A Modern History of the Kurds

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Writing this book proved a greater undertaking than I had anticipated at the outset, largely because I found myself drawn into detailed research particularly of the archival material available in the Public Record Office. As a consequence I owe a considerable debt to a number of institutions and their staff: the Public Record Office, the India Office Library, the British Library, the London Library, l'Institut Kurde, the Kurdish Students Aid Committee, the Kurdish Information Centre, the Kurdish Advice Centre, the Kurdish Cultural Centre, the Kurdish Workers' Association, the School of Oriental and African Studies, Chatham House Press Library and my local reference library in Richmond. The staff of all these archives, libraries and centres have been both efficient and helpful, and I am most grateful.

As any researcher knows, nothing can substitute for the advice and informa-tion provided by others who have laboured in the same or neighbouring fields. Both in Kurdistan and in Europe I have met with nothing but helpfulness from those who had some experience or knowledge of the Kurdish question. These include many who corrected wild misconceptions or errors of fact, some who did translation work for me, and others who went out of their way to explain or elucidate points which had left me perplexed.

I should apologize for omissions from my list of thanks, the result of forgetful-ness or, in the case of Turkey, a deliberate decision not to cite any names in case it should incur state retribution. There are a few names I may cite safely in the Turkish case because they have already been penalized: Musa Anter and Meded Serhat, both of whom were assassinated as a result of their views in September 1992 and November 1994 respectively; Serhat Bucak and Ismet Imset, whose lives were both threatened by the state in 1993 and 1994 respectively and who sought asylum in Britain; Ismail Besikci, a Turkish professor of anthropology whose steadfast and courageous insistence on Kurdish identity and rights has led him back to yet another heavy prison sentence, and Hatib Dicle, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and in December 1994 sentenced to 15 years' imprison¬ment for exercising the right and — in a democracy — duty of free speech.
 
Those I can name are Sami Abd al Rahman, Ibrahim Ahmad, Dlaweh Alaaldin, Hama Ali, Nawshirwan Mustafa Amin, Sarbast Aram, Sedat Aybar, Maia Balcioglu-Brisley, Siyamand Banna, Karim Khan Baradusti, Masud Barzani, Muhammad Ismail Bilbas, Hamit Bozarslan, Martin van Bruinessen, Sami Coskun, Kemal Davoudi, Mehmet Ali Dikerdem, Shirwan Dizai, Rebwar Fatah, Hassan Ghazi, Tom Hardie-Forsyth, Salah al Din Hafidh, Muhammad Hawar, Mustafa Hijri, Jane Howard, Ziba Mir Hosseini, Shaikh Izz al Din Husayni, Kamran Karadaghi, Fouad Masoum, Murad Metin, Djilshad Miran, Abd Allah Mohtadi, Adnan Mufti, Adil Murad, Hoshmand Othman, Mahmud Othman, Siyamand Othman, Andrew Penny, Latif Rashid, Khalil and Haydar Rashidian, Kawa and Bayan Rezannezada, Mansur Sajjadi, Barham Salih, Estella Schmidt, David Shankland, Sami Shoresh, Robert Soeterek, Jawhar Surchi, Umar Surchi, Jalal Talabani, Abbas Vali, Late Yalcin-Heckmann and Hoshyar Zibari. Of these I owe a very special debt to Adnan Mufti, who took me under his wing in Iraqi Kurdistan and introduced me to people he shrewdly realized would answer questions that were still forming in my mind; to his friend Adil Murad who spent hours explaining in great detail particular events over the past two decades in Iraqi Kurdistan; to Hassan Ghazi who spent much time digging out informa¬tion on events in Iranian Kurdistan and correcting many misunderstandings; and Maia Balcioglu-Brisley and Estella Schmidt who arranged a wide range of contacts and hospitality on my first visit to Turkey. Needless to say, I remain responsible for any errors of judgement or fact.

I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the Authors' Foundation which provided a generous grant that enabled me to visit Kurdistan to talk with a wide variety of people. All I can say is that their money was extremely well spent.

I owe special thanks to Anna Enayat, my editor, who as ever read the text with a critical and informed eye, questioning things that either did not make sense or which contradicted her own considerable knowledge of the region, and to Anne Rodford who prepared the text for publication quickly and very efficiently.

