Silence and Voice 1

Silence and Voice: Turkish Policies and Kurdish Resistance in the

mid-20th century, in The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, ed.
Mohammed Ahmed and Michael Gunter (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda
Press, 2007).

CHAPTER 4

Silence and Voice: Turkish Policies and

Kurdish Resistance in the Mid-20th Century
Nicole F. Watts

If the dominant indigenous elite is collaborationist and there is only

one external alien authority or group, the local counterelite will be in a
position exclusively to manipulate ethnic particularist symbols to chal-
lenge the leadership of its rivals and it will appeal to alternative social
classes in doing so.1

ocal and international observers surveying Turkeys poli-

L tics in the 1940s and 1950s would have found nearly no

explicit references to the fact that a significant portion of
the countrys population was of Kurdish ethnicity. Following the
suppression of the 1937-1938 Dersim uprising, the often-
rebellious Kurdish regions of Turkey seemed finally subdued,
with the few foreign travelers who managed to visit the area not-
ing in some wonderment that they could not detect even the
faintest breath of Kurdish nationalism.2 In keeping with the
state-sponsored emphasis on the Turkic roots of the Turkish Re-
public, the Turkish press confined discussion of the mostly
Kurdish southeastern part of the country to talk of banditry,

1 Paul R. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison

(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991), p. 29.
2 Anthony Parsons, Report of a Tour of South East Turkey, 29 Sep-
tember-19 October 1956, Foreign Office 371/130176, cited in David
McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I.B. Tauris,
1997), p. 402.

1
2 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

smuggling, and, at most, underdevelopment,3 without reference

to the non-Turkish ethnicity or cultures of the people who lived
there. For Kurdish historian smet Cheriff Vanly, it was a time
when the movement was at its weakest stage, making its
traverse du desert. 4
These decades of silence 5 ended in the 1960s. In dramatic
defiance of the Turkish states continued efforts to suppress col-
lective public assertions of Kurdish identity, Kurdish intellectu-
als began publishing Kurdish-language periodicals; politicians,
activists, editors, and journalists began publicly debating the sta-
tus of the countrys Kurdish communitiesexplicitly naming
them as such; and Kurdish activists founded new organizations
intended to articulate Kurdish grievances and further Kurdish
ethnonational interests. By the end of the decade, Kurdish activ-
ism was deemed a sufficient public menace to help rationalize
the Turkish militarys March 12, 1971 coup by memorandum.
This chapter examines the causes and nature of this transfor-
mation in Kurdish activism, focusing on the years between the
1960 and 1971 military coups in Turkey. Although often referred
to simply as a reawakening or rebirth of Kurdish nationalism
in Turkey,6 I suggest this period is better understood as one of
fundamental political reconstruction in which a young generation

3See, for instance, Cumhuriyet, 23 January 1958, p. 1, for a story on the

lack of pharmacies in many parts of the southeast.
4smet Cheriff Vanly, Survey of the National Question of Turkish Kur-
distan with Historical Background (Rome: Hevra, Organization of the
Revolutionary Kurds of Turkey in Europe, 1971), p. 39.
5 Hamit Bozarslan, Kurdish Historiographic Discourse in Turkey, in
Abbas Vali (ed.), Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism (Costa
Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2003), pp. 31-34.
6 Paul White, Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers? The
Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (London: Zed Books, 2000), p.
130; Kendal [Nezan], Kurdistan in Turkey in Gerard Chaliand, (ed.)
A People Without a Country: The Kurds & Kurdistan (New York: Ol-
ive Branch Press, 1993), p. 68; David McDowall, A Modern History of
the Kurds (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), p. 204; and Hamit Bozarslan,
Political Aspects of the Kurdish Problem in Contemporary Turkey, in
P.G. Kreyenbroek and S. Sperl (eds.), The Kurds: A Contemporary
Overview (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 96.

2
 Silence and Voice 3
of Kurdish counter elites seized control of the movement from
traditional Kurdish leaders, defined Kurds in radical new ways,
and engaged in new types of political activism.7 Whereas an ear-
lier generation of Kurdish activism was led primarily by reli-
gious and tribal elites who challenged the state through armed
uprisings,8 this one was led mostly by an educated intelligentsia
using legal, non-violent repertoires. Whereas an earlier genera-
tion of Kurdish leadership fought its battles with the Turkish
state in large part to maintain socio-economic status quo and de-
fend its regional autonomy, the new generation of Kurdish lead-
ership sought to revolutionize class relations, overturn the power
of the landed Kurdish elite, and create a socialist state. Finally,
whereas earlier generations of Kurdish rebels fought isolated
battles that had difficulty bridging tribal, religious, and linguistic
divides, this generation not only brought diverse Kurds together
in protest, but did so across ethnic boundaries in coordination
with the Turkish left.
Taking advantage of political opportunity structures,9 espe-
cially new schisms within the Turkish ruling elite, Kurdish activ-
ists forged an alliance with Turkish socialists and challenged
some of the basic principles of Republican rule through previ-
ously barricaded institutional channels. Specifically, Kurdish
activists were integrated into the political process and student

7 For one of the best analyses of this period, see Bozarslan (1992), pp.
96-104. Other brief but useful overviews include M. Hakan Yavuz,
Five Stages of the Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey,
Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 7 (Autumn 2001), pp. 9-11; Kemal
Kirici and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An
Example of a Trans-state Ethnic Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1977),
pp. 106-110; and Kendal, Kurdistan in Turkey, pp. 64-71.
8 Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism, 1880-1925
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989); and Nicole Watts, Relocat-
ing Dersim: Turkish State-Building and Kurdish Resistance, New Per-
spectives on Turkey, Vol. 23 (Fall 2000), pp. 5-30.
9 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Conten-
tious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
pp. 71-90.

