rebel groups. As the ring closed some of the rebels managed to escape but large numbers were killed or arrested. The Independent Tribunal arrested 7,500 suspects of whom they executed 660. Sheik Said and 46 others were among those hanged in public and their execution marked the end of the rebellion. The Turkish army acted ruthlessly and it moved across the country side. David McDowell tells us that:
The whole villages were burnt or razed to the ground, and men, women and children were killed. Around Diyarbakir for example, Zazas were rounded up and massacred…. Sheik Said revolt marked the beginning of ‘implacable Kemalism’. Systematic deportation and razing of villages, brutality and killing of innocents, martial law or special regimes in Kurdistan now became the commonplace experience of Kurds… the government has already begun to supply to the Kurdish elements the policy which so successfully disposed of the Armenian Minority in 1915. (McDowell 1996: 196-8-9)
That was reckoned that in the August 1927 the government had moved more that 20,000 people in to Western Anatolia. “Many died on the way and some of the better looking women are said to have disappeared”. (The Times: 7 April 1928) This figure to some extent resembles the mass deportation of the Armenians in 1915. Although the events of the 1925-28 reached a genocidal scale but the Turkish newspaper, Vakit announced that “There is no Kurdish problem where a Turkish bayonet appears”. (Istanbul: 16 October 1925) In the 1912 The Ocaks or “hearths” was established by Zia Gokalp to defeat Islamist ideas and to promote the Turkish nationalism. With the triumph of the Kemalists, these Ocaks had been revived in 1924 as a vehicle for the spread of Turkish nationalism. The Kurds were considered to be evil and deserved no life in the eyes of the Turkish officials. They were excluded from the most position of economic or political authority. There was no education for them or education meant “Turkification”.
Kurdish Resistance: Khoybun and Dersim
In October 1927 the Kurds formed a new party called “Khoybun” (Independence) led by Jaladat Badr Khan and they sought to avoid the mistakes they had made in the past. After the disaster of the 1924-25 they believed that they could succeed only with the means of military enterprise if it were properly planned and organised. This meant a move from revolt led by tribal leaders and required a team of well-trained fighting forces. Thus they formed the liberation movement in Aleppo and they start to seek and urge people all over Kurdistan to act together against Turkey. Khoybun sought Italian and American experts to assist with military training. Ihsan Nuri the operational commander of the movement demanded the Turkish evacuation of Kurdistan.
In response to the revolt, the Turkish forces acted disproportionately. They shot 1,500 Kurds they had captured. The evidences claim that they had also killed anther 3,000 non-combatants, men, women and children. A law (No. 1850) was passed in order to ensure that no one engaged in suppressing the Kurds could be prosecuted. “One must remember that Turkey was practising the crude idea of social engineering which had currency not only in Nazi Germany but among many European intellectuals.” (McDowell 1996: 207)
Eventually Turkey managed to destroy the Khoybun Revolt because they had the advantage of superior communication and logistics. They were also able to concentrate forces significantly faster and larger than the Kurds. Turkey had the benefit of advanced weapon such as sophisticated artilleries and aeroplanes. The Kurds abilities to stay in the field were highly dependent on the willingness of Iran to let the rebels use its territories. Once the Iran let the Turkish troops entered its territory, the rebels were crushed and their final stamina was over and defeated. One of the major weaknesses of the Kurdish resistance movements prior to PKK was that they were highly dependent on the aids of the external powers, particularly the neighbouring countries; once the aid was over the movements started to diminish.
Despite all the disastrous consequences that the Kurds had come up with from the rebellion, their hope for freedom was never ended. The city of Dersim located in the south east of Turkey was one of the most defiant cities against the Turkish offensives and hence it attracted the attention of Ankara. In 1938 Said Reza in Dersim stood against the Ankara and with the hope of independent Kurdistan he inspired a new hope to the Kurdish people. Notwithstanding his movement went into the same destination as the previous ones and marked the end of Kurdish revolts against the Kemalists. He was executed along with the seven leading members of his movement.
