Kasaba Review on Van Bruinessen

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Review: Kurdish Society and Politics

Reviewed Work(s):

Agha, Shaikh and State: On the Social and Political Organization of Kurdistan. by M.M. vanBruinessen

Resat Kasaba

MERIP Reports, No. 85. (Feb., 1980), pp. 23-25.

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Review

Ira nia n troops in Iraqi Kurdista n before 1975withdrawal.

Kurdish Society and Politics b y ~ s a tKasaba

Agha, Shaikh and State: On the Social and

Political Organization of Kurdistan

by M.M. va n B ru inessen . Ut rech t : Th e Univers i ty o f

U t r e c h t 1978 467 pages wi th ma ps i l lus t ra t ions

an d b ib liography .

There are some 14 million Kurds in Iran, Turkey, Iraq,

Syria and the USSR. For centuries Kurdish people have

played an impor tant role in the history of the region, and

today they have once again come to the fore in the after-

math of the Ira nia n revolution an d recent turmoil in Iraq

andTurkey. I n the early sixteenth century the greater part

of 'Kurdistan' came under Ottoman rule. During the rival-

ry and clashes between the Per sian and Ottoman Empires,

the Ottom ans made extensive use of the Kurds a s a fight-

ing force and, when the boundaries were finally drawn

between the two Empires during th e seventeenth century,

the majority of the Kurds remained under th e Ottoman

suzerainty, including the territories now known as Iraq

and Syria.

After World War I, the greater par t of Kurdistan was

effectively divided between Iraq , Turkey, and I ran. Manip -

ulation, suppression, and exploitation of the Kurdish peo-

ple characterized the regional politics of these states. The

movement headed by Ba rzani t ha t led to a war between

Iran and Iraq i n 1974 constitutes the most striking recent

example of this manipu lative usage of the Kurdish people.

In t he early 1960s Kurds were given limited autonomy by

the new Iraqi republican regime then trying to form a

broad popular base. Externally, a s the Iraqi government

moved closer to th e USSR, the US and its regional allies,

sough t covert mean s to de-stabilize the regime.

Barzarii,

a powerful traditional leader of the Kurds in Iraq, was

anxious to enlarge his influence and did not hesitate to

accept the support of some dubious sources, including the

CIA, Israel and the Shah , to realize his aims. When I ra n

an d Ira q signed a peace treat y in 1975, however, the Kur-

dish people were left open to the cru shing ons laught of the

Iraqi army.

Today, the sta tus quo in the ar ea rests upon suppres-

sion of the Kurdish identity. I n Turkey Kemalist ideology

denies the existence of any distinc t ethnicities by proclaim-

ing tha t Turkey is a unified nation without any class

distinctions or an y special privileges for anybody. The

regimes in I ran and Iraq, too, have been disguising their

exploitive oppression of the Kurdish people by referring to

national interest and national unity. Schol ars of the

Middle Eas t ha ve been overly influenced by these official

ideologies. It is now a long overdue task to come to grips

with the reality of the Kurdish people. We have to under-

stan d their historical and contemporary situation, and un-

veil the ideological m ask covering their pas t an d present

struggles. We should exami ne the possible effects of these

past and present configurations on the future develop-

ments i n the Middle East . M. M. va n Bruinessen's recent

book, A g h a S h a i k h an d S ta t e constitutes an extremely

significant step in th is direction.



Primordial loyaltiesv* is van Bruinessen's focus of

attention; he states his object as to show how [these oyal-

ties] were and are influenced by external factors, and to

trace how Kurdish nationalism developed in interaction

with these primordial loyalties (p. 11). In explaining the

transi tion from Kurdish tribalism to Kurdish national-

ism, he warns us right away th at tribes as such do not

simply represent a st age of evolution preceeding the s tat e

but they are in several ways creations of surrounding

states (148-149).** Rat her th an developing an abst rac t

treatise on Kurdish nationalism, van Bruinessen focuses

on specific tribes, their interactions with the surrounding

sta tes and specific nationalisms th at developed out of

these interactions.

After an introductory chapter providing some back-

ground information about Kurdistan, he develops a n

analys is of the Kurdish tribe in general, a nd descriptions of

some specific tribes. According to van Bruinessen, triba l

organization in the Kurdish case does not refer to a closely

knit organization in a well defined territory. Most impor-

tant ly, a belief in havi ng descended from common ances-

tors serves as a thread th at loosely connects the scattered

segments of the sa me tribe (43-58).Marriage patterns rein-

force the closed and fragmented characte r of Kurdish so-

ciety. In line with this str uctura l characteristic, chieftains

an d paramount chieftains have only vaguely defined func-

tions and duties (146). Va n Bruine ssen cites blood feuds

(59-62), nter- and intra-t ribal conflicts, and occasional al-

liances between the tribal leaders and the surrounding

states a s examples tha t demonstrate the lack of a unifying

structural organization among and within the Kurdish

tribes (59ffl.

