Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.805og3>
Abstract
`titrebLast Kurdish Bandits in Modern Turkey : An Analysis of the “Spontaneous” Kurdish Individual Uprisings against the Turkish Nation-State in the Form of Banditry`/titrebThis study is an analysis of the last Kurdish bandits in modern Turkey between 1950 and 1980. In this period, which constituted the transition from the Kurdish riots of the early 20th century to the emergence of the first organized Kurdish movements in the late 1970s, it seems as if the history of the Kurdish rebellion against the Turkish nation-state paused. This period, however, also constituted the massive emergence, final climax, and the ultimate demise of the Kurdish banditry. This study is an attempt to fill in the blanks of the history of the Kurdish rebellion by posing the question « In what sense, were the “ordinary crimes” of the last Kurdish bandits extra-ordinary ? » Through a textual analysis of the issues of one of the most mainstream and popular daily newspapers Milliyet (Nationality) in Turkey between 1950 and 1980, the social protest function and the role of banditry in the power politics between the Turkish nation-state, local landlords, and peasants are analyzed. It is argued, first of all, that it was the nomadic life style, from which the Kurdish bandits exclusively emerged, that was interpreted by the state elite as a substantial threat to the Turkish nation-state building process. Through the measures taken against the banditry, the state aimed to dissolve these communities themselves – which were in the civilization discourse of the state elite nothing but “the remnants of the reactionary Ottoman society”. Moreover, it is claimed that there appeared no bandit, or even bandit image in the memory of the Kurdish peasants, fighting against the order of the landlords. Some of the figures of these bandits have become legends in the eyes of the Kurdish people ; because, not of their rebellion against the landlords, but of their supposed courage and invulnerability in the face of “the great state”. The legends of these bandits in the eyes of the Kurdish people mainly mocked the entire state structure and its image as an irresistible force. In addition, it is argued that while banditry and the nomadic tribes were interpreted by the state elite as a rebellious spirit of the old reactionary structure to the Turkish nation-state building process, Kurdish banditry was also used as a veil for the state to penetrate the Kurdish regions. Finally, the sudden disappearance of the Kurdish banditry in the late 1970s was due to the success of the state centralization process to dissolve nomadic tribes, to the social transformation of the Kurdish regions of Turkey by the establishment of big landowning and rapid urbanization, and to the very emergence of the first Kurdish organized movements in the late 1970s.