{"id":14628,"date":"2026-06-29T08:01:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T06:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/?p=14628"},"modified":"2026-06-28T19:07:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T17:07:39","slug":"three-issues-regarding-the-sheikh-said-revolution-and-the-azadi-association","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/three-issues-regarding-the-sheikh-said-revolution-and-the-azadi-association\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Issues Regarding the Sheikh Said Revolution and the Azadi Association"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somewhere in Diyarbak<\/span>\u0131<\/span>r, more than a hundred years ago, Turkish government forces buried the bodies of Sheikh Said and his 47 companions, who had been executed by the field-based and extraordinary “Independence Tribunals” formed by the Grand National Assembly. Since then, the burial sites have remained one of the undisclosed secrets of the state, despite repeated demands by Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s family, civil society representatives, and Kurdish parliamentarians and politicians to hand over the topographic maps of the graves. This was sought to ensure a proper burial that would offer redress and restore due recognition to the makers of Kurdish history<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>a demand that directly conflicts with the state’s methodology of erasing Kurdish memory out of fear that the tombs of the 1925 revolution’s figures would transform into national shrines connecting the past with the present.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The failure to determine the burial sites of the figures of Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s revolution and the Azadi movement renders that revolution an ongoing, contemporary event. Furthermore, the division and multiplicity of viewpoints regarding the causes and failure of the revolution add a dialectical dimension that has not yet ceased. This makes writing about a revolution that occurred over a century ago a recurring event, open to more than one interpretation and approachable from multiple angles. For this reason, this paper attempts to present a historical reading, rather than a historical narration, of three issues that may seem distinct and lack a directly continuous contextual nature. However, these issues offer an additional reading that helps dismantle the historical puzzle surrounding Sheikh Said’s revolution and the Azadi Association. Because more than a century has passed since this foundational event, division persists regarding the identity of the revolution<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>between those who focus on its religious dimension to find a kind of kinship between it and the religious movements that emerged in the post-Ottoman Caliphate world, and those who insist on its purely nationalist side to align with the nationalist visions that crystallized decades after the revolution. Conversely, astute trends since the 1960s have attempted to argue that the 1925 revolution was a composite of both factors, and that the relationship of mutual benefit between Kurdish nationalists, urban notables, and military officers on one hand, and Kurdish religious figures on the other, provides a better scope for vision and evaluation.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The poor preparation, the outbreak of the uprising ahead of its scheduled time, and the failure to pave the ground for its sustainability reflect the “inevitable” tendency for its occurrence at any cost. The monopoly of the “state” and its Turkish nationalization, alongside the economic pressure on Kurdistan, formed the basis of what can be called the inevitability of rebelling against the nascent state, whether preparation took place or not. Furthermore, the economic factor has rarely received a detailed, supportive study; in most works addressing the revolution, this factor was referred to as a secondary element or was treated descriptively to provide a general overview of the conditions in Kurdistan just before the outbreak of the revolution.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although the revolution was an elite endeavor that brought together the nationalist\/military and religious elites, it also managed to maintain an element of pluralism and address popular Kurdish classes that trusted those elites and the tribal leaders participating in the revolution. Remarkably, the impact of the uprising transcended its Kurdish regional nature and Kurdish positioning into the entirety of Turkish political life, particularly through the liquidation of the opposition and accusing it of supporting Sheikh Said as a prelude to liquidating Mustafa Kemal’s opponents.