Kurds in Turkey

The Marwanid dynasty, which was of Kurdish origin, ruled a territory from Diyarbakir that included parts of Syria and Iraq from 984 to 1083.[23] The Ayyubid dynasty, also of Kurdish origin (but identifying first and foremost as Muslims), ruled parts of Anatolia in the 12th and 13th centuries.[24]

According to Ahmet Nezihî Turan the first Kurdish settlement in Central Anatolia was named Kürtler ("Kurds"), founded in Yaban Âbâd (present-day Kızılcahamam-Çamlıdere near Ankara) in 1463.[25] According to Mark Sykes, the earliest population transfer (or exile) of Kurds to Central Anatolia was carried out during the reign of Selim I (1512–20).[26]

The Mahmudi or "Pinyanişi" was an Ottoman-Kurdish tribe in the Lake Van region, who according to Evliya Çelebi had 60,000 warriors.[27] Their chief, Sarı Süleyman Bey,[28] strengthened the Hoşap Castle[29] in the Lake Van region, in 1643.[30]

Kurdish Anatolian carpet, early 19th century.

After ca. 1800, the Cihanbeyli, Reşwan and Şêxbizin tribes migrated into central Anatolia from the east and southeast.[31] The total Kurdish population in Turkey was estimated at 1.5 million in the 1880s, many of whom were nomadic or pastoral.[32]

Kurdish mother and child, Van, Turkey. 1973

Iraqi Kurds fleeing to Turkey in April 1991, during the Gulf War

Before the foundation of Turkey, the Kurds were recognized as an own Nation of themselves.[33] The Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal also recognized the Kurds as a nation at the time and stated that provinces in which the Kurds lived shall be granted autonomy.[33] After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, which ended the caliphates and sultanate in Turkey, there have been several Kurdish rebellions since the 1920s: Koçkiri Rebellion,[34] Beyitüssebab rebellion, Sheikh Said Rebellion,[35] Dersim Rebellion,[36] Ararat rebellion. The policy towards the Kurds changed most prominently in 1924, as the new constitution denied the Kurds autonomy.[33] The Kurdish people and their language were soon oppressed by the Turkish Government, as the Turkish Constitution of 1924 prohibited the use of Kurdish in public places, and a law was issued which enabled the expropriation of the Kurdish landowners and the delivery of the land to Turkish speaking people.[35] Through the Turkish History Thesis, Kurds were classified as being of Turanian origin, having migrated from Central Asia 5000 years ago.[37] Hence, a Kurdish nation was denied and Kurds were called Mountain Turks.[37] From 1927 on, a General Inspector ruled over the First Inspectorate General through the implementation of emergency decrees and martial law. The areas around Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt, Urfa, Van, Elaziğ and Diyarbakır were under his rule until 1952,[38] when the government of the Democratic Party brought a new approach towards the Kurds and closed the General Inspectorates.[39]

Referring to the main policy document in this context, the 1934 law on resettlement, a policy targeting the region of Dersim as one of its first test cases, with disastrous consequences for the local population.[40] The aim or the law was to spread the population with non-Turkish culture in to different areas than their origin, and to settle people who were willing to adhere to the Turkish culture in the formerly non-Turkish areas.[39] The Fourth Inspectorate General was created in January 1936 in the Dersim region[41] and the Kurdish language and culture were forbidden.[37] The Dersim massacre is often confused with the Dersim Rebellion that took place during these events.[42] In 1937–38, approximately 10,000-15,000 Alevis and Kurds[42][43][44] were killed and thousands went into exile. A key component of the Turkification process was the policy of massive population resettlement.

After the 1960 coup, the State Planning Organization (Turkish: Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, DPT) was established under the Prime Ministry to solve the problem of Kurdish separatism and underdevelopment. In 1961, the DPT prepared a report titled "The principles of the state's development plan for the east and southeast" (Turkish: Devletin Doğu ve Güneydoğu'da uygulayacağı kalkınma programının esasları), shortened to "Eastern Report". It proposed to defuse separatism by encouraging ethnic mixing through migration (to and from the Southeast). This was not unlike the policies pursued by the Committee of Union and Progress under the Ottoman Empire. The Minister of Labor of the time, Bülent Ecevit of partial Kurdish ancestry,[45][46] was critical of the report.[47] From the establishment of the Inspectorate Generals until 1965, South East Turkey, was a forbidden area for foreigners.[38]

During the 1970s, the separatist movement coalesced into the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. From 1984 to 1999, the Turkish military was embroiled in a conflict with the PKK. The village guard system was set up and armed by the Turkish state around 1984 to combat the PKK. The militia comprises local Kurds and it has around 58,000 members. Some of the village guards are fiercely loyal to the Turkish state, leading to infighting among Kurdish militants.[48]

Due to the clashes between Turkish Army and the PKK the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, with Kurdish civilians moving to local defensible centers such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation included the Turkish state's military operations against Kurdish population, some PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans they could not control and the poverty of the southeast.[49] In the 1990s, hope for an end to the conflict emerged, as the PKK has declared several ceasefires and the political society has organized several campaigns to facilitate a reconciliation.[50]

