Emergence of the Modern Middle East Interview, Caleb Mi

Hello. Today, I will be interviewing Professor Nelida Fukaro at New York University Abu Dhabi. Professor Fukaro is a historian who specializes in modern Middle Eastern history, and her research focuses include Kurdistan, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula. I will interview her about the topic of Kurdish-Turkish conflict, one of the most significant challenges faced by the Turkish nation-state. It refers to the long-standing and complex dispute between the Kurdish minority in Turkey and the Turkish central government. In particular, we will discuss the process through which Kurdistan was divided into territories of different nation-states after World War I instead of forming a separate nation, the nation-building agenda in Turkey, and how that led to the resistance of the Turkish people. I will also ask her about her opinion of some of the potential solutions that might alleviate the tension. So my first question will be, in the very early years of the modern state of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk promised autonomy to the Kurds, and that's a reward to their contribution to the Turkish military effort during World War I and also in the Turkish War of Independence. So it might be surprising to see how suddenly the Turkish government decided to systematically shift their policy and started to suppress Kurdish cultural identity. Why do you think this radical shift happened? Well, I mean, I think this has much to do with the particular circumstances that came with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War and the ways in which the so-called War of Independence was fought by Mustafa Kemal at the head of, you know, the old Ottoman army, and the ways in which this War of Independence also created two separate centers of power, one in Ankara, where the Kemalist government was in a sense of the Kemalist group coalesced, and Istanbul, which was the old capital of the empire. So clearly during the War of Independence, the Kurds were mobilized as former military elites of the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds really served in the Ottoman army very prominently. And so, and also they guarded, they were settled in a very important area, a border area, right? What then became the border areas with Syria, with Iraq, and with Armenia, right? So the Kurds were very, very, very important at the moment of the conflict, and at the moment when Mustafa Kemal wanted to create or establish military facts on the ground, right? Now, he wanted to establish military facts on the ground for a number of reasons, because clearly during the peace conference during the First World War, after the end of the First World War, I mean, basically Anatolia, which was the region where the Turkish state came to be defined with borders and so forth, started to be occupied by foreign armies. And so he needed to establish facts on the ground, and he needed the support of the Kurds, right? Both as military elite and as the people that inhabited border regions that were central for the definition of the new boundaries of the republic, right? So once this was established after 1923, with the Lausanne Treaty in 1923, Mustafa Kemal obviously was able to kind of reverse and overturn the previous international agreements that actually were against the formation of an independent Turkish republic. After 1923, when Mustafa Kemal was able to fix the boundaries, internationally recognized boundaries of a new Turkish republic, then clearly that started a process of state centralization, which was clearly an institutional as much as it was ideological. Right? And the ideology that cemented this state was Turkish nationalism. Turkish nationalism as a pretty exclusive ethnic nationalism that very much relied on the idea of the uniqueness of the Turkish people, Turkish language, Turkish culture, and Turkish history. And that's how the Kurds became known as mountain Turks. The word Kurdish could not, Kurds or Kurdish could not be pronounced for a long time in the republic. So you mentioned several things during your answer to the previous question. That is, the first one is, you talked about the treaty after the World War I. Now, as we all know, that's probably too harsh for the Turkish people. And that created the resistance within the Turkey to fight back. And later, the Treaty of Lausanne divided Kurdistan into the territories of different nation states. And I'm just wondering, how did they decide how to divide Kurdistan? And if you were to go back in time, are you going to make the same decision? Or do you think there might be a better plan for the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire? And what plans would you probably propose? So you're asking me two questions. Why do I think that Kurdistan was divided between different nation states? One, and second, if I were to be in charge of the decision, how would I implement it? Okay. I mean, fundamentally, Kurdistan was divided into different nation states. I mean, for very simple reasons. Because the Kurds, who were promised an independent state in 1920 in the Treaty of Sèvres, were not able to lobby successfully at the international level in order to be able to objectify the state. As a matter of fact, the Kemalist resistance was very successful, not only as a military resistance, but as a diplomatic