The defeated Otteman Government in Istanbul which had signed the Treaty of Sévers did not surive to implement it. the seizure of its arabs territories of Syria and Mesopotamia, the threat of the loss of eastern Anatolia to a new Armenian and possibly a Kurdish state, the entry into Cilcian Anatolia of a French force intent on annexing it to Syria, and most of all the abject failure of the government in Istanbul to respond to the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by the Greeks, of whom laege nummbers were to be found in Thrace (European Turkey) and in western Anatolia, had already resulted in a revolt in Anatolia led by Mustafa Kemal, who had distinguished himself against the Allies at Gallipoli.

Turkey under the effective leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatüürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, was able to impose its will on the allies under the Treaty of Lausanne. Atatüürk formed a new state from the ashes of a defeated Ottoman empire in 1923. Atatüürk based the new secular Turkish republic on a nationalist basis. So, he wanted to form a homogeneous and unitary state out of a multi-ethnic Turkey. As a result, he did not allow the growth of any other nationalities. The Kurds who formed an important ingredient of this republic suffered more. Atatüürk issued a decree on 3 March 1924, prohibiting the use of Kurdish language, banning education in Kurdish and making illegal all Kurdish publications.⁸ This was the beginning of the banning and suppressing of the Kurdish identity which caused a series of uprisings which continued until 1939.

Sheik Said of Piran led a major uprising in February 1925 aimed at the creation of an independent Kurdish state. The Turkish army crushed Sheik Said's rebellion by the end of April 1925⁹ but the effects of this rebellion remained on Turkish foreign policy. At the time, there was disagreement between the Turkish government and the United Kingdom, which had Iraq under its mandate, over the town of Mosul which had oil resources. The Turkish authorities believed that the United Kingdom was inciting the Kurds of Turkey to put pressure on Turkey to give up the oil resources of Mosul. However, it would not be in the interest of the British to encourage such an uprising in Turkish Kurdistan which aimed at the formation of an independent Kurdish state. The creation of an independent Kurdish state in the north of Kurdistan would threaten the territorial integrity of Iraq which was under the British mandate and had its own Kurdish minority. The Kurds in Iraq, apart from their rich oil resources, were essential for the United Kingdom to make up the balance of power in Iraq, and to force the Iraqi government into submission.¹⁰ In fact, the defeat of the Sheik Said rebellion was in the interest of the United Kingdom.

The bloody suppression of the Kurds by the Turkish government had its effect on the status of Mosul. The harsh measures against the Kurds of Turkey compelled many Kurds of Mosul vilayet to favour joining the Iraqi state. This was a reason for the League of Nations to award Mosul to Iraq. This led to the Anglo-Turkish Treaty of June 1926, in which Mosul was annexed to Iraq. Turkey was the loser in that game but Britain and Turkey agreed that they would oppose the emergence of a Kurdish entity in Turkey while allowing it to happen in Iraq.¹¹ The suppression of Sheik Said's rebellion and the fear of further Kurdish uprisings forced Turkey to soften its foreign policy and give up Mosul in exchange for the security of the existing borders. Sixteen of the eighteen articles of the Anglo-Turkish Treaty of June 1926 dealt with measures on border security and control of the Kurds.¹² Turkey's stance with relation to the allies was not entirely antagonistic. During Sheik Said's uprising, the French permitted Turkey to use the Baghdad railway which passed through Syria to transport the Turkish troops¹³ This assisted Turkey's defeat of the Kurdish insurgency. Despite the defeat of Sheik Said the Kurds did not give up their hopes and further uprisings followed.

