At the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, the Ottoman Turks allied with the Kurds against the Safavid Empire in Persia (Iran since 1935). That battle marked the beginning of a political division in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shiites for the first time since the inception of Islam in 610 AD. This division manifested in the form of warring states, each carrying an ideology\u2014the first Sunni and the second Shiite.<\/p>\n
Such an occurrence was unprecedented, even though Sunnis and Shiites had crystallized into two distinct sects since the tenth century with the declaration of the (Occultation of the Imam) by Ibn Babawayh al-Qummi, the jurist of the Imami-Twelver sect, in 940 AD. It was also unprecedented despite this division being translated by rulers who embraced one of the two sects, such as the Buyids, who controlled the Abbasid capital, Baghdad, between 945 and 1055 AD, but never attempted to impose the Shiite sect on the state of the Abbasid Caliph.<\/p>\n
When the Ottoman Sultan seized control of the Levant following the Battle of Marj Dabiq two years after (Chaldiran), followed by his control over Egypt the next year, and his subsequent control over the Hejaz\u2014the land of the Two Holy Mosques\u2014the Sunni Arab acceptance of Ottoman control led to establishing the Ottoman Empire on a Turkish-Kurdish-Arab triad. However, this was not on the basis of three nationalities, but rather on the basis of a state whose Sultan declared himself the Caliph of Muslims, which clearly cast his Shiite Safavid rival in Persia out of the fold of Islam.<\/p>\n
During the period between 1514 and the coup of the Unionists in the (Committee of Union and Progress) against Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908, followed by his deposition the next year\u2014and particularly after they monopolized power in 1913, sidelined the proponents of decentralization, and moved toward Turkifying the Ottoman Empire\u2014the Sunni bond was the glue of the Ottoman Empire with its Turkish-Kurdish-Arab triad. It was what gave the empire its identity as a Millet state based on the Sunni denomination, hostile to other Muslim sects such as the Twelver Shiites and the Nusayris (Alawites), while allowing non-Muslim Millets, including Christians and Jews, autonomy in personal status issues in exchange for political obedience to the center of the Ottoman state.<\/p>\n
The Sunni bond was shaken during the reign of Sultan Abdul Mejid I (1839\u20131861) when, with the (Edict of G\u00fclhane: Tanzimat Firman) and the (Imperial Edict \/ Hatt-\u0131 H\u00fcmayun) in 1839 and 1856 respectively, he moved toward attempting to bestow a new identity upon the Ottoman state “by guaranteeing the rights of all Ottomans regardless of religion and nationality” and “equality regardless of religion, class, and nationality” making (Ottomanism) a new identity for the state instead of the Sunni Millet identity.<\/p>\n
When Sultan Abdul Hamid II came to power in 1876 and revoked the policies of Sultan Abdul Mejid I through the policy of the (Pan-Islamic Investment), he initially found satisfaction and popularity among the Kurds and Arabs. They had been uncomfortable with Sultan Abdul Mejid’s policies of equality within the Ottoman bond and his turning of the back on the Sunni Millet tendency that had begun with (Chaldiran). Without this, one cannot explain the Armenian opposition movements to Sultan Abdul Hamid in the nineties, nor the discomfort of European capitals in London and Paris with his policies\u2014especially through his exploitation of the Islamic bond beyond Ottoman borders against the British in India, or in a place that remained nominally affiliated with him, such as Egypt after the British occupation in 1882. Furthermore, without this, one cannot explain how the (Committee of Union and Progress), upon its establishment in Paris in 1889, threw down the gauntlet of (Ottomanism) against Sultan Abdul Hamid and his line of the (Pan-Islamic Investment).<\/p>\n
If the Ottoman triad\u2014Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab\u2014had been shaken and brought close to unraveling with the Unionists and their direction toward the Turkification of the Ottoman state, the death blow came in 1923 with Mustafa Kemal. He revealed his Turkish nationalist face with the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923, whereas during his war against foreign armies in present-day Turkey (1919\u20131922), he either declared an Islamic face or suggested a Turkish-Kurdish duality, as in the (National Pact \/ Misak-\u0131 Mill\u00ee) issued in 1920. This was a process of deception and esotericism practiced by the founder of the nationalist Turkish state, despite the fact that many Arabs\u2014indeed, the majority of Sunni Arabs in the Ottoman Empire\u2014did not stand in 1916 with Sharif Hussein bin Ali when he declared the "Arab Revolt" against the Ottomans, and despite the fact that a significant portion of the Kurds in the regions of Kurdistan supported Mustafa Kemal in his war during the 1919\u20131922 period due to promises he made to recognize them.<\/p>\n
