The fate of the Kurds in a surviving Ottoman Empire

[Kokoda]

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Kurds had been confronted with a policy of centralization of Ottoman power, forced sedentarization and encroachment on their lands by Turkish settlers repatriated from the Balkans. What would happen if the central empires won the First World War and the Ottoman Empire survived the decades that followed? Would large swathes of Kurdish territory - OTL Rojava for example - be completely Turkified or not? Would the Kurds be in a worse, similar or better position than OTL?

 

[TheSpectacledCloth]

In what regard would the Kurds be 'Turkified'?

 

[Lalli]

Kurds probably would are more turkified but there would be lot of Kurds left. Independent Kurdistan would be even more distant dream than in OTL.

 

[Kokoda]

Kurds probably would are more turkified but there would be lot of Kurds left. Independent Kurdistan would be even more distant dream than in OTL.

When the oil will begin to flow, the Ottoman Empire will enter an age of economic prosperity and political stability. I can see northern Iraq and even the whole Levant completely Turkified, because after all, you can abandon your original culture if doing this makes you 100 times richer than your parents who were poor nomads in the mountains...

 

[Jürgen]

When the oil will begin to flow, the Ottoman Empire will enter an age of economic prosperity and political stability. I can see northern Iraq and even the whole Levant completely Turkified, because after all, you can abandon your original culture if doing this makes you 100 times richer than your parents who were poor nomads in the mountains...

The oil would likely mostly enrich the Anatolian and Thracian heartland, but in case of the Kurds they would likely benefit as they would be overrepresented in the army and as migrants to the booming heartland.

 

[Nivek]

The same

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

The oil would likely mostly enrich the Anatolian and Thracian heartland, but in case of the Kurds they would likely benefit as they would be overrepresented in the army and as migrants to the booming heartland.

That might depend if the Young Turks are still in charge of the Islamists could retake power under a strong enough Caliph. Because Oil would develop the regions that produce it and they are almost all located outside of Anatolia. While the Young Turks would obviously focus more on Turkey itself, I can see the Islamists developing Arabian lands for sake of prestige if nothing else, like how the Saudis developed Mecca, the Ottomans would do the same.


As for the Kurt's, that depends again if the Young Kurds are in charge and pursuing Turkification, or you have someone like Abdulmejid II in charge who was a Pan-Islamic leader and mostly didn't care for ethnicity so long as you were Muslim. He even once had the support of the Kurds to crush an Armenian rebellion in the 1890s.

 

[DocJamore]

I don’t think it is very likely the Kurds would have assimilated very much. It is likely though that Kurdish autonomy would have followed Arab nationalism in the Ottoman Empire as the Arabs were living near most of the oil and their would be nationalistic backlash against the Ottomans if the Turks were stupid enough to try to push turkification policies on the Arabs. Basically the Arabs would get Autonomy first, then the Kurds can say “ What about us?”

 

[Jürgen]

That might depend if the Young Turks are still in charge of the Islamists could retake power under a strong enough Caliph. Because Oil would develop the regions that produce it and they are almost all located outside of Anatolia. While the Young Turks would obviously focus more on Turkey itself, I can see the Islamists developing Arabian lands for sake of prestige if nothing else, like how the Saudis developed Mecca, the Ottomans would do the same.

No they would not develop the region producing it, that doesn’t even happen in the modern Arabic countries. Oil and gas demand a very small skilled work force, so you don’t need to develop the region where it’s extracted, it’s far easy to send in some thugs to keep the locals down.

 

[Jürgen]

I don’t think it is very likely the Kurds would have assimilated very much. It is likely though that Kurdish autonomy would have followed Arab nationalism in the Ottoman Empire as the Arabs were living near most of the oil and their would be nationalistic backlash against the Ottomans if the Turks were stupid enough to try to push turkification policies on the Arabs.

I expect the model of a surviving Ottoman Empire to be one of Turks at the top, Kurds as their enforcers and Arabs with a boot on their face.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

No they would not develop the region producing it, that doesn’t even happen in the modern Arabic countries. Oil and gas demand a very small skilled work force, so you don’t need to develop the region where it’s extracted, it’s far easy to send in some thugs to keep the locals down.

The Gulf states are very well developed nations such as Kuwait and Qatar, even investments on the logistical infrastructure of the region would be improving the lives of the locals. A more Islamist-minded leadership in the Empire would for sure be interested in developing historically and religiously relevant regions and cities such as Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Damascus.

 

[DocJamore]

I expect the model of a surviving Ottoman Empire to be one of Turks at the top, Kurds as their enforcers and Arabs with a boot on their face.

That model is completely unsustainable and guarantees Arab nationalism putting Turks above Westerners as their primary object of hate. The Ottomans could accommodate Arabs in an Islamist framework as a sort of modern Caliphate. What they cannot do is try to turn Arabs into Turks. Arab population growth has been near exponentially growing since the beginning of the 20th century. Persecuting Arabs means the Turks will eventually be outnumbered in their own Empire and in the short term guarantees Arabs would turn to ethnic nationalism as the primary ideology they would identify as and destabilize the Empire.

