Kurdish National Identity Research Articles

The National identity in Kurdish proverbs

Identity is intimately related to people’s understanding of “who they are,” “what they are,” and what matters to them. This understanding depends on a number of factors. Identity also creates similarities and differences between individuals or groups. In fact, the emergence of identity is the emergence of similarities and differences between oneself and the other. That is, when someone says I am that person, that family, that nation, he says I am different from this and that and the others. National identity is an individual's sense of affiliation with a nation. Geography has its impact on language and national identity. Without this geography, called the country, states, cultures and civilizations could not exist. Lifestyles, forms of communication and languages have emerged according to the areas in which people live. This research is entitled “National Identity in Kurdish Proverbs”. Through the study of the content of Kurdish folk proverbs, many of the characteristics of the national identity and civilizational characteristics of an important part of the population of Kurdistan, especially in the center and south, can be known. This includes familiarity with the customs and traditions and the nature of the economic, social and political situation. This research is an attempt to get to know the Kurds through the Kurds themselves, not foreigners. This paper aims to demonstrate this role. The aim of this study is to show the role and characteristics of proverbs as some examples of oral means of expressing Kurdish national identity, because proverbs are the wisdom of human experience and a mirror of culture, opinions, norms and lifestyles. For this purpose, the method of "descriptive, analytical" has been used to interpret the content of the proverbs that carry national identity.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Multipronged Approach to the Repression of Kurds

Since the establishment of the modern Iranian nation-state in 1923, successive regimes and governments of Iran have pursued an intricate policy of suppressing and persecuting its Kurdish people, presenting a significant threat to the Kurdish national identity, culture, and society. The successive Iranian regimes have, along with military means, employed the state’s cultural, educational, religious, and economic institutions to accomplish their goals of assimilating and conquering the Kurds. An examination of Kurdish history and politics in Iran reveals that while the international community has some knowledge of the Iranian state’s extensive deployment of military force and explicit militarization of Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat/East Kurdistan), the broader psychological and nonmilitary (soft power) practices employed to suppress the Kurdish movement, identity, and culture are lesser known to the outside world. By focusing on mass media and policies of “divide-and-rule” as measures and mechanisms used by the Iranian state to subdue its Kurdish citizens, this article aims to provide an analysis of the post-1979 state-Kurdish relationships in Iran.

Իսլամիդերըքրդականազգայնականությանառաջացմանմեջ

This article delves into the intricate relationship between Kurdish nationalism and Islam during its formative years and subsequent development. The historical backdrop reveals a profound interconnection, with profound implications for the shaping of Kurdish national identity. Kurdish nationalism's emergence and evolution were deeply enmeshed with Islamic influences. This connection found its expression through the pivotal roles played by Sufi brotherhoods and Islamic educational institutions known as madrasas. Sufi brotherhoods occupied a central position in the lives of Kurds, and it is notable that a significant majority of prominent Kurdish nationalist figures were devout followers of Sufism, nurtured within the nurturing embrace of these brotherhoods. In their turn, medreses, functioning as indispensable Islamic educational establishments, exerted a substantial influence on the rise of Kurdish national sentiments and the eventual crystallization of Kurdish nationalism. Notably, the inclusion of Kurdish language instruction within the curriculum of medreses played a pivotal role in fostering a distinct national identity, thereby providing a sturdy foundation for the emergence of Kurdish nationalism. This article sheds light on the intertwined narratives of religion and nationalism in the Kurdish context, offering valuable insights into the complex historical forces that have contributed to the shaping of Kurdish identity and the enduring relationship between Kurdish nationalism and Islam.

‘Gan qey bedenî yeno çi mana’ (What the Soul Means for the Body): Collecting and Archiving Kurdish Folklore as a Strategy for Language Revitalization and Indigenous Knowledge Production

Folklore-collecting initiatives in Turkey and Iran have become increasingly popular over the past decade. In this article we present a historical overview of folklore-collecting practices and focus on more recent developments in this field. While Kurdish folklore has been perceived as a cornerstone of Kurdish national identity and as a source of information on Kurdish history, today’s collectors in Turkey and Iran understand its role in a wider context of language revitalization and indigenous knowledge production. Collecting oral traditions in the Kurdish dialects of Kurmanji, Sorani, and Zazaki is appreciated as a step towards protecting and developing the Kurdish language, which is endangered by language assimilation policies in both countries. Reviving folkloric vocabulary, stories, and traditional knowledge practices such as agricultural teachings, folklore collectors revive and promote indigenous knowledge production, and enrich education and research. Drawing on language revitalization theories and indigenous knowledge production, this article offers insights into unexplored aspects of collecting, archiving, and publishing Kurdish folklore in recent years.