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This paper does not discuss the course of battles and the minutiae of the revolution as much as it attempts to examine the issue of the inevitability of its occurrence within the consciousness of the Azadi Association. It also discusses the impact of internal sectarian, tribal, and cultural (linguistic) division, as well as the division over the nature of the revolution and its justifications, and the significant role played by the Azadi Association. That role was largely overlooked if not for the immense efforts made by the Dutch anthropologist specializing in Kurdish history and society, Martin van Bruinessen, who reshed light on the role of this association as a partner in the 1925 revolution. This provided subsequent studies with a better scope of vision compared to those that attempted to restrict the revolution to a religious-tribal scope, or the descriptions by Turkish authors who labeled it a “reactionary” act. The paper also examines the economic factor as a reinforcing element of the uprising and revolution, in addition to a third axis addressing the impact of the revolution on Turkish politics, particularly the future of the opposition that was liquidated shortly after the defeat of the revolution.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A Century of Controversy: Religious, Nationalist, or Both?<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of October 1923, the Grand National Assembly approved a new constitution that turned Turkey into a republican entity, and Mustafa Kemal was elected its president. Immediately, the policy of Turkifying the Kurds began through a top-down decision that reneged on the promises made to the Kurds at the Erzurum and Sivas congresses (1919) held during the heat of the wars of independence.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

However, before transforming what remained of the Ottoman Empire’s territories into what would later be known as “Turkey”<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>specifically, two years before the National Assembly’s decision to convert the sultanate into a republic<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>concepts such as the “State of Turkey” and the “Government of Turkey” were present in Mustafa Kemal’s speeches, and subsequently in the 1921 constitution known as the “Fundamental Law of Organizations.” This means that the Kurdish elites’ awareness of the sweeping shift in the course of Kurdish-Turkish relations began with matters that appeared formal in their general presentation, a fact proven by the establishment of the nationalist vanguard known as the Azadi Association earlier than 1924. Contrary to what Mustafa Akyol wrote regarding the Kurds’ support for the national struggle, their acceptance, adoption, and commitment to this concept<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>meaning here the term “Turkishness” (the recurring term in some of Mustafa Kemal’s texts prior to the founding of Turkey) (<\/span><\/span>Akyol, M. (2006). The Origin of Turkey’s Kurdish Question<\/i><\/span><\/span>)<\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>the facts indicate that Azadi held a different viewpoint, which we will demonstrate in the following lines. Even if a segment of the Kurds accepted with reluctance the promotion of terms such as Turkey, the State of Turkey, the Government of Turkey, and the people of Turkey, this does not mean that all Kurds agreed to replace the Ottoman bond and Islamic spiritual connection<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>which united the last two Ottoman “elements,” namely the Kurds and the Turks<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>with the emerging concept of “Turkishness.” The silence of some Kurds regarding this “mutating” term might have been their acceptance of the idea of the “distinctiveness” of Mustafa Kemal<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s government (the Ankara government) from the Istanbul government through the use of such novel terminology.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Following the declaration of the republican system, the nascent government instructed Turkish historians to invent a shared identity between Kurds and Turks based on the idea of erasing the Kurdish presence from history. This “populist” policy continued until it reached, at a later stage, a reliance on “vulgar scientism,” which was based on examining Kurdish craniums and making morphological speculations about the physical features of the inhabitants of Kurdish regions to link them to the “Turkish race.” The process of assimilation began earlier than anyone anticipated, and efforts were not limited to distorting and falsifying history but extended to the Kurdish geography within the republic. To this end, a law was passed allowing the government to confiscate large landholdings in the eastern provinces, thereby targeting the Kurdish feudal and sheikh classes, and filling the vacuum resulting from confiscation by settling human mixtures coming from outside the geography of Kurdistan: Turks arriving from Greece after the population exchange, as well as Turks coming from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, or crypto-Turks coming from the Balkans after 1923, alongside the possibility of settling thousands of Circassians in the eastern Kurdish provinces.