Demographic Engineering and Population Alteration in Iranian Kurdistan

Introduction

Since the sixteenth century, due to their resistance against the unjust policies of successive regimes, the Kurdish people have been subject to violence and aggression. The struggle has become an inseparable part of the Kurdish identity and an essential element of national survival and “the Kurdish movement has worked as was a fire, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but it was never out completely. This fire is in the people” (Ciment, 1996, p. 37). The Kurdish question in Iran has deep historical roots, and it can be viewed as a product of the Iranian state’s attitude toward ethnic diversity. The different Iranian regimes have viewed diversity in terms of a threat to the centralization of power and to territorial integrity, rather than a source of cultural richness.

Consequently, these regimes have, through different mechanisms, attempted to alter the identity and culture of non-Persian ethnonational groups, either through linguistic and cultural homogenization policies or by changing the demographic composition of these societies, thus, making the rebellious societies fragmented. With reference to the Kurdish people, several forms of state policies, such as dismantling the Kurdish confederative and semi-independent system, policy of comprehensive centralization, enforced replacement, disproportionate rise of taxes, and so on, have resulted in their socioeconomic and political deprivation (Amin, 1991, pp. 20–27). Like their counterparts in Turkey, Iraq and Syria, the Iranian Kurds suffered massively due to policies pursued by the Iranian state. Forced migration of the Kurdish population and replacement with Turks, Arabs and Persians, and the establishment of state farms and military garrisons on the most productive lands are among some of the policies implemented by the states controlling Kurdistan (Beşikçi, 2004).

The Kurdish struggle is, to a certain extent, a reaction against deprivation and massive socioeconomic underdevelopment resulting from their peripheral relation to the occupying states. James Ciment (1996) approached the current condition of Kurdistan as a product of imperialistic, dictatorial and theocratic regimes’ attempt to subjugate the Kurds for such strategic purposes as access to economic resources and creating a hegemonic national identity (p. 1). The geopolitical location of Kurdistan makes it highly important in terms of security for the states controlling it. The location of Kurdistan has turned it into the center of the regional relation between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Through the late nineteenth century, under the control of the Ottomans, the Iranian Kurds witnessed through the awakening of Kurdish national sentiments in other parts of Kurdistan. During the Second World War, however, Iranian Kurdistan was the epicenter of Kurdish nationalism, and this mantle was then taken by Iraqi Kurds in the 1950s and 1960s (Borzoi, 1999, pp. 80–86).

In this article, the role of demographic alteration and change of population composition of the Iranian Kurdistan have been investigated. The regional conflicts and sociopolitical developments of the sixteenth century onwards within the Kurdish society frame the scope of this study. There are multifaceted complexities linked to the Kurdish question, as emphasized by Ali Ezzatyar (2016):

One could argue that Kurdistan’s modern history is four times as complex as the history of its neighbors. This is because, despite cross-cutting tribal, cultural, and linguistic similarities that exist in all areas where Kurds live, most Kurds are separated along the borders of four distinct “nation states” with their own complex histories. (p. viii)

Generally, the geographic location of Kurdistan, and its division between at least four modern states, all with aggressive and hostile attitudes to the Kurdish people, is one among many other factors that have increased the complexity of the Kurdish question and extended it throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Nonetheless, through the sixteenth century, the geopolitics of Kurdistan and the Kurdish people were viewed with importance in the power struggle between the hostile regimes in Iran and the Ottoman Empire.

Geopolitics and Geography

As David McDowall (2004) argued, “Kurdistan is located in a peripheral region, lying the geopolitical fault line between three power centers on the Middle East” (pp. 6–7). The question of how the geographical conditions have affected the Kurdish society and its struggle for liberation is a factor with a significant effect on the direction and content of the current Kurdish question. Although it is not the only factor affecting the Kurdish movement, the geographical location is one of the decisive elements in the current political condition of the Kurds and their homeland (Amin, 1991, p. 10). As asserted by Maria T. O’Shea (2004), the Kurdish question is a product of “the geographical, historical, and cultural factors shaping Kurdish identity” (p. 1). The competition between the Safavid (1501–1722) and the Ottoman Empires (1299–1922) was an important variable in shaping the sociopolitical developments in Kurdistan and had a direct impact on the emergence of the Kurdish question in the sixteenth century. Both parties attempted to gain the Kurdish support and had the ambition of expanding their territorial authority through strengthening their position among the Kurds. The Kurdish territory hosted many wars, and a huge number of the Kurds were deployed in the armies of each sides.

Consequently, Kurdistan turned into the frontline of the war between these two powers (Amin, 1991, pp. 16–17). Nils Weidmann (2009) pointed out the correlation between the geographic concentration of a group and the emergence of conflict. By focusing on the territory as a source of conflict and facilitating condition of conflict, it can arguably be claimed that there are some inherent potentials in geography, which, in the cases of disputes, can be converted to violence. Weidmann (2009) holds that:

The territory has an objective value because of the valuable resources located there, territory has a strategic value because of control over it brings a military advantage, [and] territory has a subjective value because it is part of a state’s culture and identity. (pp. 529–530)

The Kurdish geopolitical importance revealed its significance during the Safavid–Ottoman confrontation, particularly following the Battle of Chaldiran (1514). As a buffer zone, Kurdistan became a factor of state security for both sides, and the Kurdish people inhabiting this region were an important source of human resource for both militaries, whereby Kurdistan supplied the armies of the Ottomans and the Safavids with skilled fighters and sanctuary. As put by Abbas A. Madih (2007), “the succeeding period in the internal policies of both Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia, is marked by the conspicuous trend of using this factor as a security component” (p. 13). The Ottomans—unlike their counterpart which actively worked for de-Kurdifying of Kurdistan through demographic engineering policies such as exile and forced replacement of Kurdish tribes—used the Kurds to populate the eastern regions of Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolia). The Ottoman policy of Kurdifying these areas was aimed to create a stronghold against the Safavid (Madih, 2007, p. 13).