Another insurgency broke out in 1929, led by Ihsan Nuri Pasha, a former officer in Ottoman army. This insurgency was supported by some Kurdish intellectuals who organised a new movement, the Khoyboun (independence), from their exile in Syria and Lebanon. Iran, which had territorial disputes with Turkey, wanted to use the Kurds to get some concession from Turkey. So, it allowed the Khoyboun movement to use Iranian territory and get equipment and supplies from Iranian Kurdistan and Azerbaijan. Turkey protested to the Iranian government over the use of Iranian territory by the Kurdish rebels. Turkey promised some concessions to the Shah of Iran. In return, Iran allowed the Turkish troops to enter Iranian territory to encircle the rebels. As a result, Ihsan Nuri's forces, which had liberated a large expanse of territory, had their supplies cut off and were defeated by the end of the summer of 1930. On 23 January 1932, Iran and Turkey reached an agreement. Turkey was given an area around Mount Ararat, the place the Kurdish insurgency stemmed from and was important for Turkey to control in order to prevent another uprising. In return, Iran obtained a territorial concession around Van to the west of Uromiyah.¹⁴ Therefore, the Kurdish problem decreased Turkey's bargaining power against the United Kingdom over Mosul, and Iran over some territorial adjustment in its south-east borders.

Turkey, lacking effective bargaining power against its neighbours, intensified its suppression of the Kurds. After Ihsan Nuri's defeat, Turkey began mass deportation of Kurdish villagers and exiled tribal and religious leaders. This suppression caused the death of thousands of Kurdish civilians. The Turkish government passed a law which decriminalised the killing of the Kurds by everyone who had helped the government to repress this insurgency. Article one of Law No. 1, 850 stated that murders and other actions committed individually or collectively from the 20th of June 1930 to the 10th of December 1930 by everyone who helped to quash the revolt were not regarded as crimes.¹⁵ This act was especially aimed at the civilian population because by the end of summer 1930, the rebellion was defeated, and its forces were either killed or took refuge in neighbouring countries. Turkey committed these atrocities without being put under pressure or receiving protest from any foreign country.

The international community ignored the suppression of the Kurds by Turkey. Those neighbouring countries who wanted to gain some concession using the Kurdish card did so. The Western press paid little attention. There was no protest from any Western power or any other state, as far as I am aware, except the Socialist International. The Second International passed the following resolution on 30 August 1930:
The executive of the I.O.S calls the world's attention to the massacres which are being committed by the Turkish government. Peaceful Kurdish populations who have not participated in the insurrection are being exterminated just as the Armenians were. The degree of repression extends far beyond containment of the Kurdish struggle for freedom. Yet capitalist public opinion has not in any way protested against this bloody savagery.¹⁶

The disregard of this repression by international bodies encouraged Turkish authorities to go far beyond mere suppression. They stated that whoever did not regard him/herself as a Turk should live like a slave. Following the Kemalist Kurdish policy, Mahmut Asat Bozhurt, the then Turkish Minister of Justice, indicated in September 1930 that Turkey was the freest country in the world. Only Turks were entitled to be masters and lords. Whoever was not of a pure Turkish race had only one right and that was the right of being servants and slaves.¹⁷ These attitudes were followed by physical repression which caused another insurgency in 1937.
In 1937, Sheikh Sayyed Reza launched another rebellion in the Dersim (now called Tunceli) area. This uprising continued to the end of 1938, but like the other uprisings it did not achieve its aims. The Turkish government reacted very harshly. Entire villages in the Dersim area were evacuated or massacred. The words "Kurds" and "Kurdistan" were prohibited and removed from Turkish history and publications. The government forged a new history for the Kurds and called them "mountain Turks".¹⁸ In fact, repression of the Kurds by the Turkish state was effective and it prevented further uprisings. But the effect of this series of uprisings on Turkish foreign policy remained.

On 8 July 1937, Turkey signed an agreement with its neighbours which was partly aimed at containing Kurdish insurgencies. The Saadabad Pact was signed by Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan in 1937, with encouragement from the British, to contain communism and prevent its influence in the Middle East. However, it was more a non-aggression pact by Iran, Iraq and Turkey to contain Kurdish insurgency. According to this pact, the signatory states agreed to avoid interfering in each others' internal affairs. They announced their willingness to co-operate and consult each other on security matters, and respect their existing borders.¹⁹ This pact, which was mainly focusing on abstention from interference in each other's internal affairs, was clearly aimed at the Kurds. This agreement was signed when the guerrilla warfare was going on in the Dersim region in Turkey. Kurdish history in Turkey from the Dersim uprising onwards entered its darkest stage where it remained until the 1950s. However, it still had some indirect impact on Turkish foreign policy during this period.

