The nationalist movement ( also known as the Pan-Kurdism ) among the Kurdish people first emerged in the late 19th century with an uprising in 1880 led by Sheik Ubeydullah. Many Kurds worked with other opponents of the Ottoman regime within the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). A growth in ethnic consciousness at the start of the 20th century was spearheaded by the Society for the Elevation of Kurdistan. Some Kurdish nationalist groups agitated for secession, others for autonomy.
During the First World War, while some Kurdish nationalists were working with the British and Russian enemy powers, Kurdish tribal forces were fighting alongside Ottoman troops on the Russian front. Deaths and displacements occurred on a large scale among Kurdish civilians due to wartime conditions and deliberate ethnic cleansing policies.
There was a brief opportunity for Kurdish nationalism after World War I with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Western powers (particularly the United Kingdom) promised the Kurds they would act as guarantors for Kurdish freedom, a promise they subsequently broke. Some of the autonomist Kurdish groups received British support leading up to the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which prepared for local autonomy for the Kurdish regions and envisaged later independence. Opposition from Kemal Atatürk, leader of the new nation-state of Turkey, and changes in British policy, prevented such a result. Following the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) the Kurdish territory was partitioned between Turkey, the French mandate of Syria, the British mandate of Iraq, and Persia.
Prior to 1914
The nationalist movement among the Kurds first emerged in the late 19th century with the uprising of Sheikh Ubeydullah, a Kurdish landowner and head of the powerful Şemdinan family. In 1880, Ubeydullah demanded political autonomy or outright independence for Kurds and the recognition of a Kurdistan state separate from both the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia.Özoğlu, Hakan. Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries. Feb 2004. . p. 75. The uprising was suppressed by the Ottomans.
The first Kurds to challenge the authority of the Ottoman Empire did so primarily as Ottoman subjects, rather than Kurds. They worked with other Turks and Ottoman subjects who were in opposition to the policies of Sultan Abdul Hamid and in 1889 formed the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Abdul Hamid responded with a policy of repression, but also of integration, co-opting prominent Kurdish opponents into the Ottoman power structure with prestigious positions in his government. This repression could be extremely violent, as Ottoman authorities executed leading Kurdish tribal chiefs, including those of the Mir Mahmali, Mir Yusifi, and Pusht Gali groups and eliminated influential figures such as Hamza Agha of the Mamish, along with much of his family, to break resistance and consolidate control. This strategy appears successful given the loyalty displayed by the Kurdish Hamidiye regiments during World War I.
In the first decade of the 20th century, Kurdish nationalism was still an ambiguous, controversial, or unfamiliar concept for many Kurds. Educated Kurds, primarily from Istanbul, sought a political solution largely within the confines of the Ottoman Empire and one that did not rest solely on an ethnic basis. That kind of identity was related with a more tribal consciousness; one that lacked sophistication for many. Others had much to lose if the status quo was altered. For many, this stemmed from a religious concern, where the Sultan had long brought Muslims under a secure Caliphate. Others, particularly tribal chieftains, had economic concerns. Still other Kurds, especially those outside of Anatolia, lacked understanding of nationalism or were simply unaware and unaffected.
In the short time of its existence, the Kurd Society for Cooperation and Progress (Kürt Terraki ve Teavun Cemiyeti) was a leading force in supporting the Kurdish nation. It was founded in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 by several members of the Kurdish political elite. Some of the co-founders were founders Sheikh Abdulkadir, (a son of Sheikh Ubeydullah); Emin Ali Bedir Khan of the Bedir Khan family and the former Ottoman official Muhammad Şerif Pasha. With the establishment of.a school it has also supported the education of the Kurdish population in Istanbul, which at the time amounted to around 30'000. The institution was attended by Said Nursi, who in the future was to become the leader of the Nurculuk. The society also continued to distribute the newspaper Kurdistan, which was led by members of the Bedir Khan family. In 1909, the Society was prohibited by the Government, who didn't see a benefit in the organization of Kurdish people.
An organization known as the Society for the Elevation of Kurdistan (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti) was central to the forging of a distinct Kurdish identity. It took advantage of the period of political liberalization during the Second Constitutional Era (1908–1920) of Turkey to transform a renewed interest in Kurdish culture and language into a political nationalist movement based on ethnicity. The emphasis on the Kurdish people as a distinct ethnic group was encouraged around the start of the 20th century by Russian anthropologists who suggested that the Kurds were a European race (compared to the Asiatic Turks), based on physical characteristics and their language which is part of the Indo-European language group. Based more on this ethno-nationalistic standpoint, two prominent Kurdish families, the Badr Khans and the Sayyids, renewed opposition to the empire. These two houses founded the first two strains of Kurdish nationalism. The Badr Khans were secessionists while the Sayyids of Nihiri were autonomists.
