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Many lesons about Turkey - attitudes towards Armenians and attitudes and today. Also interesting the supression of Islam (and opposition political parties) under the guise of supressing Kurdish nationalism...Ataturk may not have been in the CUP inner circle - but he certainly learned the trade from them...
The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and
the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925
By Robert Olson, University of Texas Press, Austin
Conclusion (exerpts with my notes) - I find it interesting the repression of the Kurds (who were so used by the Turks for killing Armenians) following the Armenian Genocide - a continuing effort as it were...
The Sheikh Said rebellion was the first large-scale nationalist rebellion by the Kurds.
...the Sheikh Said rebellion was a nationalist rebellion, the mobilization, propaganda, and symbols were those of a religious rebellion. (my notes: The rebellion occured in 1926 a few years after Ataturk secularlized the state and abolished the Caliphate (1924). Like Tito with the ethnic & religious animosities in Yugoslavia - Ataturk suceeded [only] in temporarily surpressing [political] Islam and nationalism...not defeating it)
The Sheikh Said rebellion was a turning point in the history of the Kurds in that nationalism was the prime factor in its organization and development. This is indicated by the fact that the subsequent large rebellions by the Kurds were nationalist and religious, employing nationalist symbols and propaganda. The Sheikh Said rebellion clearly demonstrated the direction that Kurdish nationalism was to take. In the Zeylan (1930) and Agri (1926-1932) rebellions, nationalist Kurdish slogans were used extensively.
The Sheikh Said rebellion was tribal...Few tribal or peasant cultivators participated in the rebellion as combatants...the landlords of the Diyarbakir plains opposed the rebellion. They played a principal role in assuring that Diyarbakir remained loyal to the Turkish government when it was attacked and besieged by Sheikh Said. The cooperation of these agas (my note: typical duped Kurdish chieftans who were used to persecute the Armenians) with the government is another indication of the strong ties that the Kemalists had already established with many Kurdish agas and chiefs. It was a premonition of a future when they were to become one of the mainstays of the Ataturk coalition.
Diyarbakir, heavily Kurdish did not rise in support of the rebels. The populace of Elazig initially surrendered without fighting, only to turn against the rebels because of their excessive looting and pillage.
The Sheikh Said rebellion represented an incipient nationalism that was also challenged by a strong nationalism that had mobilized in the course of the past thirty years, gathered strength during World War I, and further energized by the war of liberation with the power of an organized state behind it. Turkish nationalists claimed the territory on which the Kurdish nationalists wanted to create an independent Kurdistan. The Turks also proclaimed a nationalism that was inclusive of the Kurds, however prejudicial, while Kurdish nationalism, imperatively so, was exclusive of the Turks and their nationalism. (My comment: Turks were able to convince Kurdish nationalists that removal of Armenians would help their cause in the long run.)
The Sheikh Said rebellion demonstrated, territorially, and politically, the increased vulnerability of the Kurds as a result of the displacement, deportation, and massacre of Armenians during World War I. The removal of the Armenians also removed the buffers of protection that their presence and nationalism offered the Kurds. The situation of the Kurds and the suppression of their nationalism was even more ironic in light of their eager participation in the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in 1915 and subsequently. The truly tragic meaning that the elimination of the Armenians held for the Kurds and Kurdish nationalism was recognized, as menitioned earlier, by some of the Kurdidh nationalist leaders such as Halid Beg Cibran. (my comment: oops - too late - instead of eliminating an enemy you Kurds helped to eliminate a potential ally or at least certainly a group that would have commanded the attention of the Turks while you continued to raid and pillage at will as you had always done. Another comment - often the Turks make claims about having punished over 1,000 [during WWI and the Genocide] on their own for excesses commited against the Armenians. It shouldn't surprise anyone that most of these were prosecutions of Kurdish chieftans who were [as usual] taking loot for themselves and depriving the Turkish authorities their share! - of course corruption among local Turkish government folks - who weren't passing enough along to the central authorites also occured and how convienient for the CUP to be able to claim that they were protecting Armenians eh? I should also note that some local officials who were outraged by the excesses of the CUPs Special Organization often indicted them as well - though the CUP always managed to ensure that justice was not served in this case...)
As soon as the Turkish armed forces were able to mobilize, it (the Kurdisn rebellion) was crushed. (my note: these armed Kurds were always greater in number and more active - raiding and attacking non-military targets - then any Armenian "gangs" or bands - yet, because it was primarily - though not exclusively - Armenians citizens being preyed upon - no need for extreme [or any] measures. And in fact I don't doubt that some stories of civilian Turks being butchered by Armenians might not have been Kurdish raids blamed on the Armenians...)
