Kurdish Globe, Erbil, Iraq
Nov 8 2009
Kurdish nationalism in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution
Russian soldiers sympathetic to the Bolshevik cause carry banners
bearing Marxist slogans. Bolsheviks found a welcome audience among the
Imperial troops sent by the Tzar to fighting a losing war in the
freezing winter. Hulton / Getty
By Salah Bayaziddi
The Kurdish Globe
Indeed, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 was a secret agreement.
In November 1917, when the Bolshevik Revolution under the leadership
of Vladimir Lenin toppled the last Czar of Russia, no one at the time
had thought about the scale of its implication on the Kurdish question
in the years to come. Just a year before, the Russian imperial army
had occupied the Kurdish regions of the Ottoman Empire and they were
just about to witness the dismemberment of the last, greatest empire
of modern history. A secret agreement between major colonial powers
was concluded to redraw the geo-political map of the Middle East.
Indeed, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 was a secret agreement
between the government of Britain and France, with the assent of
Russia, defining their respective spheres of influence and control in
West Asia after the expected downfall of the Ottoman Empire once the
First World War had ended. Under this agreement, it was envisioned
that most parts of the northern Kurdistan, when freed from Ottoman
control, would become part of the Russian Empire, which would fulfill
their several-centuries-old dream of reaching the further south. For
achieving this goal, Russia also needed Kurdish cooperation. Russia,
for its part, gave rosy promises to Kurdish tribes that helped her
during the war. By securing the cooperation of Armenians and Northern
Kurdish tribes, Russia aimed at annexing Armenia and Kurdistan as part
of its colonizing policies. Russia’s European allies had similar aims
for different areas of the Ottoman Empire.
The First World War ended and the Ottoman Empire, once called "the
Sick Man of Europe," was going to be removed completely from the
Middle East’s map. But something had gone wrong because the Kurdish
regions did not end up in the Russian’s hands. Indeed, the Bolshevik
Revolution had changed all geo-political calculations in the region,
and at the same time it was a great opportunity for the other two
colonial powers to divide the Kurdish regions among themselves. The
revolutionary government, under the leadership of Lenin, abandoned all
previous Tsarist policies. This also meant that for the time being
Communist Russia was not interested in the colonizing policies of its
predecessor of which Kurdistan was an essential part, in accord with
the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, the Russian claims in
the Ottoman Empire were denied and the Russian army began to withdraw
from the Kurdish and the Armenian regions of the Ottoman.
The new Socialist state also cut off all its ties with the Entente
Powers, and signed the humiliating peace treaty of the Brest Litovsk
with Germany. At the same time, the new Russian government declared
that they had no territorial claims and all previous colonial
agreements had no legal effect for them anymore. When the Bolshevik
found a copy of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in the Russian government’s
archives, they did not hesitate to make that public. They revealed
full texts in Izvestia and Pravda on November 23, 1917; subsequently,
the Manchester Guardian printed the texts on November 26, 1917.
In fact, withdrawal of Russia from the Kurdish regions of the Ottoman
following the Bolshevik Revolution changed the pattern of the modern
history of the Kurds. In line with this argument, Dr. Azad Aslan, in
his unpublished PhD thesis, "Clashes of Agencies: Formation and
Failure of Early Kurdish Nationalism 1918-1922," has pointed out: "The
withdrawal of Russia from the war and post-war settlement provided
ample opportunities for the Turkish nationalists to launch their
struggle from the east, which Britain and France had neither the
manpower nor the financial resources to occupy during the post-war
period. It was not coincidental that the initial phase of the Turkish
nationalist struggle had begun in those areas where the Great Powers
had no presence. It is a hypothetical question to ask what would have
happened had Russia occupied those areas left to her. It can be
assumed that had such developments occurred, the Turkish nationalists’
chances to consolidate their power in Anatolia and Kurdistan would
have then been considerably diminished."
