Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of the Kurdish region, its peoples and its historic experience in the Turkish Republic since the 1920s. It describes the multiple peoples of the region, including Kurds, Turks, Alevis, Yezidis and Syriacs before discussing its linguistic heterogeneity. It proceeds to outline the emergence of Kurdish Nationalism in the early twentieth century, and how Kurdish political forces were confronted by the Turkish Nationalism of the early Republic. It discusses the Kurdish rebellions of the 1920s and 1930s and the violent state reaction. It finishes by describing some of the socio-economic and political transformations which changed the country in the 1940s and 1950s such as industrialisation and the installation of a form of electoral democracy. It explains how the unintended consequences of the state presence in Kurdistan led to the formation of an educated class of young Kurds with the social capital required to lead a Kurdish cultural and political rival from the 1950s.

This chapter analyses what happened to the undesired citizens of the Kemalism during the Kemalist nation-building project. The ‘other’ to the state’s desired citizen of Homo LASTus were practising Muslims, Islamists, non-Atatürkists such as leftists and socialists, non-Muslims, Alevis and Kurds who were discriminated against by the Kemalist state in a variety of ways. Not only were attempts made to assimilate or dissimilate them, but they were also denied important bureaucratic positions, despite officially being ‘equal citizens'.The chapter looks at the ‘others’ to the Homo LASTus in order: practising Muslims and Islamists (opposite to the laicist), leftists–socialists–communists (opposite to the Atatürkist), non-Muslims and Alevis (opposite to the Sunni Muslim) and Kurds (opposite to the Turk). Before concluding, the chapter discusses how, for a variety of reasons, these minorities felt a need to hide their identities in public, resorted to dissimulation and were constructed by the majority as villains in different conspiracy theories linked to the insecurities, anxieties, fears and paranoias of the state and the nation.

“This chapter discusses some of the different forms of religiosity in Kurdistan over the centuries. Countering a longstanding bias in favour of minorities and heterodox groups, like Christians, Jews, Yezidis and Alevis, it also explores whether one may find more orthodox forms of Islam that are specific to the Kurds, or to the region predominantly inhabited by Kurds. Accordingly, it focuses on the emergence of vernacular religious learning in Kurdish in early modern times, and on the spread of the Khalidiyya branch of the Naqshbandî Sufism during the Tanzimat period and after. From a historical, and genealogical, perspective, it emerges that questions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy have witnessed qualitative changes over the centuries, reflecting changing forms and modalities of power; from a global-historical perspective, it appears that new articulations of religious orthodoxy in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, in particular the rise of the Khalidiyya Naqshbandî tarîqa, reflect, and interact with, wider developments, like the centralization of state power, the emergence of Wahhabism and the arrival of Christian missionaries. Finally, it discusses the qualitative religious changes accompanying the rise of post-Ottoman nation-states and their epiphenomena, up to and including, most notoriously, the so-called Islamic State.”

This chapter discusses religious traditions that had their origin in Kurdish-speaking regions, notably Yezidism and Yarsanism (the religion of the Yaresan, Ahl-e Haqq, or Kaka’i), with some reference to the Alevis of the Dersim (Tunceli) area, the Shabak and the development of a Kurdish Zoroastrian community in the Kurdish Autonomous Region. The chapter offers an outline of the characteristics of the main traditions discussed here, points to similarities between them and describes their recent history in the homelands, particularly after the IS attacks that began in 2014.

“Despite their large population and their remarkable place in the Kurdish and Alevi history, only recently the Kurdish Alevis became the centre of attention and discussion among the public and the academicians. This was mainly due to their ethnic and religious identities. Considered as ‘heretic’ by the Ottoman administration they were singled out for centuries.Once the borders of the Ottoman Empire disintegrated and became the Republic of Turkey, the Kurdish Alevis were now ostracized as an ethno-religious group, which led to a painful suppression during the twentieth century. It is due to the input of fieldwork carried out by activists and researchers since 1980s that we are now better informed about their authentic beliefs, myths, religious organizations and ceremonies performed in Zazaki and Kurmanci. This chapter does not only offer an overview of these findings, but also the critical turning points in their history and the main features of their religious tenets, their contemporary state in Turkey and Western Europe and the ongoing debates they are participating in.”