international enterprise. So the Kurds did not have enough clout or leadership or voice at the international level at that point. Whereas Mustafa Kemal could actually, and he was very, very skillful in that, could establish facts on the ground, at the same time he could also present these facts on the ground in a very, very articulate way to the international community that fitted in with the different mosaics of power that were created after the end of the war and the different nation states in the Middle East and elsewhere, also in the Balkans, in Eastern Europe, and so forth. The second question they are asking me is a bit difficult, in a sense that, as historians, I think it's very difficult for us to think in terms of active agency in the past. You know what I mean? What I can say is that, basically, it was the result of a lot of moving parts, very complex moving parts. And you wonder, for instance, why the Kurds did not get a nation state. But, for instance, the Armenians were able to proclaim in 1920 a republic, which then was, Armenians, another important group that lived in Anatolia in the late Ottoman era. You wonder how the Armenians could get, in 1920, the proclamation of the republic, and then, of course, they became part of the Soviet bloc, right? So, if you ask me, I would not divide the Ottoman Empire with the hindsight, because what's been happening today, not so much in Turkey, because Turkey, overall, is a relatively stable country, in spite of, of course, the political issues there, but certainly, if you look at the Arab world, the Arab world, but also, in some ways, Iran, which I think they are kind of extremely troubled as a nation state. So, this idea of the nation state seemed to be working at the time as an organized principle of the world, or a certain part of the world, after the war. It seemed, it was very much in tune with international thinking, and also allowed the former colonial powers, like Britain and France, to maintain some sort of influence in the Middle East, not in Turkey, obviously, because Turkey was successfully became independent, and so forth. So, that's the only answer I can give you on this. The Kurds suffered of fragmented leadership, and a fragmentation of political mobilization, right? Already, even before they were divided into these three different countries. The Armenians were much more cohesive, I think, and they could also capitalize on more international, through their kind of supposed Christian heritage. They had a lot of support from a certain diaspora community, Armenians living abroad, and so forth, at the time. The Kurds did not have this. As you mentioned in your book, The Other Kurds, a long time ago, there's no mobilized Kurdish identity, per se. There's different tribes, and after the division of Kurds into different nation states, there are still priests, there are still religious people going around borders to different villages of different countries. Do you think, perhaps, if Kurdistan were to be a nation state, do you think that's going to be a sustainable, that's a viable idea, to have a separate Kurdistan? At the moment? Both at the moment, and if now, there were to be a Kurdistan nation state. Do you think that's doable? Well, I mean, you know, I think that the situation in these main three, let's say, four different countries where Kurds live, because we are talking here about Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, right? There is also Iran in the port. I think that at the moment, the situation is so fragmented in the region, and each one of these nation states has very specific kind of policies at interest vis-à-vis the Kurdish population. They have national, they are pursuing national interest, the nation states, right? And the ways in which this reflects upon the Kurdish situation on the ground within these individual states is very different. In Iraq, because of the kind of, in a sense, undoing of the Iraqi state after 2003 American invasion, the development of ISIS, what happened to Mosul when it was occupied by the Islamic State, and so forth. In Iraq, also because the Kurds are actually, in some ways, they have some very strategic position there, they have been able to carve out for themselves a great degree of autonomy and independence. So the Iraqi Kurdish enclave, the regional government, Kurdish regional government in Iraq is very strong. But then if you look at Syria, and the kind of fragmentation that has happened in Syria after 2010, after the Arab Spring, and Syria is basically a country that has been collapsing, as we all know, the Kurdish enclave in Syria, for instance, Rojava, and so forth, they have been fighting very local battles, right? And they have been against the Assad regime, against the Islamists, the ISIS, the Islamic State. So the mosaic is too complicated at the moment. In Turkey, we have basically an Islamist regime in power that actually very much and very conveniently actually is forgetting ethnicity and Turkishness, right, as an element, let's say, of unity or division, as it was in the early republican regime, where being a Turk was very important, where being a Muslim now is obviously more important. And as you know, the majority of the Kurds are Muslims, right? I mean, notionally. So the situation in Turkey has changed considerably from the republican period for the Kurds. However, the Kurds in border areas in