I do not understand why you think that a surviving Ottoman Empire could function as a giant Gulf State. The two are on completely different models of scale. The gulf has some of the smallest countries in the world, the Ottomans were one of the worlds largest. Even more so if we are including their claims on Africa and Arabia, both of which were mostly Arab anyway.

 

[Jürgen]

That model is completely unsustainable and guarantees Arab nationalism putting Turks above Westerners as their primary object of hate. The Ottomans could accommodate Arabs in an Islamist framework as a sort of modern Caliphate. What they cannot do is try to turn Arabs into Turks. Arab population growth has been near exponentially growing since the beginning of the 20th century. Persecuting Arabs means the Turks will eventually be outnumbered in their own Empire and in the short term Guarantees Arabs would turn to ethnic nationalism as the primary ideology they would identify as.

I do not understand why you think that a surviving Ottoman Empire could function as a giant Gulf State. The two are on completely different models of scale. The gulf has some of the smallest countries in the world, the Ottomans were one of the worlds largest. Even more so if we are including their claims on Africa and Arabia.

You don’t understand why the Ottoman Empire would function like the Ottoman Empire functioned and as Turkey and the Arabic states functioned after the fall of the Ottoman Empire?

I must admit I don’t get why anyone would think that getting access to an easy source of income, which is mainly placed in Arabic areas wouldn’t cause the Ottoman Empire to double down. Also the Arabs would also be split, the Levantine Arabs would benefit from this model, as they did not have access to oil and was one of the most developed areas.

 

[Typho]

I expect the model of a surviving Ottoman Empire to be one of Turks at the top, Kurds as their enforcers and Arabs with a boot on their face.

I think this is likely, I've read Kurds had a large part in the Armenian genocide.

 

[Jürgen]

I think this is likely, I've read Kurds had a large part in the Armenian genocide.

Yes, but there’s nothing unusually with that, if a state commit genocide or ethnic cleansing they often use neighboring groups (to the victimized group) to help with the genocide or the ethnic cleansing. Whet more interesting is that Kurdish soldiers was often used across the Ottoman Empire against rebellions. We will likely see this continue with the Ottomans using Kurds against rebelling Arabs or against revolutions in the Turkish heartland.

 

[Typho]

Yes, but there’s nothing unusually with that, if a state commit genocide or ethnic cleansing they often use neighboring groups (to the victimized group) to help with the genocide or the ethnic cleansing. Whet more interesting is that Kurdish soldiers was often used across the Ottoman Empire against rebellions. We will likely see this continue with the Ottomans using Kurds against rebelling Arabs or against revolutions in the Turkish heartland.

So they were about second in the hierarchy. A bit similar to (Baltic) Germans in the Russian empire.

 

[Jürgen]

So they were about second in the hierarchy. A bit similar to (Baltic) Germans in the Russian empire.

It’s not that simple, being enforce doesn’t make you the second in the hierarchy and the Baltic Germans was not enforcers, they were part of the Russian elite. It’s better to think of the Kurds as cossacks, an impoverish group enjoying some privileged for military service.

 

[rfmcdonald]

A lot depends on what happened to let the Ottomans survive. Was there a 1912 war? Did they stay out of the world war, or get involved in one side or another? Etc.

 

[Lions21]

When the oil will begin to flow, the Ottoman Empire will enter an age of economic prosperity and political stability. I can see northern Iraq and even the whole Levant completely Turkified, because after all, you can abandon your original culture if doing this makes you 100 times richer than your parents who were poor nomads in the mountains...

Arabs have an extreme sense of pride in their language due to it being the language of the qur'an, even Arabs in Turkey today are extremely stubborn when it comes to this issue. I don't see turkification ever being really successful in the arabic speaking part of the empire without settlement.

 

[Lions21]

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Kurds had been confronted with a policy of centralization of Ottoman power, forced sedentarization and encroachment on their lands by Turkish settlers repatriated from the Balkans. What would happen if the central empires won the First World War and the Ottoman Empire survived the decades that followed? Would large swathes of Kurdish territory - OTL Rojava for example - be completely Turkified or not? Would the Kurds be in a worse, similar or better position than OTL?

Kurds would most likely not be turkified, the Kurds accepted ottoman rule by and large and dominated institutions like the Hanidiye. Most disputes were simply ones of local vs central government rather than the broader ethnic struggle it is today.

The question becomes, how much does the ottoman empire seek to westernise/modernise after the great war? Crack downs on tribalism and religiius authority is inevitably going to leas to conflict between the Kurds and the Sublime porte though I seriously doubt an ottoman government would pursue turkification in the manner that the kemalists did in response to uprisings. The Young Turks were pursuing Ottomanism not turkish nationalism after all.