3
4 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

organizational life10 through the Trkiye i Partisi (TP, or the

Worker Party of Turkey) and through left-wing student organiza-
tions. Kurds and Turks working in these organizations, as well as
through the socialist and liberal press, re-cast Kurds in the public
realm as an oppressed and revolutionary national population. In
an unprecedented effort to mobilize ordinary people in the
southeast outside religious or tribe-based activity, Kurdish activ-
ists in TP organized a series of protests in 1967 known as the
Eastern Meetings, which brought tens of thousands of Kurds into
open demonstrations of dissatisfaction with the cultural, econom-
ic, and political status quo.
More than simply a history review, attention to this decade of
Kurdish activism is important for several reasons. First, it offers
a corrective to the commonplace idea that the Kurdish movement
in Turkey really began in the early 1980s with the rise of the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its guerrilla attacks. In fact,
as this paper demonstrates, the ideological and social framework
of the contemporary movement was established during the
1960s. Second, this cycle of Kurdish contention draws attention
to the way that specifically national agendas can be formulated
across ethno-national boundaries, based on common socio-
economic critiques and shared views of the future. Sub-national
ethno-national movements, in other words, do not always devel-
op in coherent opposition to the dominant ethnic majority. Con-
versely, ethnic majorities do not always behave in a unitary (and
uniformly oppressive) fashion. Third, the inter-ethnic, legal, and
largely institutionalized nature of left-wing Kurdish activism
during the 1960s helps explain both the movements successes
and failures (keeping in mind the ambiguous nature of these
terms.)11 Although the secular, socialist ideological framework

10 It is important to note that Kurds themselves were well integrated

into the political process prior to this time; what was new was the inte-
gration of activists calling for the recognition of Kurds and solutions to
their political and economic grievances.
11 Defining the success and failure of movements is highly prob-
lematic. See Marco Giugni, How Social Movements Matter: Past Re-
search, Present Problems, Future Developments, in Marco Giugni,
Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly, (eds.) How Social Movements Mat-
ter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. xx-xxiv.

4
 Silence and Voice 5
used by Kurdish activists during this time helped bridge the lin-
guistic, religious, and tribal divisions that had obstructed the
spread of Kurdish nationalism in past decades, it also positioned
the movement at odds with much traditional Kurdish leadership
and robbed it of meaningful identities (i.e. Sufi tarikat, tribal
affiliations) that might have facilitated the broader mobilization
of ordinary Kurds in the southeast. The nature of Kurdish activ-
ism in the 1960s thus created a cycle of protest that was more
durable and influential than earlier ones but, paradoxically, may
have limited its ability to mobilize long-term mass support.
The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. The
next section briefly outlines Turkish state-Kurdish relations from
the 1940s to 1960; changes in Kurdish leadership during this era;
and the post-1960 political context in which a new phase of ac-
tivism began. The chapter will then examine three arenas in
which the Kurdish movement reconstituted through a partnership
between the Turkish and Kurdish left in the 1960s: party politics
within TP, the left-wing press, and the Eastern meetings that
took place in southeast Turkey in 1967. The final section of the
chapter explores the emergence of two Kurdish organizations
that represented alternative types of Kurdish activism in the
1960s.

From Silence to Voice: Changes in Turkish State-Kurdish

Relations in the Mid-century

Kurdish silence in the pre-1960s era can be explained as the

product of both official policies and the strategic choices made
by a Kurdish leadership faced with the commanding power of
the modern state. The states primary goals towards Turkeys
Kurdish communities throughout these years can be roughly
summarized as seeking to destroy Kurds as an independent pow-
er base, and to suppress collective, public expressions of Kurdish
identity in the name of Turkish national unity and security.
These goals were pursued through a combination of strategies I
classify into three main types: strategies of coercion (i.e. impris-
onment, execution, internal deportation, scorched earth tac-
tics), opportunity (i.e. employment for Turkish speakers, educa-
tion), and what can be termed social reconstruction, or an at-
tempt to re-map the actual and imagined ethnic landscape so as

5
6 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

to define Kurds out of existence and render their ethnicity not

only irrelevant, but literally inconceivable (i.e. changing place
names, official historiographies).
The application of these policies as actually played out on the
ground varied considerably, and was the result of multiple forces
and sometimes competing interests. Some policies contradicted
others, and many were only partially implemented or partially
successful. In particular, the interests of what is usually termed
the military-bureaucratic elite were challenged and sometimes
undermined by the advent of multi-party politics after 1946,
when party leaders began courting Kurdish local elites in an ef-
fort to gain votes. During this time the Turkish state shifted from
being one that governed with what Joel Migdal terms integrated
domination to one characterized by more dispersed domina-
tion, in which various parts of the state are pulled in different
directions.12 This should not encourage us to downplay how
hegemonic the state often appeared to many Kurds in the south-
east on the receiving end of its policies; indeed, the work of
policing, educating, documenting, and judging inhabitants of the
region worked quite effectively to manufacture the Turkish
nation-state as an almost transcendental entity, to borrow the
words of Tim Mitchell.13
After the late 1940s, Kurdish quiescence in the southeast was
largely maintained by Kurdish landed and tribal elites, who side-
stepped Kurdish nationalism in exchange for representation in
Ankara and government protection of the socio-economic struc-
tures that maintained their local influence.14 Allegiance to the

12 Joel S. Migdal, The State in Society, in Joel S. Migdal, Atul

Kohli, and Vivienne Shue (eds.), State Power and Social Forces: Dom-
ination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994), p. 9
13 Timothy Mitchell, Limits of the State, American Political Science
Review 85.1 (March 1991), p. 94.
14 McDowall, Modern History of the Kurds, p. 399; also alar Key-
der, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development
(London: Verso, 1987), pp. 157-158; and Hamit Bozarslan, Political
Crisis and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey, in Robert Olson (ed.), The
Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and

6
 Silence and Voice 7
center demanded a public disowning of Kurdish identity but
allowed Kurdish chieftains and landlords to use new political
mechanisms (such as mass voting) and technological innovations
(such as tractors) to maintain their power over rival Kurdish fam-
ilies and over villagers, who worked primarily as tenant farm-
ers.15

The Rise of a Kurdish Counter-elite

Shifting but nonetheless robust arrangements between Kurdish

landowners and Turkish officials were complicated and disrupt-
ed in the late 1950s, and especially after 1960, as a younger gen-
eration of Kurds began protesting political and economic condi-
tions in the southeast. The rise of this Kurdish counter-elite16
can be viewed in many ways as the predictable outcome of state
policies that co-opted or muted the voice of traditional Kurdish
religious and political leadership and provided new educational
and economic opportunities to younger Kurds. Expanding educa-
tional opportunities for eastern-born Kurds, especially at univer-
sities in Ankara and Istanbul, created a new Kurdish leadership
that formed the intellectual spearhead of Kurdish identity17
after 1960. In addition, the rise of this new generation was facili-
tated by important demographic changes. In the 1950s more than
a million people left the land for work in urban centers, and by
1960 Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara were growing by 10 percent a
year.18 Over time, this altered patterns of social relations
throughout the country and, in the southeast, undermined the
power of the aghas.

the Middle East (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996), pp.

141-142.
15 McDowall, Modern History of the Kurds, p. 399.
16 Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism, p. 29.
17McDowall, p. 403.
18 Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris,
1993), p. 237. See also Kemal Karpat, The Gecekonudu: Rural Migra-
tion and Urbanization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1976).

