As Strong as the Mountains
Robert L. Brenneman
Waveland Press
Robert Brenneman provides a razor-sharp awareness of the Kurds’ roots in the Middle East as well as their massive urban migration and the resulting cultural upheaval. Based on long-term research, this richly layered ethnography takes readers on a journey from the mountains of Ararat, the alleged resting place of Noah’s Ark, to urban environments in a megalopolis like Istanbul, Turkey. Brenneman, who lived among the Kurds in both Iraq and Turkey, conducted fieldwork in such places as refugee camps, destroyed mountain villages, and tea gardens in Istanbul. He examines core and changing aspects of Kurdish culture, including human rights, ethnic identity, women’s roles, family and community, religious practices, and the transition from oral tradition to literacy.
In addition to providing insight into the worldview of the Kurdish people from antiquities to current events, the author points to key lessons that can be drawn from the ongoing dilemmas they face.
Robert L. Brenneman (Ph.D. University of Minnesota) lived with his family in the Middle East, particularly among the Kurds in 1983-1996 and continues to travel to the region every year. He teaches at North Central University in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Contents
Acknowledgements / vii
Introduction: Mountain Scenario / 1
1 Discovering the Kurds / 5
My Journey with the Kurds / 7
Understanding Culture / 11
Methodology of the Research / 11
Difficulties in Doing Research among the Kurds / 14
2 History and Ethnic Identity / 17
The Suppression of Kurdish History / 17
Ancient History until the Ottoman Empire / 18
The Islamization of the Kurds / 22
Kurdish Identity during the Ottoman Empire / 23
The Transition from Empire to Nation-State / 25
The Legacy of Ataturk / 27
The Role of Turgut Ozal / 29
The Role of the PKK / 29
Developments in Iraq since the Treaty of Sevres / 31
The U.S. Betrayal of Mustafa Barzani / 33
The First Gulf War and Its Aftermath / 35
Internal Factions among the Kurds / 37
3 Language and Ethnic Identity / 41
The Development of Kurdish in Iraqi Kurdistan / 42
Developments in Turkey / 43
How Kurdish Are Turkish Kurds? / 46
4 From Storytelling to Television: The Decline of Oral Tradition / 51
Indigenous Knowledge and Oral Tradition / 51
Genres of Oral Tradition / 52
Myths, Legends, and Folktales / 53
Proverbs / 55
Functions of Oral Tradition / 59
Effects of Literacy on the Oral Transmission of Culture / 62
Television and Oral Tradition / 64
5 Relationships, Roles, and Traditions Family and Enculturating the Next Generation / 68
Sex and Marriage / 71
Gender Issues / 77
Tribal Structure and Leadership / 84
6 Core Values and Religious Rituals / 91
The Hospitality-Generosity Syndrome / 92
The Honor-Dignity Syndrome / 94
The Courage-Bravery Syndrome / 101
Other Important Values / 102
Attitudes toward Work / 105
Religious Values and Rituals / 106
7 Rapid Urbanization and Culture Change / 111
Displaced Kurds / 112
Imagined Communities in Urban Regions / 116
Urbanization and Traditional Values / 117
Asabiyya / 118
Urbanization and Anomie / 119
Conclusion / 120
Appendix A: Worldwide Population of the Kurdish People / 125
Appendix B: Glossary of Foreign Words / 127
Appendix C: Languages and Dialects among the Kurds / 131
Bibliography / 133
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is impossible to name everyone who has contributed to this book. I do want to thank several people, however, who have been particularly vital in the process.
Thanks to my deceased father, Emanuel, my mother, Florence, my sister, Elaine, and her husband, Dr. Leroy Coleman, for their constant encouragement and support.
Special thanks goes to my wife of 31 years, Sherry, and our children Aaron, Joshua, and Leyla for the years of memories we share by having lived for 14 years in the Middle East. We have had countless wonderful memories living among the Kurds. Even those memories that did not seem so pleasant at the time are a source of nostalgia and humor when we reminisce about old times. Aaron, a special thanks for your meticulous proofreading of this text.
Thanks to my colleagues at North Central University, especially Drs. Nan Muhovich and Buzz Brookman in the Department of Intercultural Studies and Languages, for being incredibly supportive friends and for being such a joy with whom to work.
Thanks to two very special teachers of the “Greatest Generation” who have been like fathers to me: Professor Glen Fischer, who helped me find the way of faith and has prayed daily for me for 35 years, and Rev. Carl Malz, who lovingly mentored me. Words cannot express my gratitude.
This book would never have come about without the support of Dr. Jane Plihal at the University of Minnesota. As my advisor for six years while doing my Ph. D. dissertation, at which time much of the research for this book was conducted, Jane went far beyond the call of duty in encouraging me to complete the task and was always ready to grant me her time and help. Three other professors at the University of Minnesota deserve special thanks—Drs. Jerry McClellan, Ruth Thomas, and Gerald Fry.