Turkey find themselves also entangled with Syria and Iraq, right? And so Iran, Kurds in Iran is another different story. And I don't see connections with Iran because of the ways in which geopolitics is working these days. Whereas you have Iran very much pursuing the Shia strategy card around the Middle East. And so Iran is a bit of kind of isolated as a state from both Turkey, certainly Turkey, from Turkey certainly, and in Syria and in Iraq, Iran is not very interested in Kurds, but is more interested in Shia, right? So we know that southern Iraq and Baghdad and Shia government, Shia militias are controlling, for instance, the capital. But they are very important political players. And as you mentioned, it seems like in the beginning of the nation building process, Turkey is more focusing on the ethnicity, the culture of the homogeneous Turkish identity. But now it seems like they are starting to focus more on Islam, their Muslim identity. So do you think that religious identity might be a good way to find this common denominator between Turkish and Kurdish people? Well, I mean, in some ways, I mean, it's a very broad question and we have to go into the different layers of this question. I mean, in terms of state rhetoric, perhaps yes, so that the government might be using this. But in terms of strategic and political realities on the ground, the situation is far more complex than that. Because clearly you also have the integration of Kurdish politics into mainstream politics much more. This is true in Turkey and so forth. But you also have still forms of resistance on the part of Kurdish groups, communities and so forth in the east against the government. So it's a very, very complex picture here. Also because there are these very, very, particularly now, there is a, the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, as far as I understand, is more and more economically infiltrated by Turkey. Right? So there is this kind of also economic fear, we are after all in a neoliberal world, where there are kind of gains to be made, economical gains that go beyond ideology. We are talking about ideology a lot and politics and political movement and nationalism and whatever, but I see the pragmatic part of this power basically and the economic interests being much more prominent now than identity politics. Which is ethnicity or Islam and whatever, although they might be used in that way. And it seems like this is a really complicated question and how to solve it is also very complicated. But it seems like during the Ottoman Empire in the 16th, 17th century, things are much easier. So I read one of your articles on the Ottoman frontier in Kurdistan in the 16th and 17th century. So you mentioned the idea that there is autonomous Kurdish principalities, which became sort of Ottoman Basel state. And these states were collaborating with the Ottoman Empires and they are doing well economically, they can tolerate each other. And despite their differences in culture, there seems to be an integration of cultures in the border area. And why is it that today they are not collaborating with each other and today there is no cultural integration. There is, what we see is the opposite. There is a stronger and stronger Kurdish national identity. Well, in certain areas, yes. Well, I mean, you know, I'm happy you read that article because that article brings us back to much earlier periods when the world was configured, at least the Middle Eastern world was, but the whole world more generally, to at least Europe, at least Eastern Europe and Russia, were organized around the idea of multi-ethnic empires, right? Like the Ottoman Empire. And clearly, in this multi-ethnic empire, what you had, you had no clear cut, the political identity of this empire was not defined so much by borders, clearly defined borders, but particularly in the case of the Ottomans, but also the Safavids and then the Qajars in Iran, by kind of allegiance to rulers and membership in a religious community. So territoriality was not that important to define political identity. As a matter of fact, the borders of this empire shifted and that's why you have Kurdish peoples where Kurdish communities were actually located on the kind of borderlines that defined the influence of the Ottomans and the Iranian empires could actually fit in in a much more elastic way, both geopolitically but also culturally. And as a matter of fact, if you think about Ottoman, Iranian, which is Safavid or Qajar empires, you know, they were actually, there was a lot of cross-cultural exchange, right? In a sense that if you think about the Ottoman language, Ottoman Turkish had Turkish words, Arabic words from the common bond of Islam, but also there are a lot of Farsi words that are particularly used for poetry. So that was an imperial canon which was widely shared. And the Kurds belonged to this world of interconnections. Now, clearly, some of the foundations for Kurdish, a separate ethnic political identity, was kind of established in this period because Kurds had independent, semi-independent principalities along the way, different ones, right? It is unclear, though, whether we can talk about the development of Kurdish nationalism within this political unit. It's very unclear because what is very clear is that later on, when the Kurds had to play a nationalist card, meaning they had to kind of try to justify