7
8 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

Kurdish author Musa Anter was a prominent representative of

this group, and his well-known story described in his memoirs is
outlined here briefly. Born in a village near Mardin to a relative-
ly modest landowning family, he went to boarding school in
Adana before arriving in Istanbul in 1941 as one of a group of
about 50 Kurdish students sent to school in western Turkey. The
students lived together in a dormitory in which class distinctions
were downplayed by common ethnic backgrounds and experi-
ences. While in university, Anter and a small group of friends
including (future) prominent Kurdish politicians such as Yusuf
Azizolu founded the Krtleri Kurtarma Cemiyeti (Rescue Soci-
ety of Kurds), which Anter says was neither a party nor an as-
sociation in todays sense of the word but more a secret and
civil committee.19 Although the group was known to almost no
one outside its small cadre of members, it functioned as an incu-
bator for future generations of Kurdish activists by establishing a
common set of Kurdish political symbols and reinforcing an eth-
nic bond between Kurds who ultimately chose quite different
paths of political action.20
State persecution of men such as Anter further encouraged
their rapid politicization. In December of 1959, 50 Kurdish stu-
dents, activists, and intellectuals were arrested and accused of
subversive activities after a gathering in which two dozen Kurds
protested anti-Kurdish statements made by a member of parlia-
ment.21 After one student died, leaving 49 of them, the remain-
der became known as the forty-niners and the event as the
49lar olay (49ers event). Anter, among those jailed, notes the

19Musa Anter, Hatralarm, Vol.1 (Istanbul: Yon Yaynclk, 1991), p.

58.
20Those in the dorm included Tark Ziya Ekinci, who later became
secretary-general of TP; Yusuf Azizolu, who became a deputy in the
Democrat Party; and Faik Bucak, who founded the Kurdistan Demo-
cratic Party of Turkey. See McDowall, Modern History of the Kurds, p.
403 and Mustafa Remzi Bucak, Bir Krt Aydnndan smet nnye
Mektup (Istanbul: Doz Yaynlar, 1992), p. 8.
21The arrests occurred after a series of events that brought attention to
burgeoning Kurdish activism: the gathering, a telegram sent to the par-
liamentarian, and a Kurdish poem Musa Anter published in the periodi-
cal leri Yurt.

8
 Silence and Voice 9
differences in the group between the rightists and the leftists but
goes on to describe how their jail-time experiences papered over
such distinctions.22 When the 49 were released after the 1960
military coup, they formed the core of a motivated and energetic
elite well positioned to take advantage of the political changes
that then ensued.

Increased Access, Repression and Facilitation: Turkish

State-Kurdish Relations in the 1960s

Social movement theorists have documented how cycles of pro-

test arise in part because of political opportunity structures that
provide new opportunities and incentives for political action.23
Kurdish activism in Turkey in the 1960s can be linked to several
such structures. The 1960 coup removing the Democrat Party
(DP) from power and the passage of the new 1961 constitution
led to further fractures within the ruling apparatus (an opportuni-
ty Sidney Tarrow categorizes as divided elites) and the formal
granting of new rights and freedoms that expanded the range of
permissible politics (increased access). The 1961 constitution,
modeled on the European Convention on Human Rights,24 in-
troduced proportional representation and a bill of civil rights,
permitting the organization of labor unions for the first time and
a substantially greater degree of political expression than in the
past. Universities and the mass media were given nearly full au-
tonomy. An independent constitutional court was created, and a
more independent judiciary helped protect the rights of individu-
als, including Kurdish and leftist activists, enabling them to con-
tinue their work throughout the decade. In addition, Kurdish ac-
tivists gained important new allies (influential allies) among
the left-wing Turkish intelligentsia and rising working class.

22 Anter, Hatralarm, pp. 168-169.

23 See e.g. Tarrow, Power in Movement; and Donatella Della Porta and
Mario Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell,
1999).
24Rona Aybay, The International Human Rights Instruments and The
Turkish Law, in M. Turgay Ergn, (ed.) Turkish Yearbook of Human
Rights (Ankara: Institute of Public Administration for Turkey and the
Middle East, 1979), pp. 20-21.

9
10 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

Outside the country as well, global and regional events such

as left-wing student movements and the 1958 overthrow of the
monarchy in Iraq encouraged a new phase of activism, if not by
offering material support for Kurdish activism then by helping
create an atmosphere in which it looked as if dramatic political
change was indeed possible. The return of Mustafa Barzani to
Iraq in 1958, the alliance (albeit short-lived) between new Iraqi
President Abdul Karim Qasim and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership,
and Barzanis subsequent rebellion all offered inspiration and
new models of state-Kurdish relations for Turkeys Kurdish
populations. Barzanis movement was publicized not only in the
press but through interpersonal, informal communication across
the porous Turkish-Iraqi border, through the intermixing of Iraqi
Kurdish students in Turkish universities during the late 1950s
and early 1960s, and through Iraqi Kurdish radio.25
Important changes notwithstanding, this decade should not be
viewed simply as a golden moment in Turkeys politics, bring-
ing as it did more extensive military involvement in government
and the application of new policies intended to circumscribe
Kurdish activism and cultural expression. The National Security
Council, which included many top-ranking military officials,
was founded in 1962 to advise the government on matters of
internal and external security, and a campaign against leftism
and Kurdism was maintained by military leaders, right-wing
political parties, and the new National Intelligence Organization
(MT). Throughout the decade, Kurdish activists were frequently
arrested, many spending years in jail. In 1961 eight men were
arrested in Bursa and accused of trying to form a communist
state of Kurdistan.26 In 1963, 23 Kurdish intellectuals were ar-
rested and accused of trying to found a Kurdish state.27 Among
them was Edip Karahan, a publisher and TP regional adminis-

25Hamit Bozarslan, Political Aspects of the Kurdish Problem, p. 97;

and Martin van Bruinessen, The Kurds in Turkey, MERIP Reports
(February 1984), p. 8.
26 New York Times, May 7, 1961, p. 36.
27 See Milliyet, December 18, 1963; Cumhuriyet, 29 June 1963, repro-
duced in Turan Feyizolu (ed.), Trkiyede Genlik Hareketleri Tarihi
(1960-1980), Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Belge Yaynlar, 1993), p. 160 and pp.
165-166.