The national identity was not the only contributing factor in the establishment of these movements. Other factors were such as the economic deprivation, social injustice and physical displacement. From 1930 onward the government began policies of deportation, disarmament, and forced settlement in a manner which resembled the operation against the Armenians in 1915. Many people were deported from the fertile part of Kurdistan, known as the Fertile Crescent in the ancient time, to uncultivated Western Anatolia where many perished. The prisons were full of non-combatant and the intellectuals were shot or hanged in public. Denial was common place and the order of the day. Turkey had created a combustible situation where national and social ideas eventually could take place. As McDowell puts it; “Turkey had unmistakably intended genocide of the Kurdish people. In practice its intentions were defeated by the sheer size of the task.” (McDowell 1996: 210)
Turkey intended to assimilate the Kurds by the forced displacement and deportation but in fact it proved counter-productive and gave a new colour to Kurdish nationalism. Musa Anter, a famous Kurdish nationalist leader was among those whose family was forcibly deported to the Western Anatolia. When he was only a child he learned his identity through the mockery in the class room where he was the only Kurd in the school. He was trained as lawyer and with the help of his fellow nationalists he published the Ileri Yurt (Forward Country) in 1959, which later on the same year was closed down and he was also arrested. The Kurdish literature published by Musa Anter was significantly important in the formation of national identity so that the government could not put up with.
In 1961 the Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan (KDPT) was born and it worked in a clandestine manner since the Kurdish parties were illegal. This party didn’t resist the scale of denial on the ground by the Ankara. Its founding secretary, Faik Bucak was assassinated in July 1966 and his colleague, Sait Elci was executed in 1971. Following those unwelcomed events the party dissolved and disappeared without a trace. The reason for its failure was that KDPT didn’t succeed in putting down strong roots where its cell existed. It failed to organise the people in a scale needed to reach its goals. In 1961 however, for the first time in the history of the republic the constitution allowed for the establishment of the socialist party and the Turkish Workers’ Party (TWP) came to being as a result of this opening. Many Kurds particularly the youths and the students were attracted to the TWP. One of the significant steps forward that the TWP took was that it broke the taboo by claiming that “there was Kurd in the south east of Turkey”. But admitting the existence of the Kurds in the country was heavily expensive for the TWP and consequently it was declared as an illegal organisation.
In 1969 a network of cultural clubs were established across Kurdistan known as Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths, the (DDKO). They advocated a national and civil liberties for the eastern part of Turkey, namely Kurdistan. Having noticed the cultural claims made by DDKO, Ankara responded militarily and dispatched commandos to the region to search ostensibly for the separatists. They carried out ranges of torture and execution of the non-combatants that marked the brutal and inhuman suppression of the Kurds for decades. As one of the commandos reported; “They strip men and women naked and violate the latter. Many have died in these operations, some have committed suicide. Naked men and women have cold water thrown upon them and they were whipped. Sometimes women are forced to tie a rope around the penis of their husband and then lead him around the village.” (Devrim 197: p 2131)
In October 1970 DDKO’s member who were working on the cultural side of Kurdish issues were arrested among whom there was Musa Anter. The treatments of the Kurds were deteriorating by both the government as well as the Turkish public. McDowell reminds us that:
To be Kurdish was, as being Turkish had been a century earlier, to be primitive rustic or, worse, a Caliban. Where is your tail? … The Kurds do not have the face of human beings and should be migrated to Africa to join half-human half-animal…. They can learn by asking their fellows, the Armenians, that the Turks are very patient, but when angry no one can stand in their way. (McDowell, 1996: 407)
As the result of all these offensives carried out against the innocent people, the 1970s witnessed an explosion of new Kurdish nationalist movements. The groups which emerged from Turkish left-wing movement included; Bes Parcacilar (1976), Sivancilar(1972), DDKO-Revolutionary Eastern Culture Clubs (1969), DDKD- Revolutionary Democratic Culture Association (1975), TKSP- Turkish Kurdistan Socialist Party (1975), Kawa (1976), Denga Kawa (1977), Red Kawa (1978), Rizgari (1977), Ala Rizgari (1970), KUK- Kurdistan National Liberationists (1978) TEKOSIN (1978), YEKBUN (1979), TSK- Kurdistan Socialist Movement (1980), and the Kurdistan Worker Party- PKK in 1973. It should be noted that none of these Kurdish groups managed to survive the policies of denial and eradication of Kurds adopted by the Turkish Authorities. Some of the surviving members of these groups either joined the PKK or were pushed to the sideline. In the second part I will be discussing the emergence of the PKK as the dominant group in Kurdish politics.
Kardo Bokani