Radical Changes, Feminism, and Democratic Autonomy: The Development of Kurdish Nationalism Through the Lens of Turkish Nationalism

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the borders of the new Turkish state were defined by the Treaty of Lausanne. Although the Kurds, an ethnic group of 30 to 40 million, were promised a state, this was never realized, the majority of their homeland being subsumed into the Turkish state. At the same time, Turkish nationalism was just taking hold. Kemal Ataturk and Abdullah Öcalan, the two father figures of Turkish and Kurdish nationalism, clashed as their goals of nation-building conflicted and led to violence on both sides. Though Kurdish nationalism developed in initially violent ways in newly Kemalist Turkey—leading to Turkish and Kurdish nationalism catalyzing the development of the other—through radical ideology, feminism, and democratic autonomy, Kurdish groups, with an evolving nationalism, ultimately struggled to defend the rights of their own people to exist while garnering increasingly hostile resistance.

Kurdish nationalism first rose to prominence with revolts in the early 20th century in Turkey. Though Kurdish leaders initially supported Kemal during the Turkish War of Independence and the founding of the Turkish republic, this sentiment quickly changed.¹ As sweeping secularization and centralizing reforms took place in newly Kemalist Turkey, the Muslim-majority Kurds reacted negatively, revolting. The most prominent rebellion, the Sheikh Sait rebellion of 1925, broke out in Kurdish majority southeast Turkey.² The revolt’s namesake, Sheikh Sait, was the head of the Naqshbandi order, a group influential in Kurdish districts. As a tribal leader his influence became a “real threat to the Ankara government when he agreed to head a rebellion.”³ These revolts were soon suppressed by the new Republic’s army, and the Kurds were subsequently cautious about exercising further rebellion.⁴ These revolts were meant to bring about a Kurdish nation state to protect their interests from an increasingly centralized and dictatorial state in which their traditional identity in both ethnic and religious aspects would be threatened.⁵

After this initial uptick in nationalism, a new Kurdish leader and thinker with violent aspirations arose and began to influence many in the region. Born in southeastern Turkey in 1948, Öcalan became involved with Marxism in university,⁶ eventually founding the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. In 1977, he wrote a manifesto, “The National Road to the Kurdish Revolution,” and began training guerillas after fleeing to Syria in 1979.⁷ In 1984, as PKK militants organized into camps in northern Iraq, they began their armed campaign against Turkey, later enacted terrorism against “government installations and officials, Turks living in the country’s Kurdish regions, Kurds accused of collaborating with the government, foreigners, and Turkish diplomatic missions abroad.”⁸ Consequently, under Öcalan’s leadership from 1984 to 1999, there was “heavy bloodshed for the PKK[, as well as] Turkey,” as the group allegedly kidnapped tourists and ordered the murder of numerous civilians. Soon, however, Kurdish movements in Syria began to outshadow those in Iraq, as then-president Asad embraced the PKK before its expulsion in 1998, hosting “at least 8,000 to 10,000 ‘armed supporters’ there.”⁹ This left a lasting effect on the new Syrian branch of the organization, one which would eventually lead to the development of the autonomous region of Rojava. In 1999, Öcalan was captured and imprisoned, his trial and death sentence for treason—later commuted to life imprisonment due to Turkey’s E.U. ambitions—being met with protest from Kurds. Though its leader was imprisoned, the fight for Kurdish liberation did not end as the PKK continued its attacks amid multiple ceasefires which were called off.

As Kurdish nationalism arose in the form of radical groups, Turkish nationalist developing in tandem led to the violent suppression of Kurdish aspirations; Kurdish nationalism consequently became less violent to protect the interests of the Kurdish people as the two incompatible ideologies interacted with and strengthened one another. For example, the PKK’s radical social ideology sought “freedom from colonialism and class divisions, thus opposing both Turkish government oppression and the traditional hierarchy of Kurdish society.”¹⁰ At the same time, when Atatürk strived to eliminate religion from daily life in an attempt to modernize, his attempt consequently “[eliminated] the unity which Islam provided among fellow Muslims, [providing] the motivation for the rise of nationalist sentiment among the Kurds.”¹¹ Kemalism led to ethnicity replacing religion as the unifying factor, leaving no room for plurality. This pushed the Turkish republic, dominated by secular nationalism, to attempt to erase the Kurdish identity, as is demonstrated by the Ankara government referring to the Kurds as “mountain Turks.”¹² This attempt to remove an identity resulted in violence which paled in comparison to Kurdish attacks and only deepened support for Kurdish nationalism; 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have been killed since the PKK’s armed resistance in 1984 by Turkey in ways described as “pogrom-like violence… [including] chemical gassings, bombings, forced relocations, and the razing of entire villages.”¹³ As PKK fighter “Fingerless Zeki” expressed, “The main reason for our struggle is so that we can live on our own soil and win the right to live as human beings. It’s not to dominate someone else’s land.”¹⁴ As the two competing nationalisms further developed, Kurdish goals also shifted from violence and radicalism in light of heavy repression to better achieve its goals. No longer seeking a nation state but rather increased autonomy, the PKK transitioned in the 1990’s from a “militant, patriarchal organization [along] Marxist-Leninist lines” one which valued feminism and socialism.¹⁵ While some of these some of these values, such as feminism, first seemed in line with Kemalism in Turkey, the revolutionary values became irreconcilable as Kurds threatened Turkish cohesion with radical actions stemming from a need to protect their own interests against Turkish repression, thus further catalyzing both movements.