10
 Silence and Voice 11
trator; he spent two years in jail between 1963 and 1965 and an-
other nine months in a Diyarbakr prison in 1967.28 In addition,
in early 1970 Turkish military units known as commandos began
clashing with Turkish and Kurdish leftists, and conducting oper-
ations in villages in the southeast.29
Other official policies during this time involved what Kerem
ktem has called the creation and dissemination of a hegemon-
ic historiography, and toponymical strategies of renaming.30
Encyclopedias and pseudo-academic publications of the 1960s
sought to demonstrate that Kurds were really Turks, using the
sciences of anthropology and linguistics to defend the idea that
Kurds did not exist as a distinct group.31 Officials renewed their
efforts to change Kurdish (and Armenian) regional and village
names into Turkish ones. Dozens of new boarding schools were
opened between 1960 and 1970, both (as Turkish officials would
argue) to provide better educational services to residents of the
southeast, but also (as Kurdish activists would complain) to as-
similate them into the Turkish cultural and linguistic main-
stream. Out of 70 new schools opened in this period, 60 of them
were in the east and southeast.32 While government censuses
until 1965 published figures of Kurdish-language speakers, such
documentation was halted in subsequent censuses, reinforcing

28 Edip Karahann Ansna: Bir Krt Devrimcisi (Istanbul: Komal

Yaynlar, 1977) (no author), p. 8.
29 Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mcadeleler Ansiklopedisi Vol. 7 (hereaf-
ter, STMA7) (Istanbul: letiim, 1988), p. 2131; and McDowall, Modern
History of the Kurds, p. 409; also see Devrimci Dou Kltr Ocaklar
Dava Dosyas (Ankara: Komal, 1995), pp. 211-222; and 511-512.
30 Kerem ktem, Incorporating the Time and Space of the Ethnic
Other: Nationalism and Space in Southeast Turkey in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries, Nations and Nationalism 10:4 (2004), pp.
559-578.
31 See e.g. M.S. Frat, Dou Illeri ve Varto Tarihi, 3rd ed. (Ankara:
Karde Matbaas, 1970. Orig. published 1945, 2nd edition 1961); and
Mehmet Tevfikolu, O, Trktr Krt Deil (Ankara: Karde Matbaas,
1963).
32 STMA7, p. 2116.

11
12 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

official positions that the countrys citizenry only consisted of

ethnic Turks.
Repression can either increase the costs of collective action
and thus take the sting out of movements, or constitute an op-
portunity that enflames activism. 33 State repression in the 1960s
tended towards the latter effect, interacting with the rise of Kurd-
ish activism to cultivate a sense of difference and communal per-
secution that helped override socio-economic and political dif-
ferences among young Kurdish intelligentsia and activists. Ra-
ther than convince them to abandon pro-Kurdish politics, state
efforts to suppress discussion of the Kurdish issue encouraged
Kurdish activists to exercise symbols of resistance and contribut-
ed to the formation of a sense of Kurdish national community.

Integrating Kurdish Activists into Institutional Politics: The

Workers Party of Turkey (TP)

Left-wing political organizations and the more independent press

of the early 1960s offered new institutional opportunities for
Kurdish activists to challenge the state and traditional Kurdish
leadership through legal, nonviolent means. This was the first
time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire that those who
advocated Kurdish cultural and political recognition would have
legal recourse to do so. In particular, Kurdish activist participa-
tion in the leftist movement positioned this younger generation
against the established socio-economic order of the southeast, in
opposition to Kurdish aghas (as a class, although not necessarily
as individuals), and reframed the movement in secular, class-
based terms. Kurdish activist involvement in organizations such
as TP also normalized a Kurdish rights agenda within a genera-
tion of Turkish leftists, laying the foundations for multiple coa-
litions of convenience and commitment34 in later decades.
Dominating the leftist movement was the Trkiye i Partisi
(TP), founded in 1961 by a dozen trade union leaders. Lawyer
Mehmet Ali Aybar, described by Murat Belge as one of the
very few leftists who grasped the real significance of the opening

33 Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 80

34 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd ed. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000), pp. 365-388.

12
 Silence and Voice 13

of the political system in 1950,35 became party chairman in

1962, transforming the party into an organization able to attract
both intellectual and working-class membership. The party pro-
moted a democratic socialist platform that called for peaceful
revolutionary change to a non-capitalist path of develop-
ment,36 the dismantling of what TP viewed as a feudal so-
cio-economic system, especially in the southeast, and an end to
external exploitation of Turkey and Turkish workers by the
West, particularly the United States. An internal socialist revo-
lution via elections could only be accomplished, TPs leaders
argued, if Turkeys urban working class and its rural villagers
worked together. Fifteen TP members were elected to the Turk-
ish Parliament in 1965the first socialist party to gain such rep-
resentation. Among these representatives was Kurdish intellectu-
al and activist Tark Ziya Ekinci. Prominent Kurdish TP mem-
bers included such names as Anter, Kemal Burkay, Naci Kutlay,
and Mehdi Zana, all of whom served in leadership roles.37 By
1969, a survey of TP membership based on an analysis of
12,695 membership cards showed that 12.57 percent of its mem-
bers were from the Southeast. Of these, 65 percent were either
peasants or lived in small towns, with the remaining 35 percent
in cities.38
TPs policies towards the Kurdish issue were the subject of
vigorous debate within the party. Anter, who joined TP in 1963,
writes:
There was always a difference of opinion between these
[Turkish socialist] friends and me. Of course, this differ-
ence was about the Kurdish problem. They would say on
this topic: just to be a leftist in Turkey brought a lot of

35 Murat Belge [writing as Ahmet Samim], The Tragedy of the Turk-

ish Left, New Left Review (March-April 1981), p. 67.
36 Cited in Igor P. Lipovsky, The Socialist Movement in Turkey, 1960-
1980 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), p. 14.
37Sadun Aren, TP Olay 1961-1971 (Istanbul: Cem Yaynevi, 1993),
pp. 261-271.
38 Cited in Trkkaya Atav, The Place of the Worker in Turkish So-
ciety and Politics, in The Turkish Yearbook of International Relations
1967, Vol. 8 (Ankara: Ankara University Press, 1970), pp. 138-139,
146. Also see Aren, TP Olay, p. 79.

13
14 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

trouble to oneself; if one adds the Kurdish problem to

this, it would be so difficult that nothing could be accom-
plished [bu iin altndan cklamyacak]. The main argu-
ment rested on the premise that, if someday a socialist
Turkey was successfully established, then Kurdish rights
would be extended. As for me, I defended the premise
that the Kurdish problem was Turkeys basic problem,
and that if this problem wasnt taken up at the outset, no
other problem could be solved, and further, that the dy-
namic Kurdish national potential could not be achieved. 39

Nonetheless, such arguments took place within a common dis-

cursive frame that rejected the official ethno-Turkish paradigm
and accepted Kurds as a distinct and aggrieved group. Many
Kurds joined the party not because they shared its socialist vision
but because it had a more progressive attitude towards the Kurd-
ish issue.40 Eventually a Kurdish group formed within TP
that included many of the fledgling Kurdish movements most
active intellectuals.41 These largely internal developments were
brought into public view in 1964, when TP published its party
program, which said, of the east and southeast:

Parallel to the regions economic backwardness is the

backwards social and cultural circumstances faced by our
citizens of this region. Particularly those of our citizens
who speak Kurdish and Arabic, and those from the Alevi
mezhep [denomination], encounter discrimination because
of these circumstances.42

Although these early statements used relatively cautious lan-

guage, linking what was commonly known as the Eastern Prob-
lem with a specifically non-economic cause constituted a direct
challenge to state officials, who had previously restricted any

39 Anter, Hatralarm, p. 214.

40 Ibid., pp. 214-217.
41 brahim Gl, personal interview, Ankara, July 15, 1998.
42 TP Party Program, 1964, pp. 110-111. The drafters of the program
were careful to assert in boldface that TP rejected every form of sepa-
ratism or regionalism and supported the countrys indivisible unity.