Keyness for Revelation of Self and Other Representation in Kurdish National Identity Construction

The presentation of Self and Other as the basis of inclusion and exclusion strategies, which is the core of ideologically formation of national identity, has been examined using various branches of CDA. This paper demonstrates that the keyness technique combined with concordance can reveal the ideology behind the representation of Self and Other in national identity construction relying on the discourse-historical approach (Wodak et al. 2009) as a theoretical basis. Accordingly, four discursive strategies that signal the presentation of Self and Other: constructive strategies, perpetuation strategies, transformation strategies, and dismantle strategies, are explored. As a methodology, the six-step outline proposed by Subtirelu and Baker (2018) was followed. A corpus was compiled with data from two focus group interviews. For the focus group interviews, ten participants were recruited purposefully from postgraduate students in University Utara Malaysia. As the study is on how Kurds depict Self and Other in their national identity construction discourses, only Kurdish students were reached. The paper seeks to contribute to the body knowledge of corpus linguistic analysis in the revelation of ideology through co-text and intertext. The findings display that Kurds emphasize the ingroup sameness and sharply distinguish themselves from their Other. However, they intend to confer a shade of vagueness on their other through depersonalizing and institutionalizing. Through the discursive construction of Kurdish national identity, the informants rely primarily on transformation and dismantling strategies.

Kurdish National Identity in the films of Yilmaz Guney and Bahmani Ghobadi

this essay explores the conceptualization of Kurdish identity in the works of Kurdish film makers, namely Bahmani Ghobadi and Yikmaz Guney, whose films established a unified Kurdish National Cinema beyond the borders and statelessness in a transnational space. This essay delineates the ways Kurdishness is expressed in the cinematic techniques of the two Kurdish film makers who used similar subtle techniques to incorporate their Kurdish identity into the films they made. The Kurds, as one of the largest stateless ethnic group in the Middle East have suffered violent oppression, state perpetuated discrimination, and exclusion. This essay draws on Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, and Philip Rosen’s essay in Theorizing National Cinema to explore how Yalmiz Guney and Bahmani Ghobadi presented the national identity of the characters to mark the films with a sense of Kurdishness. This essay further explores the construction of national identity and personhood specifically in Guney’s Yol and Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly to show how stateless people can easily become a subject of dehumanization by different nation states.

“Fatally Tied Together”: The Intertwined History of Kurds and Armenians in the 20th Century

More than a century years ago Talât Pasha declared famously that in the Eastern Provinces “The Armenian question does not exist anymore”. Today, far from being resolved, the former binary coding (Armenian/Turkish) is even further complicated by a third element— the ongoing Kurdish question (doza Kurdistanê). While most research and journalistic works frame the Armenian issue and the Kurdish issue as two separate events that merely coincide(d) in the same geographical space, this work explores their interdependence and the historical trajectories of two peoples fatally “tied together” across a spatio-temporal scale. In my paper I identify two opposing lines of continuity through which both peoples are tied together: friendly and fatal ties. With regard to the first (friendly ties), I turn to the SSR Armenia and her role in fostering Kurdish culture and advancing Kurdish nationalism. Hereby, I argue that a marginalized community of Kurmanji-speakers—the Yezidis, previously othered as “devil-worshippers” (şeytanperest)— emerged as the vanguard in forging a novel, secularized Kurdish national identity. With regard to the latter (fatal ties), I link the irrevocable erasure of Ottoman Armenians to the emergence of an imagined “Northern Kurdistan” stretching over large parts of historic Armenia. This, finally, raises the question of Kurdish complicity in the Armenian Genocide—as state-mobilized regiments, tribal members and ordinary residents—in a geography where, as Recep Maraşlı put it, the descendants “are the children of both perpetrators and victims alike”.

Negotiating Female Genital Cutting as a Difficult Characteristic in Kurdish National Identity

The Nordic Journal of Migration Research is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open access international journal that is cost free for authors and readers alike. The journal publishes theoretical and empirical analyses of migratory processes, dealing with themes such as nationalism and transnationalism, ethnic relations and racism, border practices and belonging. The journal gives priority to Nordic issues, but publishes articles also from other geographical contexts.Back content now available in our issue archive.

