Issued in 1957 in microfilm form as thesis, University of Michigan, under title: Descriptive analysis of the Kurdish of Sulaimaniya, Iraq. / Includes "Two texts, given in Kurdish script ... and in a phonemic transcription with ... free translations." Bibliography: p. 119-124.

Issued in 1957 in microfilm form as thesis, University of Michigan, under title: Descriptive analysis of the Kurdish of Sulaimaniya, Iraq. / Includes "Two texts, given in Kurdish script ... and in a phonemic transcription with ... free translations." Bibliography: p. 119-124.

This study explores how subjectivity has been represented in a selection of Sorani Kurdish novels from Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan that were published in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Due to the statelessness and suffering of the Kurds caused by the political and cultural oppression, the first Sorani Kurdish novel emerged as late as 1961 and yet only established itself towards the end of the century. Within such an acute context, the novel became a tool in the hands of Kurdish authors which they utilised to preserve and promote Kurdish identity, culture and language. With the establishment of cultural centres and publishing houses in diaspora during the 1980s, the establishment of a quasi-independent Kurdish region in Iraq in 1991, and the Iranian government’s easing of publication in Kurdish by the mid-1980, the Sorani Kurdish novelists seized the opportunity to redefine the relationship between political commitment and aesthetics and to consider the possibilities for an analysis of different forms of subjectivity. All the twenty-first century Sorani Kurdish novels examined in this research have discarded, to one degree or another, the realist mode of writing which dominated the Sorani Kurdish novel until the early 1990s. That is, experimentation with new modes of writing and narrative techniques are the common feature of the novels examined here. By carrying out a close reading within a contextual framework and by drawing on Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s theory of the novel, narratology, and theories of subjectivity, this study intends to illustrate the newly emergent modes of wriring and discourses in selected twenty-first century Sorani novels and their implications for the representation of reality and subjectivity. This study demonstrates that the Kurdish novelists from both Iraq and Iran all focus their attention on recent events, relevant to each region, and how they changed the ways subjectivity could be imagined and depicted. The more modernist and postmodernist in form and narration the selected novels are, the more fragmented and passive subjectivity is; and the society that is represented in these novels appears to have separated from its high values and ideals.

The Yezidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority living mainly in Northern Iraq. In the past their religion forbade literacy: thus their accounts of their history and their descriptions of their society ha ve been preserved orally. This thesis considers how the Yezidis use oral literature. or verbal art. to represent themselves and their past. It is based largely on fieldwork carried out in Northern Iraq. The theoretical perspective of this work combines elements of both literary and social studies by considering both text and social context. The genre of a tradition has major implications for its content; three genres considered in detail are lyrical song. prose narrative and extemporised lament. Yezidi discourse about the past stresses their distinctive identity and their endurance against adversity and persecution. This is reflected in the oral traditions. especially in the lyrical song. which is performed at festivals and is extremely popular; prose narratives of events predating the immediate past. on the other hand. are in decline. Most love songs and stories feature historical figures; the performance of lyrical love songs. many of which depict conflict between the wishes of the individual and the rules of a society where marriage is arranged. provides an outlet for the audience's own emotions. Laments are performed by women. Using traditional imagery. they are a vehicle for the expression of a variety of emotions by the performer. Their performance is a social duty and is likely to remain so. The texts included in this work comprise variants of two historical themes. Feriq Pa~a and DawLide Dawtid; variants of a theme of love, Derwe~e C E.,di. and examples of women's lament. both semi-professional and personal. Some of these were transcribed from material collected during fieldwork; all were translated for this thesis. An appendix lists performers and informants.

This study attempts to analyse the internal dynamics of the most recent Kurdish resistance movement in Turkey. The main focus of analysis is the PKK's organisational existence - its ideational and material structure. As the leading entity of the Kurdish movement, the research focuses on the PKK's recent growth - asking how it became capable of revitalising the "buried" body of Kurdishness in Anatolia that has been incorporated (in both demographic and geographical terms) into the Turkicized Republic. Within the framework of the case study method, much of the research is devoted to answering an indirect question: why wasn't it the other Kurdish "national" configurations that came to prominence? To this end, the study tries to appraise the extent of national and non-national ingredients in the make-up of the movement - the leadership, the grassroots and the masses that give their support. The conclusion reached is that the successes and failures of the PKK in bringing about Kurdish opposition in Turkey are fundamentally related to its philosophy of recruitment and organisational diligence, rather than to its scrupulous use of arms or other contextual factors. The form, content and intensity of educational activities give the organisation its strength. This "education war" - concomitant with the contextual tension of Turkey's Kurdish question - produced a "sparking" Apo charisma. In its originating period, the "pure form" of this charisma contributed much to the PKK's ability to mobilise the Kurds. The later "routinised" form of the very charisma has become one of principal determinants in what is known as the movement's "shrinkage process". It was also found that the substance of the party education - mainly involving Öcalan's talks - embodies a philosophy of human nature (rather than a strictly nationalistic content) in search of the re-appropriation of "human naturalness". In the party leadership's view, this human naturalness has to be extricated from the plague of civilisation's property mechanisms, which apparently have degenerated the humane faculties of man's spiritual structure. However, it ought not to be understood that the intensively worded philosophy depicts the extent of such extrication in the personalities of the cadre body of the Organisation. And the field research indicates that this is the Party's greatest internal contradiction.

