Abstracta Iranica

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269
Strohmeier, M.
Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity: Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2003, 265 p.

The author of this book is Professor of Turkish Studies at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia and, though other parts of ‘Greater Kurdistan’ are mentioned, the work is very strongly focused on Turkey, both on events that took place there and on the work of exiles who hoped to mobilise Kurds there in the early years of the Republic. It considers the development of Kurdish nationalist discourse, as evidenced in periodicals and other publications, from the end of the 19th century to the late 1930s – a ‘failed nationalism’, according to the author.

Part One, entitled “‘Awakening’ the Kurds”, covers the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Great War and its aftermath and cites the periodicals Kürdistān, Hēvī, Rojī Kurd and Hetavē Kurd, Jīn and the publications of the Kürd Te‘āvün ve Terakki Cem‘īyeti. There is also a chapter on the influence of Khāni’s Mem ū Zīn. Part Two, “The Kurdish Question in the Turkish Republic”, mentions Azadī and Khoybūn, but concentrates more on the publications of individuals such as the Bedir Khān brothers, with illuminating remarks on their willingness to use very different arguments in different contexts, and some new observations on the so-called ‘traitor’ Şükrü Mehmed Sekbān. Part Three is particularly interesting as it discusses the attempt by Kāmurān Bedir Khān to portray the Kurdish struggle for a European audience in a German novel “The Eagle of Kurdistan” which he co-authored and which has so far been little discussed.

Christine Allison

Pour citer cette recension

Christine Allison. Strohmeier, M., Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity: Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2003, 265 p., Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 26, mis en ligne le : 8 décembre 2005. URL http://abstractairanica.revues.org/document2910.html. Consulté le 9 juillet 2008.