...the rebellion...represented a challenging nationalism in competition with Turkish nationalism and, hence, threatening to the Turkish state.
the rebellion gave Kemalists, or "radicals" as he calls them, an opportunity to silence the criticism of the Istanbul press, which was aligned with oppositional groups and, shortly thereafter, regional newspapers as well. It also established the legal means via the Restoration of Order Law and the creation of independence tribunals to arrest the leading members of the oppostion forces when the time was ripe, in June 1926 after the discovery of a plot in Izmir to assasinate Mustafa Kemal. Soon after the discovery of the alleged plot, twentyone members of the Progressive Republican party and eleven of the most important members of the Committee of Union and Progress were arrested. (my note: hm - CUP still active and about - yes - again, as with the Kurds, Kemal used them for as long as he needed them then he had them rounded up and killed. Note - assasination plots against the Great Ataturk! Oh Turkish disciples - say it ain't so!))
Less than one month after the discovery of the plot, fifteen members of groups opposed to the Kemalists were condemned to death. Even the heroes of the revolution and of the war of liberation, such as Refet Bele, Rauf Orbay, and Kazim Karabekir, who managed to escape death, were never again to play significant roles in the politics of Turkey. (my note: Karabekir was potentially a very serious rival to Ataturk. [if you as an Armenian don't know who he is and his roll in the butchery of 300-400,000 of us...well...) - again much of this can be viewd as a post-revolutionary consolidation of power and purging of "enemies")
...the machinery to facilitate the crushing of the opposition both politically and legally was put into place in the effort to suppress the Sheikh Said rebellion. Ironically, many of those sentenced to death in the Izmir plot had voted for the very independence tribunals to which they fell victim. While the Kemalists had to wait until the purges of June-July 1926, nearly a year after the suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion, to rid themselves of remaining opposition, the formal and organized opposition as represented by the Progressive Republican party was eliminated when the party was banned on June 3 1925.
...only after the Sheikh Said rebellion that three "revolutions" were able to occur: the Code of Civil Law (Medeni Kanunu Devrimi) of 4 October 1926; the Dress and Headgear Law (Kiyafet Kanunu Devrimi) of 25 November 1925; and the Alphabet Law (Harf Kanunu) of 1 November 1928. These kinds of reform would only have been possible in a Turkey under the Restoration of Order Law.
the Sheikh Said rebellion remains a symbol of the impediments -conservativism, religious fanaticism, Muslim brotherhoods, and formal democratic opposition- that the "radical" Kemalists had to suppress or contain in order to proceed with their Western-oriented, capitalist directed, heavy industry-biased modernization program. The Sheikh Said rebellion emphasized to the Kemalists that this program might be delayed through continuing political infighting or might not be carried out at all. The decisions to pursue the Kemalist road to modernization were probably determined a few years earlier, but certainly there was a solid core that wished to pursue this course expeditiously by 1924. It was the Sheikh Said rebellion that created the atmosphere and the mechanisms to carry out the purges of 1926. (my note: often Ataturk is compared to Lenin...perhaps Stalin is the better model eh?)
The reason why the Sheikh Said rebellion is so important for the Turkish history is that the laws and instutions created for its suppression were agreed to by those who opposed Kemalism. They agreed, no matter how reluctantly, because no patriotic Turkish official could tolerate a contending nationalism. Here we have a good example of laws and instutions created to suppress an "external" enemy that are later used by the group in power to quash "internal" opposition. The Kemalist opponents and Fethi Bey realized this and therefore tried to depict the rebellion as a regional uprising, certainly one that was counterrevolutionary. But the fact that the rebellion was Kurdish and nationalist severely limited any objections that they could make. More strenuous opposition would have produced the charge that they were traitors. As it was, the members of the Progressive Republican party were charged with complicity in the rebellion, altough such complicity was never proven. (my note - how [Turkish] history repeats itself under different guises..."so easy it is to be called a traitor in Kemalist Turkey" - there is my rap folks...)
The Sheikh Said rebellion gave the Kemalist government a certain justification for categorizing serious opposition as being in league with the Kurds, having sympathy for Kurdish nationalism, or favoring ideologies that would strengthen Kurdish nationalism, or Kurdish ethnic power.
