Kurdish Studies Research Articles

Jaba, Bazidî, and the Ethnography of Kurds in the 18-19th Century

Kurds are one of the inhabitant people of Middle East and in modern times, in the sense of observerobserved, they have been in relation with the westerners for over two centuries. At the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century westerners met the language, culture, cultural and social life of Kurds and introduced them to the Europeans. This acquaintance became important with the political change in the area and many powers of that time started to make researches in order to know more about them. The meeting of Alexander Jaba, the Russian Consul in Erzurum, with Kurdish people and culture occurred in such conditions. What differentiates his meeting from that of other orientalists was what he had done, and his relation with the Kurdish people and culture, especially his relation with Mele Mehmudê Bazidî, his Kurdish teacher and main source of information. What they both have done such as collecting manuscripts, collecting and writing down the songs and folktales, is still very precious for Kurdish Studies and also for Kurdish scholars. Especially, Bazidî's work about Kurdish customs and traditions, Habits and Customs of Kurds, was/is valuable work that can be evaluated as ethnography. In this article, the works of Jaba and Mele Mahmudê Bazidî will be discussed in the frame of the ethnography discipline, including emic/etic approaches which are basic for ethnographic fieldwork.

The Kurdistan Referendum: An Evaluation of the Kurdistan Lobby

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 41, No. 2, Winter 2018 The Kurdistan Referendum: An Evaluation of the Kurdistan Lobby Vera Eccarius-Kelly* Agitated and shaken Kurdish protesters gathered in Erbil (Hewlêr), the capital city of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq (KRI) in mid-October 2017. Shi’a militias and the Iraqi army had seized the Kurdish-administered city of Kirkuk and the nearby Avana and Bai Hassan oil fields (the Kurds had integrated these fields into their own oil production system shortly after Mosul fell to the Islamic State in 2014). The demonstrators chanted slogans in favor of Kurdish self-determination, waved red, white, and green banded Kurdish flags, and marched from the United Nations compound to the American consular building. With the endorsement of the governing Barzani family, the crowds of protesters called on the international community to intervene on Kurdistan’s behalf. Fearing further violence related to the regional occupation by the Iraqi military, and additional territorial losses, anger spread quickly throughout the KRI. Just days earlier, thousands of panicked Kurdish civilians fled Kirkuk after rumors spread that a violent Iraqi Arab and Shi’a invasion was 16 *Vera Eccarius-Kelly is Professor of Comparative Politics at Siena College in Loudonville/Albany, NY. Her research interests focus on Kurdish diaspora activism and revolutionary movements in Latin America. She published numerous book chapters in recent collections, including "The Kurdish Diaspora and Europe's Gatekeeping after Kobane," in Domestic and Regional Uncertainties in the New Turkey (2017) and "Behind the Front Lines: Kobani, Legitimacy, and Kurdish Diaspora Mobilization" in a collection entitled Kurdish Issues (Mazda Press, 2016). Among her journal publications are "The imaginary Kurdish Museum: ordinary Kurds, narrative nationalisms, and collective memory" in Kurdish Studies (2015), "Surreptitious Lifelines: A Structural Analysis of the FARC and the PKK," in Terrorism and Political Violence (2012) and “Nationalism, Ethnic Rap, and the Kurdish Diaspora,” in Peace Review (2010). She published a monograph entitled The Militant Kurds: A Dual Strategy for Freedom (Praeger International, 2011). She can be reached at veccarius -kelly@siena.edu 17 underway.1 In an atmosphere of insecurity, confusion, and despair, the population judged Kurdistan’s future harshly as neighboring countries closed their borders and the Iraqi government suspended international air traffic into Erbil and Sulaimaniyah (Slemani), the region’s second largest city. Many Kurds were asking if the U.S. had abandoned their allies despite the Kurds’ loyal backing of American security interests. Kurdish protesters were seething that Iraqi forces relied on U.S. supplied weapons against the Kurds without a strong response from the Trump administration. At the same time, Kurds also voiced how disconnected they felt from their privileged Kurdish leadership, whom they blamed for reigniting fault lines reminiscent of earlier Kurdish factionalism.2 Masoud Barzani, the main architect of the Kurdistan Referendum and then President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), called on the Kurdish diaspora and its intellectual leadership to take a firm stand against the mistreatment of Kurdish populations by the Iraqi government and its allies. In a last ditch effort to position Kurdistan for unconditional talks with the central government in Baghdad, Barzani warned of largescale attacks against Kurdish civilians by Shi’a militias, so-called Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) along with Iranian forces. In Barzani’s view an imminent threat of violence warranted the immediate involvement of the international community. Out of options, Barzani relied on two core Kurdish grievances to combat the global silence that followed the referendum. He invoked the memory of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaigns against Kurds and warned of looming Iranian expansionism into Kurdish administered areas. In one of his last public appeals to the world as President of the KRG3 , Barzani articulated that the international community and the diaspora needed to be committed to “prevent this warmongering , murder, [the] violations and the fleeing of people, committed by the Iraqi government through its militia forces and in cooperation with foreign assistance and guidance against Kurdistan.”4 1 Erika Solomon, “Kurds fearful and angry after Iraqi forces take Kirkuk,” Financial Times, October 19, 2017. 2 These comments are based on Skype interviews with Kurdish diaspora members who attended protest events in Cologne...