14
 Silence and Voice 15
discussion of the area to issues of development, and generally
persisted in denying that Kurds existed at all. TP also became
increasingly critical of the states policies towards Kurds
throughout the decade, passing a resolution at its Fourth Con-
gress in 1970 that stated conclusively that there was a Kurdish
people [halk] living in the eastern part of Turkey who were the
victims of repression, terror, and policies of assimilation.43
For TP to begin attracting villagers support, it needed Kurd-
ish activists from the southeast to serve important roles as inter-
mediaries between the party and voters in the region. Anter, a
TP candidate in Mardin in 1965, describes how the process of
disseminating the lefts message among ordinary Kurdish
townsmen took place:

It had been spread to the people in the past that the Worker Party of
Turkey was communist, a bad party. Upon seeing that I was a
representative of this party, the people were surprised on account of
my [Kurdish agha] family. I convinced the people to accept that the
way of the Worker Party was our way. Naturally, I would not speak
with my Mardin relatives, tribe and fellow countrymen by means of
a translator. I continuously gave all of my speeches in Kurdish.44

Handbills were also circulated. A sheet published in the eastern

Ar province in 1966 proclaimed the partys intention to work
on behalf of the people living in backward eastern Anatolia
and was addressed to Kurds, Lazes and Circassians, as well as
Turks. The sheet asserted further that it considered all minority
groups equal partners in Turkey, and that the party opposed dis-
crimination against such minorities.45

Redefining Kurds in the New Press

Discussion of Kurds and Kurdish politics in the Turkish press

prior to the 1960s occurred mostly at moments of Kurdish re-

43 Resolutions of TPs Fourth Congress, 1970, cited in Aren, TP

Olay, pp. 71-72.
44 Anter, Hatralarm, p. 217.
45 Cited in Jacob Landau, Radical Politics in Modern Turkey (E.J.
Brill, 1974), pp. 145-146.

15
16 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

volt.46 In state- and state-sponsored historiography and press

reports, Kurds tended to be equated with threat, backwardness,
pre-modernism, conservatism, and Islamic fanaticism.47 Such
imagery was complicated and challenged in the 1960s both
through the public pronouncements of parties like TP but also in
the new socialist and liberal press that blossomed at the begin-
ning of the decade. Here, images of Kurds as fanatical aggressors
were discarded in favor of depictions of Kurds as an oppressed,
potentially revolutionary force struggling against chauvinist-
nationalists. Such redefinitions of what it meant to be Kurdish
offered alternative historiographies to both Turkish nationalist
doctrine and earlier versions of Kurdish nationalism.48
Most analyses of the Kurdish issue during this decade were
framed as part of the countrys Dou Meselesi (Eastern Prob-
lem) or dou davas (the trial of the East). Prominent social-
ist journals such as Yn (Direction) and Forum tended to present
two main tropes on the topic: one of development and exploita-
tion, and one of Kurdish cultural rights. Yn was particularly
critical of the Kurdish aghas representation in the Parliament.
Although framed largely in socio-economic discourse, both jour-
nals included frank discussions of the linguistic and religious
differences of the Kurdish inhabitants of eastern Turkey. As one
writer noted:

[I]n the Middle East for a long time almost every nation
considered the Kurds their own. If you ask the Arabs,
the Kurds are Arab, even their coloring (renkleri) demon-
strates this. As for the Turks, they say the Kurds are Turks
who changed name. Because they stayed for years in the
mountains and hills, because of being on the same borders
as the Persians, their language changed. However, their
heroism (cengverlik) and the fact that the majority lived

46 See Cumhuriyets coverage of the Dersim uprising, June 16-18,

1937.
47 Encyclopedias from the 1950s offer some examples of this narrative.
See, for example, the entry on Kurds in Trkiye Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 3
(Ankara: n.p., 1956), pp. 512-513.
48 Bozarslan, Kurdish Historiographic Discourse in Turkey, pp. 34-
39.

16
 Silence and Voice 17
in Turkey shows that they are Turks. Unfortunately, how-
ever, 90 percent of the Kurds dont know Turkish!49

Several periodicals published by Kurdish activists in the early

1960s dedicated themselves primarily to the promotion of Kurd-
ish culture and coverage of the east, and played an important role
in beginning the more formal development of written Kurmanji
among Turkeys Kurdish communities. These included Dicle-
Frat, published by TP member Edip Karahan between October
of 1962 and May of 1963; Deng (Voice), edited by Yaar Kaya
and Medet Serhat, and Roja New (New Day), published by
Kaya and Musa Anter.50 In its first issue, published April 15,
1963, Deng (which presented itself as the Voice of the East or
Dounun Sesi) argued that with a free pen and exchange of
ideas among broad-minded intellectuals, positive steps could
be taken to begin to remove what they called the dark stain on
the honor of the Turkish state and people.51 Today it is a fact
that among our citizens are those who speak Kurdish as their
mother tongue, not only (those) in the East and Southeast but
(those) who have settled in Istanbul and Izmir. Out of respect for
the rights of these citizens, Deng will reserve a portion of its
publications for Kurdish.52 These journals explicit focus on
eastern and Kurdish affairs, along with their advancement of
Kurmanji, was revolutionary for the time and proved too much
for officials. Deng was shut down along with other pro-Kurdish
publications in mid-1963, when 23 Kurdish intellectuals were
arrested and charged with treason.
More open discussion of Kurdish rights took place outside the
socialist and Kurdish press, as well. Among the most important
was Bar Dnyas (World of Peace), a monthly journal pub-
lished by Ahmet Hamdi Baar, a former member of parliament
from the Democrat Party and an associate of Mustafa Kemal At-
atrk. Baar criticized both Turkeys socialists and right-wing
nationalists, whom he viewed as engaged in a fruitless life-

49 Yn, 21 February 1962, p. 11.

50 Anter, Hatralarm, pp. 182-186.
51 Ibid.
52 karken, Deng, 15 April 1963, p. 16 [continued from p. 1].

17
18 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

death struggle, and instead advocated an expansion of Kemalist

principles in order to further political democratization and devel-
opment. In his second issue Baar introduced the topic of the
Eastern Problem, arguing forcefully for both economic and cul-
tural development of the east.