The rebellion proved an opportunity to reduce the opposition to Kemalist modernization through the closing on 30 November 1925 of all tarikats (lodges), zaviyes (cells), and turbes (religious tombs). Religious titles were abolished and wearing of clerical garb was prohibited. The Dress Law was passed on 25 November 1926, aimed against religious centers of opposition for the purpose of enhancing its legitimacy against the Kemalists. What is important to note here is that these laws were passed in an atmosphere of political consciousness on the part of Turkish public that their implementation and acceptance would reduce the threat of Kurdish nationalism.
The Sheikh Said rebellion created and provided a means whereby most serious subsequent opposition to government policies or comprehensive disagreement with its progress laid open the possibility that the disaffected groups would be labeled as traitors. In the aftermath of the rebellion, it was relatively easy to color opposition forces with a hostile ethnic tinge. The vehicles created and the laws passed for the suppression of the rebellion and the symbols of opposition to the Kemalist program that it generated meant that the consolidation of the Turkish state and of Turkish nationalism were greatly expedited by the suppression and perceived threat of Kurdish nationalism. The nationalist aspirations of ten percent of population had to be denied if the nationalist goals of the other ninety percent were to be achieved. It is in this sense that the Sheikh Said rebellion, its suppression, and its aftermath were more important than the purges of 1926, which simply eliminated the remaining opposition to the Kemalists' programs. Most of those who were purged or sentenced to death agreed or would have agreed with the position subsequently adopted by the Turkish government vis-a-vis the Kurds and their nationalism.
The suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion contributed to the consolidation of the new Turkish republic, the evolution and domination of the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Firkasi) and the one-party state it represented up to 1950, and the greater articulation of Turkish nationalism on which the party and the state were based. The creation of a one-party state conditioned the lack of serious discussion of policy alternatives, which in turn meant that there was a monodimensionality to the possible ideological solutions to the problems and challenges that the young republic would confront.
...the entire post-World War II period, when the military was in power in 1960-61, 1973, and from 1980 onward, follows a pattern shaped by the political and ideological consequences of the rebellion.
The military engagements against the Kurds far exceeded the number of external interventions and engagements. By the 1980s, Turkey's military actions against the Kurds had assumed external as well as internal proportions. In 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, Turkish forces entered Iraq in order to suppress and contain Kurdish nationalist and guerilla groups. The struggle against Kurdish nationalism, in which certain patterns of policies were implemented and against which certain nationalist, ideological, and psychological premises and attitudes were initially adopted in 1925, continued to play an important role in Turkey's policy decisions more than fifty years after the Sheikh Said rebellion.
The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and
the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925
By Robert Olson, University of Texas Press, Austin
Conclusion (exerpts with my notes) - I find it interesting the repression of the Kurds (who were so used by the Turks for killing Armenians) following the Armenian Genocide - a continuing effort as it were...
The Sheikh Said rebellion was the first large-scale nationalist rebellion by the Kurds.
...the Sheikh Said rebellion was a nationalist rebellion, the mobilization, propaganda, and symbols were those of a religious rebellion. (my notes: The rebellion occured in 1926 a few years after Ataturk secularlized the state and abolished the Caliphate (1924). Like Tito with the ethnic & religious animosities in Yugoslavia - Ataturk suceeded [only] in temporarily surpressing [political] Islam and nationalism...not defeating it)
The Sheikh Said rebellion was a turning point in the history of the Kurds in that nationalism was the prime factor in its organization and development. This is indicated by the fact that the subsequent large rebellions by the Kurds were nationalist and religious, employing nationalist symbols and propaganda. The Sheikh Said rebellion clearly demonstrated the direction that Kurdish nationalism was to take. In the Zeylan (1930) and Agri (1926-1932) rebellions, nationalist Kurdish slogans were used extensively.
The Sheikh Said rebellion was tribal...Few tribal or peasant cultivators participated in the rebellion as combatants...the landlords of the Diyarbakir plains opposed the rebellion. They played a principal role in assuring that Diyarbakir remained loyal to the Turkish government when it was attacked and besieged by Sheikh Said. The cooperation of these agas (my note: typical duped Kurdish chieftans who were used to persecute the Armenians) with the government is another indication of the strong ties that the Kemalists had already established with many Kurdish agas and chiefs. It was a premonition of a future when they were to become one of the mainstays of the Ataturk coalition.
Diyarbakir, heavily Kurdish did not rise in support of the rebels. The populace of Elazig initially surrendered without fighting, only to turn against the rebels because of their excessive looting and pillage.
