‘Without a Purpose, Misfortune Will Befall Our Land:’ Discourses of Nation in Late Ottoman Kurdistan

Abstract

In the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, Kurdish and Assyrian nationalists sought to improve their communities’ situations. This dissertation demonstrates the historical factors that shaped the discourses of these nascent nationalist movements, situating them as localized developments rather than the importation of modular nationalisms from Europe. It also uncovers vital new insights into the social history of Kurds and Suryani in Southeast Anatolia in the Late Ottoman Empire. It thus contributes to Syriac Studies, Kurdish Studies, Ottoman Studies, and Nationalism Studies. Drawing on multiple archives of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate totaling thousands of documents, on the full run of journals produced within these movements, and on published and unpublished memoirs, it presents these movements as responses to historical events in the regions of Diyarbakir, Harput, Mardin, and Tur Abdin. It uniquely utilizes Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Kurdish, Classical Syriac, and Turoyo source material to place the region’s voices in dialogue, enabling a deeper understanding of the processes underlying these discourses. It analyzes these movements through an ethno-symbolist approach, focusing on the symbols drawn from the past and reconfigured by nationalist intellectuals to address contemporary concerns and to mobilize their audiences towards reform. The dissertation’s narrative centers mostly between 1880 and 1925. It argues that the Hamidian Massacres (1894-1896) served as the catalyst that set both movements in motion, forcing a politics of difference between the Suryani and Armenians, and a Kurdish ethno-religious discourse that emphasized Islamic identity and the existential threat posed by foreign invasion. It then demonstrates how, in the following years, nationalists and reformers identified education as the most meaningful route for change and that this focus deeply informed the subsequent two decades of nationalist thought. The dissertation continues by illuminating how nationalists employed a variety of symbols to argue on points of ethnicity, national history, language, religion, and gender. It then presents a detailed history of the Heverkan and Dekşurî confederations of Tur Abdin, presenting how these communities navigated the complexities of the politics of identity, obligation, and patronage in which they live. In doing so, this dissertation provides critical insights into the Seyfo, or Assyrian Genocide.