Without a doubt, cultural development must be planned at the same

time [as economic development]. Why shouldnt we open schools
to teach their own languages to the youth of our homeland (vatan
ocuklarmza) and to the offspring of our siblings whose mother
tongue is Kurdish and dont know any language other than this?
Why shouldnt the regional university here conduct research on the
literature and philology of this language? Why shouldnt Kurdish
newspapers be published and books be printed?53

Cumulatively, although these periodicals did not have numer-

ically large audiences, they helped create new spaces for vigor-
ous intellectual debate about the status of Kurds, the causes of
their disagreeable circumstances, and what steps ought be taken
to improve their condition. They created a tenuous but vibrant
public sphere in which new images of Kurds were regularly
promulgated to Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals and artists, lit-
erate workers, and Turkish authorities. They helped articulate the
voice of a current and future generation of Kurdish resistance
and pro-Kurdish activism.

New Attempts to Mobilize the Masses: Dou Mitingleri

(Eastern Meetings)

A series of Eastern Meetings held in seven cities across the

southeast in the fall of 1967 represented Kurdish activists first
serious step to mobilize ordinary people in the region outside the
purview of electoral politics. In a sense, they constituted the first
mass public Kurdish protest since Dersim, catching the attention
of both sympathetic and hostile observers and bringing together
a broad array of activists, politicians, and ordinary people.

53 Dou Davamz: Dogunun Kalknmas Trkiyenin Kalknmas

Demektir, Bar Dnyas (May 1962), p. 13.

18
 Silence and Voice 19

Spearheaded by TPs regional offices in the southeast,54 the

meetings were held in Diyarbakr, Silvan, Siverek, Batman,
Tunceli, Ar, and Ankara, attracting from 3,000 to 10,000 peo-
ple per gathering. Analysts at the time emphasized that they were
primarily intended to protest economic inequities between Tur-
keys eastern and western regions, underdevelopment, and lack
of democracy.55 As two of the slogans attendees chanted put it:
Roads and factories to the west! Commandos and police sta-
tions to the east! and We dont want gendarmes; we want
teachers!56
But the meetings also constituted a Kurdish community-
building effort, introduced some western-born Kurds to condi-
tions in southeast Anatolia that they had previously not wit-
nessed first-hand,57 and offered Kurdish intellectuals an oppor-
tunity to share their ideas with ordinary people in a public forum.
Although the ethnic nature of the meetings has perhaps been
overemphasized by later generations of activists, Kurdish was
widely spoken, some participants called for Kurdish-language
rights, and Kurdish poetry read. Activist Kemal Burkay writes
that the meetings:

created a new wave of excitement, opening the way for a

resuscitation and increased consciousness. In a way,
the Kurdish peoples walls of silence were broken down
with these meetings. And this time it wasnt by taking up

54 Kemal Burkay writes that they were organized by TP kadros [staff]

in the region of their own initiative, without consultation from the TP
central office, although leading Turkish TP members such as Behice
Boran and Mehmet Ali Aybar did attend some of the meetings and give
speeches. See his Anlar Belgeler, Vol 1. (Stockholm: Deng Yaynlar,
2002), p. 205.
55 Beiki, Dou Mitinglerinin Analizi (1967) (Ankara: Yurt Kitap-
Yayn, 1992), p. 82.
56 Ibid., p. 85.
57An interview with Hatice Yaar in Rafet Ball, Krt Dosyas, 1st ed.
(Istanbul: Cem Yaynevi, 1991), p. 86. Yaar, born in 1951, grew up in
Ankara, attended the Eastern meetings, and said this prompted her to
join the DDKO. In the early 1990s, she was prominent in the Kurdish-
socialist Ala-Rzgar-Birlik movement, based in Europe.

19
20 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

a rifle and climbing into the mountains as had been usual-

ly done in the past, it was being done through the political
process and in a public manner.58

Along with influencing dynamics internal to the Kurdish

movement, the Eastern Meetings also had a ripple effect around
the country and raised awareness of the potential power of ordi-
nary people in the region. They encouraged a wave of politicians
and journalists to visit the area, some to speak at the meetings,
and others to decry them as Kurdist.59 Some Turkish leaders
used the meetings as an opportunity to showcase Turkeys dem-
ocratic status; Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel, for instance,
told Cumhuriyet newspaper that the meetings demonstrate that
there is freedom in Turkey.60 Nonetheless, Turkish and Kurd-
ish commentators alike noted the heavy police presence, espe-
cially in the later meetings. At a meeting held in Batman, for
example, Cumhuriyet claimed there were more than 200 uni-
formed and plainclothes police, along with a commando unit sent
for security purposes for the first time.61 At another meeting, a
reporter wrote that for every person attending the meeting there
were three police or gendarmes.62 TP leaders reported that
governors tried to obstruct the meetings, cutting the roads to the
meeting grounds, deliberately organizing other popular events
like horse races on the same day, and sending out gendarmes and
police in large numbers to dissuade ordinary people from attend-
ing. A counter-meeting was organized in Erzurum by several
Turkish nationalist organizations.63

58 Burkay, Anlar Belgeler, p. 202. Also see smail Beiki, Dou-

Anadolunun Dzeni, Vol. 2 (Ankara: Yurt Kitap-Yayn, 1992; orig.
published 1969), p. 601.
59 Akam, reproduced in Feyizolu, Trkiyede Genlik Hareketleri
Tarihi, pp. 352-353; and Cumhuriyet, September 28, 1967, p. 1.
60Bu Mitingler, Trkiyede Hrriyetin Olduunu Gsterir, Cumhuri-
yet, October 18, 1967, p. 1.
61 Cumhuriyet, October 9, 1967, p. 1.
62 Cumhuriyet, November 19, 1967; also see Beiki, Dou Miting-
lerinin Analizi, p. 70.
63 Beiki, Dou Mitinglerinin Analizi, pp. 70-71.