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, various internal factors intervened in the inevitability of the uprising against the new Turkish regime. The core component of the revolution was the “Azadi Association,” later named the “Association for the Independence of the Kurds.” Its establishment came against the backdrop of purely nationalist reasons: the fear of a law to deport Kurds to western Anatolia, the removal of the name “Kurdistan” from all educational textbooks and the gradual replacement of Kurdish names with Turkish ones, in addition to corruption, the absence of justice, deprivation from benefiting from tax revenues, government intervention in the election of deputies in Kurdish provinces, and the mistreatment of Kurds in the army, among other reasons cited by Martin van Bruinessen in his work (<\/span><\/span>Agha, Shaikh and State, Part Two – 2008<\/i><\/span><\/span>). For these reasons, Azadi<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s goals focused on: securing the protection of Kurds from Turkish injustice; granting Kurds their freedom and the opportunity to develop their country; and obtaining British support<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>the latter point never materialized despite Turkish attempts to promote this narrative, a reality that Ismet Inonu himself acknowledged later, admitting the non-existence of Kurdish-British cooperation about a decade after the revolution.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To interpret the nationalist dimension established by Azadi, one can return to the debate over the date of the founding of the Azadi Association. Fighters who participated in the Beyt<\/span><\/span>\u00fc\u015f\u015f<\/span>ebap uprising of 1924 confirm that the association was founded in 1921, not in 1923 as appears in many sources. The fact that it was founded in 1921 means that “the Ko<\/span><\/span>\u00e7<\/span>giri revolution and its outcomes, and the continuous unrest in the Dersim region, probably influenced the founding of Azadi more than the political developments between 1921 and 1923″ (<\/span><\/span>Robert Olson, History of the Kurdish national struggle, 1880<\/i><\/span><\/span>\u2013<\/i><\/span>1925 – Arabic Ed. 2013<\/i><\/span><\/span>).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is useful to turn attention to the Ko<\/span><\/span>\u00e7<\/span>giri uprising (Ko<\/span>\u00e7<\/span>giri-Dersim) led by Kurdish Alevi figures such as Dr. Nuri Dersimi, Haydar Beg, and his brother Ali Shah. It revealed a Kurdish division of a sectarian (Sunni-Alevi) and linguistic (Kurmanji-Zazaki) nature, as Sunni Kurds did not take seriously the anxieties of Alevi Kurds who were skeptical of Kemalist slogans calling for Kurdish-Turkish unity based on Sunni Islam. Thus, the Alevi Kurds stood alone in “their defense of their Kurdishness at the same level as their defense of their Alevi heritage” (<\/span><\/span>Jordi Tejel Gorgas, Le mouvement kurde de Turquie en exil – Arabic Ed. 2013<\/i><\/span><\/span>). Perhaps this division would cast its shadow over the revolution of Sheikh Said and Azadi, leading to the withdrawal of Alevi Kurds from the course of events. The Alevis’ perspective toward “Turkey” had changed prior to the 1925 revolution; according to Bruinessen, the Alevis were influenced by Mustafa Kemal’s secular discourse, and for the first time “Alevis attained officially equal rights and came under the protection of the law, and an independent Kurdistan under the authority of Sunni Sheikhs could only lead to harming them.” Consequently, the Alevi Kurdish angle of vision shifted during the interval between the Ko<\/span><\/span>\u00e7<\/span>giri uprising and the Sheikh Said revolution.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Through the declaration of the Ko<\/span><\/span>\u00e7<\/span>giri uprising, and then the efforts of the Azadi Association, the early caution of Kurdish nationalist elites against the growth of Kemalism, policies of assimilation, homogenization, and the formulation of the new Turkish identity becomes prominent<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>especially after the Kemalist military victories over the Greeks and their feeling that the internal and external situations had become closer to stability and capable of imposing the new reality on the entire population of Turkey.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond these early dates of the launching of the 1925 revolution, the researcher Tahsin Sefer (grandson of Khalid Beg Cibran, the first president of the Azadi Association), through his contribution to the centenary of the Sheikh Said Revolution held in Brussels in 2025, finds that tracing the emergence of Azadi leads us to its long-lasting impact as a conscious nationalist movement that left its mark on the collective political organizations that appeared after 1925, particularly the Khoybun movement in 1927 and its emergence in the Syrian exile and within the Kurdish regions in Syria. In any case, the policy of reconciliation pursued by Azadi between nationalism and traditional trends pushed toward choosing Sheikh Said as the general leader of the revolution during the Azadi Association conference in 1924, and for it to be led accordingly by religious figures. In turn, Sheikh Said aimed, alongside his nationalist inclination, to “re-form the Naqshbandi order in Kurdistan” (<\/span><\/span>Olson – 2013<\/i><\/span><\/span>), after criticizing the behavior of the sheikhs, describing them as being closer to a “gang of bandits” than being members of a religious order. Thus, the issue of “restoring the Caliphate” was not the sole preoccupation of Sheikh Said as the bonding material for the spiritual Kurdish-Turkish relationship or one of the pillars of the Ottoman identity that must be preserved. The poor state of religious orders, particularly the Naqshbandi in Kurdistan, affected Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s imagination and conceptions of Kurdish identity, which blends the religious and the nationalist after the “deviation” of Turkish nationalism and Mustafa Kemal’s abandonment of the thesis of a shared homeland.