In Chapter

I11

the tribes ar e located within larger set-

tings with specific reference to the position of the Kurds i n

the Persian and Ottoman Empires. In hi s well-argued his-

torical sections van Bruinessen demonstrates how the Otto-

ma ns left intact and reinforced the tribal organization of

the Kurds with a view to facilitate overrule and tribute

collection. Chapter IV is devoted to the nat ure of domina -

tion exercised by the tribal and inter-tribal chiefs and an

exposition of Kurdish culture as a rich and solid force tha t

served to main tain the Kurdish identity in spite of the

segmented characte r of their social organization.

Va n Bruinessen concentrates on the Turkish Kurds in

Chapte r V to show how the ag has an d sha ikhs incited a

nationalist uprising in 1929, a t a point when the newly-

founded Turkish republic moved to break down th e tribal

organization of the Kurds. From the seventeenth century

onwards, when the Ott oman system began to be incorpo-

rated into the capitalist world economy, and th e Ottoman

state apparatus started to lose its strength, the eastern

Pr imor d ia l loyal t i es describes g r oup t ies such as k insh ip and cas te th a t p r even t

poor peasan ts f r om per ceiving c lass con t r ad ic t ions and make them act agai ns t the i r

ob ject ive in ter es t s . V an Br u inessen bor row s th i s t e r m and i t s u sage f r om H amza A lav i ,

Pea san t Classes and Pr imor d ia l Loyal ties , Jour n al of Peasan t S tud ies ,

I,

1 1973

23 62

Tribe is an amb iguo us term genera lly used in two diff ere nt senses. The first of the se

refers to a stage in th e general developm ent of human societies ; a stage that follows

primitive clan organ ization a nd preceeds the emergenc e of the f irst class socieites.

second usage refers to a type of social organization ' ' whose distinguishing chara cter is-

t ics are never clearly state d, thus lea ding to manifold controversies. Van Bruines sen

explicit ly rejects the f irst usage. He argue s that th e Kurdish tr ibes did not preceed but

w ere cr ea t ions o f the su r r ound in g s ta tes . A s f o r the second usage , h i s ar gum ents abou t

the segmenta r y char acte r of the K urd ish t r ibes sugges t tha t t r ibe i s no t a un i f y ing

or gan iza t ion am ong he K ur ds . H ow ever , h is per s i s ten t usage of the ter m th r oughou t the

book makes i t dif f icult to comprehend the exact nature of the social organization of

K ur ds .

provinces were largely left to themselves, locked in non-

capitalist relations of production. Nationalist movements

elsewhere in the Empire, especially in the Balkans, were

one consequence of th is penetration of capitalist relations

of production, an d were successful because of the degree of

development of these relat ions an d the concomitant emer-

gence of a mercantile bourgeoisie with vested inter ests in

national unification.

Kurdish Population est imates for

1975

I

total population Kurds

I

Turkey 40.2 million 7.5 million 19%

Iraq 10.5 million 2 to 2.5 million 23%

Ir an 34.0 million 3.5 million 10%

Syr ia ca. 6 million 0.5 million 8%

USSR 0.1 million

Total 13.5 to 14 million

S ou r ce : V a n Bru ine s se n p 22

At th e turn of the present century, successive shifts in the

Young Turk policies from Pan-Ottomani sm to Pan-Is lam-

ism, and finally to Pan-Turkism, occurred partly a s a re-

sponse to these nationalist movements and partly as a

response to th e empire's successive territorial loss3s in the

Balkans and the Middle East. Van Bruinessen tends to

reverse this causal relationship between the nationalist

movements and the policies of the Ottoman sta te (361-362).

A Kurdish nationalism did not an d could not develop in

this epoch because there was no similar basis for such a

movement to emerge. The 1929 revolt of Sh aikh Said h as to

be distinguished from the nationalist movements that

emerged in the Balkans.

The success of the Kemalist movement in Turkey de-

pended on its ability to break its ties with the Ottoman pas t

in three major areas: imperialism, absolute monarchism

and clericalism.

Only with the realization of these breaks could the new

Turkish sta te transform itself into a bourgeois state in th e

capital ist world economy. The situa tion of the Kurds was

in contradistinction with all three of these principles: their

fragmented structure was hindering the national unifica-

tion; their chie ftains were using religion to legitimize their

leadership, and thus they opted for monarchy a s a vehicle

to secure their position. Shaikh Said's movement which

had overt religious overtones took place right after the

abolition of the Ca liphat e by Kemal. Fa r from being car-

ried by a Kurdish bourgeoisie, it aimed to hal t and re-

verse the process of penetration of capitalist relations in

eastern Anatolia.

