What Matters in Narrative
Narrative is a highly sensitive, precise, and complex concept. In its essence, it is a form of movement, one that inherently harbors paradoxes—meaning, conflicts. It is a human weaving process par excellence. To be precise, narrative is a historical drama that never ceases to change and transform because it is not static. Its complexity arises from the fact that it is not unidimensional; even when defined or framed within a known or forced context, it points, in such a case, to the weight of a certain power preventing the expansion of its scope. This is how relations are viewed between individuals in society and, at the summit, between nations, peoples, and the state. There is a common denominator that connects them by virtue of their shared humanity, except that the logic of dominance, with its violent character, forces us to confront the qualitative nature of the occurring imbalance. This imbalance is felt in the nature of the power exerted in interactions among nations, peoples, and the state.
In this regard, the Palestinian-American critic and thinker Edward Said draws upon the work of Homi Bhabha an American thinker of Indian origin—as he diagnoses narrative on a global or planetary scale in his book Culture and Imperialism, affirming that: “Nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them.” (Arabic Translation, p. 58)
This is true to a large extent, with one correction: narratives themselves are accounts, or accounts are narratives in their structure, and it is very easy for us to transform what is individual into what is collective in terms of relations or interactions. Residential neighborliness becomes a border, and the border is a dividing line, both geographical and political. When colonialism or dominance is invoked as an imposed force, the place and its people are destabilized to the point where the tyranny of power reaches its highest echelon in colonialism—and this, within imperialism and its barbarism, spans its furthest reach, as we witness globally today.
The narrative is then directed in a manner compatible with power, its elements, its quality, or its nationality, to the point of containing the dominated place, annexing it to the agent of power, and erasing its demographic features. This is precisely the case with the Kurds, who were previously partitioned in their own land. For this direction to have a logic imported from the outside, the monopolizing imagination played its part by considering the Kurds a people with no existence except in the minds of those who lack a supporting place. The intended conclusion to be established is that referencing a Kurdish state is a kind of catastrophic fantasy—for how can a state have a foundation in a non-geography, with no history to absolve it, according to the narrative of power here?
There is a major paradox that excludes history in its broadest sense, and geography before it is synthesized in a manner responsive to those who play with the cartography of the place and ratify it as if the place were a mere appendage to it. This occurs the moment the Kurds are viewed as scattered groups among politically, culturally, and linguistically disparate countries, rather than examining how they became so. Based on this, the “geography of illusion” legitimized colonially, plays its role in erasing the Kurdish footprint, as if the illusion preceded the reality. It is a policy of liquidation, sanctioned colonially as a fait accompli here.
Illumination of the Concept of “Imagination”
The comment we hear here and there sometimes, when someone repeats in a conversation about a topic or an issue that it is imaginary or mere “fantasies” depends on the nature of the topic and who the commentator actually is. Structurally, however, a distinction remains between an imagination linked to a certain reality—to a specific, fundamentally social real issue, where there is something that feeds the discourse and grants it an intellectual value open to discussion—and an imagination that borders on illusion. Imagination is a human craft, in its genesis and the diversity of its components. It grants one of us the ability to look far ahead and hold onto a hope that is not an escape from reality; on the contrary, it is an appreciation of the truth around which disagreement occurs.
It is not the imagination of the poet, the novelist, or the artist (“he painter”) who invictulates a visual image (“a painting”) or a text not devoid of beauty, or a poem striking in its craftsmanship due to the poetic imagery that induces delight. Imagination is that which blends with spatial memory, the conception of the concerned person, and their ability to think with a will to knowledge that possesses the strength and competence to move what is being imagined forward. In this manner, one can pause at those who express the aspirations of a people or a nation, and a legitimate political entity, which is the state.
Narrative is Historical
However, since narrative belongs to the historical, and history is subject to the logic of movement—which is self-evidently temporal and equally self-evidently spatial—this implies its instability. There are those who strip what is spatial-temporal of their distinguishing marks regarding mutual interconnectedness and susceptibility to change, keeping the horizon of vision open. Space is not uniform, and those who reside in it, without exception, cannot be controlled in their capacities, their strengths, or most importantly—and this is the influential factor in this point—in their imagination that binds them to a reality they live in, just as they launch from it and attempt to influence it, which we discern by the testimony of history itself.
The saying that “history constantly corrects itself” is entirely correct. There is no evidence whatsoever that the survival of any history—any history of course, no matter what strength, might, and counter-violence it is granted—remains in its image by a kind of “metaphysical” fatalism, or as an exception to the rule. Change is a rule that has no exception. This is important for our topic.
What history is known for as a narrative is known for in its submission to the logic of change, which is a striking characteristic of narrative. A reader of history in general, and of Kurdish history in particular, can follow this narrative and how it transforms from yesterday to today. The non-existence of a Kurdish state does not mean at all, by the logic of history itself, the impossibility of its attainment in time. As long as there is an expression, even from the tongue of a single individual, of an existence for the Kurds, and for others on the face of the earth, towards a state ambition, this serves as a geographical witness of proof in contrast. The lack of realization does not mean negation; rather, it is walking the path, relying on an untamed will.