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Kurdish nationalists in Azadi did not object to labeling the armed movement to confront the Kemalists as “Jihad,” and Sheikh Said was titled “Emir of the Mujahedeen,” which meant utilizing religious energy and employing it for nationalist goals. In this matter, we notice a similarity between the behavior of Kurdish nationalists and the case represented by Mustafa Kemal during the War of Independence, when the spokesperson for the “Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Eastern Provinces” in 1919 gave Mustafa Kemal the title of “Mujahed,” or at other times he was called the “Sword of Islam” and other titles that appeared during the War of Independence to grant Kemal a religious aura that would help him in mobilization and matching the Sultanate’s government. What reinforces the view that a nationalist inclination was present in Sheikh Said to a degree no less than his religious inclinations is the nature of his relationship with certain Kurdish nationalists who were not known for religious piety. In fact, his most prominent collaborator was Fehmi Bilal Effendi, a man known for his atheism and public mockery of religion, who served as the Sheikh’s right hand because Fehmi was, according to Bruinessen, a capable and steadfast nationalist, and the primary goal of both Sheikh Said and the leaders of Azadi was “establishing an independent Kurdistan.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The social base of the revolution varied in a way that united disparate factions. Alongside religious figures, nationalists, officers, tribal leaders, and urbanites, “outlaws” appeared among the ranks. An enigmatic figure like Bado, despite being known as a “thief,” fought on the Elaz<\/span><\/span>\u0131\u011f <\/span>(Kharput) front and remained an outlaw after the collapse of the revolution until he managed to flee to Syria in 1927. Perhaps Bado<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s character leads us to the character of Topal Osman Agha, the notorious bandit and gang leader utilized by the Kemalists who participated in the War of Independence and was pardoned in 1919 after his involvement in killing Armenians and Greeks was proven, before turning against the Kemalists and attempting to assassinate Mustafa Kemal at the <\/span><\/span>\u00c7<\/span>ankaya Palace. However, the intersection in the revolutionary context between the cases of Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s revolution and Mustafa Kemal’s movement cannot prove that the former was influenced by the latter despite clear forms of mimicry; rather, it reflects a conscious pragmatism on the part of the makers of the Kurdish revolution, where everything was permissible in the context of their revolution’s victory.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, with the availability of the condition of mutual interest between the officers and intellectuals of Azadi and some representatives of traditional society, Sheikh Said, as one of the wealthiest men in Kurdistan, placed his financial capabilities and sources of wealth at the service of the revolution. He also employed his spiritual status for the sake of the confrontation. Furthermore, the Sheikh had followers among both Zazaki speakers and Kurmanji speakers, a social policy that was secured through marriage alliances. This means that Sheikh Said had consciously attempted to overcome the crisis of cultural and tribal division following the Kurdish reactions after the Ko<\/span><\/span>\u00e7<\/span>giri uprising. Despite the primary weight of the Zaza Kurds in the revolution, Sheikh Said attempted to expand his base to include Kurmanji-speaking Kurds. Based on this, Turkey found itself facing what Martin Strohmeier described as a “nationalist rebellion under a religious guise” (<\/span><\/span>Klaus Kreiser, Atat<\/i><\/span><\/span>\u00fc<\/i><\/span>rk: Eine Biographie – Arabic Ed. 2023<\/i><\/span><\/span>). The nationalists’ reliance on religious figures and the employment of their status played a role in fueling the revolution, as four out of five fronts were under the leadership of religious figures.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Stimulating Economic Factors<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is interesting that the study of the reasons behind the Kurds’ revolution against the Kemalist regime moves to cover other aspects that contributed to it alongside the religious and nationalist factors and their integration<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>such as the availability of the economic factor and the division of Kurdish stances regarding supporting the revolution and joining it. The neglect by the new rulers of Anatolia, who attempted to link the economy of an exhausted and fragmented Kurdistan to the rising new Turkish bourgeoisie, and their failure to compensate the Kurds for the loss of their traditional markets, was one of the reasons that prompted Azadi to organize its ranks and prepare for the revolution, and one of its numerous justifications.