Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:32:20.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

20 - Religion and Politics in Turkey’s Kurdistan from the Beginning of the Republic

from Part IV - Religion and Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2021

By
Mehmet Kurt
Edited by
Hamit Bozarslan ,
Cengiz Gunes  and
Veli Yadirgi
Hamit Bozarslan
Affiliation:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Cengiz Gunes
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
Veli Yadirgi
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Get access

Summary

“This chapter provides an overview of sociopolitical history of religion and politics in the transformation of the Kurdish question in modern Turkey. It examines this transformation in five distinctive periods, spanning from the 1925 Sheikh Said Rebellion to the present, and evaluates both the implementation of state religious policy in the Kurdish region and the counter-strategies adopted by Kurdish actors to challenge the state’s repressive practices. It argues how, throughout this period, the religious policy was a significant dimension of the Turkish state’s attempts to break community networks organized around religious and traditional actors and settings. On the other hand, focusing on the influence of religious affiliations and solidarities in the Kurdish region, it brings attention to the changing role of Kurdish Islamic structures and identities in the political sphere, from a platform of resistance in the early republican period to a medium of compliance after the transition to the multi-party system and a tool of mobilization, repression and resistance, in the last decades. Thus, the chapter demonstrates that there is not a fixed status of religious politics in the context of the Kurdish question as religion could serve both as a medium of compliance or a mobilizing force of Kurdish resistance.”

