Constructions of ethnic identity in the late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey: The Kurds and their Others

Abstract

The Kurds have suffered much violent oppression in Republican Turkey, but by and large this violence was exercised by the state, in the name of its civilizing mission. Ethnocide, the effort to eliminate Kurdish ethnic identity, was a constant element in Turkey’s policies towards the Kurds from the late 1920s on, and on at least one occasion (Dersim 1937-38) these policies were followed through to the ultimate consequence of genocide. Although the view of world history as a permanent struggle between competing nations enjoys popularity in right-wing nationalist circles in Turkey, this violence cannot be understood as part of such a struggle between the Turkish and Kurdish ethnies; it was part of the modernizing project carried out by Turkey’s self-appointed Kemalist elite.