Various Kurdish groups also valued feminism in society and implemented this in policy, though for revolutionary motivations different from Turkey’s goals of modernization, posing a threat to Turkish nationalism. When Kemal sought to implement feminist ideology, his ultimate goal was to bring Turkey into the ‘civilized’, modern world, away from its Ottoman roots. The Kurds, however, regarded feminism as a form not of modernization but of revolution; Öcalan wrote that “the 5,000-year-old history of civilization is essentially the history of the enslavement of woman” and that this enslavement was “closely linked to the rise within a society of hierarchical and statist power.”¹⁶ Thus, to implement these feminist ideas was for men and women alike to overthrow the power of not only gender hierarchies but existing hierarchies and the Turkish state, a grave threat to a new nation already reacting harshly to other external threats it faced. The connection between female subjugation and hierarchical and statist power also revealed how feminism influenced Kurds to evolve their objectives from an independent state to increased autonomy. In addition, one male Kurdish PKK fighter expressed that “ the liberation of women; their right to express themselves; and their need to play a role in the general development of society” were important to the PKK.¹⁷ Feminism’s role was clearly to create a society in which women held just as much power as men; their liberation would require radical changes that would threaten Turkey. For example, harsh repression from Turkey that Kurdish women in Turkey and Syria faced in the late 1980s and 90’s prompted many to join the PKK, where they made up a third of the force. Öcalan’s accommodations for these women’s demands for equal rights—a separate militia and institutions—reinforced that feminism was not theoretical but actively promoted and put into policy.¹⁸ Indeed, feminist ideals were pervasive and engrained into the provisional constitution of the Rojava region of northern Syria, which explicitly guarantees women’s “inviolable right to participate in political, social, economic and cultural life.”¹⁹ Women’s councils in the region could even “override decisions made by other councils when the matter specifically concerns a women’s interests.”²⁰ The Kurds’ implementation of feminism as a part of their nationalism was not only to provide a better society for women, but indicative of their radical rejection of all hierarchical power and centralized, state power, thus exacerbating the threat to Turkish nationalism with its feminism being for modernization.

Furthermore, the concept of grassroots democracy, intertwined with notions of socialism and feminism, manifested in ‘democratic autonomy’ and ‘communalism’ as Kurds rejected the hierarchical nature of a nation state; developments in Rojava underscored the incompatibility of Kurdish aspirations within Turkey and exemplified the equitable values a wholly independent Kurdistan could be based on. Recently, in mostly Kurdish Rojava—under increased autonomy not possible under Turkey’s harsh suppression—policies aimed to forge a radical society where all were equal and with no hierarchies or nation state. Indeed, this concept of democratic autonomy signified a shift as the PKK no longer supported the notion of a nation-state despite having previously fought for one. Nonetheless, the concept still posed a threat to existing states; for example, the Charter of Rojava proclaims that they are “led by principles of equality and environmental sustainability… [in] building a society free from authoritarianism, militarism, [and] centralism,” in contradiction of earlier authoritarian and centralization during Kemalism in Turkey.²¹ Indeed, the revolutionary way of “wrestling back control from the central state” led to the incompatibility of Kurdish insurgence within Turkish borders with the regime’s intense nationalism, as the communalist, people-oriented nature would threaten centralizing and authoritarian governments and nation states.²² Moreover, in the cantons of Northern Syria, “multi-ethnic neighborhood assemblies” had influence and power, and a “non-hierarchical, non-sectarian…outlook and a cooperative economy built on anti-capitalist principles” were emphasized in stark contrast with growing ethnocentrism and capitalism in Turkey.

²³ The democratic councils and communalist nature of democratic autonomy were a slight departure from earlier calls for a nation state, as Öcalan’s characterized the nation state as the “most dangerous instrument in history,” due its potential for repression and violence as in the case of the Kurds. Kurdish democratic autonomy, incompatible with Turkey’s nationalism, flourished in Syria in light of the infeasibility of an independent Kurdistan. Despite Kurdish nationalism’s initially violent development in early 20th century Turkey, where Turkish and Kurdish nationalism catalyzed the development of the other, Kurdish groups ultimately struggled to defend their interests and rights of their own people to exist and evolved their nationalism through radical ideology, feminism, and democratic autonomy against increasing resistance. Amidst its counterpart of Turkish nationalism, whose harsh, authoritarian nature left no room for the minority group, Kurds have not fully realized their ambitions. While facing severe repression from nations such as Turkey in more recent years with an offensive by President Erdogan’s into Rojava following multiple peace talks, Kurds’ fight for liberation has continued for decades. Optimistically, policies in autonomous Rojava stand as a beacon of hope to educate a new generation of revolutionary Kurds that may someday secure the ever-so-lacking rights for the stateless group.