Thank you for inspiring me in your classes and for being on my dissertation committee. A special thank you goes to Gerald Fry, who suggested several of the books that have been so vital in the overall framework of this book.
Thanks to several North Central University students who took time to read the manuscript and offer suggestions that I believe have contributed to making the book a more compelling and enjoyable read: Sean M. Adams, Megan Barnes, Nina Eagin, Catherine Klug, Bradly Linger, Katie Lucio, Sarah Roufs, Laura Stone, and Zachary Zavala.
Thanks to the wonderful humanitarian organization Shelter for Life (formerly Shelter Now International) that provided many of the pictures in this book. It was a privilege to work with this organization for four years in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Thank you to the hundreds of Kurdish people in Turkey, Northern Iraq, and the diaspora, who have accepted me into their culture and lifeworld and have demonstrated their hospitality and generosity to me. I wish I could gather you all together and do the Kurdish dawet dance with you, to celebrate the completion of this book, which I hope is an accurate representation of a truly remarkable people.
A special thanks to Mehmet Y. who has been my travel companion and close friend for over 15 years. Your insight has been invaluable to me.
Also, special thanks go to Tom Curtin, Jeni Ogilvie, and Diane Evans, the Waveland Press editorial team, who painstakingly edited As Strong as the Mountains. You have been great to work with in making this a much better book.
Finally, I want to give all glory to God for his constant help throughout the years it took to complete this project. Truly his peace is beyond understanding and his grace is sufficient in all things.
As Strong as the Mountains
Introduction
It is a cold winter night high up in the mountains of Kurdistan. The snow is piled high on the straw roof of the two-room stone house. A wood-burning stove sits in the middle of the room surrounded by blankets and thin mattresses. Sitting close to the stove to stay warm is a family of thirteen, ranging from a newborn baby to two very elderly people who occupy the most prominent place in the center of the circle. Four generations are represented around the fire. The oldest male of the family, or the Patriarch, is the chief storyteller, the source of the village’s sacred history. His aging wife sits near him, helping the younger mothers with their small children. A middle-aged man, who is the father of eight children and who recently became a grandfather when his oldest son married and brought his new bride into the home a year ago, reaches his hands toward the stove. His seven other children, four boys and three girls, ranging in age from three to sixteen, mingle around the fire. The older girls are helping to serve tea and kalaches (a Kurdish sweet). The boys throw some more wood on the fire as they play with the younger children.
As the wind blows through the cracks in the stone, everyone is very thankful for a warm fire and hot tea. The Patriarch looks over his offspring as he drinks his tea and nibbles at his kalache with his rotted teeth. His son and his family are a source of great pride for the Patriarch. He begins to think of their life together as father and son. The old man has been a good Kurd. He has had ten children, including five boys and two girls who are still alive, and now his oldest son has a grandson. The Patriarch has a reputation for honor in the village and in the surrounding areas. Two of his sons live nearby with their families, raising animals and farming as have the generations before them. Two of his sons and their families are living in the closest city, a one-hour walk down the mountain plus a two-hour car ride away. The last of his sons, who was accepted as a refugee in Canada, is the only one of the sons who got a university education, resulting in his getting a job with a humanitarian organization. His daughters married good men, but both of them are now living in cities away from Kurdistan.
The old man has fought for the Kurdish people. He looks at his son, whom he taught to hunt and shepherd, and remembers how he carried him across the mountains as they escaped from the government troops who were destroying villages and killing their kinfolk. Years later, they had to escape again, but this time his son was able to walk and climb the mountains by himself, carrying a weapon in one hand and his firstborn child in the other.
The Patriarch wonders whether his descendants will be able to stay in the village where his ancestors settled ages ago, or if they will have to escape again by fleeing across snowy mountain ranges. The mountains have proven to be the only dependable refuge for the Kurds—to be trustworthy friends and to offer their strength when the savage armies of oppressors have invaded time and time again while the rest of the world seemed not to care. Yet the mountains have demanded their due, and many a Kurdish child has frozen on those mountains of refuge, unable to survive the march to the valleys on the other side.
Will his descendants live in tents in refugee camps in less than friendly neighboring countries, as he was forced to? Will they give up on life in the mountains and move to the cities outside of Kurdistan, abandoning the traditional life that the Kurds have known for centuries? He still remembers the pain of burying three of his children who did not make it, two dying on the Kurdish family living in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan mountains during one of the escapes and the other dying in a refugee tent city, due to the disease-ridden unsanitary conditions. Yet, the Patriarch knows he was more fortunate than many others.
At least he had seven children who did survive.
