Politicians at the governmental level are exhibiting the responsible attitude of solving a gangrened crisis which others have not dared to so far. This is exciting and very positive. Excluding the dismal resistance of the opposition to any change that will marginalize or bury them in the graveyard of politics, various circles are looking for methods to solve this national problem. Some are studying other (foreign) examples, including that of the Irish, the Basque and the Tamils. Some want to come up with an indigenous model without sufficient knowledge of past and present circumstances.Because the history of this country was fabricated by the founders of the republic who wanted to bury the Ottoman past, which they declared backward, autocratic and non-national (or over-religious), its methods of keeping a major world empire together were totally ignored. In fact, Ottoman rulers saw merit in giving autonomy to the Kurdish nobility, wide enough to elicit their loyalty at a time when the Iranian Safavid state was threatening the eastern part of the empire. Sultan Selim I gave the Kurdish lords who ruled their own lands and people (tribes and tribal cohorts) utmost freedom in return for taking part in the Ottoman army when Iranian rulers threatened the empire's territory. The Ottoman-Kurdish alliance created unity and solidarity rather than animosity and separation. The mechanism that produced this solidarity was self-rule of the Kurdish tribes by their own notables. This continued successfully from 1514 to 1846, until the Ottoman state began to modernize and centralize, truncating local autonomies. It is from then on that Kurdish rebellions started. In fact, the republic inherited the Kurdish grievance of being subdued and ruled from a distant center.
Centralization became acute during the republic, which adopted the nation-state model and defined the state as solely Turkish in ethnicity and Sunni Muslim in belief. This reduced definition of the nation led to a pathological nationalism where part of the nation denied the other part (non-Turkish and non-Sunni Muslims) power sharing and the right of equal citizenship. Such an understanding of nationhood and ensuing nationalism was divisive and exclusive in nature. Ironically, any and every popular rebuttal to this reduction was labeled “divisive” and treacherous, and consequently brutally suppressed.
If only the rulers of Turkey could go back to their country's history and read it well, they would not look for foreign models to solve their Kurdish problem. In a nutshell, Ottoman ruler Sultan Selim I won over the Kurds by doing the opposite of what Safavid Shah Ismail I did. Ismail sent his own men to rule the Kurds, just as republican Turkish governments did. Instead, Sultan Selim I empowered the Kurdish lords further to rule their own people. In order to be more effective, the Ottoman ruler encouraged Kurdish tribal chieftains to unite into higher administrative units called mirlik by allowing each mir (lord) to hold onto their traditional powers in addition to giving them new agricultural and pasture lands, fortresses, etc., that reached the size of eyalets (provinces). Selim I's son Süleyman the Magnificent recognized the hereditary rights of the sons of Kurdish lords (passing a decree to that effect in 1533), and in case of a dispute in sharing land holdings of the deceased mir by his sons, other Kurdish lords were empowered to settle the matter. In short, the classical Ottoman model to guarantee the allegiance of the Kurds was to “unite and rule” rather than to “divide and conquer.”
The Kurdish lords were mostly Sunni; they voluntarily resisted the encroachment of Shiite Iranians on their (and Ottoman) territory just as they sided with the Ottoman dynasty to subdue Arab Iraq where there were Kurds under Arab domination. The Ottoman success was organizing close to 6,000 Kurdish tribes and endowing local autonomy to them in return for taxes and military service.
With such a historical backdrop, what other model are we looking for in far away lands and historical circumstances? Considering that latter-day administrations have alienated an ancient loyal people that lived autonomously under the leadership of their notables, it is time to reverse the series of mistakes that have turned them into foes.
The question is, are we ready to give up the claim that Turkey belongs solely to the Turks and that the rest have to either leave or serve them? In fact, both of these have been officially declared statements that are still part of the nationalist-statist rhetoric.
