Opinion
The Silent Fissures and Deep Wellsprings of Kurdish Nationalism
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The debates built around Kurdish nationalism have long been reproducing a language that circles on the surface and does not dare to descend into the depths.
Yet what we call nationalism ...
It is a multi-layered process of construction that ferments in a nation's world of feeling and longing, takes shape in its cultural memory, and crystallises on its political horizon.
Without these layers being understood and bound to one another, it is possible neither to grasp the course of Kurdish nationalism nor to make sense of its present. Among the Kurds, nationalism has most often existed as an intuitive accumulation, an instinctive defence, a fragmented memory; but the areas in which it has met the intellectual accumulation of the modern world have remained limited.
On the plane of feeling and longing, Kurdish nationalism carries a powerful inner energy amassed within traumas, migrations, mournings and resistances spread across centuries. This feeling is one of the deepest counterparts of the community of fate described in modern theories of the nation. Yet the fact that this intense feeling has most often not turned into a political reason has caused it to repeat itself like a spark that stokes the fire but does not light the road. The ancient memory of the medreses and the modern discourse of the leftist traditions have kept this feeling alive; but they have fallen short of transforming it into a strategic line.
The cultural dimension of Kurdish nationalism, for its part, presents a more complex and more tragic panorama. On a ground where no canon has formed, where the literary and intellectual heritage has been interrupted, where the breath of the language has been constricted by repression, cultural nationalism flows like a powerful river; but, like the fate of a river without a bed, it most often overflows, disappears, swells again — yet cannot become institutionalised.
Facing a cultural world that does not count as English anyone who has not read Shakespeare, there stands a large “nationalist” crowd that has heard of Mem û Zîn but has not read it. This is not merely a deficiency of reading; it is one of the most visible signs that cultural consciousness has been unable to deepen. Turning canonical texts into mere symbols without understanding or interpreting them strips culture of being a system of memory and reduces it to a ritual act of remembrance.
In the political dimension, Kurdish nationalism follows a line that has both expanded and fragmented. The perspective of independence that took root in the North in the 1970–80 period turned into a strategic mobility opening out towards the other parts; this orientation was coded by the state as a threat and came to occupy a meaningful place among the reasons for the 12 September intervention.
In this period nationalism appeared like a goal on the horizon of political reason; but organisational rivalries, power struggles, external interventions and the lack of internal reckoning prevented this goal from becoming clear.
At every stage in which Kurdish political nationalism made a move to grow, it grew fragile at another point; as it expanded itself, it narrowed at the same time.
One of the elements that deepens this scattered picture is the shallow relationship the Kurdish intellectual world has established with the theories of nationalism.
To complain about nationalism without internalising the debates on the nation between Hegel and Marx, Renan's “daily plebiscite”, Gellner's theory of modernisation, Smith's ethno-symbolism, Anderson's imagined communities, and the horizon that Sartre, Fanon and Ben Bella opened on colonised peoples, is a groundless lament.
This great intellectual heritage has most often circulated in the Kurdish intellectual world only at the level of names; the concepts have not been opened up, the methods have not been assimilated, the conclusions have not been brought into the discussion. Even Beşikçi's immense labour has not sufficed on its own to close this theoretical gap.
Even the discourse of leaders confronts us as a mirror of this intellectual deficiency. The words Abdullah Öcalan uttered in 1993, “I have no love of Kurds in me”, despite all the ideological and political meanings they contain, created no concrete debate in the Kurdish intellectual field. No one, Beşikçi included, has questioned in depth the theoretical and practical consequences of this statement. Yet in national movements the discourse of the leader is not merely a word but a strategic direction. Leaving it uncriticised is an indication that the intellectual field has lost its independence.
One of the inner wounds of Kurdish nationalism is the killing of Dr. Şivan. That a leader who took nationalism as his fundamental support was eliminated by those who defined themselves as “nationalists” is a case sufficient even to illuminate the dark zones within Kurdish political reason itself. Without confronting such historical ruptures it is impossible to understand the present weaknesses of nationalism.
When all these facts are brought together ...
It becomes clear that the weakness of Kurdish nationalism is neither “wholly external pressure” nor “total internal fault”. Nationalism is a field in which land, the market, language, culture, history, education, geography, organisation and political imagination all function as a whole.
That among the Kurds even revolt, resistance and defence have not been defined on a common conceptual ground shows that national consciousness still oscillates within a fragmented structure. While the Kurds carry a strong nationalist inclination in terms of feeling and culture, politics still falters in transforming this energy into a strategic line.
It is precisely here that the saying “the devil is in the details” finds its true meaning: what holds Kurdish nationalism back is not the great ruptures but the small yet cumulative deficiencies that remain invisible.
To criticise nationalism, one must first understand it; both rejecting it without understanding and turning a blind eye to its faults are facile attitudes.
Kurdish nationalism is both the shield and the unfinished sword of the Kurdish nation's struggle for existence in the modern world. The debate must advance not through accusations but through inquiry. Only then can Kurdish nationalism repair its own silent fissures and make its own deep wellsprings visible.
Source: Kürt Milliyetçiliğinin Sessiz Çatlakları ve Derin Kaynakları Üzerine - Hüsamettin Turan (https://www.rupelanu.org/kurt-milliyetciliginin-sessiz-catlaklari-ve-derin-kaynaklari-uzerine-1931yy.htm)