Sheikh Said’s centennial Kurdistan – Caliphate conundrum

In February 1925, a two-month-long yet critically decisive – in its total effects – uprising led by Sheikh Said in Northern Kurdistan put to a severe test the Kemalist regime in Ankara which, emboldened by victories attained elsewhere, quenched the flames of defiance heavy handedly inflicting grievous harm on the Kurdish population everywhere.

The first ever major Kurdish uprising in the Post-WWI era, would serve as a turning point in Ankara’s approach to the Kurdish Question in the long century to follow, setting race against race, and nationality against nationality.

Yet, Sheikh Said’s uprising has drawn to itself an unresolved controversy. Arguably, history has left nothing so unresolved and widely subject to speculation an event as the Sheikh Said’s uprising does.

With no consensus reached on its real motivation yet, much has been said about its timing which is considerably controversial. However, whatever the secret motive that dictated the Sheikh to the action may have been, the preceding months prepared the ground for the uprising.

While according to some scholars it emerged against the abolition of the Caliphate, conversely, others have made arguments that its ultimate aim was the creation of a Kurdish nationalist state.

A third opinion- largely circulated in Turkish official circles- have ever since claimed that Great Britain had a direct finger in the uprising, for it favoured its designs on deciding the fate of the former Ottoman Vilayet of Mosul.

However, while acknowledging that the image of the Kurdo-Turkish “brotherhood,” which Turkish negotiators had eagerly sought to promote in the ongoing deliberations relevant to the Mosul affair was tarnished beyond repair, which begrudgingly could give substance to a British meddling, the debate about the two other discrepant views and disparate opinions as to whether the uprising was religious or nationalist remains open up to date.

In the wide, one of the most important factors that determinedly contributed to feed and nurture the uprising was the activities of the Kurdish Freedom Society (Civata Azadiya Kurd), commonly referred to as Azadi.

Founded by an urban elite in 1923, and dominated by experienced Kurdish military officers, who had served in the Ottoman army during World War I, or those who had served previously in the Hamidian Cavalry Regiments, Azadi sought primarily to create an independent Kurdistan. It also included religious figures as well as Kurdish politicians and notables.

Irreparably, the party suffered an irrevocable setback in the two-day (September 3-4, 1924) Kurdish mutiny against the Turkish garrison in Beit Shebab (Elki), in the Hakkari Province.

Upon failure, some 500 Kurdish officers and men fled either to Iraq or Syria, which were under the British and French mandatory authorities respectively. By the end of 1924, most of Azadi’s high profile members were either arrested or forced to leave.

In a conference held in exile- highly likely in Aleppo- in late 1924, Azadi resolved on mounting a rise against the central government of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. Sheikh Said, largely by default, was chosen to assume leadership of the uprising, which was set on March 21, 1925.

Unexpectedly, however, in the first week of February, a trivial local incident which grew by leaps and bounds compelled Sheikh Said to announce the uprising. The premature outbreak, nonetheless, soon enveloped almost the entire Kurdish areas.

In Ankara, Mustafa Kemal, who had emerged victorious in the war against the invading Greek forces; had settled the eastern borders of his republic with Russia; quelled French claims to Cilicia; and expelled British and French forces from Istanbul and the Straits, was not to tolerate such existential a threat develop at home.

Kurdistan’s rugged terrain, remoteness and lack of infrastructure prohibited Turkish forces from rapid advance. Towards the end of March, regular forces engaged in fighting. Counter offensive forced Sheikh Said to retreat. The balance of power turned to the favor of the government forces; the major part of the uprising was over.

As the dawn of June 29 broke, the body of Sheikh Said was dangling from the gibbets. That was followed by a smearing campaign by state institutions, depicting rebels as stooges to foreign powers.

By the time Sheikh Said was hanged, Turkish military had regained whole territory lost to Sheikh Said, but conversely, Turkish diplomacy would lose a more precious, strategic and oil- bearing piece of land elsewhere; Mosul, which up to 1925 was still a heated debate between Turkey from one hand and Great Britain and Iraq from another.

It is solely for this reason that since the very first shots of the uprising, Turkish officials embraced an untenable narrative maintaining the “rebellion” was incited by the British in order to influence the studies of the Mosul Commission of the League of Nations.

Turkish official sources claim Hakkari Assyrian officers, who were serving then in the British- trained Levy Battalions in Iraq, supplied Sheikh Said with British arms and weapons.

Contextually, knowing that the uprising occurred at a time when the commission sent by the League of Nations was touring Mosul to determine the fate of the former Ottoman province, to which Turkey still had laid a firm claim, could give legitimacy to the Turkish version, the striking fact is that there is not enough evidence to prove the assertion.

It is genuine to assume that the uprising confounded the Turks, and diminished their hopes on Mosul. Yet, Great Britain since 1921 was opposed to the idea of backing a Kurdish revolt. Let alone interfering in its domestic affairs. Quiet the contrary.