The Patriarch wonders about the future of his people. Will the Western nations sell them out again to the dictators who reign over the lands the Kurds call Kurdistan? Will the young people who are migrating to the cities outside of Kurdistan remember their history and heritage, or will they lose it and deny their Kurdishness in order to fit in better with the children of their oppressors? It seems that the Kurds are as far away as ever from any hope of having their own country ruled by their own people. Yet, the Patriarch is thankful. The Kurds have outlasted many oppressive regimes over the years and will continue to do so. Kurdistan may not be a place on the maps of the world, but it is a real place in the hearts of the people. And no matter what they face, more Kurds are being born every day.
The Patriarch quiets the children. He takes a long sip of tea and begins to tell stories—the stories that he heard from his father, who heard them from his father, who heard them from his father…
Key Terms
I have included a glossary of Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic words mentioned in this text in appendix B, but it is essential to understand the following words and concepts before reading further.
Kurdistan does not appear on any official political maps. It designates the region located within the four major nation-states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in which the majority of the people are Kurdish. There are millions of Kurds living outside of Kurdistan, however. In fact, Istanbul, Turkey, has more Kurds than any other city in the world, although it is far from the traditional Kurdish homeland.
Turkish Kurdistan, Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Syrian Kurdistan refers to the predominately Kurdish areas within the larger nation states. However, only in Iraq is Kurdistan a term that is used freely to describe the region where the Kurds are the majority.
Kurdish diaspora is a term used to refer to the almost two million Kurdish people who migrated to other countries from the four major nations where Kurds have traditionally lived. In many instances, that same number of Kurds, willingly or not, has migrated within their respective nation-state outside of the predominately-Kurdish areas. Perhaps in-migration or internal diaspora are better terms to use when referring to these people.
Kurdayati is a term I use to convey a sense of Kurdish ethnic consciousness. After interviewing many people about what this word means, I think it can be summarized as the sense of cultural distinctiveness that makes the Kurds different from their Turkish, Persian, and Arab neighbors. Some writers have used ethnonationalism as an English equivalent to Kurdayati. In this book, I prefer to use an indigenous Kurdish word to refer to the overall subjective sense of what it means to be a Kurd. I have especially focused on three aspects of Kurdayati: a distinct ethnic identity, the maintenance and transmission of Kurdish oral tradition and folklore included in indigenous knowledge, and elements of a rapidly changing Kurdish culture.
Kurdish refers to the language of the Kurds (in addition to being an adjective for things pertaining to the Kurds). Probably language more than any other factor has contributed to the Kurdish sense of distinctiveness. Because of the lack of opportunity to develop a standardized Kurdish language, there are some major dialects and many minor ones (see appendix C). I describe the battle for the Kurds to maintain their language in more detail in chapter three.
Question for Discussion
- The book begins with a mountain scenario as the Patriarch, with four generations of his family surrounding him, begins to tell stories that he heard from his father. Do you know of any stories, or some type of oral tradition (like praying before eating a meal), that have been passed down in your family from generation to generation?
Chapter 1
Discovering the Kurds
In 1991, when the armies of Saddam Hussein drove almost two million Kurds to seek refuge in the mountains of Iran and Turkey, continuous television coverage exposed a people about whom millions around the world had previously been ignorant.
The Kurds resurfaced in the news in 2003 when Saddam’s 1988 chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds (which had received little attention at the time) became part of the justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent war there. In both cases, the Kurds were suddenly thrust upon the world stage, no longer living, suffering, and dying with little of the world's attention upon them.
The Kurdish people are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own homeland, numbering between 30 and 40 million people divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria (see appendix A for population estimates in each country). Thus, the Kurds are a transnational people in that, like the Hmong, Berber, Roma, Tuareg, Fulani, and many other ethnic groups, they can be found in large numbers in multiple nation-states. Being without a homeland has had a significant psychological impact upon the Kurds. Kurds say that the Arabs, Turks, and Persians (Iranians) agree on only one thing: under no condition must there ever be an independent Kurdistan administered by Kurds.
Throughout their history, the Kurds have experienced many types of oppression: forced assimilation, suppression and denial of their own ethnic identity, the outlawing of their language and other forms of cultural expression, and outright genocide. “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains” is the most quoted statement by Kurds about their collective experience. It reminds them that time after time, they have been forced to flee to the mountains for refuge, the only “friend” that has proven trustworthy.
The Kurds of Northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) are, for the most part, the United States’ staunch allies; they are eternally grateful to the United States for saving them from Saddam Hussein’s brutality, which resulted in the massacre of Kurds, the destruction of their of villages, and miserable living conditions …
Robert L. Brenneman
As Strong as the Mountains
Waveland Press
Waveland Press, Inc.
As Strong as the Mountains
a Kurdish cultural journey
Robert L. Brenneman
North Central University
Waveland Press, Inc.
Long Grove, Illinois
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10-digit ISBN 1-57766-477-9
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