ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 argues that missing out on opportunity within the nineteenth century’s new world order resulted in a hegemonic gap (e.g. not having a sovereign nation-state), which was replaced by the Republic of Turkey as a new external power in the early 1920s. This period of Kurdish history ended with great transformation being imposed by the new Turkish state under Kemalist ideology as a new form of hegemony (Gramscian concept). The ‘great regression’ or uneven development of Kurdish society in the nineteenth century – which is explained within the last two chapters – created an absence of self-governance. Chapter 4 analyses the war of manoeuvre strategy of the Kurdish socio-political agents as a direct armed-response to the Turkification of Kurdishness and the Kemalist ‘imagined community’ projects – particularly the Sheikh Said, Ağrı, and Dersim rebellions – during 1925 and 1938. It also moves on to the resulting power struggle in order to explain the new antagonistic relations between the state and society.
