The Zaza Kurds of Turkey

Nemat Sharif | Exclusive to iKurd.net

A Book by Mehmed S. Kaya
Reviewed By: Nemat Sharif

In the past few months, I read two books about two ethnic minority groups that do not differ much from each other in social, political, linguistic and perhaps ethnic aspects despite the geographical distance between them, namely Dr. Muhammad Kaya’s book on the Zaza Kurds in Turkey, and the second Dr. Saad Saleh’s book in Arabic on the Shabaks in Iraq. I leave the comparison for another opportunity. My focus here is on the first book.

Turkey enjoy a strategic location between Asia and Europe as it straddles the borders of both continents. As many Middle Eastern countries, it has collected a number of ethnic and religious minorities. If in a true democracy, putting the numbers of non-Turks together versus Turks, perhaps the Turks will be only one of the plethora of minority ethnic groups in today’s Turkey.

Many ‘forcibly’ Turkified people will breathe a little easier and happily declare who they truly are. For example, not many people knew Ibrahim Tatlises was ethnically a Kurd outside his community; only to show up on stage next to Erdogan as his friend and say a few words in Kurdish; Barzani and Shivan Perwar, the revolutionary Kurdish artist as his friend in Diyarbakir on 11/16/2013.

Of course people’s collective memory will remember both Tatlises and Perwar as they are, one accepted Turkification and the other stood on the moral high ground singing for his people to rise up against tyranny and Turkification.

Despite the lack of strong genetic relationship between the Mongols and the Turks, the close relationship of their languages (Altaic group), culture and shared historical neighborhood, Turkish insecurity and ‘brutal’ war mongering culture are evidence of their origins in central Asia.

Ottomans represented only one wave of migration to Anatolia and the Middle East. With almost the same brutality of the waves of the Mongol invasions of the Middle East, the Ottomans founded their empire after the fall of Abbasid Baghdad to the Mongol invasion in 1258 AD.

In the aftermath of WWI, the Turkish Republic was founded on the remnants of the Ottomans. Thus, the Ottoman mentality and brutality survives today in the culture of their descendants, the Turks of today‘s Turkey however dressed up in European image and script.

In his quest for ‘modernity’, Ataturk’s radical move away from the Ottoman history, identity and religion came in his quitting the Arabic script, abolishing caliphate and declaring secularism. Turkish insecurity is rooted in this ‘confused’ sense of identity and history as the younger Turks can’t read and understand their own history, despite his adapted European appearance, script, and a ‘pseudo-democracy’.

Turkey is a multi-ethnic society. It is not and will never be for ethnic Turks alone. A country that is not in peace with itself will never rest or be in peace with its neighbors and the world at large. Democracy for one ethnicity alone is never true democracy. A democracy that is imposed on others by force is not democracy. These contradict the very tenets of democracy itself.

Against this backdrop, Professor Kaya’s book directs a serious punch to Turkish democracy, and provides a reasonable understanding of the stunted cultural progress of the Zaza Kurds in Turkey. Very little is known about the Zaza even among the Kurds, let alone about their language and culture.

There are no Zaza/Dimli dictionary, grammar or any other books that I know of. Zaza Articles and poetry have begun to appear in periodical along with Kurmanji in southern Kurdistan (Iraq). Written Zaza language is a new development beginning in the 1990’s.

Therefore, making this book available in other languages including Kurdish will be a valuable contribution to the Kurdish language, culture and ethnic identity. Kurdish ethnicity, language and culture is much larger than the well-known Kurmanji and Sorani dialects. “People’s thinking, culture, tradition and world view develop differently in a society without writing.

My impression is that the Zaza-speaking Kurds imagine reality in a different way than people living in a society with writing. They have another awareness, another experience of time, other concepts they relate to, and they live in a kind of isolation and distance from modern societies in which rational values nearly completely dominate” (p156).

The impact of this book extends well beyond its field of anthropology, to politics, history, and socio-economic development. Dr. Kaya sheds light on a severely suppressed Kurdish minority in Turkey, in the way it self-censors to preserve and maintain its way of life and cultural identity in today’s world (p47).

As Dr. Kaya explains, there are more than 3 million Zaza speaking Kurds in and around major cities of Diyarbakir. Elazig, Bingol, Dersim and others cities and towns in Turkey (p5). They played major roles in two Kurdish revolts against the Kemalist state. Both Sheikh Saeed and Sayid Reza who led the 1925 and 1937 revolts respectively were Zaza.

The book describes in great detail, the Zaza tribal society with an effective kinship system based primarily on patriarchal lineage. Furthermore, he explains that “the Zaza society an old but well established system for resolving conflicts.

Their own arrangement for resolving their conflicts seems to be an extension of the idea at the bases of tribal formation as a means of self-protection against foreign powers” (p41). Chapter 7 provides a detailed account of the economic system of the Zaza society, and the rural life style in most Zaza communities.

An ethnographical study, this book provides such a detailed account of the Zaza community of Sulhan, one easily can visualize the daily family life includes clearly defined roles of family members especially gender roles in raising their offspring and in the economy of the family.

The daily life of Sulhan population resembles in many ways the life of Shabak families in and around Mosul, Iraq in the 1950’s and 1960’s of last century, including the comparable roles of Sheikhs and Sayids in the two communities. It is a must read for anyone who is interested in the Zaza community, academics and the lay readers alike.

Nemat Sharif, a political analyst, a contributing writer and columnist for iKurd.net.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

These are a non-affiliate links to the Book on Amazon and on bloomsbury.com