In the Shadow of Sheikh Said
This page is adapted from an article presented at the 2022 Migration Conference in Rabat, Morocco as “The Kurdish Question in the Shadow of Sheikh Said: Analyzing the Effects of Early Twentieth Century Migration on Twenty-First Century Regional Politics”
Introduction
The political conflict between the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and the Republic of Türkiye is rooted the complex history of region. From the Turkish perspective, the AANES is the latest manifestation of a long-term security anxiety related to Kurdish nationalism that began with the Kurdish rebellions of the 1920s and 30s and reached its zenith in the 1980s and 90s during the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (henceforth referred to as the PKK—Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan). The PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by Türkiye as well as the EU and NATO, has engaged in prolonged periods of armed resistance against the Turkish State since 1984.
The AANES is the conglomeration of several political organizations in Syria but the most prominent leadership has come from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (henceforth referred to as the PYD—Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat). As Türkiye liked to remind the American-led coalition during the fight against ISIS, the shared ideological heritage of the PKK and PYD is impossible to ignore—the establishment of the Syrian Democratic Forces was, in part, a PR move to make it easier for the PYD-affiliated People’s Defense Units (YPG—Yekîneyên Parastina Gel) to get much needed military aid as they led the frontline fight against ISIS. The shared ideological heritage of the PKK and PYD is due to the fact that both parties are based on the political philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan. Öcalan, who has been in prison in Turkey since 1999, was instrumental in founding the PKK and developing the organization’s intellectual apparatus. The PYD has led the first implementation of Öcalan’s ideology of “democratic confederalism” in the real world with the establishment of the AANES in Syria. Abdullah Öcalan’s political philosophy and a discussion of PKK ideology is beyond the scope of this article but it was necessary to show why, from the Turkish perspective, the intervention in Syria is interconnected with the domestic struggle with the PKK at almost every level of analysis. This article pushes back the focus of that interconnectedness even further than the PKK-PYD connection to the early history of the Republic of Türkiye and the beginning of Kurdish nationalism in Syria. To that end, the focus of this paper is what happened in the aftermath of Sheikh Said rebellion (1925) when there was a mass migration of Kurds from the eastern provinces of Türkiye to what as then French Mandate Syria. The chronological scope of this historical analysis is, therefore, the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925 to the de facto end of the French Mandate in 1946.
The Sheikh Said rebellion (1925) was a defining moment in both the early development of Kurdish nationalism in Türkiye and the early development of a Kurdish nationalism in exile. Once again, this article focuses on the political consequences of migration in the aftermath of the rebellion. The lead-up to the rebellion and the subsequent Kurdish rebellions against the Turkish State in the 1920s and 30s are beyond the narrow focus of this article.
In short, the Turkish repression of this rebellion precipitated a large-scale migration of Kurds into Syria and this continues to impact contemporary political dynamics. The migration of Kurds into northern Syria from 1925 to 1946, where they joined pre-existing Kurdish communities, contributed to the creation of Kurdish majority in the regions which eventually came under PYD political and military influence in the early days of the Syrian Civil War and, thereafter, became the AANES.
It is difficult to solve contemporary political conflicts without addressing the underlying historical dynamics. In this case, one of these historical dynamics is the inherent “regionality” of this conflict. The Kurdish question in Syria is inextricably linked with the Kurdish question in Türkiye and vice versa. Türkiye’s unilateral intervention in northern Syria is the result of Turkish longstanding domestic security anxieties. Based on the connection between the PKK and PYD, the Turkish security apparatus has concluded that Kurdish autonomy in Syria is a threat to Turkish domestic security. Without addressing Türkiye’s security anxieties regarding the PKK, it is difficult to reconcile Turkish national security interests and the continued existence of the AANES in Syria. In any case, acknowledging the regionality of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict and addressing Türkiye’s legitimate security concerns are necessary prerequisites for sustainable peace.
