Kurdish Responses to Imperial Decline: The Kurdish Movement and the End of Ottoman Rule in the Balkans (1878 to 1913)

Abstract

Focusing on the period between 1878 and 1913, this paper seeks to add to the growing literature highlighting the complexities of identity in the late Ottoman period through an examination of the attitudes of Kurdish political activists towards the specific question of the dissolution of Ottoman rule on the Balkan Peninsula. More precisely, it will be argued that, although it is impossible to identify a single Kurdish response to Ottoman troubles in the Balkans, a survey of contemporaneous publications indicates that many leading Kurdish public figures of the period, including those active within the nascent Kurdish movement, regarded Ottoman imperial collapse as a profoundly negative political development.