Through the Kurdish rebellions against the Republic of (Atat\u00fcrk) in 1825, 1930, and 1937\u20131938, and then with the August 15, 1984 revolution which is still ongoing\u2014although there is a path to peace that could conclude it, meaning the initiative of Abdullah \u00d6calan on February 27, 2025\u2014it is clear that there is a Turkish-Kurdish divorce. If Sharif Hussein was unable to lead the Arabs to a divorce with the Turks, (Atat\u00fcrk) convinced them of that divorce. This was further compounded by Adnan Menderes' clash with Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties during the era of the (Baghdad Pact). The attempts of Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, since the Justice and Development Party came to power in Atat\u00fcrk’s Ankara in 2002, have not been able to convince the Arabs so far, through his policies of “Neo-Ottomanism” that this divorce has ended. This remains true despite the fact that the policies of Khomeini and Khamenei have reminded the Arabs, especially the Sunnis of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, that the atmosphere of (Chaldiran) is still present, and that the Shiite Islamic tendency is in a state of twinning with Persian nationalism. It is Khomeini and Khamenei who generated a degree of popularity for Erdo\u011fan among Sunni Arabs in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, rather than an inclination toward a “Neo Ottomanism”.<\/p>\n
Among the Kurds, we find that the persecutions by the Pahlavi dynasty (1925\u20131979) against them in Iran were no less than the persecutions by Khomeini and Khamenei against them\u2014in fact, they surpassed them during the time of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Pahlavis, Reza and his son Mohammad, provided a counterpart to Atat\u00fcrk there in his nationalist tendency, and they convinced the Kurds that nationalism is confronted with its like, exactly as (Atat\u00fcrk) did among the Turks in his persecution of the Kurds, and exactly as the Baathists of Baghdad (1968\u20132003) and Damascus (1963\u20132024) did in their nationalist persecutions of the Kurds in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Iraqi monarchical rule (1921\u20131958) and the Syrian parliamentary rule (1943\u20131951 and 1954\u20131958)\u2014even if interrupted by military coups\u2014offered a path toward Kurdish integration in Iraq and Syria, or suggested a possibility for this integration within a single country, the likes of which we did not find in Atat\u00fcrk’s Turkey or Pahlavi’s Iran. The Kurdish nationalist tendency was unable to dominate the Iraqi Kurdish milieu until the early seventies; before that, the Iraqi Communist Party was stronger than the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP-Parti). Similarly, the Syrian Communists remained until the early eighties stronger than the Syrian Kurdish parties in the Jazira, Afrin, and the Rukn al-Din neighborhood.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iran has had a presence in Iranian Kurdistan since the forties, perhaps greater than any other party presence, whether it was the Tudeh Party, a Persian liberal trend, or an Islamic trend. Meanwhile, we find that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), since its establishment in 1978, faces no rival in the Kurdish milieu spread throughout the general Republic of Turkey (1923). Anyone who reflects on Abdullah \u00d6calan’s thesis\u2014a parallel to which can be found in what Sultan Abdul Mejid I proposed regarding an Ottoman bond that transcends nationality and religion\u2014can find in what \u00d6calan proposed a safeguard against the unraveling of states. This was precisely what Sultan Abdul Mejid I wanted and attempted in order to treat the “Sick Man” and when he failed, it was an announcement of the impending death of that “Sick Man”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, the Ottoman Turks allied with the Kurds against the Safavid Empire in Persia (Iran since 1935). That battle marked the beginning of a political division in the Islamic world between Sunnis and Shiites for the first time since the inception of Islam in 610 AD. This division manifested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1359,"featured_media":14504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[57,987,1167,544,102,1301,36],"ppma_author":[962],"class_list":["post-14503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-iran","tag-khomeini","tag-mustafa-kemal-ataturk","tag-ottoman-empire","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-reza-pahlavis","tag-turkey"],"authors":[{"term_id":962,"user_id":1359,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mohammad-sayed-rassas","display_name":"Mohammad Sayed Rassas","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2024-10-09-at-15.30.05-e1728481060869.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/WhatsApp-Image-2024-10-09-at-15.30.05-e1728481060869.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14507,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14503\/revisions\/14507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14503"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}