Turkish Kurdistan

A tax register (or defter) dating back to 1527 mentions an area called Vilayet-i Kurdistan, which included seven major and 11 minor emirates (or principalities). The document refers to the Kurdish emirates as eyalet (state), an indication of the autonomy they enjoyed. In a Ferman (imperial decree) issued by Suleiman I, around 1533, he outlines the rules of inheritance and succession among Kurdistan beys i.e. the Kurdish aristocracy. Hereditary succession was granted to Kurdish emirates loyal to the Ottoman Empire, and Kurdish princes were granted autonomy within the Empire. The degree of autonomy of these emirates varied greatly and depended on their geopolitical significance. The weak Kurdish tribes were forced to join stronger ones or become a part of Ottoman sanjaks. However, powerful and less accessible tribes, particularly those close to the frontier with Persia, enjoyed a high degree of autonomy.

According to a kanunname (book of law) mentioned by Evliya Çelebi, there were two administrative units different from regular sanjaks: 1) Kurdish sanjaks (Ekrad Beyliği), characterized by the hereditary rule of the Kurdish aristocracy and 2) Kurdish governments (hükümet). The Kurdish sanjaks, like ordinary sanjaks, had military obligations and had to pay taxes. On the other hand, the Kurdish hükümet neither paid taxes nor provided troops for the Ottoman Army, and the Ottomans preferred not to interfere in their succession and internal affairs. According to Çelebi, by the mid-17th century the autonomy of the Kurdish emirates had diminished. At this time, out of 19 sanjaks of the Diyarbekir Eyalet, 12 were regular Ottoman sanjaks, and the remaining were referred to as Kurdish sanjaks. The Kurdish sanjaks were Sagman, Kulp, Mihraniye, Tercil, Atak, Pertek, Çapakçur and Çermik. Çelebi lists the Kurdish states or hükümets as Cezire, Egil, Genç, Palu and Hazo. In the late 18th and early 19th century, with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish principalities became practically independent.[13]

There has been significant conflict in Turkey over the Kurdish populations' linguistic rights. At various points in its history Turkey has enacted laws prohibiting the use of Kurdish in schools.[16] To counter the Dersim rebellion, a turkification process was started by the Turkish government and the Elazığ Girls' Institute (Turkish: Elazığ Kız Enstitüsü, EGI) was opened in 1937. The institute was a boarding school for Kurdish girls and young women who had to learn to speak Turkish with their children which before they were not able to as most of them didn't know Turkish.[17][18] The girls' school was open until 1959.[19]

In 2014, several Kurdish NGOs and two Kurdish political parties supported a boycott of schools in Northern Kurdistan to promote the right to education in the Kurdish language in all subjects. While Kurdish identity has become more acceptable in Turkish society, the Turkish government has only allowed the Kurdish language to be offered as an elective in schools. The government has refused to honor other demands. In several southeastern cities, Kurds have established private schools to teach classes in Kurdish but the police have been closing down these private schools.[20]

Part of a series on the Kurdish–Turkish conflict
Kurdish–Turkish peace process
History Unilateral cease-fire 1999–2004 Solution process 2013–15
Primary concerns Depopulated Kurdish villages Dams construction Kurdish civil rights Legality of Kurdish parties Imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan
International brokers Iraqi Kurdistan
Proposals Kurdish autonomous region

There has been a long-running separatist conflict in Turkey which has cost 30,000 lives, on both sides. The region saw several major Kurdish rebellions during the 1920s and 1930s. These were forcefully put down by the Turkish authorities and the region was declared a closed military area from which foreigners were banned between 1925 and 1965. Kurdish place names were changed and turkified,[21] the use of Kurdish language was outlawed, the words Kurds and Kurdistan were erased from dictionaries and history books, and the Kurds were only referred to as Mountain Turks.[22] Politicians were often prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms for speaking Kurdish.[21]

In 1983, a number of provinces were placed under martial law in response to the activities of the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[23] A guerrilla war took place through the rest of the 1980s and into the 1990s. By 1993, the total number of security forces involved in the struggle in southeastern Turkey was about 200,000, and the conflict had become the largest counter-insurgency in the Middle East,[24] in which much of the countryside was evacuated, thousands of Kurdish-populated villages were destroyed, and numerous extra judicial summary executions were carried out by both sides.[12] More than 37,000 people were killed in the violence and hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes.[25] The situation in the region has since eased following the capture of the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in 1999 and the introduction of a greater degree of official tolerance for Kurdish cultural activities, encouraged by the European Union.[15] However, some political violence is still ongoing and the Turkish–Iraqi border region remains tense.[26]

When refugees from Caucasus reached the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople decided not to settle these in Kurdistan due to the extreme poverty and lack of material resources for the refugees. Yet after some time, the Ottomans started seeing the refugees as a chance to diminish the Kurdish claim to the region and allowed the refugees to settle in the region.[27]

From early stage on, some Caucasians went through a voluntary process of Kurdification and thereby had Kurdish as their mother tongue.[28][29]

When the Kurdish question arose in Turkey, it also had an effect on their Caucasian neighbors. Even today, there is an aversion from joining the Kurds in their conflict against the Turkish state,[30] but some individuals of Caucasian origin joined the Kurdistan Workers' Party.[31][32] As part of their campaign, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) won elections in most Caucasian villages in Turkish Kurdistan.[33][34][35]