their being a nation in order to get a state, then they looked back at that period and said, look, we had this emirate, we had Kurdish language, we had cultural production, and so forth. So the logic of the nation-state is very different from this logic of empire. It's a logic of fixed boundaries, international kind of setup of identities that are much more centralized and defined by clear political principles. So there is not much of this flexibility. Yeah, and as you mentioned in your work, there's this hukumet, some literature has viewed hukumets as pre-modern national identities. And they're arguing that, oh, this is a proto-national consciousness, that we have this idea of nation from a long, long time ago. And also the cultural book, the Sharafnama, that's originally written to show their loyalty to the Ottoman state and also as a dynastic history of the Kurds. But now that's used very differently. And clearly we see how, from the world of empire to the world of nation-state, we're seeing this quick and dramatic transformation. And also the language part you mentioned, there's language, linguistic cleansing in both Turkey's nation-state and Iran nation-state to clear all the words that are from other origins. And I guess they're trying to do this language cleansing and also ethnicity cleansing in the beginning of the state. And do you think that's what the nation-states are meant to be like? Or can we say that if there's a nation-state, then they must create a homogenous, unique identity that's exclusive of all the other identities? Well, no, there are different kind of models of nationalism, of course. And the Turkish one was the so-called ethnic models of nationalism. So ethnicity was the organizing principle of the state, ideologically, as I said, and also institutionally. Well, institutionally perhaps a bit less, but politically and ideologically certainly. You have different type of nation of nationalism apart from this ethnic one. You can have a kind of multicultural nationalism. And we can think about nationalism that allow autonomy to particular communities within their own territory and so forth. So the possibility within the nation-state is there. But in the case of the Middle East, there has been so much struggle for power. And we have to remember there was also the colonial experience that very much implemented policies of divide and rule, that very much antagonized majorities and minorities in these new states. So the minorities, it's not the case of Turkey, because Turkey was not under any colonial control. But if you think about places like Iraq or Syria, inhabited by Kurds, you have a clear strategy on the part of both the French and the British that control Syria and Iraq, you know, for much longer, practically until the end of the Second World War. You have these tactics of using minority like the Kurds in order to counterbalance emerging Arab nationalist movements. Right? So there is also this continuous strategic ploy that occurred and that placed minorities like the Kurds in a very precarious position once these countries became independent. Right? Yeah. And you said that nationalism, there are different kinds of nationalism. There are ones that allow autonomy. Do you think that granting autonomy to the Kurds people in Turkish nation-state might be a viable solution to alleviate the tension? Because it seems like in the Ottoman Empire, this autonomy doesn't create separation. There was instead integration and collaboration against the Safavids. Do you think if Turkish nation-state were now to get the Kurdish population autonomy, that would work as well as when it's in the Ottoman Empire? No, because the geopolitical setup is completely different. We are in a completely different world and also element of political identity and political mobilization are very different. We are in the post-nation-state era in some ways, many argue, even this whole idea of the nation-state is a bit passé because we live in this world of globalization, many argue. But I think it will be political suicide on the part of the Turkish government, given the logics within which this international or this regional kind of balances are working. Because clearly there is a long history of contentions with the Kurds on the part of central government in Turkey, whether it was Kemalist or it is now more Islamic oriented. There are questions of political loyalty in the end of the central government because this has been a discontention and a struggle which was very harsh in the 90s. Kurdish separatism, terrorism on the part of both the Turkish army and PKK for instance, this political organization that was elected. So there has also been so much accumulated distrust in general. And also you need to have an open kind of open dialogue, open conversation and a political system which is more open to start having autonomy conversations. And certainly Turkey now, Ankara and the government in Ankara is not characterized by openness. And especially because it seems like Kurds are not constructed as an enemy of Turkish people or Kurdish nationalism at least. They have been for a long time and they continue to be. So this is in the actually also national psyche. Could you explain a little bit more about this national psyche, from where did it emerge and why is it so... Because there are other places where minority is not such a huge and tricky issue. But