After the foundation of the Turkish Republic (1923) and the suppression of the Sheikh Said (1925) and the Ararat Rebellions (1928-1931), Damascus, Beirut, and the Kurdish territories in northern Syria became new centers of the Kurdish nationalist movement. Many former Ottoman Kurdish elites who opposed the Kemalist nationalist vision of Turkey took refuge in and sought political exile to the Levant still under the French mandate. There, they initiated a Kurdish cultural movement following their failure to free Kurdish territories from the control of the Turkish Republic. One such cultural endeavor involved the publishing of Kurdish periodicals and books in Kurmanji Kurdish in the 1930s and 1940s to which leading Kurdish intellectuals, writers, and poets contributed, with the aim of educating, awakening, and mobilizing the Kurds of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. These nationalists not only contributed to the development of the Kurdish written language, re-writing of Kurdish history, collection of the Kurdish folklore, and definitions of Kurdistan, but also responded to Kemalist discourse and policies. Relying on sources in Kurmanji Kurdish, Turkish and French, my paper explains the former Ottoman Kurdish elite’s views of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and Kemalist policies through an analysis of their descriptions of Ataturk, his relations with and his attitude toward the Kurds. My analysis includes how the Kurdish nationalists criticized the Kemalist linguistic, spatial, historical theories as well as Kemalist policies to assimilate Kurds into Turkishness. While Kurdish nationalists were exceedingly hostile to the Turkish Republic and its nationalist policy, ironically their Kurdish nationalist ideas sounded similar to the Turkish nationalist ideas of the Kemalists nationalists. Through my analysis, I unpack the dynamics involved in the formulation of rival nationalisms by the former Ottoman Turks and Kurds, reflecting their similar visions of society, religion, and modernity in this important era of history.

With the breakup of the Ottoman polity in the aftermath of the Great War, the Ottoman Kurdish population found itself residing in three different nation-states (Turkey, Syria and Iraq). Of this, the most significant section resided within the boundaries of the new Turkish Republic. Nevertheless, with the Anglo-Iraqi annexation of Mosul, the newly formed Iraqi state also found itself with a sizable Kurdish minority. This included many intellectuals and men of letters who had formerly served the Ottoman state, but returned to their native lands after war. From the political perspective, these men’s primary concerns were affairs in what had become Iraqi Kurdistan and, more broadly, the affairs of the Iraqi state. Nevertheless, given that many of these individuals - such as Rafiq Hilmi, Mohammad Amin Zeki Bey and Abdulaziz Yamulki – had lived and worked in Ottoman Istanbul and given that the majority of their ‘ethnic kin’ lived ‘north of the border’ in Turkey, they could help but discuss the nature of Kemalist policies towards the Kurds and, more broadly, towards modernisation. It is with this point in mind that this paper will examine the attitudes of Iraqi Kurdish intellectuals in the interwar period, towards the Kemalist regime in Turkey.

The reforms and policies implemented by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk following the establishment of the Turkish Republic, has been the subject of heated debates among various segments of the society in Turkey, as they often led to radical and rapid changes in the political, social, economic, and cultural life. However, neither the impact of nor the debates about these reforms and policies were limited to Turkey. The politicians and intellectuals in different parts of the region between 1920s and 1940s were closely following the transformation taking place in Turkey and reacting to it in positive, negative, and sometimes in mixed ways. In this paper, based mostly on memoirs, newspaper columns, and official correspondences, I will examine the responses of Iranian statesmen, officials, and intellectuals to Kemalism in the early republican period. Studying particularly the writings of those who visited or served in Turkey during and shortly after Ataturk’s presidency, such as Muhammad 'Ali Furughi, Abu al-Qasim Azad Maragha'i, Husayn Danish, and Seyyid Tabatabai, I will explore how Iranians critiqued, praised, challenged, or adopted various aspects of Kemalism. Through a nuanced and careful reading of their views about specific principles and practices in Ataturk’s Turkey, I aim to shed new light not only on the ways in which Iranians envisioned their own new state and society, but also on the complex relationship between two seemingly similar yet rival nation-states in their formative years.