20
 Silence and Voice 21
Among more thoughtful commentators, the meetings prompt-
ed some soul searching and an unusually frank discussion of the
governments policies in the region. A front-page editorial pub-
lished in Cumhuriyet on September 28, 1967 argued that, despite
rumors that the meetings were linked to Barzani or to Kurdish
nationalist activities outside the country, the real cause of any
Kurdist propaganda (if indeed it was occurring at the meet-
ings) was rapid social changes that had created newand un-
metdemands in the region. If Kurdism was stirring in the
region, the writer argued, it was only the result of, not the cause
of, the movement in the east. He concluded:

Turkey is a whole, complete with its East and West. But

within this whole (oneness) there is also an Eastern reali-
ty. It is an undeveloped East, a primitively governed East,
a neglected East, and it is certain that it will cause an im-
balance, and when people wake up to this imbalance, they
will certainly want to take various roads to achieve a bal-
ance.64

Towards Two Alternative Kurdish Platforms: The KDP-

Turkey and the Devrimci Dou Kltr Ocaklar (DDKO)

The close partnership between Kurdish activists and Turkish left-

ists that had transformed the nature of Kurdish protest during the
1960s began unraveling at the end of the decade. This can be
attributed to external state pressure and to intra-organizational
politics within both the Turkish socialist and Kurdish move-
ments. Eric Hobsbawm describes how the young intellectuals of
the instant left began joining ethnic and separatist movements
when 1968 failed to produce the expected millennium.65
TPs lackluster performance in the 1969 national elections and

64 Cumhuriyet, September 28, 1967, pp. 1 and 7.

65E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme,
Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.
149-150. Not all Kurdish activists believed they should form their own
organizations. Kurdish lawyer and TP member Tark Ziya Ekinci, for
instance, led a small contingent of Kurdish leftists who argued that
Kurdish rights should be promoted from within broader-based organi-
zations.

21
22 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

increasing levels of urban student violence made the vision of a

partnership of workers and peasants seem increasingly unlikely.
Official pressure was growing; alarmed by the number of Kurd-
ish-language newspapers and periodicals being published, the
government decreed Kurdish-language imports or publications
illegal in 1967.66 Within TP, the latter half of the decade saw
increasingly fractious debate concerning how extensively the
party should promote Kurdish rights, and many Kurdish activists
eventually reached the conclusion that the left was insufficiently
concerned with the Kurdish question.67
Dissatisfaction with the reliance on the Turkish left produced
two different types of Kurdish organizations, each drawing on
differing (although overlapping) socio-economic bases and offer-
ing different visions for the Kurdish national struggle. In July of
1965, Faik Bucak and four other Kurdish activists founded the
underground Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan (KDP-
Turkey). Its program was directly inspired by the Iraqi KDP (a
copy of whose bylaws and program had been translated into
Kurdish and then modified to fit conditions in Turkey), and
sought recognition of the Kurdish nations political, cultural
and economic rights within the borders of the Turkish Republic,
in the words of erafettin Eli, one of the partys founders.
Among its demands was that the Turkish Constitution be modi-
fied to assert that Kurds and Turks both existed in the State of
Turkey and that the two nations (millet) were equal in every
way; it also sought Kurdish-language education, development in
the east, and for three-quarters of the profits of oil and other re-
sources from Kurdistan to be distributed there.68 Four years lat-
er, in 1969, a group of Kurdish university students in Ankara
founded the first branch of the Devrimci Dou Kltr Ocaklar
(Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths), or DDKO, which
can be considered the first legal Kurdish organization in the his-
tory of the Republic. Students and activists went on to establish
branches in other cities including Istanbul and Diyarbakr. Alt-

66 Official Gazette, no. 12577, February 14, 1967, cited in McDowall,

Modern History of the Kurds, pp. 408 and 417.
67 brahim Gl, personal interview, Ankara, July 15, 1998.
68 Ibid.

22
 Silence and Voice 23
hough each branch was independent and had different bylaws,
they shared common goals that revolved around Kurdish cultural
development and community building, especially among Kurd-
ish university students, and combating official nationalist poli-
cies with educational seminars and other events.69
The existence of these two distinct organizations can be seen
as the external structural outcome of the new types of internal
fault-lines that now bisected Turkeys Kurdish activist communi-
ties. The KDP-Turkey received considerable support from disaf-
fected tribal and landowning elites70 who rejected the alliance
with the Turkish socialists (on both self-interested and ideologi-
cal grounds) in favor of a nationalist but socio-economically
more conservative platform. As one Kurdish politician involved
with the KDP-Turkey put it, comparing what he called the
Marxist Kurds to the Nationalist Kurds:

The Nationalist Kurds did not see the Kurdish problem as a problem
of class but as a national problem. According to them the problem-
atic situation the Kurds found themselves in was not the responsi-
bility of sheikhs and aghas. Because in Kurdistan true sovereignty
was not with the sheikhs and aghas. It was the state that was sover-
eign. So the real responsibility lay with the state and its order.
And it was the right of the sheikhs and aghas, as well as the rest of
society, to take part in the national struggle. There should have been

69Devrimci Dou Kltr Ocaklar Dava Dosyas (Ankara: Komal,

1995), pp. 481 and 625-655.
70 Growing friction between some Kurdish landowners and the state
had emerged as early as 1960 when 250 were detained after the military
coup that took place in May. Later that year, all were released except
55 who were deported to a number of western cities under Law 105, a
new law that decreed landowners deemed responsible for destructive
activity against the state could be forcibly moved, and their lands
claimed. All except one of the 55 were supporters of the ousted DP. In
1962 the aghas were able to return to their lands (which were not dis-
tributed among landless farmers as had been originally promised by the
new government) See Yn, December 10, 1961, pp. 4-5; and January
10, 1962, pp. 8-13. The periodical carried extensive coverage of the
aghas, their exile, and the debates in Ankara concerning their return
home. Also see Christian Science Monitor, December 5, 1960, p. 12;
and Cumhuriyet, December 5, 1960, p. 1.

23
24 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

a place for those patriotic sheikhs and aghas who desired (it) in this
struggle.71

The DDKO, on the other hand, were profoundly influenced

by the Turkish leftist movement and articulated their demands
within the paradigm of socialist-Marxist discourse. Although
they were supported by the KDP-Turkey (because the KDP
viewed the DDKO as an independent Kurdish organization) and
originally included more conservative Kurdish nationalists, left-
ist ideas took over, as one participant put it.72 Many DDKO
founders and members were either past or present members of
TP. DDKO leaders depicted Turkish society as a battleground
between fascists and bourgeoisie on the one hand, and an alli-
ance of the working class revolutionary struggle, the villagers
democratic movement, and the struggle of revolutionary youth
on the other.73 Reinforcing the class lines demarcated by the
socialist movement, the DDKO publicly denounced the Kurdish
aghas, whom it held responsible (along with the state) for the
subjection of the Kurdish underclass. One DDKO news bulletin
describes support for an anti-agha march in which demonstrators
chanted slogans in Kurdish such as Our Soil, Our Rights, No
to the Oppression of the Aghas. The bulletins editors conclud-
ed: Down with the Aghas and All Exploiters! Long Live the
Villagers Brave Struggle Against the Land Aghas!74
The DDKOs progressive (or Marxist) paradigm, with its
equal emphasis on what Nancy Fraser calls politics of redistri-
bution as well as politics of recognition,75 became the domi-