Before the end of 1918, the Ottoman Empire surrendered and signed the
peace treaty called the Mudros Armistic, which eventually resulted in
the abolishment of the Caliphate system. The fall of the Turkish
Empire brought a historic opportunity for the Kurdish national
movement because the whole country was in a total state of anarchy and
chaos. During these critical years the new Turkey was experiencing a
potentially volatile political and military vacuum. However, the Kurds
were lacking unity and collective force. As in the past, the Kurds
failed to build a united front, let alone an independent Kurdistan.
While almost all of these new Middle Eastern states during this period
and afterward were either British or French mandates, the Kurds
wrongfully chose the partition of the their homeland and for the years
to come to remain under the yoke of Turk and Arab.
The rise of Mustafa Kemal, the leader of so called the Young Turks on
Anatolia, and factional division among the Kurds themselves shattered
the independence of Kurdistan. The failure of forming a united front
and accumulating of the Kurds gave the Young Turks’ leader opportunity
to strengthen his political and military position. Indeed, at the
beginning, Mustafa Kemal was careful not to mention the Turkish state.
Instead, he stressed either the fraternity between Kurds and Turks, or
the Ottoman nation in conflict with foreign occupation force. Once he
accomplished all of his plans, there was no need to keep his promises
and he moved to offensive against the Kurds. Mustafa Kemal furiously
fought the Kurdish national movement because he saw in them a real
threat to the new Turkish republic. He aimed to do whatever necessary
to crush the Kurdish resistance from now on.
The modern Turkish republic formed when the Treaty of Sevres was
replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. With the entry into force
of this treaty on August 6, 1924, the international consideration of
the Kurdish question, growing out of the First World War, was
terminated. Already, it was painfully obvious not only that the
nationalists themselves were not accepted in international circles.
There was no Kurdish representative at the Lausanne Conference, and
the Kurds played no role in the presence of non-Muslim
minorities-Armenians, Greeks, and Jews-within Turkey.
Mustafa Kemal, who by this time had established the Turkish
nation-state, immediately broke his promises of the Kurdish autonomy
and dissolved the Kurdish National Assembly. He abolished Kurdish
schools, use of Kurdish language was outlawed, and Kurds officially
were labelled "Mountain Turks" and their land called "Eastern
Anatolia." Mustafa Kemal’s regime also forced the abolition of the
Muslim caliphate through a protesting assembly.
It has been argued that the major Western powers had no choice but to
agree with Ataturk’s demands in order to gain him as an ally rather
than an enemy who was certain to fall into the lap of the Bolshevik
Regime in Russia. But it seems that it was too little too late because
he was already receiving military and financial help from Moscow.
Though the Turkish nationalists and Bolsheviks alliance went back as
far as early 1919, it became official in March 1921 in a treaty
between Ankara and Moscow. This strengthened the Kemalists by
providing them both with diplomatic support for their cause as well as
arms, ammunition, and money-the things most needed to aid the Turkish
nationalists in their fight against the Greek army in the west and the
Armenians in the east."
Indeed, both the Kurds and Armenians were the first victims of the
Bolshevik policies in the early stages of their partnership with the
Kemalists. This Bolshevik-Kemalist pact also was becoming a major
source of anxiety and uneasiness among the colonial powers. The major
European powers, especially Great Britain, were fearful of spreading
Communism in the Middle East. Mustafa Kemal had all the cards in his
hands and was playing expertly, and his position was becoming
favorable. No doubt, he used both the Islamic religion at his early
stage to rally Kurds around the idea of a republic of brotherhood,
then military and political alliance with the Bolshevik to break up
his enormous enemies. Therefore, the internal developments (failure of
the Kurds to form a united front and weakness of Kurdish nationalism)
and external developments (complexity of the region following the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and fall of the Ottoman Empire) shaped
the modern history of the Kurds. As an immediate result, the Ottoman
Kurdistan, which was a united entity for almost 400 years, was about
to be divided among three new national states.
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