Finally, my greatest thanks must be to my family — my sons, Angus and William, who had to live with my fixation, — and above all to my wife Elizabeth. She maintained me for four years in every sense, earning enough for us to live on and raising my spirits when they were low. To her, true love and helpmeet, I offer this book with all my love and thanks.

David McDowall
Richmond, April 1995

The Kurds number at least 25 million, yet there is only modest information available about them. There is probably a larger literature available on Kuwait, a state with barely half a million citizens. The reason is obvious: the Kurds inhabit a marginal zone between the power centres of the Mesopotamian plain and the Iranian and Anatolian plateaux. They remain marginalized geographically, politically, and economically.

However, during the past decade the Kurds have steadily grown in impor-tance. It is difficult to imagine they will sink again into the relative obscurity of the middle years of this century. Today they have emerged, not quite yet as a coherent nation, nevertheless as an ethnic community that can no longer be ignored. For that reason alone, they deserve to be much better understood.

Because so little has been written about Kurdish history, I have written in greater detail than would be necessary were the context better known. Even so, it must be tentative since English, French and Arabic provide only a limited basis. A working knowledge of Persian, Turkish and Russian, let alone Kurdish, is also needed to fill out the picture.

I have devoted considerable space to the years 1918-25. The reason is simple: during this narrow period the Kurds lost their one great opportunity for state-hood, and found themselves apportioned as minorities in the new state system that replaced the Ottoman and Qajar empires. It was a defining moment for the Kurdish people. Understanding how and why the contestants behaved then is critical for understanding later developments.

I have also concentrated particularly on the Kurdish struggle in Turkey and Iraq, since it is in these two countries that Kurds constitute 20 per cent or more of the population and the broad implication of this should be self-evident. This is also where Kurds have been most active. I have in addition tried to cover the Kurdish story in western Iran, since here they number over five million and constitute approximately t0 per cent of Iran's population, although the national movement has achieved much less than in Iraq or Turkey. My canvass was already so broad that I baulked at discussing the Kurdish question in either Syria or the former Soviet Union.

I regret I have found it almost impossible to achieve consistency in nomen¬clature and transliteration. Latinized script in Turkey changed conventional European spellings of place and proper names. In Turkey, Iran and Iraq, names have been changed, or conventional spellings altered over the years. Further¬more, Kurdish spelling itself is often unrecognizable except to Kurds, for example Wirmi (for Urumiya), and Shnu (for Ushnaviya). In other cases it changed for one reason or another, for example Sawj Bulaq became Mahabad, Sinna became Sanandaj and Julamirk became Hakkari. Consequently I have tried to use the name appropriate to the era and I hope that by cross-referencing the index, readers will not encounter any difficulty. Regarding transliteration, the simplest solution seemed to be to adopt simplified standard Arabic transliterations wherever possible, except for post-1923 Turkey. For example, Ghazi and Ghassemlou, two important Iranian names, appear as Qazi and Qasimlu.

The term Kurdistan is controversial. I use it simply to indicate the region where the majority of people are Kurds, not to peddle any particular political views. In the case of Turkey, therefore, it means the same as the euphemistic `East' or `South East', in the case of Iran it implies more than the province of Kurdistan (except where that is clearly the sense) to include Kurdish parts of West Azarbaijan and Kirmanshah, and in Iraq it means more than the autono¬mous region.

Finally, I have resisted the temptation to provide a reference for every little- known fact, since this would have made the book unacceptably long. Instead, I have tried to confine endnotes to points of elucidation or references to a quotation. My primary sources have been twofold. A substantial number of people, almost entirely Kurds, have been very generous with their time and understanding to explain aspects of their history or the contemporary situation; their contribution has been invaluable. My other primary source has been the archives of the Public Record Office; that has both advantages and disadvantages. British diplomats reported regularly on events in different parts of Kurdistan from the 1870s through to 1945. These reports are probably the single most important historical archive on Kurdistan and as such are invaluable. But they must be treated with caution. This is not because the motives of an imperial power are suspect; that may be true, but diplomats still sought to understand and report faithfully what was taking place. The reason is that British diplomats saw events in Kurdistan through the prism of British interests. There must have been any number of things happening in Kurdistan which did not attract their attention. Of these perhaps the most important were the processes of economic and social change. I cannot help feeling that if these were better documented and understood, many of the events we do know about in Kurdistan would undergo re-evaluation