The Sheikh Said rebellion represented an incipient nationalism that was also challenged by a strong nationalism that had mobilized in the course of the past thirty years, gathered strength during World War I, and further energized by the war of liberation with the power of an organized state behind it. Turkish nationalists claimed the territory on which the Kurdish nationalists wanted to create an independent Kurdistan. The Turks also proclaimed a nationalism that was inclusive of the Kurds, however prejudicial, while Kurdish nationalism, imperatively so, was exclusive of the Turks and their nationalism. (My comment: Turks were able to convince Kurdish nationalists that removal of Armenians would help their cause in the long run.)
The Sheikh Said rebellion demonstrated, territorially, and politically, the increased vulnerability of the Kurds as a result of the displacement, deportation, and massacre of Armenians during World War I. The removal of the Armenians also removed the buffers of protection that their presence and nationalism offered the Kurds. The situation of the Kurds and the suppression of their nationalism was even more ironic in light of their eager participation in the deportation and massacre of the Armenians in 1915 and subsequently. The truly tragic meaning that the elimination of the Armenians held for the Kurds and Kurdish nationalism was recognized, as menitioned earlier, by some of the Kurdidh nationalist leaders such as Halid Beg Cibran. (my comment: oops - too late - instead of eliminating an enemy you Kurds helped to eliminate a potential ally or at least certainly a group that would have commanded the attention of the Turks while you continued to raid and pillage at will as you had always done. Another comment - often the Turks make claims about having punished over 1,000 [during WWI and the Genocide] on their own for excesses commited against the Armenians. It shouldn't surprise anyone that most of these were prosecutions of Kurdish chieftans who were [as usual] taking loot for themselves and depriving the Turkish authorities their share! - of course corruption among local Turkish government folks - who weren't passing enough along to the central authorites also occured and how convienient for the CUP to be able to claim that they were protecting Armenians eh? I should also note that some local officials who were outraged by the excesses of the CUPs Special Organization often indicted them as well - though the CUP always managed to ensure that justice was not served in this case...)
As soon as the Turkish armed forces were able to mobilize, it (the Kurdisn rebellion) was crushed. (my note: these armed Kurds were always greater in number and more active - raiding and attacking non-military targets - then any Armenian "gangs" or bands - yet, because it was primarily - though not exclusively - Armenians citizens being preyed upon - no need for extreme [or any] measures. And in fact I don't doubt that some stories of civilian Turks being butchered by Armenians might not have been Kurdish raids blamed on the Armenians...)
...the rebellion...represented a challenging nationalism in competition with Turkish nationalism and, hence, threatening to the Turkish state.
the rebellion gave Kemalists, or "radicals" as he calls them, an opportunity to silence the criticism of the Istanbul press, which was aligned with oppositional groups and, shortly thereafter, regional newspapers as well. It also established the legal means via the Restoration of Order Law and the creation of independence tribunals to arrest the leading members of the oppostion forces when the time was ripe, in June 1926 after the discovery of a plot in Izmir to assasinate Mustafa Kemal. Soon after the discovery of the alleged plot, twentyone members of the Progressive Republican party and eleven of the most important members of the Committee of Union and Progress were arrested. (my note: hm - CUP still active and about - yes - again, as with the Kurds, Kemal used them for as long as he needed them then he had them rounded up and killed. Note - assasination plots against the Great Ataturk! Oh Turkish disciples - say it ain't so!))
Less than one month after the discovery of the plot, fifteen members of groups opposed to the Kemalists were condemned to death. Even the heroes of the revolution and of the war of liberation, such as Refet Bele, Rauf Orbay, and Kazim Karabekir, who managed to escape death, were never again to play significant roles in the politics of Turkey. (my note: Karabekir was potentially a very serious rival to Ataturk. [if you as an Armenian don't know who he is and his roll in the butchery of 300-400,000 of us...well...) - again much of this can be viewd as a post-revolutionary consolidation of power and purging of "enemies")
...the machinery to facilitate the crushing of the opposition both politically and legally was put into place in the effort to suppress the Sheikh Said rebellion. Ironically, many of those sentenced to death in the Izmir plot had voted for the very independence tribunals to which they fell victim. While the Kemalists had to wait until the purges of June-July 1926, nearly a year after the suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion, to rid themselves of remaining opposition, the formal and organized opposition as represented by the Progressive Republican party was eliminated when the party was banned on June 3 1925.
