Bedirxan Pashazades: power relations and nationalism (1876-1914)

Abstract

By focusing on the political and cultural activities of a family known as Bedirxan Pashazades during the era of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) and Second Constitutional Period (1908-1914), this thesis problematizes whether the clashes and opposition of the Kurdish elites against the Ottoman state had a nationalist character or not. Bedirxan Pashazades are the family members of Bedirxan Beg, whose emirate of Cizre and Bohtan was eliminated with the Tanzimat implementations, and thereafter who lived in exile in the western parts of the empire. Most of the Bedirxan Pashazades approached to the Young Turks both practically and ideologically during the reign of Abdulhamid II and saw the solution of the problems of the Kurds and empire in the unity of elements and restoration of Constitution. Although they maintained such inclinations during the early years of the 1908 Revolution, after the consolidation of the power of the Committee of Union and Progress, the centralist and ever-increasing Turkist policies of it led the family members to join the opposition in different wings. Some of them while keeping their Ottomanist inclination, saw the solution in the liberal, decentralist and anti-Unionist path of the Liberal Entente. However, some others chose a pro-separatist politics. Nevertheless, the motivations behind Kurdish nationalism in the late Ottoman period cannot be reduced to the state policies. As will be discussed, most of the family members not only followed western movements of thoughts, but also observed the dynamics and demands and were influenced from practices and discourse in the Armenian, Albanian and Arab societies within the empire. On the one hand this study shows the transformations and changes in the ideology and identity of the Kurdish elites in the longue durée (1876-1914), on the other hand it elaborates how the demands of the Kurdish intellectuals, political activists and notables were heterogeneous and fragmented, and how it is difficult to define their movement/s with the terms of 'Ottomanism,’ ‘Kurdish nationalism,’ and ‘cultural nationalism.'