Stages of the Kurdish folk poetry in Kurdish criticism

    The current research, entitled as "Stages of the Kurdish folk poetry in Kurdish criticism," aims at collecting and classifying Kurdish studies and writings – books and essays which have tackled and presented Kurdish prosody in order to clarify its general characteristics and the role of Kurdish writers and critics at each stage. The folk meters are divided into three stages and each stage has its own characteristics.     The conclusions of the study reveal that research of Kurdish prosody started early by Kurdish poets and it was developed gradually to appear no longer in journals and papers, but in books and academic and scientific research works. Thus, generally speaking, Kurdish prosody has undergone different stages and at each stage it developed and acquired different characteristics particular to that stage.

Kurdish Studies in Russian Language: 1917-2017

Kurdish Studies, as an academic field, seems today to be dominated by English and Turkish-language literature. Little is known about the volume of literature that has been produced (and is available) in Russian, an important world language spoken across a vast geographic space in regions not far from Kurdish lands. In this review, we have explored this published literature by using searches in Google Scholar. We present the results of this inquiry, as a simple inventory which shall serve to acknowledge and highlight the Russian-language scholarship on the Kurds, Kurdish and Kurdistan. It shows that access to this scholarship is paramount if we want to arrive at a more global understanding of the issues related to the Kurds and Kurdish studies.

In Memoriam: Amir Hassanpour (1943-2017)

This tribute memorialises Professor Amir Hassanpour (1943-2017) a pioneer of Kurdish sociolinguistics, an influential advocate of Kurdish studies, a public intellectual, and a visionary humanist. As a scholar, his contributions are wide and varied and have had a significant impact, broadening our knowledge of the Kurdish history, nationalism, language, media, gender, social structures and movements. He will be remembered for raising and transforming the consciousness of the academic community regarding the rightful place of the Kurdish language and studies. As a revolutionary, Hassanpour played a key role in studying, organising, and leading social movements. He was truly an inspiration to many young researchers and political activists, a heroic man with a lifelong commitment to justice and a new vision of communism.

Editorial

The development of a field of studies such as our own, Kurdish studies, depends to a large extent on the existence of an institutional infrastructure of specialised academic departments, libraries, journals, etc. Only very few academic institutions in the world have a well-established tradition of Kurdish studies, and not surprisingly they are found in those countries that have had an imperial interest in Kurdistan: Russia, Great Britain and France. The general marginalisation of area studies in academia in favour of the more strictly discipline-oriented organisation of academic research has affected these established institutions too. The best specialised libraries in Europe are not in universities but in private Kurdish institutes in Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Vienna, and they were established and funded by members of the Kurdish diaspora with incidental governmental support.