in Turkey we saw this national psyche and we saw this deepening, deepening division between these two ethnic groups. Well, I mean, you know, now this division is much more multi-faceted than it used to be at least in the early republican era as I explained before. Well, I mean, you know, this kind of a strong state of, strong sense of the state, right, and the power of the state in Turkey, which is then translated into state centralization, institutional centralization and so forth, started off in a dramatic way in the 1920s. And the 1920s for me, I mean, they are very key. 1920s, I mean, the Ataturk period really until 1938 or the beginning of the Second World War. You have this really dramatic transformation, or at least the imposition of transformation in Anatolia. The change was really dramatic. It was not sudden, it was actually rooted in developments that occurred in the late Ottoman period. You can argue that the late Ottoman period also developed this strong sense of state, right, with the last sultans. And this kind of need of state centralization because the empire was being threatened, particularly in the 19th century, by Europe, by minority communities that wanted to separate, by the secession and the independence of many states in the 19th century in Eastern Europe, starting with Greece and whatever. So this sense of the strength of the state and the state is kind of rooted in the late Ottoman period. And also, the ideology of Turkish nationalism, as we all know, was rooted in the late Ottoman period, because Ziya Gokalp, who was considered to be the father of Turkish nationalism, worked very much within the parameters of the late Ottoman era. And by the way, it was born a Kurd and spoke Kurdish as first language. So we are here in an Ottoman world still. But Turkish nationalism is an ideology of supremacy, of the Turkish people, and a Turkish culture was born before. But in the 1920s, under the pressure of the collapse of the empire, the pressure of the prospect of Anatolia becoming occupied by, or actually being occupied by foreign powers and becoming a sort of colonial possession, really very much galvanized Mustafa Kemal and the regime he established. So the changes were really dramatic in the 1920s. They changed the alphabet. They purified the language. They declared Turkish. Fundamentally, they removed the religion from the public sphere. Right? And so forth. And so, this type of identity, which was cemented by the willingness of, or this idea of the need to have this very strong identity in order to be independent and to develop as an independent state, really, really gave impetus to this very, very strong ethnic nationalism. And we are seeing, as you mentioned, nationalism emerging in different parts of the Ottoman Empire. And there are a lot of separatists who want to leave the Ottoman Empire to have their own independent country. Do you think that this process is inevitable, in a way? Because, as we mentioned in class, history is contingent upon multiple factors. But it seems like the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is inevitable, almost. Well, I mean, you know, I don't think so much about inevitability as a historical concept, but contingency. And contingency is very important in the case of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, because it also was very much linked up to other developments around the Ottoman Empire. It was like a bit of a domino effect. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was collapsing. There was the Russian Empire. It underwent the Bolshevik Revolution. And the nature of colonialism after the First World War, European colonialism, in the Middle East, that had actually, European powers had been very central in the 19th century to the managing of the Ottoman Empire, to this idea of decentralization. It came to a point where, at the beginning and at the end of the First World War, this type of European intervention in the Ottoman Empire could no longer be sustained. And so Europe could no longer exert influence in the empire as it had done for a number of different reasons that are kind of linked to the more global international development. First World War, peace conference, Wilson, President, American President Woodrow Wilson, bringing in new ideas of self-determination of the population of empires and so forth. So it's the American kind of intervention, in a sense, that also shatters old ways of European control of the Middle East and of the Ottoman Empire, but also of Iran, actually, not just the Ottoman Empire. And so, you know, the Ottoman Empire had become unfeasible. I'm just wondering, what's so powerful and attractive about nation-states? Why does everybody want it? And this idea originally emerged from Europe, but now it becomes a reality of the whole world. Everybody now is living in this system of nation-states. Why do you think that this system is so powerful that almost every political figure, or the prominent ones that, let's say, shape the history, want their country to be an independent nation? Do you think there's any advantages of nation-states in organizing the country for production, for economic progress, or what is it that's so powerful? Well, I mean, it was indeed a powerful idea that was born in Europe. As we know, the two oldest nation-states are Britain and France. Well, the question is also problematic. They are also