The regime of Kemal Ataturk

Such  measures and the theart of further atrocities against an unarmed civilian population silenced Kurdish nationalist activities for almost 30 years. Much Anatolian Kurdistan became a 'military zone' ostensibly because of the proximity of Soviet border, but in reality to deny it to its indigenous Kurds because of their recalcitrance. Perhaps over one milion Kurds were forcibly displaced between 1925-1938, including aghas and shaikhs, the focus of local Kurdish solidarity, and the conscripation of young men into the army where they could be assimilated under duress. Indeed, it seemed as if the Kurds would accept assimilation as inevitable. Life for Kurdsih community eased somewhat in 1950 with the first free general selection in which the Democratic Party was swept to power in reaction to almost 25 years of Kemalist, voted heavily for the Democratic Party, and were rewarded by the return of exiled aghas and shaikhs and the reinstatement of their property. These aghas, shaikhs aand landlords acquired new importance since they could deliver votes to government and favours to the Kurdish population. Kurds were elected to Parliament, some even become ministers. School, roads and hospitals began to appear in the region.

A new philosohpy was espoused by the newly emergent Kurdish bourgeoisie many of whom were the scions of the tratitional leadership, called doguculuk ('Eastism') which advocated economic development in the nelected east. In part it was a response to Kurdish activism elsewhere, especially in Iraq, and the exposure of eastern Anatolia to Kurdish language radio broadcasts from neighbouring countries. But the proponents of Eastism were careful to work in Turkish and to avoid any reference to Kurds or Kurdistan, though no one could be in doubt what was in their mind. Fifty Kurdish leaders of this movement were arrested.There were limits to the Democratic Party's Liberalizatio. Following an army coup d'etat in 1960 in response to Prime Minister Menderes'efforts to stifle parliamentary opposition the situation for the Kurdish community improved further with the introduction of a new constitution in 1961, though not before thousands more dissidents had been deported by the military.

A clandestine party, The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDPT), was established in 1965, echoing and in solidarity with Barzani's nationalist movement in Iraqi Kurdistan. Its supporters tended to be traditional in outlook, as Barzani's were in Iraq Unlike the leftists who were more concerned with equal rights within the state, the KDPT was explicitly separatist. A nummber of leftist Turks showed an interest in the problem which successive regimes had tried to hide, and the Turkish Workers Party welcomed Kurdish intellectuals, took up the Kurdish cause and established branches in Kurdistan itself. Kurds, as Turks, were able to participate in political life so long as they claimed a Turkish identity. A number of deputies from the 'East'have been Kurdish. But they had to proceed with care, and had to belong to Turkish parties, since it was - and remains - illegal to form a specifically Kurdish party. When the Deputy for Diyarbekir, himself a Kurd and founder of the New Turkey Party, during his brief term as Minister of Health in the 1960s succeeded in building more hospitals and dispensaries in Kurdish areas than all the previous administrations put together, he was quickly forced to resign amidst accusations of regionalism and Kurdish nationalism. In April 1979 a Kurdish ex-minister of Public Works (under Prime Minister Ecevit) and longstanding member for Mardin created a scandal by publicly stating 'In Turkey there are Kurds. I too am a Kurd'.He was subesquently charged and tried by miliatary court for 'propaganda aimed at weakening national feelings' and condemned to over two years imprisonment with hard labour.

As Kurdish and Leftist groups become increasingly vocal and managed to draw in a far wider constituency, so the government increased its efforts to silence cultural and political activity of which it did not approve. Many of the bilingual Kurdish-Turkish jourals that had appeared in the mid-1960s were prohibited by decree of the Denirel government in January 1967, and their editors arrested. As Demirel's repression increased from 1967 onwards, with the use of special commando groups to patrol Kurdistan and intimidate the population and ransack the homes of suspects, Kurdish students and militants (apparently close to the Turkis Workers Party) called for mass demonstrations, which took place on 3 August 1967. More than 10,000 turned out in Silvan, and over 25,000 in Diyarbekir - the first expression of Kurdish anger for 30 years. Such demonstrations only made the government more implacable and more brutal in the enforcement of its authority particularly around Batman and Silvan, where important oil deposits exist. There was good reason for governmental unease. In 1969, first in Ankara, then in Istanbul and in the Kurdish towns of the east, an Organization of Revolutionary Kurdish Youth (DDKO) had set up Easten Revolutionary Cultural Centers. Many of its leaders were members of the Turkish Workers Party. The proliferation of leftist groups in Turkey and support they enjoyed in Kurdistan led to violent confrontation with rightist groups who were frequently backed by local police. Political murders became commonplace between bitter adversaries of left and right. Meanwhile the Turkis Workers Party had officially changed its stand on the Kurdish question in October 1970 becoming the first legal party to recognize the Kurds'struggle. Recognition of the Kurds (though it did no go so far as advocating self-government) led to the party being banned.

