The origin of Turkey's Kurdish question: an outcome of the breakdown of the Ottoman ancien regime

Abstract

This thesis looks at the impact of the transformation of Ottoman society from a multi-ethnic, religious and decentralized structure (i.e. the Ottoman Ancien Régime) to a modern nationhood on its Kurdish citizens. The roots of the Kurdish discontent with Turkish authority are traced back to the reaction of the Kurdish notables to the centralization reforms of the Tanzimat period. The main focus of the thesis is, though, on the period of revolutionary transformation from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. Until the official destruction of the empire, under which the symbols of the Ottoman Muslim millet had served as a common bond between Turks and Kurds, the latter stayed devoted to the former’s struggle for survival and independence. However, after 1922, and especially from 1924, the radical emergence of the modern identity of the Turkish Republic alienated the Kurdish population and hence came Kurdish rebellions. The thesis argues that the fall of the Ottoman Ancien Régime and the subsequent modernization was inevitable, however the methods and the pace of nation-building could have been different; in a sense, more evolutionary than revolutionary in nature. Why that course wasn't opted and how this influenced the Kurdish question of Turkey is analyzed by examining key historical facts of the time through an extensive survey of the literature relating to that early period of the Turkish Republic.