Drawing from Ottoman, British, and French archives, this project examines the activities of Kurdish tribal head Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa and his interactions with the Ottoman Empire’s government during the period of 1908-1914, a time marked by his deep involvement in the “land question”. Under the rule of Sultan Abdülhamid II since 1876, Kurdish tribal heads in the eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire seized vast swathes of land cultivated by Armenian peasants through acts of massacre and expulsion. Following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Armenian peasants launched campaigns to reclaim these lands from Kurdish tribal leaders, thus giving rise to the “land question” as it was known at the time. As one of the most influential Kurdish tribal leaders, Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa faced pressure from the Ottoman government to return lands to the peasants after the revolution. In response, he employed various tactics to thwart the government’s efforts, such as forging alliances with other Kurdish tribal leaders and establishing connections with parliamentary deputies. When these measures proved ineffective in halting the government’s demands for land restitution, Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa led his tribe in a mass migration to Persia in late 1909. This migration served as a demonstration of his influence in the region. Concerned about potential instability and Russian expansion in the eastern territories, the Ottoman government feared the collaboration between powerful Kurdish tribal leaders like Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa and the Russian government. Consequently, a compromise was reached between the Ottoman government and Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa in the summer of 1910. Following this agreement, Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa returned to the Ottoman Empire and reclaimed the lands that had been returned to peasants during his absence. Ultimately, he successfully retained possession of the usurped lands and even acquired additional territory. Through an analysis of the Ottoman government’s post-revolution policies towards Kurdish tribal leaders, Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa’s responses to government pressure, and the negotiation process leading to the compromise, this project illustrates the flexibility of relations between the empire’s center and its periphery which was represented by local powerful figures like Haydranlı Hüseyin Paşa, and how international dynamics influenced the shaping of these relations.

The dominant ruling elites of early Republican Turkey, advocated a national regime and society with a monist and security focus within the attitudes of "high modernism". The desire for a state-led radical transformation of cultural life is most strongly manifested in the linguistic sphere. In this presentation, the focus will be on the cultural/linguistic discourses and practices of the People’s Houses, the cultural branch of the authoritarian single party (Republican People's Party) between 1932 and 1951, towards the ‘‘dangerous’’ or ‘‘potentially dangerous’’ Kurdish-speaking ethnicity in Eastern Turkey. These provinces, which correspond to Ottoman Kurdistan, are mostly Kurdish as their native language and the average rate of those who speak only Kurdish is 70 percent, and where forms of resistance to the new regime are seen: Diyarbekir, Elaziz/Elazığ, Mardin, Siirt, Urfa, Hakkari, Van, Muş, Bitlis, Bingöl. It covers Dersim/Tunceli and Ağrı. In addition, in these twelve provinces, where the state administrators were governed by a state of emergency and where single-party organizations were specifically not established and People’s Houses were envisaged to be established instead. In these localities, 44 People’s Houses and 305 People’s Rooms, which are smaller versions, were organized with the mission of the forced linguistic assimilation and civilization of Kurds and other ethnic subjects, with a strong colonial connotation, aimed at producing the cultural security of the nation-state. In the literature, the linguistic assimilation in the East in Turkey, and the People’s Houses in particular, have not been satisfactorily researched in different historical periods, within the specific non-autonomous and non-monolitic state’s domination and power techniques, practices, ambiguity, differentiation and separation within them, and their social and cultural contexts. The contribution of this study is to analyze modern disciplinary and power techniques and practices of People’s Houses’s and state’s members involving linguistic assimilation and varying symbolic and linguistic violence in Kurdish localities, and how these are responded to and negotiated in complex ways by diversified local recipients through first hand sources. This study benefits from state theories, subaltern studies premises, some conceptutalisation of M. Foucault and P. Bourdieu. It relies on official and non-official written and visual archival documents; periodicals focused on “Kurdish Eastern” provinces. Memory and oral historical sources of ordinary people and also second hand ones are other important sources. Having an interdisciplinary perspective, I will try to analyze both historical documents; voices, words and images following the historical ethnographic methods.