The Turkish state acted swiftly to suppress the move-

ment. I n th e decades th at followed, the Kurds were force-

fully assimilated into the Turkish social formation a s a

reservoir of cheap labor for the advanced capitali st indus-

tries of western Turkey and Europe. Van Bruinessen, how-

ever, is not clear enough on the exact na ture of the Kurdish

uprising of 1929 and he fails to distinguish sufficiently this

movement from the other nationalist movements th at tore

the Ottoman Empire apa rt in previous centuries. His oc-

ca si on al imprecise references to Kurdistan, Kurdish



proletar iat, Kurdish nati onal income, etc. undermine

the otherwise well articulated t heses put for th in the book.

One central theme t hat runs through va n Bruinessen's

account is tha t structurallv the Kurdish tribes (a nd sub-tri-

bal sections-villages, households, etc.) are isolated from

eac h other, with little and frequently hostile relations be-

tween them. The political boundaries between Iran and

Turkey that were drawn in 1600s, and t he further separa-

tion of Iraqi and Syrian Kurds from Turkey at th e turn of

the century, served to reinforce and increase the segmen-

ta ry organization of the Kurds. Thus, n place ef intertr ibal

articulation among the Kurds, these groups were left to be

absorbed by the different processes developing on either

side of th e frontier.

Van Bruinessen argues in his conclusion th at in recent

years the primordial loyalties hav e been gradually dis-

appearing among the Kurdish tribes. In hi s view a decisive

turning point in this direction occured around 1970. I be-

lieve this turning point is a specific effect of the current

major crisis in Turkey. Throughout the 1970s Turkey ha s

been living through a doubly determined crisis: one

marked by the tr ansition to monopoly capitalism in west-

ern Turkey, and anothe r involving the fi nal breakdown of

the non-capitalist relations of production in t he east . These

transformations have generated fundamental shifts in the

configurat ion of social relations on a local level in easte rn

provinces. Traditio nally influent ial groups-Sunni Mus-

lim Turks and the a gha s and shai khs of the Kurdish tribes

-have seen their traditional control weaken. Va n Bruin-

essen describes Turkey's fascist Naitonalist Action Par-

ty's attempts to exploit the discont ent of these groups to

provoke civil war with the hope th at this can open the

way for assu ming power in cooperation with a fraction of

the army. The Maras incident of December 1978 was a

highpoint of this provocation.

Today, there are various progressive movements of

Kurds in Ira n a nd Turkey. The carriers of these movements

are not the aghas and shaikhs but the working class and

peasantr y. In spite of the ideological proclamations by the

governments tha t tend to distort the aims of these people,

domin ant Kurdish organizat ions of both Turkey and I ran

do not seek total secession from either count ry. The de-

man ds of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Ira n have been

formulated a s self determination

wi th in a democrat ic

Iran. They ar e one of th e most progressive elements in t he

Ira nian revolution. Today, after having used the Kurdish

people in coming to power, th e Ayatoll ah Khomeini does

not hesitate to brutally repress an d use them a gain, this

time a s a pretext to crush the Iran ian left a s a whole. All

these deve lopments make a close consideration of the Kur-

dish problem a n ever more urgent tas k. We are quite

fortunate a t this time to have Van Bruinessen's insightful

analysis.

Interview, continued from page

I t seems not even know ing to o much about th e par-

t iculars that the forces for centra lization are

ascendant.

That's true, but Shaikh Rashid in particular is motivated by his

ow n econ omic and political interest and it will b e difficult for

him to relinquish his autonom y. I think th e U nion w ill survive.

Th ere are tw o main factorsthat strengthen it, though there are

also factors that might lead to a break. I n Abu Dhabi, th e

internal politics of the shaikhly ruling class are important. Abu

Dha bi has the only potential for separation, with its army and

wealth. Zayid isvery unionist. That's not the case with th e other

Abu D habi shaikhs, especially the al- Mu ha mm ad branch of the

family, who complain that Abu Dhabi's wealth is going to the

other Emirates. They want mo re for themselves. O n e could say

that after Zayid goes these shaikhs in Abu D habi cou ld be the

real force for separation. Th e case is differen t in D ub ai. Rashid's

sons are very strong unionists, unlike their father. This is from

the ruling class perspective. At a mass level there is growing

awareness of the UAE's distinct personality and ide ntity. An d

even more important is the economic structure, and it is

headed towards centralization rather than decentralization.

So the contradictions are ones that threaten the char-

acter of the polit ical leadership but not the fact of

un ion?

Yes. The unionist forces are in fact mo re supportive of political

change than the separatists.

Don't

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