"Evacuations were unlawful and violent. Security forces would surround a village using helicopters, armored vehicles, troops, and village guards, and burn stored produce, agricultural equipment, crops, orchards, forests, and livestock. They set fire to houses, often giving the inhabitants no opportunity to retrieve their possessions. During the course of such operations, security forces frequently abused and humiliated villagers, stole their property and cash, and ill-treated or tortured them before herding them onto the roads and away from their former homes. The operations were marked by scores of "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions. By the mid-1990s, more than 3,000 villages had been virtually wiped from the map, and, according to official figures, 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced and left homeless."[51]

In 2009, under the lead of Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, a short-lived peace process was started, but was not supported by the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) over concerns over the ethnic and national unity of the state. It ended in December 2009, following an attack on Turkish soldiers by the Kurdistan Workers' Party on the 7 December and the ban of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) on the 11 December 2009.[52] In 2010, after clashes between the PKK and the government forces in eastern and southeastern Turkey, several locations in Iraqi Kurdistan were attacked by the Turkish Air Force early in June 2010.[53] The air attack was reported 4 days later in a news article released immediately after the attack.[54] The tense condition has continued on the border since 2007, with both sides responding to each other's every offensive move.

Following Turkey's electoral board decision to bar prominent Kurdish candidates who had allegedly outstanding warrants or were part of ongoing investigations for PKK-links from standing in upcoming elections,[55] violent Kurdish protests erupted on April 19, 2011, resulting in at least one casualty.[56]

On the eve of the 2012 year (28 December), the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said that the government was conducting negotiations with jailed rebel leader Öcalan.[57] On 21 March 2013, after months of negotiations with the Turkish Government, Abdullah Ocalan's letter to people was read both in Turkish and Kurdish during Nowruz celebrations in Diyarbakır. The letter called a cease-fire that included disarmament and withdrawal from Turkish soil and calling an end to armed struggle. The PKK announced that they would obey, stating that the year of 2013 is the year of solution either through war or through peace. On 25 April 2013, the PKK announced that it would be withdrawing all its forces within Turkey to northern Iraq.[58]

Kurds protesting the Siege of Kobanî, 29 September 2014

HDP supporters celebrating election results in Istanbul, 8 June 2015

On 6 and 7 October 2014, riots erupted in various cities in Turkey for protesting the Siege of Kobani. Protesters were met with tear gas and water cannons; 37 people were killed in protests.[59] Following the July 2015 crisis (after ISIL's 2015 Suruç bombing attack on Kurdish activists), Turkey bombed alleged PKK bases in Iraq, following the PKK's unilateral decision to end the cease-fire (after many months of increasing tensions) and its suspected killing of two policeman in the town of Ceylanpınar (which the group denied carrying out[60]).[61][62] Violence soon spread throughout the country. Many Kurdish businesses were destroyed by mobs.[63] The headquarters and branches of the pro-Kurdish rights Peoples' Democratic Party were also attacked.[22] There are reports of civilians being killed in several Kurdish populated towns and villages.[64] The Council of Europe raised their concerns over the attacks on civilians and the blockade of Cizre.[65] In 2008 and also in the indictment in the Peoples' Democratic Party closure case the demand for education in Kurdish language or the teaching of the Kurdish language was equated of supporting terrorist activities by the PKK.[66][67] By 2017, measures taken to curtail efforts to promote Kurdish culture within Turkey had included changing street names that honored Kurdish figures, removing statues of Kurdish heroes, and closing down television channels broadcasting in the Kurdish language.[68] In July 2020, Turkey's Council of Higher Education banned students studying the Kurdish language and literature at Turkish universities from writing their dissertations in Kurdish.[69]

Pro-Kurdish HDP politicians Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yüksekdağ had been arrested in 2016

Parties in Turkey with high emphasis on Kurdish nationalism or minority politics include Rights and Freedoms Party, Communist Party of Kurdistan, Islamic Party of Kurdistan, Peoples' Democratic Party, Kurdistan Democratic Party/North (illegal), Revolutionary Party of Kurdistan (illegal). Defunct parties include Democracy Party (DEP; 1993–94), Democratic People's Party (1997–2005), Democratic Society Party (DTP; 2005–09), Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP; 1992–93), Kurdistan Islamic Movement (1993–2004), Peace and Democracy Party (2008–14), People's Democracy Party (HADEP; 1994–2003), People's Labor Party (HEP; 1990–93), Workers Vanguard Party of Kurdistan (1975–92). Banned parties include HEP, ÖZDEP (1993), DEP (1994), HADEP (2003), and DTP (2009).[77]

According to a 2020 poll conducted by Kadir Has University 17.3% of the surveyed people who identify as Kurdish answered the question "Which form of polity do Kurdish people want?" as "an independent Kurdish state". Around 25% of the non-Kurdish participants gave the same answer to the question. Roughly 33% of the Kurdish participants answered "more democratic Turkey", meanwhile those who responded "autonomy" composed 24.5% of the surveyed.[78][79]

