February–April 1925

The Sheikh Said rebellion

A Kurdish religious leader leads a revolt in south-eastern Turkey; its defeat brings executions, deportations and decades of official denial of Kurdish identity.

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 — Robert Olson, University of Texas Press (1989)
A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan — Martin van Bruinessen, Zed Books (1992)

Debated by historians uprisingreligionrepression

In 1924 the new Turkish republic abolished the caliphate, the last formal Islamic bond tying many Kurds to the state, and banned Kurdish schools, organisations and publications.

A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 — Robert Olson, University of Texas Press (1989)

In February 1925 Sheikh Said of Piran, a respected Naqshbandi Sufi leader, launched a revolt planned with the secret Kurdish nationalist society Azadî. It spread quickly around Diyarbakır and Elazığ, but drew its support mostly from Zaza-speaking Sunni Kurds; many tribes stayed out, and Alevi Kurds largely opposed it.

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 — Robert Olson, University of Texas Press (1989)
Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan — Martin van Bruinessen, Zed Books (1992)

The army crushed it by April. Sheikh Said and dozens of others were hanged in Diyarbakır that summer, villages were burned and many people were deported westward.

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 — Robert Olson, University of Texas Press (1989)
A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)

The government also used the emergency to silence opposition across the country. Historians such as Robert Olson and Martin van Bruinessen argue that the revolt was both religious and nationalist, a nationalist project expressed in religious language.

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 — Robert Olson, University of Texas Press (1989)
Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan — Martin van Bruinessen, Zed Books (1992)

What followed is not in doubt: a policy of assimilation, in which public use of Kurdish was suppressed and, for decades, official discourse denied that Kurds were a separate people at all, sometimes calling them “mountain Turks”.

A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance — Cengiz Gunes, Routledge (2012)

How it's seen

Kurdish nationalist view

A national uprising against a republic that had broken its promises, abolished the caliphate that bound Turks and Kurds together, and begun to deny that Kurds existed.

The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 — Robert Olson, University of Texas Press (1989)
A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)

Turkish state view

For decades presented as a reactionary religious revolt against the secular republic, encouraged by foreign powers, which had to be crushed to save the new state.

A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)
The Cambridge History of the Kurds — Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes and Veli Yadirgi (eds), Cambridge University Press (2021)

Why it matters today

Kurds

For Kurds in Turkey, 1925 marks the start of a century in which the state treated Kurdish identity itself as a security threat. Sheikh Said's burial place was never revealed, and that remains a quiet grievance.