problematic, these two countries, Britain and France as the oldest nation-states. But let's say that the principle at least comes from there. Well, I mean, you know, it's the kind of, at the end of the First World War, when actually humankind had reached almost self-destruction. You know, it was thought that this was the most efficient, best organizing political principle, right? And it was actually imposed, also this model of nation-state was obviously imposed by Europe and the US and the West on the rest of the world. Also, through the, you know, the foundation of a number of nation-states, in some ways, if you think about the colonial period, if you think about a place like the Indian subcontinent, which was actually controlled by the British, right? Until the Second World War, you know, in some ways, many argue that British colonialism laid the foundation for the partition of India and independence in different nation-states. So, also you have the development of these nationalist ideologies in many parts of the world among particular communities before actually nation-states were established. For instance, if you think about the old Arab nationalism that developed under, or Turkish nationalism, for that matter, developed in the late kind of Ottoman period in the 19th century. And so this was a moment where there was a new idea circulating globally about this kind of new political ideas about ennistic community, political mobilization. And so, particularly in the colonial world, and perhaps you can think about the Ottoman Empire as a colonial world as well because it was an empire, you have a lot of people, a lot of communities that start mobilizing against the center, the colonial center, right? So, what I'm trying to say is that this idea of nationalism as an ideology was also born out of anti-colonial movements, not in Europe and in the West, but outside. And so that's how nationalism as an ideology comes first, people mobilize, and what do they want? They want a nation-state, an Arab state, a Kurdish state, an Armenian state. And that shaped the world we are living in right now. Yes, I mean, and if you think about Africa, perhaps it's a bit more complicated because you have different kinds of lines of division, but it's the same kind of basic concept around the world. And do you think that to sort of alleviate the tension between Kurds and Turks, we must get rid of the nation-state structure as a whole, or do you think there are solutions within the nation-state, or are there any solutions, do you think there are solutions? Well, I mean, the nation-state has provided quite flexible as a model overall. It's so widespread and it's still there, so it has a certain type of usefulness, usefulness and flexibility, right? So notionally, Turkey could actually have, you know, an autonomous Kurdish region in the same way as you have autonomous regions in places like Spain, or in other parts of the world. But for me, the real issue is regional and international politics. And by international politics, you refer to Western intervention in Turkey? I mean, you know, it's not just the West now, isn't it? It's China. You know, you're Chinese, so let's say international politics and the new kind of configuration of international politics that is no more West versus the rest. It's a much more complicated situation now, I think. But, you know, I find it very difficult as a historian to predict scenarios. I analyze the past, and for me, looking at the future is a bit difficult, but if I do so, I look at contextually. And if we look at contextually, there's still the complicated international situation, complicated issue within the Turkish nation-state. Would you say that? Well, the Islamization of the Turkish government has occurred as a result of a number of issues, I think. One is the kind of failures of the secular regime, the corruption and so forth, right? That has brought to power, that has really galvanized the power of the Orange Party, at the beginning we're talking about some years ago now. So, it's a combination of internal development, but also external pressures. And we see around the region, we've seen the last, certainly after the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, you have religion and Islam taking, religious identity politics taking much more, becoming more and more important. It's not just in Turkey, as we all know. So, do you think religion might unite different peoples? Let's say, is it possible for the Kurds and Turks, because of the same Muslim identity, to unite together, to have this Islam brotherhood again, as it were before in the Ottoman Empire? Well, it depends how political and economic power evolves. I think identity politics is kind of very much linked to this now, because of the strength of globalization, neoliberalism, and neoliberalism is very, very embedded in the Erdogan regime. Turkey is becoming, you know, glitzy. The airport in Istanbul, it's a very neoliberal regime, right? So, perhaps, even though Islam can alleviate the tension, there will still be economic inequalities. And the economic inequalities are going to become starker and starker, I'm afraid. So, it's a matter of class, I would say, rather than identity politics. Identity politics is important discourse, but it's really the economic world and field that is becoming more and more important. Thank you so much for your time today.