The Early History of Kurdish Studies (1787–1901)

The history of Kurdish studies in the period before the 20th century has been neglected. In the few instances where it has been discussed, it was treated as a mere opening act paving the way for later developments. This has led to anachronistic projections of the contemporary state of the field onto the past. Furthermore, the uncontextualized approach generally adopted has not allowed for a critical account of the field’s development and the way it reflected global trends and evolutions. By doing this work of contextualization, this article wishes to provide a better understanding of the way the field developed before the 20th century and to identify the specific characteristics that emerged through this development.

Editorial

Scholarship on the Kurdish diaspora is a relatively new but rapidly expanding field, with approaches from such disciplines as migration and minority studies, transnationalism, social psychology and education, multiculturalism, social movement studies as well as comparative diaspora studies. We are pleased to present a special issue dedicated to this youngest branch of Kurdish studies, after an earlier special issue last year (Vol. 2 No. 2) dedicated to what is probably the oldest branch, Kurdish linguistics. Our guest editors, Bahar Başer, Ann-Catrin Emanuelsson and Mari Toivanen, have already made their mark with pioneering studies of the Kurdish diaspora, and we thank them for their efforts in preparing this issue.

Editorial

Kurdish Studies as a journal and a scholarly community has grown significantly in recent years. We pride ourselves on being able to create a venue for scholarly exchange for those interested in the field. Our dedicated editorial team works tirelessly with the collective aim of publishing high quality research and scholarship. Behind the scenes we offer constructive academic support to both new and established researchers in the field through a meticulous peer review and feedback process. Without ignoring the dilemmas, the pros and cons of academic indexes, we are also generating some interest from well-known indexing and abstracting services. Besides RePEc, Kurdish Studies is now indexed and abstracted by EBSCO. For this we would like to thank both the authors and the anonymous reviewers for their contributions to the journal thus far. As always, we welcome contributions from researchers in Kurdish Studies and also proposals for special Journal issues.

Professor Mirella Galletti

Professor Mirella Galletti, a great friend of the Kurds, died in Rome on 4 September 2012. Mirella's work is of inestimable value to the field of Kurdish Studies and her publications cover not only the history, society and traditions of the Kurds, but also the Christian minorities of the Middle East, particularly those of Iraq and Kurdistan.

A COMMENT ON MARTIN VAN BRUINESSEN'S REVIEW OF CENGIZ GUNES, THE KURDISH NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN TURKEY: FROM PROTEST TO RESISTANCE (IJMES 45 [2013]: 643–45)

I am humbled that Martin van Bruinessen, a leading figure in the field of Kurdish Studies, has reviewed my book in IJMES. However, the review contains a number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations with which I take issue in this response.

Editorial

Kurdish Studies has no intention to regularly cover and comment on recent events. However, we are definitely interested in publishing studies, based on serious research and critical reflection, that provide important background or new insights relevant to understanding these events. We would specifically encourage colleagues who could contribute to deepening our understanding of the developments in Syria (or, for that matter, developments affecting the Kurds of Iran, who rarely if ever hit the headlines and who are the most seriously under-studied part of Kurdish society).This special issue of Kurdish Studies is dedicated to studies of the Kurdish language, the oldest branch of Kurdish studies, and the first to find a degree of academic institutionalisation. Compared to other major Middle Eastern languages, Kurdish has received relatively little serious investigation, but there is a gradually growing corpus of empirical and theoretical research, of which the guest editors give a useful overview in the introduction.

Editorial

Kurdish studies have, in the past few decades, come to be established as a respectable field of academic investigation and publication, after long having been as marginal in academia as the Kurds themselves were in the politics of the Middle East. The received wisdom, in many Western academic institutions, was that it was essential to retain access to the “field” and that permits to carry out field research in such pro-Western and relatively accessible countries as Turkey and Iran would continue to be granted as long as scholars stayed away from sensitive issues – and the Kurds were definitely one of the most sensitive of those issues. Turkey and Iran, Iraq and Syria perceived their Kurdish citizens as a major security issue, and scholarly interest in the Kurds aroused suspicions of imperialist meddling in Arab, Persian or Turkish affairs.