Besides, by 1925 Mustafa Kemal had emerged victorious in the war of liberation against the invading Greek forces, which were pushed and backed by Allies. Turkish victory over the Greeks impressed everyone, particularly the French mandatory authorities in Syria which concluded a separate peace with Turkey on October 20, 1921, leaving the British in the dust.

Great Britain was anxious not to disturb Turkey, it sought rather to preserve Turkey’s territorial integrity from the danger posed by the Bolshevik Russia. In the British circles, there emerged an established conviction about the importance of obtaining the friendship of Turkey as a counterpoise to Bolshevism.

Publicly, Great Britain did not endorse the uprising. However, as far as the Mosul Question is concerned, it could be argued that it approved it privately since it suited its endeavors on Mosul to gain concessions.

While before the uprising Turkish official circles adamantly maintained Mosul was naturally, economically, ethnographically, and historically part of Turkey, the uprising and the ensued mass killings made the Turkish claim to Mosul senseless.

The uprising brought the Turks and the Kurds into an irreconcilable conflict. The former exerted valiant though futile efforts to have the latter kept in the fold. To no vail.

It is equally untrue that abolishing the caliphate a year earlier (March 3, 1924) has nothing to do with the event, should we know that on the very same day the caliphate was abolished, the draconian “Law for the Unification of Education” was passed, denying virtually the Kurdish identity. Turkish was made the only official language.

The words Kurds and Kurdistan were removed from state literature. Geographically, there no longer existed an entity called Kurdistan, historically, the word Kurd was replaced as a corruption of mountain Turk. Breaching the rule entailed severe punishment.

Admittedly, the caliphate, though nominally, served for centuries as the league that made the Kurds and the Turks bind together. Ending the 1300 years- old Muslim state for a secular (apostate) one, and the gradual demise of the understanding reached by Sultan Salim and Idris Batlisi, may have given more strength to the uprising.

The strict Turkification policy which entailed forcibly transforming the Kurds into Turks legally and politically, and assimilating them culturally and socially, seem to be the main driving force and a common ground for Kurdish men of religion and those of politics to converge.

It is likewise genuine to admit that religion played significant a role in the uprising; and that Great Britain may have heartily welcomed the uprising—but as evidence is lacking, it is not possible of course to decide whether it gave any support or otherwise.

With the collapse of the Caliphate, that imposing, inclusive and homogenous edifice, which had kept shrinking since the Balkan Wars until it (the Sick Man of Europe) was finally laid to rest, it was natural therefore that with the growth of nationalist Kurdish spirit, Kurdish solidarity on political and religious bonds began to take shape, and eventually converge.

Under that clock, the uprising essentially aimed at an independent Kurdistan; this became evident when written documents such as ‘Kurdistan Ministry of War’, ‘Government of Kurdistan’, and the ‘President of Kurdistan’ were discovered.

In a tribally- driven environment, the appointment of Sheikh Said to lead the uprising was to the point. In that sense, as a religious façade, the uprising aimed primarily at the establishment of an independent Kurdish state proper.

The personality of Sheikh Said played fundamental a role in building up support for the uprising. He had a foot in both camps; that of religion, and that of politics. He was a religious Muslim, and nationalist Kurd, who had established relations as far as Aleppo and Beirut.

This vividly represents Sheikh Said as a deviation from the classic role played by men of religion. Reports of contacts the Sheikh made with the Assyrians of Midyat, and the martyrdom of some 150 Alawites of Dersim embracing his cause, gives undeniable legitimacy to the narrative that the uprising was a politically motivated one, and its main objective was the creation of a Kurdish state.

In many ways, the uprising served as a watershed in the history of new Turkish republic and laid the foundation stone for its brutal approach to the Kurds in the decades that followed. Authorities used the uprising as a pretext to launch campaigns of reprisal and deportation.

It had deleterious effects on the Kurds as a whole. Large waves of Kurds, Assyrians, Syriacs, and Armenians were either deported or relocated to distant areas in western parts of Turkey, such as in Adana, Mersin, and elsewhere, beyond the border.

The heavy hand of oppression drove a wedge in the Kurdo- Turkish relationship; it was an acrimonious divorce. The Kurds crossed the Rubicon, and the Turks responded by unleashing the beast so savagely, setting the wheel in motion for Kurdish racial obliteration, exceeding in brutality even the Armenian Genocide.

Dr. Riza Nur, a former Deputy for Sinope, and second in command to Ismet Inonu at the Lausanne Conference, described the uprising as ‘God-sent’ to eradicate the opposition.

In his Memoirs, which were published in 1957, Prosecutor Ahmed Sureyya Bey, who conducted the investigation of Sheikh Said and his comrades, unveiled:

”It was only religious in terms of appearance……it was nothing but a complete Kurdish nationalism and the desire for a Kurdish state and government.”

On reflection, the jurist reaches a conviction that Sheikh Said was loyal to his cause, and that the stout insistence he put up throughout the court that the uprising was not a Kurdish case, was that he may have thought to avoid execution.