This presentation aims at critically analyzing historical writings by Kurdish and Turkish nationalists during the 1930s who shared a common Ottoman background. Turkism and Kurdism as cultural movements had taken shape in the late-Ottoman era and particularly since the Young Turk Revolution (1908). However, it was the end of the Ottoman Empire that prompted the Turkish and Kurdish nationalists to imagine a national identity free from the strains of Ottoman nationalism. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) used an Islamic rhetoric during the War of Independence (1919-1923) and emphasized the Islamic fraternity of Turks and Kurds. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic; however, he expected Kurds to adopt a secular and Turkish civic identity. Feeling betrayed, Kurdish nationalists organized two major rebellions against Kemalist Turkey: the Sheikh Said (1925) and Ararat (1927-1930) Rebellions . While those rebellions failed, they seriously challenged the young Kemalist Republic. The struggle between the two rival nationalisms would continue during the 1930s. Historiography was a major component of the struggle. Ataturk was personally involved in a history-writing project which presented Turks as the primary makers of world history. Known as the Turkish History Thesis, this new historiographical vision emphasized pre-Islamic Turkish history rather than the Islamic-Ottoman one. A similar but rival attempt to re-write history from nationalist perspective was led by exiled Kurdish nationalists of Turkey in Syria and Lebanon under the French mandate during the 1930s. After briefly introducing the late-Ottoman precedents of both Turkist and Kurdist attempts to view the past through the ethnic terms, this presentation will compare and contrast the two rival historiographical projects during the 1930s. I will put them in perspective by clarifying the political events as well as racial and linguistic debates that shaped Turkish and Kurdish historiographical arguments. For my presentation, I make use of primary sources including textbooks, magazine articles, conference proceedings, and memoirs from the time period in Kurmanji Kurdish, Turkish, as well as French languages.