Operating within the autonomist framework, Shaykh Abd al Qadir in 1910 appealed to the Committee on Union and Progress (which, after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, now held the power of the government after deposing Sultan Abd al Hamid) for an autonomous Kurdish state in the east. That same year, Said Nursi traveled through the Diyarbakir region and urged Kurds to unite and forget their differences, while still carefully claiming loyalty to the CUP. Other Kurdish Shaykhs in the region began leaning towards regional autonomy.
During this time, the Badr Khans had been in contact with discontented Shaykhs and chieftains in the far east of Anatolia ranging to the Iranian border, more in the framework of secession, however. Shayk Abd al Razzaq Badr Khan eventually formed an alliance with Shaykh Taha and Shaykh Abd al Salam Barzani, another powerful family in Kurdistan. Because of this possible Kurdish threat as well as the alliance's dealings with Russia, Ottoman troops moved against this alliance in 1914. Two brief and minor rebellions, the rebellions of Barzan and Bitlis, were quickly suppressed.
The problem for these early Kurdish rebels was one of coordination. The British vice-consul in Bitlis reported that "Could the Kurds combine against the government even in one province, the Turkish troops in their eastern part of Asia Minor would find it difficult to crush the revolt." (p. 101)
The First World War
The outbreak of World War I was a powerful check to growing Kurdish nationalism. However, some Kurds continued to work behind the scenes for an independent Kurdistan. These represent some of the first attempts by Kurds to work with foreign powers against Turks for their autonomy. In 1914, General Muhammad Sharif Pasha offered his services to the British in Mesopotamia. Elsewhere, members of the Badr Khan family held close relations with Russian officials and discussed their intentions to form an independent Kurdistan.
Meanwhile, the conflict between Kurds and Armenians in the east raged. Kurds were threatened with punishment by Ottoman authorities if they did not obey orders to evict or kill the Armenians. In rare instances, Kurds spared their Christian victims and protected them because they were neighbors with whom they had held cordial relations. It is difficult to accept that the struggle was a purely ethnic one. The Armenians, it was reasoned, presented a real threat for many Kurds, especially the farther one went east. Armenians, after all, had relationships with the hostile European powers and Russia. According to David McDowall, "most Kurds involved in the massacres probably felt it was a question of 'them or us'". (p. 105)
Kurds contributed significantly to the Ottoman Empire's war effort. Tribal forces served against the Russian army in Persia and Turkey. Kurdish battle casualties are estimated at 300,000. However, the effect of the war on the Kurdish populated areas was more severe. Many regions throughout Kurdistan were laid waste and their populations decimated by advancing and retreating troop forces. Furthermore, as the war continued, the Young Turks implemented large scale ethnic cleansing of both Armenians and Kurds, including the deportation of Kurds from Erzurum and Bitlis in the winter of 1916.Fisk, R. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, p.322. Vintage. By the end of World War I, up to 700,000 Kurds had been forcibly deported and almost half of the displaced perished.Dominik J. Schaller, Jürgen Zimmerer, Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies—introduction, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.10, No.1, p.8, March 2008. Nevertheless, at this time the Ottoman Kurds still had the legal right to conduct their affairs in Kurdish, celebrate unique traditions, and identify themselves as a distinct ethnic group.
The end of the Ottoman Empire
The Kurdish ethnonationalist movement that emerged following World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire was largely in reaction to the changes taking place in mainstream Turkey, primarily radical secularization which the strongly Muslim Kurds abhorred, centralization of authority which threatened the power of local chieftains and Kurdish autonomy, and rampant Turkish nationalism in the new Turkish Republic which obviously threatened to marginalize them.
In 1918, the prominent Kurdish nationalist Şerif Pasha pressed the British to adopt a policy supporting autonomous Kurdish regions throughout Kurdistan. He suggested that British officials be charged with appointing officials to administer the regions and control their finances. Strategically, he desired movement towards this plan to be made before the end of the war and the Paris Peace Conference. Şerif was not able to convince the British of this. However, his efforts to plead the cause of his people leading up to the Peace Conference impressed Western powers. Because of his friendship with Armenians, after he was chosen to represent the Kurds by various Kurdish nationalist organizations at the Peace Conference, a Kurdo-Armenian peace accord was reached between Şerif and Armenian representatives at the conference in 1919. The British persuaded the Kurdish and Armenian representatives to sign this Kurdish-Armenian declaration of solidarity against the Kemalists for strategic reasons. The British thought this would increase the likelihood of independent Kurdish and Armenian states that would create a buffer between British Mesopotamia and the Turks.