Reflection of National and Cultural Identities in Foreign Schools of the Kurdistan Region/Iraq

The Qualitative research method has been used to analyze 16 semi-structured interviews. This study focuses on the influences of foreign schools on Kurdish national and cultural identity in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. The study asks how the Kurdish national identity and its components have been reflected or dealt with in the schools’ curriculum. The study asks such questions as: Do foreign schools in the region have a special strategy to protect Kurdish national and cultural identity and do the students’ parents’ opinions matter in framing their children’s identity in the foreign schools? Through analyzing the data, the paper finds that learning second languages is important and can be useful for the future of the students. But, Kurdish as their mother language and as an important part of their identity won’t be protected and taken seriously to be a scientific language. We also find that hard science classes are taught more compared to the social and historical classes which include more subjects on Kurdish culture, history, and geography that can keep them updated about their national identity in general. Moreover, parents of the students who are enrolled into the foreign schools are not satisfied with the activities and practicing Kurdish national holidays. Creating a globalized generation is one of the positive goals of the schools which were identified from the study. They also do obey the laws that have been issued by the parliament of the Kurdistan region in general. Finally, family can be seen as one of the most influential tools for making or protecting national identity, which can also be seen as more important than the schools.

Fez, Brimmed Hat, and <em>Kum û Destmal</em>: Evolution of Kurdish National Identity from the Late Ottoman Empire to Modern Turkey and Syria

Fez, Brimmed Hat, and <em>Kum û Destmal</em>: Evolution of Kurdish National Identity from the Late Ottoman Empire to Modern Turkey and Syria

Kurdish nationalism: What are its origins?

Abstract There is a general perception among some academics and Kurdish nationalists that Kurdish nationalism is ancient and inherent as demonstrated by centuries of history. These primordialists reference a distinct Kurdish culture and language and literature as the foundations for an ancient Kurdish national identity. An opposing camp of modernists asserts that the concept of nationalism is a product of industrialization and modernity. The issue of the origins of nationalism has advanced little beyond the primordial–modernist debate. An alternative approach to the emergence of nationalism is presented by the works of Anthony Smith. This approach, labelled ‘soft’ primordialism, acknowledges primordial and modernist elements of nationalism. Herein lies the issue: Where does nationalism come from? Is it inherited or constructed? This article will revisit the classical debate between the two dominant theories on nationalism and assess their applicability to the Kurdish case. It argues that neither the primordial nor the modernist approach alone can account for the origins of Kurdish nationalism. Instead, the article argues nations – as the Kurdish case will reveal, contain both primordial and modern characteristics.

The Kurds of Iraq: building a state within a state

Ofra Bengio explores the dynamics of relations between the Kurds of Iraq and the Iraqi state from the inception of the Baath regime to the present. Bengio draws on a wealth of rich source materials to carefully trace the evolution of Kurdish national identity in Iraq. Dissecting the socioeconomic, political, and ideological transformations that Iraqi Kurdish society has undergone across some five decades, she focuses on the twin processes of nation building and state building. She also highlights the characteristics of the Kurdishmovement in Iraq relative to Kurdish communities elsewhere in the region. This narrative of the profound vicissitudes of Iraqi Kurdish fortunes illuminates not only the complexities of politics within Iraq today, but also the influence of Iraqi Kurdistan on the geostrategic map of the entire Middle East.

Kurds and the state in Iran: the making of Kurdish identity

In early 1946, Kurds declared an independent republic in north-west Iran. The Mahabad Republic, as it became known, was the first time that the Kurds experienced self-rule in the modern era. Although short-lived, the Republic had a formative influence on the subsequent development of Kurdish nationalist movements in Iran and the wider region. Here, Abbas Vali disputes the conventional view that the Kurdish Republic was the result of a Soviet conspiracy to dismember Iran, a side-effect of the Cold War. Instead he emphasizes the diversity of the internal Iranian and Kurdish factors that led to the formation of the Republic, arguing that the Republic represents the culmination of a new and modern Kurdish national identity. This was an identity which emerged in response to the exclusionary effects of the political and discursive processes and practices of the construction of a modern Iranian nation-state and national identity since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. With its analysis of the formation and effects of nationalism and ethnic identity, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Kurds or the development of national and state identities in the Middle East.

‘Sold Out to the Enemy’: Emerging Symbolic Boundaries in Kurdish Politics and the Strategic Uses of Labeling Treason

Why do the pro-Kurdish activists selectively condemn renowned leftists of treason? Why are allegations of treachery so ubiquitous? Existing literature suggests that the Kurdish community would be particularly receptive to allegations of treason because of its tribal structure and strong cultural codes. Drawing on the niche theory, this article argues contrary that competition over Kurdish nationalism is the key to explain the growing symbolic politics. Especially in the past decade, the PKK’s monopoly over Kurdish identity has been challenged strongly by both Islamic and leftist groups. Analyzing recent contestations over Kurdish national identity, the article illuminates how the construction of external threats and symbolic boundary making appear in the form of labeling treason.