The Turkish Response to the Rebellion
From a 1925 Turkish newspaper showing Turkish troops encircling the area controlled by Sheikh Said
Sheikh Said rebellion was first major military threat faced by the nascent Republic of Türkiye. In his article, “The Kurdish Rebellions of Sheikh Said (1925), Mt. Ararat (1930), and Dersim (1937-8): Their Impact on the Development of the Turkish Air Force and on Kurdish and Turkish Nationalism,” Robert Olsen notes that the Sheikh Said rebellion was the first time the Turkish Air Force was engaged in combat—now Türkiye has air superiority over all of its neighbors. The Sheikh Said rebellion was also one of the first large troop mobilizations since the Turkish War of Independence ended in 1922. Hamit Bozarslan notes that “Ankara mobilised some 50,000 soldiers and spent nearly a third of its annual budget” in order to suppress the rebellion.
Both the introduction of new military capabilities and the scale of the conventional military response indicate that the leaders of Türkiye believed that the Sheikh Said rebellion constituted a genuine threat to the integrity of the Turkish State. The military victory was decisive and the Turkish government enacted policy to further inhibit future Kurdish nationalisms from constituting themselves as a threat to Turkish state. The most significant policy in the period immediately following the Sheikh Said rebellion was the 1925 Report for Reform in the East which, among other measures, put the eastern provinces under martial law and allocated money for the resettlement of Kurds in the rest of the country. Rather that forced resettlement in other parts of Türkiye, many Kurds crossed the border into Syria where they settled alongside other Kurds and became, in the course of nation-state development, Syrian Kurds. The Sheikh Said rebellion was, therefore, a pivotal event in the early years of the Republic of Türkiye which continues to have political ramifications in both Türkiye and Syria. As mentioned above, one of the consequences of this mass migration from Türkiye to the French Mandate was the continued development of a Kurdish nationalism in exile. In 1927, just a few days after the Kurdish nationalist Xoybûn party was created in Beirut, the central committee of this party declared independence for the “Republic of Ararat” in eastern Türkiye. This rebellion, which flourished from 1927 to 1931, was eventually defeated by the Turkish Armed forces but the precedent of trans-border nationalist movements remained a central security problem for the Turkish State—most significantly from 1984 to 1998 when the PKK leadership was conducting business from Syria.
The Difficulty of Quantifying Kurdish Migration to Syria
The difficulty of quantifying migration during the period from 1925 to 1946 is indicated by the wide range of estimates given by scholars. For example, the Cambridge History of the Kurds states that “while large waves of Kurds and remaining Armenians fled for the Syrian Jazira (Altug, 2011: 75), thousands were resettled in western parts of Turkey.” Arshak Safrastian, a witness to the migration who wrote the 1946 book Kurds and Kurdistan, simply “describes a ‘great flow of Kurds into Syria at this time.’” Robert Olsen, in his book on the Sheikh Said rebellion, cites the British ambassador who said that the migration was “on a scale which to some extent recalls the mass deportations of Armenians in 1915…it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that not less than 20,000 men, women and children will have been forcibly driven from their homes before the deportations are completed.” It is impossible to know exactly how many Kurds crossed the border into Syria in 1925 but it is possible to make more precise observations about the demographic impact of Kurdish migration based on data from the period of the French Mandate. Jordi Tejel says that “if before 1927 there were at most 45 Kurdish villages in this region, by 1939, they numbered between 700 and 800 agglomerations of Kurdish majority. According to an official census, in 1939 Jazira counted a total population of 158,550 habitants of which 81,450 were Kurdish Muslims and 2,150 were Yazidi Kurds.” Mohannad Al-Kati writes that “the French also encouraged the reception of refugees in Jazira, and the number of Kurds in the region increased from 6000 in 1927 to 56,340 in 1939.” It is also important to note that David McDowell highlights the presence of Kurds in the Jaziran steppe before 1925, saying “by 1918 Kurds probably slightly outnumbered Arabs in the Jazira. From 1920 onwards, however, many more Kurdish tribespeople arrived, fleeing from the Turkish armed forces particularly during the pacification of the tribes, 1925-28. Although the precise number crossing the new international border is unknown, it was probably in the order of about 25,000.”