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Kamal Ahmad Mazhar argued for the existence of a third (economic-class) reason for the Kurdish revolution, according to his study (<\/span><\/span>The Kurdish Uprising of 1925 in Turkey – 2001<\/i><\/span><\/span>), as Mazhar places the economic condition in a preferential position alongside religion and nationalism. The victory of the bourgeois revolution in Turkey pushed toward adopting a new economic policy. In this manner, Kemalism weakened the social and political center of the feudal class, altered the feudal mode of production, and concentrated power in the hands of the new ruling class. Based on this preliminary conception of the economic situation, Mazhar reaches a conclusion carrying two dimensions that seem somewhat contradictory on the surface: on one hand, he finds that the feudal class in Turkish Kurdistan in the 1920s constituted a positive force that played a prominent role in the liberation struggle of the Kurdish people, while he finds later that feudalism turned the main army of the Kurdish national rebellion movement into an “unconscious” and therefore ineffective political factor in the course of events.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

At the beginning of its era, Kemalism failed to tend to the agrarian question and address the fears of the old feudal society, as Turkey witnessed a growth movement of the new bourgeoisie accompanying the process of building the new national identity. Alongside secularism and nationalism, industrialization emerged as one of the manifestations of modernity. However, the focus on industrialization distanced Ankara from the concerns of peasants in Kurdistan and Anatolia. About a decade after the Kurdish revolution, Ismet Inonu realized the gravity of the matter and admitted the existence of vast numbers of landless peasants, expressing the poverty and widening class gap that centralized policies did not address.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Alongside the agrarian question and feudalism, Kurdistan became a landlocked and economically isolated region after border demarcations and was tied to the Turkish interior, which led to the deterioration of economic conditions. Here, a noteworthy observation by Kamal Mazhar emerges, stating that nomadic tribes and small Kurdish traders were, during the 19th century, on the verge of forming what could be called a “unified market.” At that time, commercial exchange flourished between different regions of Kurdistan, and trade caravans crossed the seven roads and the wide valley located at the confluence of the Khabur with the Tigris, turning this transit area into a main gateway between Northern and Southern Kurdistan. The Turks attempted to exploit the issue of Kurdistan’s economic domain as a factor to strengthen their negotiating position during the dispute with Britain regarding the Mosul Vilayet. To this end, the League of Nations committee recommended that in the event of annexing the vilayet to Iraq, the inhabitants must be granted freedom of trade with Turkey and Syria, and the traders of Turkish Kurdistan must be granted the right to use the routes of the Mosul Vilayet in their commercial activity.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Border demarcation contributed to suffocating Kurdish trade; markets were not oriented toward the Turkish interior, as the traditional Kurdish centers during the Ottoman era were the cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Baghdad. The impact of the border policy can also be demonstrated in the case of a wealthy Kurdish man like Sheikh Said, who used to sell his herds of livestock in the markets of Aleppo until a short time before the start of his revolution. To overcome the destructive border policy, “smuggling” flourished and became an economic resource in the Kurdish peripheries and adjoining Kurdish border areas. However, this significant activity should not be read as an attempt to establish a “nationalist Kurdish market” (<\/span><\/span>Gorgas – 2013<\/i><\/span><\/span>), an observation that does not contradict the idea of the existence of a “unified market” that ended with border demarcations.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is worth noting that the nature of economic production had an impact on the capacity for mobilization. The segment relied upon for fighting shared somewhat similar conditions; every man in the ranks of the participating tribes owned a piece of land in addition to livestock, and thus they belonged to that segment that could be recruited into rural rebellion movements with the utmost ease. Moreover, tribal leaders did not possess economic authority over the commoners, nor were those leaders immensely wealthy; hence, there were no conflicts of interest preventing the commoners from participating upon the request of the aghas. Added to this was the aspect of piety and religious commitment, as the influence of religious figures among those segments was greater than anywhere else. On the contrary, the “non-tribal Kurds”<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>meaning those not belonging to tribes and residing in the Diyarbak<\/span><\/span>\u0131<\/span>r plain who possessed no economic