Military repression in the 1970s and 1980s

The army overthrew the Demirel govenment in March 1971. Thousands of arrests took place all over Turkey, but particularly in the east on account, it was claimed, of a planned Kurdish uprising. Murder and toture were widely reported. Many were accused of beloning to the Democratic Party of Kurdistan or to DDKO, which was banned forthwith. oppression of the Kurdish population continued erratically throughout the 1970s. The conflict between rightists and leftists had not ceased but pervaded to some extent the instruments of government authority, the army, the police and the judiciary. This wearkness ended with 1979 proclamation of martial law in the Kurdish provinces and the resumption of consistently respressive measures. The immediate reasons for the proclamation were the rumours of armed Kurdish freedom fighters (peshmergas) seizing areas and declaring them 'liberated'zones, but it was also on account of the development of a more less overt Kurdish nationalism, in which Diyarbekir had become the main centre of activity. As the Turkish President said:
'there is no room for liberated regions and activities aimed  at language, racial , class or sectarian differences in or homeland. The governement will defeat the disease and heads will be crushed'.

In the following years urban-based political groups were repressed a good deal more easily than rural ones. In September 1979 the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that 5000 Turkis Kurds had been recruited to fight alongside Iranian Kurds. Although publicly denied by the govenment, this report followed the interception by the the army of a convoy of arms apparently destined for fellow Kurds in Iran. Unlike the Iranian and Iraqi governments, which recognize that the Kurds are a distinct community (even if that does not guarantee any special rights) the Turkish governement could not possibly allow support or any contact whatever to occur between its own Kurds and those elsewhere, since it would encourage Kurdish consciousness inside Turkey. Even in a stuation of conflict between Turkey and one of its neighbours, the Turkish government would act with utmost caution before playing their Kurdish 'card'. In this respect they differ radically from their neighbours Iraq and Iran in their attitude to the Kurds. In September 1980, as in 1960 and in 1971, a group of army generals carried out another coup d'état. They made it clear that they intended to brook no expression of the Kurdish movement or identity whatsoever. Indeed, the very first speeches made by Ceneral Evren, leader of the Junta, and Prime Minister Ulsus were Kurdistan. A spate of specious articles appeared in academic and other journals arguing that the Kurds are true Turks - Turkkurleri - merely another of the Central Asiatic Turic tribes from which the Turkish people are derived.

The ban on Kurdish was implemented more strictly than ever, villages and homes were raided by the army, and tens of thousands of people, primarily Leftist activists and Kurds, were arrested and interrogated, frequently under torture. A number of Kurds were shot dead, according to army whilst resisting or evading arrest. Renewed clashes took place between the army and small groups of the radical Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) particularly around Mardin. Persons suspected of contact with Kurdish organizations were detained iindefinitely, whilst the treatment of activists ha been much harsher. Their particular target has been the PKK in mass trials directed against this party the state had demanded over 600 death sentences. The reported arming the local population by the Turkish army against these guerrilla groups suggested that the government could rely at least on some elements of Kurdish society. Militarization of the eastern and southern provinces, which had eased considerably during the 1970 was intensified. Two of Turkey's four armies were permanently hased in the east. Although the ostensible reason for this concentration, and for NATO and US military installations in the area, was the sensitviity of Afghanistan-Iran -former Soviet Union border regions, it permitted the Turkish government closely to control the Kurds under the protective mantle of Western strategic interests.