12.3% of those surveyed find the government policies concerning Kurdish issues "definitely successful", while those who said "definitely unsuccessful" were 11.7 percent. 31.5 percent of the respondents stated that the "main element connecting the Kurds and the Turks" was Islam, 24% stated that they shared a common history, and the rate of those who said "democratic society" was 4.5 percent. To the question "How do you evaluate the dismissal of some provincial and district mayorships and the appointment of trustees by proxy after the 31 March local elections?" 26.5 percent of the participants answered the question as positive and 38.2 percent as negative.[79]

Between 1982 and 1991, the performance or recording of songs in the Kurdish language on television and radio was banned in Turkey, affecting singers such as Şivan Perwer, Mahsun Kırmızıgül and İbrahim Tatlıses. However, a black market sprang up, and pirate radio stations and underground recordings became available.[82]

Şivan Perwer is a composer, vocalist and tembûr player. He concentrates mainly on political and nationalistic music—of which he is considered the founder in Kurdish music—as well as classical and folk music.

Another important Kurdish musician from Turkey is Nizamettin Arıç (Feqiyê Teyra). He began with singing in Turkish, and made his directorial debut and also stars in Klamek ji bo Beko (A Song for Beko), one of the first films in Kurdish. Arıç rejected musical stardom at the cost of debasing his language and culture. As a result of singing in Kurdish, he was imprisoned, and then obliged to flee to Syria and eventually to Germany.[83][84]

A Kurdish girl

Some sources consider Ali Hariri (1425–1495) as the first well-known poet who wrote in Kurdish. He was from the Hakkari region.[85] Other well known are Sharafkhan Bidlisi the author of Sharafname and Ahmad Khani who wrote the Kurdish national epic Mem û Zin.[86] During decades, the letters X, Q, and W which are part of the Kurdish alphabet were prohibited to be used[87] and only in 2013, the ban was lifted.[88]

In 2011, Kanal D, Turkey's largest television station, began filming Ayrılık Olmasaydı: ben-u sen in majority-Kurdish Diyarbakir. The show, written by a Kurdish screenwriter, professed to be the first in the popular genre to portray the Kurds in a positive light. The show was set to debut in early 2012, but suffered numerous delays, some say because of the controversial subject.[89]

The majority of people who identify as Kurds speak Kurmanji, meanwhile a minority of them speak Turkish or Zazaki as their mother language. A study published in 2015 that demographically analysed the Kurdish inhabited regions of Turkey (excluding diaspora) concluded that c. 92% people belonging to Kurdish ethnic identity spoke Kurdish languages, 6.4% spoke Turkish, and 1.4% spoke Zaza as their mother language. Around 2% of the surveyed people who identified as Zaza, but not Kurd expressed that their mother tongue was Kurdish. 3.1% of the Turks and 4.6% of Arabs also stated that they spoke Kurdish. Concerning Alevi people, c. 70% spoke Zaza, 20% Kurdish and 10% Turkish.[104]

Around 75% of the Kurds stated that they either had "very good" or "good" proficiency in their respective mother languages. 55% of those who had "very good" or "good" proficiency in their mother language stated that their children were also proficient. Around 75% of the Kurds and 2% of the Zazas (58.4% for Zazaki) declared that they spoke Kurdish at home. Turkish was spoken by 22.4% and 38.3% at home, respectively. Turkish (70%) was the dominant household language for Alevi population.[104]

Most of the Kurdish people living in Turkey are Sunni Muslims, though Alevism comprises a sizable minority of about 30%.[105] 24.4% of the Kurds and 9.8% of Zazas declared that they were belonging to Hanafi school, meanwhile the vast majority of them were of the Shafiʽi school, which contrasted the local Turkish and Arab population, both of whom were overwhelmingly Hanafi. 3.1% of the Kurds and 14.8% of Zazas were Alevi, compared to 5.4 percent of Turks and 1.1 percent of Arabs.[104]

Kurds and Zazas in Eastern Turkey are found to be more religious compared to both general population of Turkey and the Turkish population in the same region. Religious observance rates such as fasting during Ramadan, praying 5 times a day or going to Jumu'ah regularly show similar patterns. On the other hand, people who are Alevis show the least amount of religiosity and lowest observance rates, both regionally and nationally.[104] 96 to 97 percent of the surveyed Kurd and Zaza groups in Eastern Turkey had someone in their household who wears headscarf, which was higher compared to Turkish population of the region. Only around 11% of Alevis declared that there were someone with headscarf in their household. 4.3% of both Kurd and Zaza groups were members of a specific religious sect, which was roughly double the rate of regional Turkish and Alevi population.[104]

33.4% of the Kurds and 21.2% of the Zaza from Eastern Turkey declared that they had tribal affiliations (Kurdish: eşîr, Turkish: aşiret), compared to c. 3% of the Turks in the same region. Tribal affiliation was highest (73%) among the people who declared that they were Alevis. 18.5% of those who were a member of a tribe stated that their tribe was an important factor for their political decisions. Around 10% of the surveyed tribal members claimed it was economically important to be in a tribe.[104]