Previous scholarship has extensively examined how novels, produced within sovereign states, embody nation-building qualities. Yet, there is a noticeable gap in scholarly exploration into how these qualities function in stateless literary traditions, especially those characterized by minority-state dynamics and linguistic suppression, as is the case with Kurds. This paper addresses this lesser-explored dimension by examining early 21st-century Kurdish literature and its nation-building qualities with a focus on Mehmed Uzun’s 2007 novel Ronî Mîna Evînê Tarî Mîna Mirinê (Light like Love, Dark like Death). Within the Kurdish literary tradition, Uzun’s body of work assumes great significance. It navigates the complex mission of simultaneously constructing a national identity for the dispersed Kurdish population across various nation-states and diasporic communities while representing diverse Kurdish subjectivities and experiences. This tension is rarely addressed in other national literary canons. While nation-building objectives may be perceived as outdated in contemporary literary history discourse, it retains its relevance within Kurdish literature due to the deeply rooted historical struggle for recognition. In his novel, Uzun presents unique and individualistic conceptions of Kurdish identity, diverging from intra-cultural ideological demands and expectations for political solidarity, a literary vision he has explicitly underscored on several occasions. His distinctiveness lies in this vision to construct a national identity that embraces the diverse array of Kurdish subjectivities and experiences, departing from the more uniform approaches often found in the literary histories of other nation-states. In my proposed presentation, I seek to examine the relationship between statelessness and the contemporary Kurdish novel, focusing on its development as it grapples with reconciling national and subjective conceptions of Kurdishness. In essence, I contend that the literary development of Kurds takes a fundamentally distinct path compared to that of other national literatures, where the process of nation-building through the novel has largely been completed. Ultimately, this paper poses questions about the future trajectory of Kurdish literature and how concepts like political solidarity, ethnic loyalty, and group cohesion must be recast around individual, subjective, and often reflexive conceptions of Kurdish identity.

Ernest Renan (1823–1892) and Jemal Nebez (1933-2018) have intricately conceptualized the notion of a nation, drawing parallels yet diverging in significant ways when scrutinized within their historical and political contexts. This comparative analysis seeks to unravel the descriptive and normative elements constituting their respective formulations of the nation. A critical assertion is made that categorizing Nebez solely as a primordialist theorist, a prevalent view among Kurdish scholars, is at best inaccurate and potentially misleading. Renan posits the nation as a soul forged through a dual temporal lens, rooted in a "rich legacy of memories" from the past and a contemporary consent to coexist, coupled with a shared appreciation for a common heritage. Similarly, Nebez aligns with a historical perspective, conceiving the Kurdish nation as a construct shaped by historical processes. The shared sense of Kurdness, according to Nebez, emerges through a complex historical trajectory, solidified by the present consent to transmit this heritage to future generations. Noteworthy is Nebez's distinction between nations with and without states, advocating for the realization of self-determination rights for 'stateless nations.' He questions the legitimacy of multination states, emphasizing the necessity of consent from non-sovereign constituent nations—an idea mirrored in Renan's emphasis on the legitimacy of the will as a criterion for nationhood. Despite these resonances, Nebez introduces unique elements to his conception of Kurdness, accentuating its profound ties to homeland, culture, and language alongside the collective will. This departure from Renan's framework, argued here, does not succumb to essentialism; rather, it stems from Nebez's contextualization of the Kurdish nation in a stateless condition. In this statelessness, homeland and language, far from being deemed essential, acquire heightened significance for the survival and freedom of the Kurdish nation. Nebez further justifies his formulation by drawing distinctions between the experiences of Kurdish and European societies in the modern era. While European states were predominantly shaped by bourgeois classes, Kurdish society, observes Nebez, sought to build a national state through its feudal structure. This observation, coupled with his nation-building conceptualization, leads Nebez to assert the critical importance of stateless nations attaining sovereignty within their territories. As a proponent of Kurdish unity, despite partitioning, Nebez advocates for a common language as a unifying force, aligning language with the essence of Kurdish nationhood