A turning point in the formation of the Kurdish left in Turkey : the revolutionary eastern cultural hearths (1969 - 1971)

Abstract

This thesis scrutinizes the initial step in the formation of an autonomous Kurdish left movement, the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths, following the social mobilization in Turkey in the late 1960s. The dissociation of the Kurdish left from Turkish left organizations was facilitated by the radicalization of social movements and the crisis in the Turkish left accompanied by the discontent with the propositions put forward by the official ideology. The influence of socialism shaped the general outlook of the organization while attention to ethnic problems increased gradually. This study argues that the Hearths were the first legal autonomous Kurdish organizations that brought socialism and the ethnic question together, founded on the basis of ethnic considerations by the leadership of the Kurdish youth having mostly socialist orientations. Considering the aspects to gather all Kurdish people regardless of their political affiliations and to take hold in daily lives of people, this study poses the question that whether the Hearths became the first ethnic-based mass organization with socialist orientations. Since the elaboration of the problems pertaining to the eastern parts of Turkey was mostly confined to economic terms in the period, this thesis states that the Hearths brought about the ethnic dimension of these problems. Albeit with the evident remnants with economic-led arguments inherited from the Turkish left, this study reveals the rising interest of the Hearths in Kurdish nationality, language, history and literature. Methodologically, the publications and the trial documents, accompanied by the interviews, constitute the primary sources of this study contents of which reveal the diverging path of the Kurdish left in organizational terms from the Turkish one. Though the trial process of the Hearths was regarded as the sole legacy upon the Kurdish movement in Turkey, this thesis, conceding its ultimate significance, revises the Hearths as the first organization to have departed organizationally from the Turkish left while retaining the juxtaposition of socialist and ethnic considerations.