independence<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>had no incentive to join the revolution. This was because the revolution was not directed against their local exploiters, but against a government that promised to reduce the authority of those exploiters (<\/span><\/span>Bruinessen – 2008<\/i><\/span><\/span>). All of the above means that the economic reality imposed its rhythm on the scene of mobilization and the ease of recruiting fighters into the ranks of the revolution within the rural-tribal segment, particularly nomadic tribal members, who saw the state as a danger threatening their interests and trusted their tribal leaders and, more importantly, religious figures. Meanwhile, non-rural peasants found no direct interest in joining a revolution that promised them nothing that served their interests. The immediate meaning of all this is that at the moment of the revolution, there was a rural-tribal division and a deficiency in encouraging Kurds who did not belong to asset-owning tribes to participate in the revolution and bear its burdens.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Kurdish Revolution Changes the Face of Turkish Politics<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Kurdish uprising granted the Kemalists the opportunity to oust their opponents<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>the collective former comrades of Mustafa Kemal who had positioned themselves within the Progressive Republican Party (PRP). According to Zinnar Silopi (Qadri Jamil Pasha), Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s uprising “served as a means that saved Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s government from collapse […], for the Ghazi no longer paid any attention to his comrades who shared the struggle with him.” Realistically, this “rescue” of Kemal<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s government did not occur according to a Kurdish reading suggesting that the failure of armed action would lead to strengthening the hardline wing sitting to the right of Mustafa Kemal and would end the forming opposition state inside Turkey; it seems that this aspect, which resulted in crushing the opposition, was not taken into account by Azadi and Sheikh Said.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The parliamentary opposition was erased, and the nascent political pluralism regressed into the logic of the single party. This was because the Kurdish nationalist revolution, which was described as reactionary and religiously fanatic, gave the Republican People’s Party (CHP) the necessary opportunity to dismantle the bloc of the Progressive Republican Party and its compromising inclinations toward the Kurds. The initial clash took place between Mustafa Kemal and K<\/span><\/span>\u00e2<\/span>z<\/span>\u0131<\/span>m Karabekir (the Conqueror of the East) along with other politicians of the Progressive Party amidst the advance of Kurdish fighters inside Kurdistan. Ultimately, the “Law on the Maintenance of Order” (Takrir-i S<\/span><\/span>\u00fc<\/span>k<\/span>\u00fb<\/span><\/span>n) was passed after being presented by Ismet Inonu; 37 Kurdish deputies out of 44 voted in favor of the law\/government.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a quick review of the program of the Progressive Republican Party<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>within which the Turkish elite such as Karabekir, Rauf Orbay, Adnan Ad<\/span><\/span>\u0131<\/span>var, <\/span><\/span>\u0130<\/span>smail Canbulat, Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Refet Bele, and Cafer Tayyar E<\/span>\u011f<\/span>ilmez, in addition to the writer Halide Edib, were positioned, all of whom were names of weight in Turkish political life and had roles during the War of Independence<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>we notice their aversion to Mustafa Kemal<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s condescending style, and their desire to present a policy different from that offered by the Kemalists. To this end, the Progressives approved their party program, “which centered around limiting state powers and supporting decentralization.” However, when Mustafa Kemal turned on these opponents, he held them accountable based on Article 6 of their program, which “states the party’s respect for religious opinions and beliefs,” using it as a pretext to demonstrate the complicity of its authors with the Kurdish “reactionaries” (<\/span><\/span>Kreiser – 2023<\/i><\/span><\/span>). For the purpose of using this article as a pretext for liquidation, the Sheikh Said-Azadi movement was linked to religious reactionism, obscuring its nationalist and liberatory content. Mustafa Kemal did not forget the wound caused by the Progressive Party group merely for standing in his face and objecting to his policies. After six days of continuous speech in his most famous address, “Nutuk” (The Speech), he turned to the subject of Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s revolution, saying: “But the enemies of the Republic did not want, after this defeat (the defeat of Sheikh Said), to put an end to their conspiracies; so they attempted, in a despicable manner one last time, embodied in the assassination attempt [the assassination of Mustafa Kemal] in Izmir.