Reassembling the Political: The PKK and the project of Radical Democracy

One of the most important secular political movements in the Middle East, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) underwent a profound transformation in the 2000s. What the PKK has experienced in this period was a comprehensive restructuration of its organization, ideology and political-military struggle, changing its course towards a project of radical democracy. In this article we explore the content of this new project, and its practical implications. Through this discussion, our study addresses a gap in Turkish and Kurdish studies. Only few studies deal explicitly with the political ideology of the PKK. The data for this article has been collected through a study of Öcalan’s defence texts and his ‘prison notes’, along with key PKK documents, such as congress reports, formal decisions and the writings of its cadre, such as Mustafa Karasu. We conclude that the project for radical democracy is based on the conception of ‘politics beyond the state, political organisation beyond the party, and political subjectivity beyond class’ and can have the opportunity to change the centralist tradition in Turkish political system as well as the statist and class reductionist political thought in the Left in Turkey.

Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds

AbstractThe article presents a thorough review of nearly all relevant aspects of Kurdish Studies concerning the ethnic history, identity, religion, language, and literature of the Kurds. Elaborating upon the respective issues, the author makes extensive use of all available data and materials, including ancient and mediaeval, particularly those never previously examined with regard to related topics. The objective examination of most crucial problems of the field contributes to a better understanding of Kurdish prehistory, expanding, at the same time, the basic methodological concepts upon which further research should be grounded. Due to the politicised nature of Kurdological disciplines, many ideological elements of non-academic provenance, that have found their way into the scholarly milieu in recent decades and have become a constant set of stereotypes and clichés, have been highlighted in the paper.

Zîn-ə Hördemîr: A Lekî Satirical Verse from Lekistan

With the exception of a minor mention, which Sharaf Khān (b.1543) made in theSharafnāma, the first information about the most southern group of Kurdish tribes in Iranian Kurdistan, the Lek, first became available to modern readers inBustān al-Sīyāḥa, a geographical and historical Persian text by Shīrwānī (1773–1832). These hitherto unknown Lek communities, were probably settled in north-western and northern Luristan, known as Lekistan, by order of Shāh ‘Abbās, who wished in this way to create some support for Ḥusayn Khān, thewālīof Luristan. Many of the centres of Lekî intellectual life in the late Afshārīd and early Zand period, which is also of much importance in that the Zand dynasty arose from it, are located in this geographical area. One has only to call to mind the names of such places as Alishtar (Silsila), Kūhdasht, Khāwa, Nūr Ābād, Uthmānwand and Jalālwand in the most southern districts of Kirmānshāh, and also the Lek tribes of eastern Īlām. The very mention of these cities and villages already sets in motion in one's imagination the parade of Twelver Shiites, Ahl-i Haqq heretics, and non-religious oral literary councils which constitutes the history of Lekî new era. But unfortunately little of this is known in the West and Lekî literature remains one of the neglected subjects of literary and linguistic Kurdish studies. This important oral literature and also some written manuscripts are unpublished and untranslated into western languages. The subject of this article is the translation ofZîn-ə Hördemîr, as an example of a genre of Lekî written literature which also provides linguistic data for the Lekî dialect of southern Kurdish.

Knowledge, ideology and power. Deconstructing Kurdish Studies

The idea for this issue arose out of a seminar we organised, together with Jean-Francois Perouse, in 2005-2006 at the Institut Francais d’Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA) in Istanbul on the ‘Conditions of emergence of the Kurdish question within the Turkish academic field’. We noticed that since the 1990s there had been a growing interest among Turkish scholar on the topic of Kurds and Kurdish questions. Until this very recent period, speaking about Kurds was a genuine taboo in Turkish universities...

A Modern History of the Kurds, 3d rev. ed.

