Turkey’s Mission Impossible. Cengiz Çandar
them against the Knights of the Crusaders. . . . From Vienna to Yemen while the blood of the Turkish race was rolling in, they, the Kurds, were herding their goats in the mountains and the villages they dwelt in, and whenever they have found the opportunity they lived by theft and pillaging that they have committed.16
He repeated the same theme two months later:
Let them [the Kurds] go off wherever they want, to Iran, to Pakistan, to India, or to join Barzani. Let them ask the United Nations to find them a homeland in Africa. The Turkish race is very patient, but when it gets angry, it is like a roaring lion, and nothing can stop it. Let them ask the Armenians, their racial kin, who we the Turks are so that they can come back to their senses. As easily understood, these lines are written against those traitors who want to divide Turkey and to establish an independent Kurdistan in our eastern provinces.17
Atsız may be considered an extreme example of Turkish nationalist expression vis-à-vis the Kurds, yet the terminology he employed and the overall approach he upheld illustrate the disdain that almost every shade of Turkish nationalism still has regarding the Kurds.
Kurdistan: A Taboo for Turkey, a State (Eyalet) for the Ottoman Empire
The denial—or the hatred as illustrated above—of the Kurdish identity and language inevitably resulted in the non-recognition of the Kurdish question. Even if implicitly, there has always been a quasi-consensus that the Kurdish question (with its corollary conflict) is the primary challenge to the survival of Turkey. Not acknowledging the question, treating it mainly as a security matter or downgrading it to a struggle against terrorism is tantamount to not undertaking a serious and real quest for its resolution. Ironically, it is also equivalent to aggravating the matter and transforming it to become gangrenous.
The passage of time, the changing circumstances, and the new dynamics of the post-Cold war period compelled Turkey, albeit reluctantly and gradually, to terminate its denial of Kurdish identity. However, fluctuations in acknowledging the Kurdish question have never ended. While the Turkish establishment vacillated on whether to acknowledge the Kurdish question and its settlement, the usage of the term “Kurdistan,” remained a taboo in Turkey.
In their imperial spirit, the Ottomans, to whom the Turks consider themselves and Turkey the main heirs, had no problem acknowledging or referring to Kurdistan. On the contrary, in the fifteenth century at the apogee of the Empire, Sultan Suleiman I (the Lawgiver) who in the annals of Western historiography is entitled also “the Magnificent,” in a letter to the King of France, François I, boasted of being the “shadow of God on the Earth” and Sultan of the Mediterranean and Black Sea and the countries from Rumelia (Balkans) to Yemen and all the Arab lands—and Kurdistan. In 1847, in the attempt of reorganizing the administrative structure of the empire in order to centralize and modernize the Ottoman government, a state (eyalet) named Kurdistan was formed that comprised the governorate of Diyarbakır, the sanjaks of Van, Muş, and Hakkari, and the districts of Cizre, Bohtan, and Mardin,18 all within the borders of today’s Turkey.
Within the historical context, the foundation of the Republic of Turkey is seen as a radical and revolutionary rupture from the Ottoman past, and a step forward in the sequence of modernization process. However, ironically, referring to Kurdistan within the Ottoman imperial realm has become an anathema for the modern Turkish nation-state. Zürcher asserts that
the republic created out of the ruins of Ottoman Anatolia in October 1923, was, of course, legally and formally a new state. . . . At the same time, it is evident that in some ways Turkey is a very different heir to the empire, say, Syria or Albania. . . . it inherited not only the limbs but the head and heart of the empire, its cultural and administrative centre.19
Thus, in the imagination of the new state, acknowledgment of Kurdistan, implying the land inhabited by a non-Turkish ethno-national community, would prejudice its “head and heart” and also its “administrative centre.” It would also jeopardize its highly avowed unitary character, thereby arouse concerns on further dismemberment of the homeland, which is regarded in modern Turkish historiography as the “last refuge,” the land salvaged from the Ottoman imperial estate.
Yes to Mustafa Kemal, No to Atatürk
To the extent of banning the use even of euphemisms for Kurdistan or the Kurdish language, acknowledgment of the Kurdish question proved to be extremely difficult in the Republican era. In fact, during the initial phase of the national struggle (1919–1922), its leader Mustafa Kemal consistently nourished the hopes of certain Kurdish circles regarding the implementation of specific Kurdish national rights and privileges. This even goes back to October 1919, when Mustafa Kemal and his colleagues, in preparation for the national struggle in Anatolia, signed the Amasya Protocol. The Protocol was signed with the Minister of War of the Ottoman government on the borders of the Ottoman state to be defended against the victors of World War I. The Ottoman land to be defended was defined as where Turks and Kurds live together. The main reference point is the document adopted on January 20, 1921 (Teşkilat-ı Esasiye Kanunu), that practically served as the constitution of the national struggle until the foundation of the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923, and even later—that is, until the first Constitution of the republic was made in 1924. In the 1921 document, there is a reference to self-rule to be exercised by the governorates. The Kurdish political leaders continuously referred to Article 11 of the Teşkilat-ı Esasiye Kanunu as the basis of their claims for autonomy or federalism in Turkey.
The most crucial document in this respect is the Draft Law for a Proposed Autonomy of Kurdistan as Debated in the Grand National Assembly (at a secret session) on February 10, 1922.20 The British High Commissioner in İstanbul, Sir Horace Rumbold, sent a telegram including the draft to British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon. Thanks to the archives of the British Foreign Office, the draft has become a source of reference for those seeking autonomy for the Kurds.
Of the draft’s 18 articles, the first is especially interesting. It reads as follows:
(ı) The Great National Assembly of Turkey, with the object of ensuring the progress of the Turkish nation in accordance with the requirements of civilization, undertakes to establish an autonomous administration for the Kurdish nation in harmony with their national customs.21
Articles 15 and 17 are of particular interest in understanding the limits of the autonomy envisaged for the Kurds:
(15) The Turkish language only shall be employed in the Kurdish National Assembly, the service of the Governorate and in the administration of the Government. The Kurdish language, however, may be taught in the schools and the Governor may encourage its use provided that this shall not be made the basis of any future demand for the recognition of the Kurdish language as the official language of the government.
(17) No tax whatsoever may be imposed by the Kurdish National Assembly without the approval of the Governor-General and before the Great National Assembly of Angora [Ankara] shall be informed.22
It should however be noted that some Turkish historians have contested the authenticity of the Draft Law for a Proposed Autonomy of Kurdistan, as cited in the appendix of Robert Olson’s book The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism 1880–1925 on the grounds that the Turkish archives do not contain a secret session of the parliament on that date, February 10, 1922.
Another vital reference point regarding the “promise of Mustafa Kemal” on Kurdish autonomy that has been sporadically brought up over the years by Kurdish political figures is the conversation Mustafa Kemal had with prominent journalists like Ahmet Emin (Yalman) and Falih Rıfkı (Atay) accompanying him in the city of İzmit, in the proximity of İstanbul, on January 16–17, 1923. In responding to a question by Ahmet Emin on what he thought about the Kurdish issue, Mustafa Kemal made reference to Teşkilat-ı Esasiyle Kanunu of 1921 that stipulates self-rule. Yet, he did not specified self-rule exclusively for the Kurds. On the contrary, he drew the attention of his audience to the practical impossibility of drawing borders to delineate the areas that the Turks and the Kurds are living in because of the deep penetration of the Kurdish element in those areas where Turks have settled.
The Kurdish political figures, nonetheless, made frequent references to this