This reveals the policy adopted—deliberately—by those who partitioned Kurdistan among themselves, and those who were global “custodians” in “granting” these geographical “endowments” and a certain historical dependency, surely since before the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 itself. Reading historical texts about this fabricated and circulated characteristic—meaning the “imaginary state” of the Kurds—is a negation of a negation, in the mathematical logical sense. Whoever sought and seeks to negate the existence of the “state” for the Kurds, describing it as imaginary, must necessarily proceed from a demographic reality, whatever its nature in partition or division—a reality existing on the ground. The continuous handling of the topic according to these “preserved-guarded” calculations is the accurate expression of what is not intended to be disclosed or named: namely, the reality of the state, even in the future.
The simplest example of the foregoing is what the great Kurdish poet Ahmadi Khani disclosed more than three centuries ago about this political entity, and how it can be dealt with regarding the requirements of time and place. Khani was not merely a poet whose work came from the fabric of pure imagination (“mere infatuation”); rather, it came from the fabric of a reality in a fragmented society, and he was possessed by it out of faith, doctrine, and commitment, in every sense of the word. Here, we are in front of a narrative of the resistant type—the narrative of the oppressed seeking liberation. It runs in the opposite direction to the course of history (“the most modern colonial/colonialist blueprint currently”)—the direction that works in contradiction to the narrative executed in the colonial complex, a complex constructed by those who seek, in various ways, to practice methods responsive to an ideological, authoritarian system. This opposite is the desired reality: the representation of the political entity, meaning considering the imaginary state here a state awaiting inauguration. From here, and here, it is easy to discern this chronic disease that accompanies the rigid political structure of regimes that relegate the Kurds as a people to something below a people, and consequently, to the lack of credibility of what is sought in a state entity. Thus, the disease itself becomes that very imagination which has transformed over time into an illness difficult to treat, except with growing pressure—meaning when quantity turns into quality or type, which is the impossibility of remaining in the
“possession” of illusion.
I want to point out here what brings us closer to the “tangible, specific reality, with its flesh, blood, and pains”. In the journal Les Cahiers de l’Orient, the researcher Sophie Bélaïch opened an article of hers seventeen years ago under a striking title: “Kurdistan: un peuple, une langue, un territoire, mais un Etat fictive” (Kurdistan: a people, a language, a territory, but a fictional state).
The clarification, or part of it, comes from the beginning: “We often hear about “Kurdistan” as if it were a state. But Kurdistan is defined as a region and a territory, not an independent, sovereign, and recognized state. Faced with the persecution suffered by the Kurdish people, some preferred exile. If exile can sometimes be exploited as an opportunity, Kurdish nationalism and the desire to establish an independent state remain alive among some.” The researcher lives between two opposing coordinates that require clarification: The coordinate of the existing reality (de facto), where it becomes impossible to look at
the Kurds as a people, and consequently, as a possibility of thinking about the political and legal cover that grants them an identity presence in their name within the borders of a state.
And the coordinate of the reality liberated from this alienation—this forced fragmentation—the moment one looks at the borders represented by their regimes, and not the Kurds as a people, when they are lifted. This is a pre-construction reality of any thought based on an applied agreement, as it is historical, so that geography, in this case, bears witness that it transcends such a logic. From an existing geographical- demographic standpoint, talking about the concept of the “imaginary state” becomes nothing but a myth and more, because myth has an aesthetic narrative that amuses and induces pleasure, whereas here, it is repellent.
In an older example, and one more qualified to be examined for its condescending, colonial, and liquidating origin, which takes us back nearly a century after the tragedy of the Ararat (Agri) rebellion, and how a history accompanying this aggression was recorded: When a caricature was published in the Turkish newspaper Milliyet on September 19, 1930. The publisher of the newspaper was the correspondent of Siirt (Sêrt): Mahmur Soydan (1883–1936), where the newspaper began publication in Istanbul on February 11, 1926. It was established with the approval of the Turkish constitution and encouragement from Mustafa Kemal, and in 1935 it bore the name Tan (“The Dawn”), and its owner in turn was Ali Rıza Karacan.
In the caricature, a tombstone appeared bearing the name “Agri” (Agrî), on which was written: “The imaginary Kurdistan is buried here, the imaginary Kurdistan was entombed here.” This example appeared at the beginning of Ismail Beşikçi’s book, The Resurgence of Imaginary Kurdistan, which I translated into Arabic through an intermediary language, Kurdish, introduced it, and it was published by the University of Duhok (2018, p. 17), where I work in its research center.
The core of the argument is that the distance separating the Kurds from the state has no connection to imagination in its length, breadth, and depth; rather, it is connected to the politics that practice piracy in its arena. This permits the Kurds to disclose what concerns them and what they are worthy of. Certainly, the pirates of history cannot represent the history that transcends them, if it does not condemn them, considering them themselves transient in history in this case. Therefore, those who speak about the Kurds and their pursuit of a state that concerns them, describing it as a craft of “imagination”—meaning the impossibility of realization—are correct in that, because they simply want a coexistence with reality and its variables, so that their imagination takes on the color of illusion while they bet on it.
Conversely, those who emphasize that the state for the Kurds is not a craft of imagination, as they look to the future, are also correct, with the difference that these—the Kurds here—proceed from the experiences of history, the most recent to emerge among them being a group of states originating from the “Yugoslav Federation” as the clearest example. For their imagination, it has the color of reality extending inside space and time.