This extensive survey of the Kurds’ history is divided into five sections:“The Kurds in the Age of Tribe and Empire,” “Incorporating the Kurds,”“Ethno-nationalism in Iran,” “Ethno-nationalism in Iraq,” and “Ethnonationalismin Turkey.” An introduction on Kurdish identity and social formation, as well as four appendices discussing the Treaty of Sèvres and theKurds of Syria, Lebanon, and Caucasia, are also included. David McDowall,a noted British specialist on Middle Eastern minority affairs and anacknowledged expert on Kurdish studies, has extensively revised the 1996second edition of his book. He provides an analysis of recent Kurdish eventsand a more up-to-date bibliography at the end of each section.This highly detailed history begins in the nineteenth century and ends inthe present day. The author discusses the interplay of the old and new facetsof Kurdish politics: local rivalries within Kurdish society; the enduringauthority of the traditional leadership represented by sheikhs and aghas; thefailure of modern nation states to respond to the challenge of Kurdishnationalism; and the use of Kurdish groups as pawns by major western powersand regional states in the region’s power politics. His methodology is primarilypolitical-historical in nature; however, anthropological and socialanalysis are not totally lacking.As presented by McDowall, a close scrutiny of modern Kurdish historyreveals striking continuities. For example, one pattern has characterizedKurdish-Iraqi relations since 1958: Each Iraqi government pursued peacenegotiations with the Kurds at first, only to fight them when it felt secureabout its rule. This pattern is also found in Iran’s relations with its Kurds.Turkey, however, has pursued a policy that seeks to assimilate and, at times,even ethnically cleanse its Kurdish population.There is also continuity in the major powers’ manipulation of the“Kurdish card” in Iraq. McDowall writes that in 1976, the SelectIntelligence Committee of the House of Representatives reported to theHouse that neither Iran nor the United States would like to see the civil wargoing on in Iraq at that time resolved in a way that would give the Kurds aclear win. Twenty years later, in 1991, the United States implemented a similarpolicy with the Kurds’ so-called “exclusionary zone’’ in northern Iraq.Fearing the consequences likely to follow Saddam Hussein’s overthrow – inparticular, the dismemberment of Iraq and wider regional instability – theUnited States refused to give the Kurds sufficient aid to enable them toestablish an independent homeland ...

Information-seeking behavior and use of social science faculty studying stateless nations: a case study

The information-seeking behavior of social science faculty studying the Kurds was assessed using a questionnaire, citation analysis, and follow-up inquiry. Two specific questions were addressed: how these faculty locate relevant government information and what factors influence their seeking behavior and use of such information. Results show that besides using traditional methods for locating relevant government information, social science faculty studying the Kurds use the World Wide Web (Web) and electronic mail (e-mail) for that purpose, suggesting that these faculty are aware of, and utilize, new information technology to support their research. Results also show that the information-seeking behavior of social science faculty studying the Kurds is influenced by factors similar to those influencing other social science faculty. Moreover, results also show that accessing the needed materials is a major information-seeking activity that should be added to David Ellis' behavioral model, and that faculty examined here employ somewhat a more elaborate “differentiating” information-seeking activity than the one described in the model. Some elements of interdisciplinarity of Kurdish studies as a field of research have been discovered, however, further research is required to verify that. Implications for library services and suggestions for future research are presented.

Citation ranking versus peer evaluation of senior faculty research performance: A case study of Kurdish scholarship

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between citation ranking and peer evaluation in assessing senior faculty research performance. Other studies typically derive their peer evaluation data directly from referees, often in the form of ranking. This study uses two additional sources of peer evaluation data: citation content analysis and book review content analysis. Two main questions are investigated: (a) To what degree does citation ranking correlate with data from citation content analysis, book reviews, and peer ranking? (b) Is citation ranking a valid evaluative indicator of research performance of senior faculty members? Citation data, book reviews, and peer ranking were compiled and examined for faculty members specializing in Kurdish studies. Analysis shows that normalized citation ranking and citation content analysis data yield identical ranking results. Analysis also shows that normalized citation ranking and citation content analysis, book reviews, and peer ranking perform similarly (i.e., are highly correlated) for high-ranked and low-ranked senior scholars. Additional evaluation methods and measures that take into account the context and content of research appear to be needed to effectively evaluate senior scholars whose performance ranks relatively in the middle. Citation content analysis data did appear to give some specific and important insights into the quality of research of these middle performers, however, further analysis and research is needed to validate this finding. This study shows that citation ranking can provide a valid indicator for comparative evaluation of senior faculty research performance.