Abstract:
In 1925, a rebellion led of Shaikh Saeed broke out in the southeast of Turkey. This rebellion deeply influenced Turkish domestic and foreign affairs, and also became a typical model for Kurdish revolts before the 1970’s. Shaikh’s rebellion was characteristic of tradition against modern society, peripheral against central rule, and Kurdish nationalism against Turkish nationalism. Owing to realistic circumstances and strategic and tactic needs, the rebels and republicans respectively their two systems of political discourse, one being religious and the other nationalistic. The rebels’ two systems of political discourse called to overthrow the existing antireligious republic so as to restore the religious discourse of the SultanKhalifa system. And the Kurds ought to rise against Turkish oppression and establish a national political discourse of the Kurdish nation. In contrast, the republican religious discourse warned that, since the aim of the rebels was to overthrow the young republic and restore the SultanKhalifa system, the rebellion must be suppressed. Politically, the republicans thought that, since the rebellion was Kurdishnationalistic and separatist and meant a challenge to the Turkish character of the republic and her territorial integrity, it must be rooted out. In a word, the rebellion was a religion-clothed battle between Kurdish nationalism and Turkish nationalism and exercised a profound influence.