Keywords

religion and political theologyIslamismTurkish nationalism and nation-stateKurdistan questionKurdish uprisingsSheikh SaidKurdish madrasasSufis and imamsHizbullahpolitical violence
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Kurds , pp. 506 - 532
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmad, F. (1988). Islamic reassertion in Turkey. Third World Quarterly, 10 (2), 750–69.Google Scholar
Anter, M. (2011). Hatıralarım. Istanbul: Aram Yayınları.Google Scholar
Aras, R. (2018), Naqshbandi Sufis and their conception of place, time and fear on the Turkish–Syrian border and borderland. Middle Eastern Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2018.1508456.Google Scholar
Aslan, S. (2011). Everyday forms of state power and the Kurds in the early Turkish republic. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 43 (1), 75–93.Google Scholar
Atacan, F. (2001). A Kurdish Islamist group in modern Turkey: Shifting identities. Middle Eastern Studies, 37 (3), 111–44.Google Scholar
Azak, U. (2010). Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Kemalism, Religion and the Nation State. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Bagasi, I. (n.d.). Kendi Dilinden Hizbullah ve Mücadele Tarihinden Kesitler.Google Scholar
Barkey, H. and Fuller, G. (1997). Turkey’s Kurdish question: Critical turning points and missed opportunities. Middle East Journal, 51 (1), 59–79.Google Scholar
Bayrak, M. (1999). Kürt Sorunu ve Demokratik Çözüm. Wuppertal: Öz-Ge Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bayrak, M. (2010). Dersim – Koçgiri: Te’dib, Tenkil, Taqtil, Tehcir, Temsil, Temdin, Tasfiye. Ankara: Öz-Ge Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bayrak, M. (2014). Kürtler ve Ulusal-Demokratik Mücadeleleri: Gizli Belgeler, Araştırmalar, Notlar, Ankara: Öz-Ge YayınlarıGoogle Scholar
Bedirxan, C. A. (2010). Bir Kürt Aydınından Mustafa Kemal’e Mektup. Istanbul: Doz Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bedirxan, C. A. (2014). Gazinda Xencera Min. Istanbul: Avesta Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bedirxan, C. A. and Lescot, R. (2009). Kürtçe Gramer. Istanbul: Avesta Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bozarslan, H. (2008). Kurds and the Turkish state. In Kasaba, R. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey (Vol. 4, pp. 333–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Çiçek, H. (2009). Şark Medreselerinin Serencamı. Istanbul: Beyan Yayınları.Google Scholar
Çiçek, C. (2013). The pro-Islamic challenge for the Kurdish movement. Dialectical Anthropology, 37 (1), 159–63.Google Scholar
Çiçek, C. (2017). The Kurds of Turkey: National, Religious and Economic Identities. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Global Security (1999). ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)’. www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1999/5–050299.html.Google Scholar
Goner, O. (2017). Turkish National Identity and Its Outsiders: Memories of State Violence in Dersim. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Houston, C. (2001). Islam, Kurds and the Turkish Nation State. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Houston, C. (2019). The inadequate Islamic grappling with the Kurdish issue. In Gunter, M. M. (ed.), Routledge Handbook on the Kurds (pp. 169–77). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Karpat, K. (1972). Political developments in Turkey, 1950–70. Middle Eastern Studies, 8 (3), 349–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kieser, H. L. (2011), ‘Dersim massacre, 1937–1938’. Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/dersim-massacre-1937–1938.Google Scholar
Kumbuzoğlu, M. A. (2016). Şark İstiklal Mahkemesi Kararlar ve Mahkeme Zabıtları. Vols 2–5. Ankara: TBMM Basımevi.Google Scholar
Kurt, M. (2017). Kurdish Hizbullah in Turkey: Islamism, Violence and the State. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Kurt, M. (2019a). ‘My Muslim Kurdish brother’: Colonial rule and Islamist governmentality in the Kurdish region of Turkey. The Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 21 (3), 350–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurt, M. (2019b). A conversion to civil society? The incomplete reconfiguration of the Hizbullah movement in Turkey. The Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 22 (6), 762–76.Google Scholar
Mardin, Ş. (1973). Center–periphery relations: A key to Turkish politics? Daedalus, 102 (1), 169–90.Google Scholar
Massicard, E. (2009). ‘The repression of the Koçgiri Rebellion, 1920–1921’. Violence de masse et Résistance – Réseau de recherche. www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/repression-koa-giri-rebellion-1920–1921.Google Scholar
McDowall, D. (1996). A Modern History of the Kurds. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
M. N. Yekta (2011). ‘Kurdistan Islam Partisi Tüzüğü’. https://web.archive.org/web/20110714104816/http://www.mnyekta.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1040.Google Scholar
Olson, R. (1989). The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Olson, R. (2000). The Kurdish rebellions of Sheikh Said (1925), Mt. Ararat (1930), and Dersim (1937–8): Their impact on the development of the Turkish Air Force and on Kurdish and Turkish nationalism. Die Welt des Islams, 40 (1), 67–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özoğlu, H. (2001). “Nationalism” and Kurdish notables in the late Ottoman–early republican era. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 33 (3), 383–405.Google Scholar
Reed, H. A. (1954). Revival of Islam in secular Turkey. Middle East Journal, 8 (3), 267–82.Google Scholar
Reş, K. (1997). Celadet Bedirxan: Jiyan û Ramanên wî. Stockholm: Weşanên Jîna Nû.Google Scholar
Sakallio, ğlu, U. C. (1996). Parameters and strategies of Islam–state interaction in republican Turkey. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28 (2), 231–51.Google Scholar
Salt, J. (1995). Nationalism and the rise of Muslim sentiment in Turkey. Middle Eastern Studies, 31 (1), 13–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarıgil, Z. (2018). Ethnic Boundaries in Turkish Politics: The Secular Kurdish Movement and Islam. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Soleimani, K. (2016). Islam and Competing Nationalisms in the Middle East, 1876–1926. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tan, A. (2011). Turabidin’den Berriye’ye Aşiretler, Dinler, Diller, Kültürler. Istanbul: Nubihar Yayınları.Google Scholar
Tuğal, C. (2009). Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Türkmen, H. (2013). ‘Seyyid Kutup ve İslamcılık Karalamaları – Saptırmaları’. www.haksozhaber.net/seyyid-kutup-ve-islamcilik-karalamalari-saptirmalari-26963yy.htm.Google Scholar
Türkmen, G. (2018). Negotiating symbolic boundaries in conflict resolution: Religion and ethnicity in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. Qualitative Sociology, 41 (4), 569–91.Google Scholar
Uçar, F. (2016). Demokrat Parti Döneminde Kürt Sorunu: Gelişimi ve Etkileri. International Journal of Social Science, 43 (1), 175–200.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, M. (1992). Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, M. (2000). Mullas, Sufis and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society: Collected Articles. Istanbul: Isis Press.Google Scholar
van Bruinessen, M. (2016). Erken 21. Yüzyılda Kürt Kimlikleri ve Kürt Milliyetçilikleri. In Oztoprak, E. and Kaya, A. C. (eds.), 21. Yüzyılda Milliyetçilik. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.Google Scholar
White, J. B. (2002). Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics. Washington, DC: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
White, J. (2013). Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Yadırgı, V. (2017). The Political Economy of the Kurds in Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yalman, A. E. (1990). Yarının Türkiye’sine Seyahat. Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi.Google Scholar
Yavuz, M. H. (2003). Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yeğen, M. (1999). The Kurdish question in Turkish state discourse. Journal of Contemporary History, 34 (4), 555–68.Google Scholar
Yeni Șafak (2016). ‘Polis üç teröristi vurmadan Enfal Suresini okuyor’. www.yenisafak.com/video-galeri/haber/polis-uc-teroristi-vurmadan-enfal-suresini-okuyor-2075010.Google Scholar
Yıldırım, K. (2018). Kürt Medreseleri ve Alimleri. 3. Vols. Istanbul: Avesta Yayınları.Google Scholar
Yılmaz, M. H., Tutar, C. and Varol, M. (2011). Hizbullah Ana Davası: Savunmalar. Istanbul: Dua Yayıncılık.Google Scholar
Yüksel, M. (2009). A “revolutionary” Kurdish mullah from Turkey: Mehmed Emin Bozarslan and his intellectual evolution. The Muslim World, 99 (2), 356–80.Google Scholar
Zaza, N. (2000). Bir Kürt Olarak Yaşamım. Istanbul: Peri Yayınları.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×