State Ideology and the Kurds in Turkey

This article evaluates theories of nationalism by examining the formation of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. It deals particularly with the various manifestations of the contemporary Kurdish minority question and provides an account of the late development of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. It situates the Kurdish experience within the broader experience of the post-Ottoman world and analyzes the awakening of Kurdish national identity among broader segments of the population. It provides an alternative to Ernest Gellner's functionalist account of nationalism and industrialization by stressing the link between state policies and minority nationalism. It considers the political, social and other implications of state repression as well as the opportunities created in the diaspora or through external intervention. It argues that state policies in Turkey did not prevent and even contributed to the rise of Kurdish minority nationalism. Finally, the article raises two interrelated questions: what types of nationalism have Kurds developed under conditions of limited expression and what options for conflict resolution are present particularly in light of Turkey's democratization and EU accession process.

The Kurds and the state: evolving national identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran

This is a timely book that analyzes the formation of Kurdish national identity from the late Imperial period to the present. In tracing the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, Denise Natali shows that, contrary to popular theories, there is nothing natural or fixed about Kurdish identity or the configuration that Kurdish nationalism assumes. Rather, Kurdish nationalism has been shaped by the development of nation-states in the region. Although Kurdish communities have maintained some shared sense of Kurdishness, Kurdayeti (the mobilization of Kurdish identity) is interwoven with a much larger series of identities within the space of each Kurdish group. Different notions of inclusion and exclusion have modified the political and cultural opportunities of Kurds to express their ethnic identities, and opening the possibility of assuming alternative identities over time. With this book, Natali makes a significant contribution to theoretical, empirical, and policy-based scholarship on the Middle East, the plight of the Kurds, ethnonationalism, and ethnopolitical conflict. Hers is the first comparative work to examine Kurdish nationalism as a function of diverse political spaces. As a vital addition to the literature in the field, this book will supplant a number of standard texts on the Kurds.

M. Strohmeier. Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity: Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2003, 265 p.

The author of this book is Professor of Turkish Studies at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia and, though other parts of ‘Greater Kurdistan’ are mentioned, the work is very strongly focused on Turkey, both on events that took place there and on the work of exiles who hoped to mobilise Kurds there in the early years of the Republic. It considers the development of Kurdish nationalist discourse, as evidenced in periodicals and other publications, from the end of the 19th century to the late 1930...

MARTIN STROHMEIER, Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity: Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). Pp. 283. $109.00 cloth

MARTIN STROHMEIER, Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity: Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). Pp. 283. $109.00 cloth

Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity

This book is primarily a history of the early Kurdish movement, from itsinception in the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. Yet, its distinctivenesscomes not from the Kurdish nationalists’ more publicized products, but fromits focus on the margins of their literary attempts. This study of failed nationalism“is concerned less with how and why Kurdish nationalism did or didnot ‘catch on’ than with the efforts made by [the] Kurdish elite to constructa viable concept of Kurdish identity” (p. 1). In other words, the author’smain concern is to identify how images of the Kurds were constructed andrepresented, and how they evolved, over time, until the late 1930s.The book is divided into three parts, each of which corresponds to a differentperiod that delineates differing self-images of the Kurds. Each part,in turn, consists of six to eight chapters that provide an account of both keyevents in the Kurdish movement’s history and literary works. Part 1,“‘Awakening’ the Kurds,” deals with the movement’s background contextand early period by discussing its leaders, several publications, and organizations.In this period, the Kurds’ self-definition was predominantly negative,and obstacles to modernization abounded: tribal structures, a nomadicway of life, illiteracy, ignorance, and wildness.Yet the Turks were never the “inimical other,” except for such people asthe Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid and “a long line of Ottoman despots.” Theyhad a long list of prescriptions to awaken and literally “remake” the Kurds sothat they could be accepted by the nations of the civilized world. When theWilsonian principles granted their right to self-determination without this culturalleap, some Kurds wanted a Kurdish state. However, the vast majoritymourned for the Treaty of Sevrés along with their Turkish brethren, despitethe fact that its articles established Kurdistan. This chapter also describes howmost Kurds joined forces with the Kemalists to drive out the occupiers, onlyto be frustrated by the Kemalists’ subsequent assimilation projects ...

Crucial images in the presentation of a Kurdish national identity: heroes and patriots, traitors and foes

This book deals with the discourse on Kurdishness and the development of the Kurdish national movement from its inception at the end of the 19th century to the late 1930's. The first part examines the efforts of aspiring Kurdish leaders, mainly through newspapers, to awaken their fellow Kurds to the necessity and benefits of the Kurdish cause. Part two deals with the rise of a Kurdish movement in exile, mainly in Syria, and analyzes various aspects of cultural nation-building as mirrored in Kurdish publications. Part three focuses on the effort of a prominent Kurdish nationalist to promote Kurdishness in a little-known novel written in German. The book includes an annex with translations from Ottoman and Turkish sources, illustrations, and an index.