Today’s leading Sorani poets grew up alongside the political parties of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). What is now “the state” was once a Kurdish guerrilla force in which these poets served shoulder-to-shoulder with future political leaders. Both poet and politician survived on bright ideals. As time passed, disappointment arrived: nepotism became common, meritocracy failed to take hold, educational and health reforms were slow to non-existent, women’s rights lagged. Poets began to articulate the collision between revolution and governing. For poets and parties, this is a multi-faceted rift. Bekas, like the feminist poet Kajal Ahmad, served in the peshmerga during the Kurdish uprisings of the 1980’s and early ’90’s. As soldiers, radio operators, and journalists, these poets sacrificed to bring the KRG into existence. Reacting against a Turkish or Arab government, the artist reinforces rather than puts at risk his or her Kurdishness. Criticizing a Kurdish state for which one fought is not only delicate, but heart-breaking. More, the two traditionally significant parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have financially backed their preferred poets, further complicating an artist’s ability or desire to find fault. In a region where neither academia nor publishing (copyright is not enforced) can sustain poets, party funding has been crucial income. With many reasons to stay silent, poets have spoken. Ahmad now calls her homeland the “hard-hearted lover.” She censures the government, saying, “The nation we have now is not the nation I worked for.” Bekas, the PUK’s favored poet until his death in 2013, abandoned political subject matter and championed a broken free verse; these are culturally dramatic statements from a man who wrote the PUK anthem, militaristic in its rhetoric and meter. Abdulla Pashew turned away from personal friendships with major political figures to embrace exile. He attended graduate school in Russia, becoming fluent in Russian, and acting as perhaps the most vocal and direct critic of the Kurdish political parties. He still resides in Europe. These established poets embody a rift between Kurdish poets and the Kurdish state that has only just begun. The critical distance that Sorani poets have created from the state gives vent to rising frustrations among the Kurdish people. Poets continue to have widespread authority, but today it emerges from rebuking rather than promoting the state.

According to Kwam Anthony Appiah honour and desire for respect are still the driving forces standing behind the many of our decisions and activities. However, while our desire for being honourable remains constant, our understanding of honour changes considerably in time and space. The concept of honour is usually associated with traditional cultures, thus, its modern equivalent, dignity, is central to the understanding of human rights. However, these two concepts are not identical. While the traditional honour relied on courage and faithfulness, dignity is rooted in the values of life and love. When comparing Kurdish traditional narratives with modern literature examples we can discover an interesting switch from honour to a dignity based ethical system. Its main theme is the elevation and the reinterpretation of love which was deeply seated in the oral and the classical narratives. The new wider meaning of love gives priority to human life and this way constitutes the modern concept of dignity linking it with both the Kurdish past and the modern world. These changes are reflected in the Kurdish lexicon where the traditional term of şeref (honour) is confronted with other words connected with respect such us rûmet (Kurmanji) or şkomendî (Sorani) which gain the meaning of dignity in a modern sense. However, the Kurdish political struggle, the constant need to resist violence or assimilation challenge the modern concept of dignity. Life is often sacrificed in the name of Kurdishness or simply the life of other compatriots. At the beginning Kurdish literature accompanied the Kurdish political movement calling for such a sacrifice. However, in time the dilemma became more acute and ambiguous. What is more important life or honour? Is it possible to live a happy life without honour? And what does it mean to lose or save honour? Interestingly, the same dilemma might be discovered in Polish cultural narratives which can be justified by the shared historical experiences. Taking into account Kwam Anthony Appiah’s reflections on honour it still seems important for the modern world to keep alive the traditional notion of honour and its links with courage. In my paper I would analyse a few motives of Kurdish literary narratives focusing on the understanding of honour and dignity and their influence on Kurdish identity and resistance

Amir Sharifi, Caliifornia State University Long Beach Ali Ashouri, , San Diego State University Abstract Kobani, Literary Hermeneutics of Kurdish Resistance Literature The devastated and yet unconquered Kurdish city of Kobani in Syria with its legendary women fighters created an unprecedented political fervor and creative universal power, inspiring literary and artistic production across time and space among a new generation of artists, musicians, poets and writers as it etched in the memory of humanity the epic tale of anguish and triumph of the iconic city and its resistance against the Islamic State’s four month long siege. We will explore how Kurdish resistance literature as a whole and that of Kobani, in particular opened new emotive and figurative vistas and outreached global and spatial connections for new hermeneutics of resistance beyond national boundaries and autochthonous discourse in its political and literary aesthetics. We will examine how the emergent artistic creation and resistance has been as a potent and passionate cultural and political force and influence in the continuing struggle for freedom, epitomized in the 17th century Dimdim epic work which had aptly declared “ There is no defeat as long as there are words to create the story.”

In this paper I intend to focus on the symbolical value of the city of Diyarbakir/Amed in Kurdish culture. In particular, I look at how the city is mobilized in Kurdish literature as a symbol of resistance. A growing scholarship has recently showed how, at the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the State produced specific policies to “Turkify” Diyarbakir, a city barely adaptable to Turkish national values, (Çaglayan, 2014; Jongerden, 2007; Üngör, 2012). Echoing the spatial narrative emanating from the capital city, Ankara, the urban space in Diyarbakir had to be transformed according to the Kemalist values, (Houston, 2005). Accordingly Turkish literature, in the works of author such as Gökalp, Adıvar and Karaosmanoğlu, used the city as a symbol of the shortcomings of the Kemalist revolution. In their representations, Diyarbakir is a place calling for further turkification efforts, since, with the words of Karaosmanoğlu, “not even the letter R of the word Revolution has reached Diyarbakir” (Karaosmanoğlu, 1987). Nonetheless, in the last decades of the Twentieth century a significant cultural process of decolonization took place: the political, spatial and cultural transformation of the city from “Diyarbakir” into “Amed”, namely the capital city of Kurdish resistance in Turkey, (Dorronsoro and Watts, 2009; Gambetti, 2010; Gambetti and Jongerden, 2011). In this transformation, literature written in Kurdish and Turkish language –and often echoed by popular music–, played an important role. Literature constituted a sort of “free-space” where Kurds could imaginatively question and counter the Turkish hegemonic narratives about the city. In this context Kurdish contemporary literature has been defined as a literature of resistance, (Scalbert-Yücel, 2013). Furthermore, portraying the city as a bastion of resistance and struggle, inspired policies of urban transformation and re-symbolization by local Kurdish municipalities, (Watts, 2010). In the work of authors such as Ahmed Arif, Mehmed Uzun, Rojen Barnas, and others, Diyarbakir is represented as a castle of resistance of Kurdish culture and identity vis-a–vis the Turkish assimilative policies. In the last decades, in which Kurdish language publishing has seen a significant resurgence, poems, short stories and novels that celebrate the city are uncountable (see Akyol, 2014; Arif, 2014; Barnas, 2013; Galip, 2015; Uzun, 2005, among others). Bringing together examples from Kurdish and Turkish literature, in this paper I will analyze the literary image of the city and the ways in which the latter inspired practices of resistance and opposition to the State.