The presence of Kurdish tribes in the Jazira region prior to 1925 is one of the two primary factors that made this region a practical destination for Kurdish refugees. The presence of these Kurdish tribes in the region represents an earlier migration from the highlands of Eastern Anatolia to the Jaziran steppe that was a result of ordinary, at first seasonal, migration patterns when all of this area was part of the Ottoman Empire. The seasonal migration patterns of the Kurdish tribes, which likely existed for centuries, were noted by French orientalist Pierre Rondot when he described this area of Syria in his 1936 report “Les Tribus Montagnardes de l’Asie Antérieure.” In particular, he describes the attempts of Kurdish tribes from the mountainous region around Lake Van that descended onto the steppe of Upper Jazira to graze their flocks in the winter. Eventually, these tribes abandoned the mountains for the Jaziran steppe which was “relatively well watered and easier to cultivate than the mountain, [and] where they could drive their sheep and plant some crops.”
The second, and more decisive, factor was that the French presence in Syria made the region a safe haven for Kurds fleeing violence in Turkey. The settlement of other groups of refugees from Turkey in Jazira had been encouraged by the French authorities as part of the strategy of governing the region. According to Jordi Tejel, “While France’s presence in the Levant was opposed in France, the High Commissioner saw the launching of a profitable economic program in Syria as a tool which could serve to justify its ‘civilising’ mission.” Because the herding and small scale agriculture practiced by the tribes on Jaziran steppe did not represent a viable economic project, “the High Commissioner thus envisaged settling the refugees from neighboring countries with a clear preference for Assyrian, Armenian and Syriac migrants from Turkey.” Jordi Tejel notes that beginning in 1925 Kurds fleeing repression in Turkey were also included in this preference.
1935 French ethno-religious map of Syria.
2020 map of AANES regions.
Contemporary Political Consequences
Jordi Tejel observes the intrinsic connection between the Sheikh Said rebellion and the emergence of Kurdish nationalism in Syria, saying: “After the crushing of the Shaykh Said Insurrection (1925) in Turkish Kurdistan, the Ankara government envisaged the deportation of Kurdish tribes…At the same time, members of Istanbul’s Kurdish clubs found themselves forced into exile due to repression by the new Turkish regime.” In other words, the exile of intellectuals and elites gave rise to a Kurdish nationalist discourse and the forced migration of population created a population receptive to this discourse. One of the first political entities to rise out of this early twentieth century milieu was the Khoybun League (Xoybûn in Kurdish). Although the Khoybun league was founded in Greater Lebanon under the French Mandate, it “was the basis for the conceptualization, in Kurmanji dialect, of modern Kurdish nationalism, and by consequence, for the widespread doctrine in Turkey and Syria.” Considering the linguistic and geographical limitations of the Khoybun League's influence, the Khoybun league did not represent Kurdish nationalism universally. Barbara Henning notes that “leading activists in Rawanduz were right to suspect competition: It seems that only with the foundation of Hoybûn in Beirut did the center of the Kurdish activities shift from Iraq to the French mandate territories.”
Beginning with the Sheikh Said rebellion, the Turkish answer to the Kurdish question helped to create the regional dynamics of Kurdish nationalism. Hamit Bozarslan, therefore, observes: "Since the beginning of the Republic, there has always been a close link between Turkey’s internal Kurdish issue and the Kurdish conflict in the Middle East. Almost all the Kurdish struggles throughout the twentieth century have in fact had a regional dimension, thus playing a decisive role in the foreign policies of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.” There is, therefore, a distinct regionality to Kurdish politics that is due not only to the borders that divide Kurdistan but also due to migrations that took place. Hamit Borzarslan notes that "with the notable exception of President Turgut Özal (1989–93), Turkish authorities have always considered the formation of an autonomous Kurdish entity within the neighbouring territory as a potential threat to their own territorial integrity, and thus advocated a system of regional security against 'Kurdish separatism.’”
Raymond Hinnebusch writes that “flawed analyses and bad policies are intimately linked: analyses of what went wrong in Syria and Iraq that failed to put it in a historically long term context or to appreciate the co-constitution of the conflicts, were likely to exaggerate the role of immediate agency.” This paper has attempted to place the current conflict between the Autonomous Administration of Northern Syria and Turkey into the historically long term context of migration history. In particular, migration history further illustrates the co-constitution of the conflicts, the internal Kurdish conflict in Turkey and the Turkish intervention in Syria, and indicates that peace solutions must consider both conflicts. The alternative is a continuation of bad policies that undermine Kurdish human and political rights and contribute to ongoing and future refugee crises.