...only after the Sheikh Said rebellion that three "revolutions" were able to occur: the Code of Civil Law (Medeni Kanunu Devrimi) of 4 October 1926; the Dress and Headgear Law (Kiyafet Kanunu Devrimi) of 25 November 1925; and the Alphabet Law (Harf Kanunu) of 1 November 1928. These kinds of reform would only have been possible in a Turkey under the Restoration of Order Law.
the Sheikh Said rebellion remains a symbol of the impediments -conservativism, religious fanaticism, Muslim brotherhoods, and formal democratic opposition- that the "radical" Kemalists had to suppress or contain in order to proceed with their Western-oriented, capitalist directed, heavy industry-biased modernization program. The Sheikh Said rebellion emphasized to the Kemalists that this program might be delayed through continuing political infighting or might not be carried out at all. The decisions to pursue the Kemalist road to modernization were probably determined a few years earlier, but certainly there was a solid core that wished to pursue this course expeditiously by 1924. It was the Sheikh Said rebellion that created the atmosphere and the mechanisms to carry out the purges of 1926. (my note: often Ataturk is compared to Lenin...perhaps Stalin is the better model eh?)
The reason why the Sheikh Said rebellion is so important for the Turkish history is that the laws and instutions created for its suppression were agreed to by those who opposed Kemalism. They agreed, no matter how reluctantly, because no patriotic Turkish official could tolerate a contending nationalism. Here we have a good example of laws and instutions created to suppress an "external" enemy that are later used by the group in power to quash "internal" opposition. The Kemalist opponents and Fethi Bey realized this and therefore tried to depict the rebellion as a regional uprising, certainly one that was counterrevolutionary. But the fact that the rebellion was Kurdish and nationalist severely limited any objections that they could make. More strenuous opposition would have produced the charge that they were traitors. As it was, the members of the Progressive Republican party were charged with complicity in the rebellion, altough such complicity was never proven. (my note - how [Turkish] history repeats itself under different guises..."so easy it is to be called a traitor in Kemalist Turkey" - there is my rap folks...)
The Sheikh Said rebellion gave the Kemalist government a certain justification for categorizing serious opposition as being in league with the Kurds, having sympathy for Kurdish nationalism, or favoring ideologies that would strengthen Kurdish nationalism, or Kurdish ethnic power.
The rebellion proved an opportunity to reduce the opposition to Kemalist modernization through the closing on 30 November 1925 of all tarikats (lodges), zaviyes (cells), and turbes (religious tombs). Religious titles were abolished and wearing of clerical garb was prohibited. The Dress Law was passed on 25 November 1926, aimed against religious centers of opposition for the purpose of enhancing its legitimacy against the Kemalists. What is important to note here is that these laws were passed in an atmosphere of political consciousness on the part of Turkish public that their implementation and acceptance would reduce the threat of Kurdish nationalism.
The Sheikh Said rebellion created and provided a means whereby most serious subsequent opposition to government policies or comprehensive disagreement with its progress laid open the possibility that the disaffected groups would be labeled as traitors. In the aftermath of the rebellion, it was relatively easy to color opposition forces with a hostile ethnic tinge. The vehicles created and the laws passed for the suppression of the rebellion and the symbols of opposition to the Kemalist program that it generated meant that the consolidation of the Turkish state and of Turkish nationalism were greatly expedited by the suppression and perceived threat of Kurdish nationalism. The nationalist aspirations of ten percent of population had to be denied if the nationalist goals of the other ninety percent were to be achieved. It is in this sense that the Sheikh Said rebellion, its suppression, and its aftermath were more important than the purges of 1926, which simply eliminated the remaining opposition to the Kemalists' programs. Most of those who were purged or sentenced to death agreed or would have agreed with the position subsequently adopted by the Turkish government vis-a-vis the Kurds and their nationalism.
The suppression of the Sheikh Said rebellion contributed to the consolidation of the new Turkish republic, the evolution and domination of the Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Firkasi) and the one-party state it represented up to 1950, and the greater articulation of Turkish nationalism on which the party and the state were based. The creation of a one-party state conditioned the lack of serious discussion of policy alternatives, which in turn meant that there was a monodimensionality to the possible ideological solutions to the problems and challenges that the young republic would confront.
...the entire post-World War II period, when the military was in power in 1960-61, 1973, and from 1980 onward, follows a pattern shaped by the political and ideological consequences of the rebellion.
The military engagements against the Kurds far exceeded the number of external interventions and engagements. By the 1980s, Turkey's military actions against the Kurds had assumed external as well as internal proportions. In 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, Turkish forces entered Iraq in order to suppress and contain Kurdish nationalist and guerilla groups. The struggle against Kurdish nationalism, in which certain patterns of policies were implemented and against which certain nationalist, ideological, and psychological premises and attitudes were initially adopted in 1925, continued to play an important role in Turkey's policy decisions more than fifty years after the Sheikh Said rebellion.