ABSTRACT
Early in the sixteenth century most of the Kurds loosely fell under Ottoman rule, while the remainders were placed under the Persians. In July 1943, another Kurdish sheikh in Turkey, Said Biroki, briefly led a few tribes in rebellion against the Turkish government. He attacked police and frontier posts and demanded autonomy, but within a matter of weeks was captured and his forces dispersed. According to most accounts, the institution of multiparty democracy in Turkey in 1950 enabled the Kurds to improve their situation. Kurdish politicians were able to make use of Turkey’s multiparty system by bargaining their important support to the most attractive party. Even more ominously Turkey began to sink into a crippling spiral of political instability and terrorism as the 1970s drew to a close. This situation, of which the Kurdish problem was only one element, was in tum greatly to influence the course of the Kurdish problem in Turkey.
