Since the two Gulf wars, the Kurdish question has become a burning issue. Along with the Palestinians, the Kurds have failed to establish a national state. Although a vast literature on the origins and development of the Palestinian nationalist movement is available, very little has been written on the identity and legitimacy of the Kurdish nation.
Abbas Vali, editor of “Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism,” admits openly the lack of information concerning the origins of Kurdish nationalism; he also acknowledges that the proliferation of historical and political discourse on the Kurds since the two Gulf wars has done little to remedy this “fundamental deficiency.” He goes on to say, “The present volume marks the beginning of a debate on the origins of Kurdish nationalism, a subject which, despite its perennial importance, remains seriously under-researched, especially in Western academia.”
The articles included in this book highlight different stages in the historical development of Kurdish nationalism. Martin van Bruinessen delves into a critical analysis of “Mem u Zin”, considered a national Kurdish epic while Hamit Bozarslan and Nelida Fuccaro tackle respectively the development of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and Syria. Kurdistan covers a mountainous area to the south of the Caucasus and the Kurdish people have been dubbed “the largest people in the world without a state of its own.”
An overwhelming majority of Kurds have been removed from their traditional homelands; presently, Kurds live mainly in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan, Armenia and approximately 1.3 million are in Western Europe. An estimated 100,000 Kurds are known to live in the United States, with 50,000 in Canada and fewer than 15,000 in Australia. Half of all Kurds live in Turkey.
Kurdish nationalism emerged after World War I with the break-up of the Ottoman Empire which had successfully integrated — but not assimilated — the Kurds. The Kurds disliked the secularization policies implemented by the new Turkish government which, in addition, threatened to marginalize them. Western powers, particularly the United Kingdom, promised the Kurds they would act as guarantors for Kurdish freedom, a promise which was subsequently broken. Following the first Gulf war, an autonomous “safe haven” was established in northern Iraq under UN protection. Since the second Gulf war, and the death of Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish people have been returning to Iraq with promises of autonomy and citizenship. The new Iraqi Constitution drafted in 2005 establishes Kurdish as an official language and recognizes the national rights of the Kurdish people.
Abbas Vali has written one of the best essays “Genealogies of the Kurds: Constructions of Nation and National Identity” as has Amir Hassanpour “The Making of Kurdish Identity: Pre-20th Century Historical and Literary Discourses”.
Vali concludes that the concepts of the Kurdish nation and national identity have been shaped by the processes of formation and consolidation of the modern nation states in Turkey, Iraq and Iran since the end of World War I and the subsequent partition of Kurdistan. “The denial of Kurdish identity and the destruction of civil society in Kurdistan were the necessary conditions of the construction of a uniform national identity in these multi ethnic nation states. This assigns a specific character to Kurdish nationalism, setting it apart from classical nationalism in Europe,” explains Vali.
In a well researched study, Amir Hassanpour writes convincingly about the language which is “the fundamental constituent element of nationhood and national identity, and literary language the main index of the development of national consciousness in a given culture.” Throughout his study, Hassanpour tries to prove the causal relationship between political power and the literary use of Kurdish as a developmental process. Hassanpour also recognizes that the boundaries of an independent Kurdistan or an autonomous part of it, are always mapped along ethnic lines; they cannot be drawn along democratic lines. These boundaries foreseen by today’s nationalists, are the same as those of the intelligentsia in the past. “Moreover, the pre-modern, patriarchal structures of political power reveal more continuity than rupture in the experience of Kurdish self-rule from the autonomous government set up by Sheikh Mahmud in the early 1920s to the Kurdistan Regional Government in the 1990s”.
These scholarly essays add some well-needed information on the origins of Kurdish nationalism. This thorough research, conducted by the foremost scholars working in the field of Kurdish nationalism, contributes undoubtedly to a better understanding of not only Kurdish nationalism but also other nationalisms especially Arab, Turkish, Armenian and Iranian.