Kurds and Kurdish Nationalism in the Interwar Period

Taking a world historical perspective and postcolonial critique as its point of departure, this chapter goes into a survey of the state of the Kurds and Kurdish nationalism in the interwar period. The analysis is organized along the lines of the states under whose rule the Kurds came to reside; namely, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the USSR. The dissolution of empires and the emergence of nation-states that were politically, culturally and economically subjected to the Western-centred world economy since the nineteenth century was the main feature that characterized the interwar period. Kurdish reactions to the shifting borders comprised a wide array of responses ranging from assimilation to armed uprisings. Turkey and Iran adopted policies of Turkification and Persianization alongside the forced resettlement of the Kurds in interior regions. In Iraq, they were promised official recognition on paper yet it remained unfulfilled in reality. Syria under the French Mandate was home to Kurdish nationalist political and cultural activities. In the USSR, the earlier categorization of the Kurds as a ‘small nation’ later shifted to that of an ‘enemy nation’, which led to the first wave of their deportation in 1937. The chapter concludes that the interwar period in Kurdish history thus has a defining legacy in the formation of subsequent Kurdish nationalist discourses and movements.