71 Interview with erafettin Eli in Rafet Ball, ed., Krt Dosyas, 2nd
ed. (Istanbul: Cem Yaynevi, 1992), p. 601. He reiterated this point in a
personal interview, Ankara, July 13, 1998.
72 brahim Gl, personal interview, Ankara, July 15, 1998.
73DDKO Dava Dosyas, p. 567.
74DDKO Dava Dosyas, pp. 563-564.
75 Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the
Postsocialist Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 11-39. I
am indebted to Brian Mello for first bringing this work to my attention
in the context of the Turkish and Kurdish cases. See Brian Mello,

24
 Silence and Voice 25
nant framework for Kurdish activism into the 21st century. I
would suggest that this can be explained, at least in part, as a
product of the public and well-organized nature of left-wing
Kurdish activism during the 1960s, which stood in contrast to the
KDP-Turkeys covert activities. Although legally and culturally
circumscribed, as well as suppressed and fragmented by the 1971
coup, left-wing activists access to and activities within durable,
domestic institutional arenas gave them a substantial advantage
over the underground KDP-Turkey, which was beset by leader-
ship struggles, failed to mobilize support (either inside or outside
the country), and never seriously challenged the state.

Ending a Decade of Contention

In January of 1970 the Turkish Chief of General Staff, citing a

report prepared by Military Intelligence, warned the public that
Kurdish propaganda was increasing in the East and blamed it on
alleged support for Kurdish separatism by England and the Unit-
ed States, as well as the influence of Barzani in Iraq.76 This an-
nouncement was part of the ideological groundwork for the
March 12, 1971 Coup by Memorandum, which the generals
argued was necessary in part to protect Turkey from Kurdish
separatists.
Although TP had been careful to emphasize the partys
commitment to Turkish national unity, even as it espoused Kurd-
ish recognition, 23 TP leaders were arrested after the coup for
Kurdish propaganda and for supporting communism, as a
story in Cumhuriyet announced.77 TP was closed by the courts
four months later on charges of separatism. The DDKO were
also closed, and its leaders charged with treason. Martial law was
imposed on April 26 of that year in Diyarbakr and 10 other re-
gions, mostly in the Southeast; the New York Times reported that
Justice Minister smail Arar had told the Turkish parliament that
such emergency measures were necessary because separatist

Democracy and Economic Justice: Labor Activism & Contemporary

Turkish Politics, unpublished paper, July 2005.
76 Yeni stanbul, Jan. 2, 1970, cited in Beiki, Dou-Anadolunun
Dzeni, Vol. 2, pp. 583-584.
77 Cumhuriyet, March 13, 1971.

25
26 EVOLUTION OF KURDISH NATIONALISM

agitation among the nations Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey

had raised a grave threat to internal security.78

Conclusions

For two decades after the suppression of the Dersim uprising,

Kurdish identity found no room for public expression in national
politics in Turkey. For all intents and purposes the Kurdish
movement had been silenced. By the late 1950s, however, Turk-
ish officials had lost control of the public sphere they sought to
dominate, and by the early 1960s Kurdish rights emerged as a
new dialogue of public contention. During this decade a Kurdish
national movement was reconstructed through the inter-ethnic,
institutionalized, and legal framework of the radical left. This
framework brought a new, counter-elite generation of Kurdish
activists and Turkish socialists together into an alliance against
both elements of the state and landed Kurdish elites. Taking ad-
vantage of political fissures within the state, Turkish and Kurdish
socialists introduced the language of Kurdish rights into political
parties, student movements and the press for the first time since
the creation of the Republic. This pragmatic arrangement be-
tween Kurdish and Turkish socialists allowed both groups to ex-
tend their appeal and to more effectively promote their agendas
among diverse populations. It also fractured the power of the
Kurdish tribal elite, which had for several decades cooperated
with the state, not out of passivity, but because it was the most
efficient way to maintain regional power.
The phase of Kurdish contention had several important con-
sequences. First, it produced a generation of new, left-wing
Kurdish leadership that dominated Kurdish nationalist activity in
(and concerning) Turkey from the early 1960s into the 21st cen-
tury. Mehdi Zana, a leading member of TP and the DDKO,
served for three years as mayor of Diyarbakr before he was
jailed on charges of separatism after the 1980 coup; Kurdish au-
thor and TP activist Musa Anter became a leading and inspira-
tional literary and political figure in pro-Kurdish politics before
he was assassinated in 1992. Kemal Burkay, another prominent
TP member, founded the Kurdistan Socialist Party and led it

78New York Times, 2 July 2, 1971, p. 5.

26
 Silence and Voice 27
from Germany through the 1990s. And Abdullah calan, later to
establish and lead the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was a
member of the leftist student group Dev Gen.
Second, positioning Kurdish activism within a secular, social-
ist framework during this period helped construct a collective
identity that could bridge religious, tribal, and linguistic differ-
ences among Turkeys Kurds. This framework proved remarka-
bly durable, lasting with relatively little modification into the
1990s. However, as indicated earlier, it is also possible to attrib-
ute the relatively low levels of Kurdish societal mobilization in
Turkey, at least in part, to this same framework, which made
little or no reference to local and religious identities that re-
mained personally meaningful to millions of Kurds.
Third, the dominance of Kurdish leftists in Turkeys Kurdish
movement contributed to the development of different Kurdish
movements in Turkey and in Iraq. In Iraq, a similar struggle be-
tween leftist and so-called traditional leadership in the 1940s
and 1950s ended with the triumph of a charismatic tribal leader,
Mustafa Barzani. This schism between the leftist and conserva-
tive nationalist programs contributed to the splintering of the
Kurdish national movement along geographical lines and the
introduction of competing ideological visions. These differences
challenged and complicated Kurdish activism into the 21st centu-
ry.
Finally, the adoption of a Kurdish rights agenda by Turkish
leftists and the integration of Kurdish resistance into the heart of
national Turkish politics publicly undermined some of the basic
principles of Republican ideology promoted by the state, weak-
ening its hold on the Turkish and Kurdish public imagination.
The expansion of Kurdish tactics of resistance into Turkish
movements and institutions meant it would be impossible, after
1960, to isolate Kurdish resistance to the geographic and ideo-
logical borderlands of the nation. Instead, it would come to chal-
lenge the Turkish Kemalist project at its very core, and prompt
new imaginations of what it meant to not only be Kurdish, but
Turkish.

27