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Azadi attempted, through Yusuf Ziya Beg and Seyyid Abdulkadir, to communicate with the opposition hostile to Mustafa Kemal, especially with the Progressive Party. However, there are no indications of cooperation between Azadi and the opposition, nor did the opposition show any interest in the Kurdish revolution. There are also no indications of coordination between Azadi and the revolution with the former Sultan Vahideddin, contrary to what Kemalist propaganda circulated. Robert Olson reaches a conclusion (despite the multiplicity of opinions he presents and his hesitation regarding the nature of Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s revolution after relying on some dilatory Turkish readings) stating that the opponents of Kemalism depicted Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s revolution as a local uprising, and none of them was part of the “counter-revolution.” Even if the revolution was Kurdish (nationalist), Turkish nationalism severely restricted any objections that could have been raised (<\/span><\/span>Olson – 2013<\/i><\/span><\/span>). Such an analysis leads us to the fact that the religious\/nationalist character of the revolution embarrassed the opponents of Kemalism; on one hand, they could not stand with a “reactionary” revolution and confront the process and intention of “modernization and Westernization,” nor could they, on the other hand, stand with a Kurdish nationalist (ethnic by the calculations of that era) revolution seeking independence. Therefore, Fethi Okyar<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s utterance describing it as a “local uprising” provided an acceptable exit in the face of the embarrassment caused by the Kemalists’ accusations against them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

According to archives and multiple sources, the revolution centered within the Kurdish circle. Despite its reliance on the religious dimension in the process of instigation, it remained within a portion of the Kurdish demographics. Neighboring Turkish regions did not join it, nor did the areas where the traditional Turkish center lost ground<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>particularly those running the Sufi lodges and hospices, which lost their influence in 1925 with the Kemalists’ issuance of Law No. 677, consolidating secularism at the expense of sheikhs, khalifas, and dervishes. This means that the unrest and social movements launched by the Turks shortly after Sheikh Said<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s revolution to confront secular ban measures were disconnected from the Kurdish revolution. It reflected the weak coordination between the affected Kurds and Turks, a result of the difference in their angles of vision, and the focus of Kurdish nationalists and religious figures on their revolution being nationalist within a religious guise unique to them.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, the defeat of the Kurdish revolution affected the Turkish political opposition bloc, which did not approve of Mustafa Kemal<\/span><\/span>\u2019<\/span>s condescension and his conceptions of solving the problems of “post-Ottoman” groups<\/span><\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>meaning here the Kurds, traditional feudal classes, and religious figures possessing social prestige and popular influence. Consequently, the defeat of the revolution provided the necessary energy for the Kemalists to liquidate opponents one after another. The tragedy of the opponents manifested following the alleged plot to assassinate Mustafa Kemal in Izmir in June 1926, resulting in death sentences for a group of them who had previously supported the Independence Tribunals that caused the execution of Sheikh Said and his companions. In addition, the defeat of the Kurdish revolution led to the acceleration of the implementation of modernization and Westernization policies, such as the law banning lodges and hospices, the hat and clothing law, and the adoption of the Civil Low<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhere in Diyarbak\u0131r, more than a hundred years ago, Turkish government forces buried the bodies of Sheikh Said and his 47 companions, who had been executed by the field-based and extraordinary “Independence Tribunals” formed by the Grand National Assembly. Since then, the burial sites have remained one of the undisclosed secrets of the state, despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":266,"featured_media":14629,"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":[43,1130,36],"ppma_author":[506],"class_list":["post-14628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-kurdistan","tag-sheikh-said","tag-turkey"],"authors":[{"term_id":506,"user_id":266,"is_guest":0,"slug":"shoresh-darwish","display_name":"Shoresh Darwish","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Shoresh-3.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Shoresh-3.jpg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14628","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\/266"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14631,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14628\/revisions\/14631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14628"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}