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The aim of this thesis is to study the concept of Kurdism and its emergence in the first half of the nineteenth century. The study explores the foundations, origins and evolution of Kurdish nationalism, which has grown out of Kurdism. It focuses on the three Kurdish emirates of Soran, Botan and Baban and their relationship with the Ottomans during the first half of the nineteenth century. Warm Ottoman-Kurdish relations continued until the beginning of the New Order (Nizami Cedit) under Sultan Selim III 1789-1807 and Sultan Mahmud II 1808-1839, and the modernisation and administrative reform (known in Turkish as Tanzimat) of the empire, which took place between 1839-1876. At this time, central power was in the hands of the Sultan who abolished all local authorities in the capital and in the Ottoman provinces, including Kurdish semi-autonomous emirates. This direct rule was met by strong Kurdish resistance. From this point, the Kurds conceived of the Ottomans as the “other” whose direct rule over them was unwelcome. They resisted the Ottoman policy of centralisation and the notion of Kurdism flourished. This can be regarded as a key turning point for the development of Kurdish nationalism, reinvigorating a Kurdish consciousness in respect of politics, language and literature. Kurdish Melas (Islamic scholars), popular poets and Kurdish folkloric poets played a major role in the creation of Kurdism in the first half of the nineteenth century in Soran, Botan and Baban emirates. Kurdish writers and scholars turned to literary forms for the expressions of Kurdish cultural politics. This thesis examines a range of literary sources to consider the rule of Kurdish mirs (princes), in politics, and the position of Kurdish intellectuals in the politics of language and culture in Kurdish emirate in the first half of the nineteenth century. This study shows how identification with Kurdism had enabled the Kurds to articulate their claim to their community and their emirates. Kurdism went on to engender Kurdish nationalism, whose growth was reflected in the late nineteenth century through the Kurdish revolt of 1880 by Sheikh Ubeydullah Nehri, the establishment of the first Kurdish newspaper in 1897 and the literature of the period, and which matured further in the twentieth century.

Kurdish ulema, a religious class with a strong influence on Kurdish social life, have developed various forms of religious nationalism. This study offers a possible reading of the accounts of Kurdish ulema during the Turkish Republican period, as a neglected form of Kurdish nationalism. I illustrate how they defined the Kurdish nation in the name of religion, supplied religious metaphors and symbols central to the representation of the Kurdish nation, and even produced an alternative to secular nationalism by sharing the underlying grammar of modern nationalism. This calls into question the concept of Kurdish nationalism as something uniform and secular. Such accounts of religious nationalism were largely suppressed in modern Kurdish history writing under Marxist influences. Since the 1940s, this historiography often marginalized the narratives of Kurdish ulema by setting them apart from Kurdish national struggle. This project provides the first in-depth analysis of the role of Kurdish ulema in the story of the development of Kurdish nationalism during the Turkish Republican period (1920s-1990s). My analysis challenges the dichotomy in the Kurdish nationalist historiography that Islamic and Kurdish identities are exclusive of one another. Kurdish ulema combined their Islamic identity with a strong sense of Kurdish national consciousness. Some envisioned the Kurdish nation’s liberation in education, some in joining secular national movements, some in conformity with Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood and some in political Islamic resistance. I emphasize that Kurds, whether secular or religious, formed a united front against Kurdish regional underdevelopment, exclusivist state policies, and exploitative sheikhs as late as the late 1960s. There has been an overlap between opposing Kurdish groups and the division between them was not primordial. These initially similar concerns, however, were gradually shaped by different popular ideologies of their day: nationalism, Marxism, and Islamism, in Turkey and around the world.

This thesis challenges the traditional literary criticism’s definition of modern poetry and the explanation of its emergence as a radical break with the past in the 1930s and 1940s and conducted by Abdula Goran, “the father of modern Kurdish poetry”. In traditional criticism, the classification of poetry is based on its formal features and modern poetry is characterized by abandoning the classical metrical system (aruz), and employing syllabic meter and free rhyme schemes. However, guided by Lotman’s theory of literary change, this thesis offers a more nuanced approach to the study of modern poetry and examines its emergence as a process of literary change that unfolded through the oeuvre of several poets, starting from the late nineteenth century and culminating in the 1940s. Exploring the process of the poetic change in time and investigating the mechanism of the transformation, three stages of transformation are identified which are represented by the works of Hacî Qadirê Koyî, Rehîm Rehmê Hekarî, and Pîremêrd. A close reading of the works of the selected poets reveals a gradual move from the classical norms and conventions of poetry and a successive introduction of new perspectives, rhetoric, and literary devices into the poetic system. This thesis argues that modern Kurdish poetry emerged in response to the advent of modernity and nationalism in Kurdish society. The study argues that modern poetry was the literary form which accompanied the emergence of Kurdish nationalism, a phenomenon which can be equated with the role played by the novel in Europe. Poetry played a significant role in constructing and disseminating Kurdish nationalism, making it intelligible to uneducated people. The examination of the evolution of modern poetry in this study has revealed lesser known aspects of the formation and the development of Kurdish nationalism and has brought to light the neglected contribution of Kurdish religious intellectuals.