Monica Toft (2002) maintained that “geographically concentrated groups face a higher risk of conflict” (cited in Weidmann, 2009, p. 528). Toft explained the different value through which the counterparts (ethnic groups and states) relate to territories:

For ethnic groups, territory is invariably tied to the group’s identity. Control over territory means a secure identity. For states, control over territory is directly linked to their physical survival. Where both ethnic groups and states calculate that they need to control the same piece of territory to guarantee their survival, a violent clash is likely to result. (Toft, 2002, p. 84)

The Kurdish culture and territory have been the central objectives of all Kurdish political movements of the past century, where the Kurdish language and the historical homeland of the Kurds (Kurdistan) are the most important national symbols (Bruinessen, 2000, p. 1). According to Toft (2002), “for ethnic groups, settlement patterns—where groups live, and whether they are a majority or minority—determine the capability and legitimacy of a group’s mobilization for independence” (pp. 84–85). The values attributed to territorial control for both ethnic groups as well as states mainly concern survival. However, while for the ethnic groups homeland is a special category with relation to its identity and culture “inseparable from its past and vital to its continued existence as a distinct group,” for states, territory is a matter of power and border in material term, and since the (nation) state is defined by geographical borders, any challenge to their borders is equivalent to a threat to their existence (Toft, 2002, pp. 86–88).

The different Iranian regimes’ implementation of diverse territorial and administrative changes has altered the Kurdish perceptions of “Kurdistan” and Kurdish identity. These policies played an important role in the Kurds’ relationship with the world around and outside them. O’Shea (2004) argued that geography continued to influence the Kurds’ perceptions of themselves and Kurdistan, especially in that, the map of Kurdistan is the most clearly visible aspect of the Kurdish nationalist narrative. Many aspects of Kurdish nationalist mythology are clearly influenced by geographical factors, many of which can be seen to have influenced historical events. One of the existing studies useful for understanding some geopolitical aspects of the Kurdish question is by Julian Wucherpfennig, Weidmann, Girardin, Cederman, and Wimmer (2011), which focuses on the correlation between “location and degree of geographic dispersion” in the case of the emergence of ethnic conflict. Thus, “territorial conflicts are more likely to involve groups that settle far away from the capital city and close to the border…” (pp. 423–424). Therefore, it can be argued that “spatial factors” is an important element for the outcome of the conflict.

The composition of the Kurdish population in Iran has left a negative impact on the capability of the Kurdish movement. The degree of concentration of the Kurdish population differs from one region to another. In some regions, homogenized Kurdish cities and areas with a huge Kurdish majority are quite visible. ¹

This study focuses on the politicized process inspired by the idea of changing the demography of Kurdistan. It argues that this policy has left a long-term negative impact on Kurdish identity and the capability of Kurdish movement in Iran. For instance, following the fragmentation of Kurdistan at the hands of Reza Shah, the “Kurdistan” province only represents a small part of the Greater Kurdish area. While the Kurdish-inhabited areas in Iran are estimated to cover 125,000 km, Reza Shah divided these areas into three provinces ³

Kurdistan as an Internal Colony

The political geography of Kurdistan has many characteristics of the center-periphery, whereby the center has systematically considered how to control and alter the nature of the periphery. According to Ismail Beşikçi (2004), the Kurdish nation has been reduced to a position that is lower than a colony. Indeed, Kurdistan cannot be described either as a colony or as a semi-colony. ⁴

The Kurdish dissent toward the regimes occupying Kurdistan shaped following the politicization of the Kurdish suffering from sociopolitical and economic discrimination imposed on their society. While the poor socioeconomic conditions of the Kurdish territory were neglected, its geopolitical location turned into a center of security concern by states surrounding the Kurds. The importance of this became more evident when the “Kurds played an important role in defining and propagating both state nationalism and the nationalism of other groups” (O’Shea, 2004, pp. 19–20) in the different states controlling the Kurdish population. According to O’Shea (2004), Kurdistan became the “main theatre for Ottoman-Persian rivalry and a buffer zone” (pp. 71–72), which demarcated the border between the two major branches of Islam (Sunnism represented by the Ottomans, and Shiism by the Safavid).

The geopolitical location of Kurdistan has historically obsessed leaders and policymakers of those states occupying the Kurds’ homeland. According to Tim Marshall (2016),

…geography is clearly a fundamental part of the “why” as well as the “what.” It might not be the determinant factor, but it is certainly the most overlooked […] All leaders are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and concrete. Yes, to follow world events you need to understand people, ideas and movements—but if you do not know geography, you’ll never have the full picture. (p. x and band cover)

While factors such as ideology, leadership, technology, and so on contribute to shaping events, geographical and physical factors ⁵

Demographic Change

Highlighted through political and historical literature, systematic demographic alternation has been deployed by the Iranian state, aimed at weakening the Kurdish capability to conduct its political resistance. Implementing systematic change of the Kurdish demography aimed at breaking down the Kurds into smaller and separate entities rather than a strong unit, placed in a specific geographical location, has been shown to be effective. This policy has shown its efficiency, particularly when reflecting on the geographically fractured condition of the Kurdish nation and many variations of challenges facing its movement. It is argued that different Iranian regimes’ implementation of policies of demographic alteration has left a massive negative effect on the capability of the Kurdish struggle in Iran and weakened the Kurdish position. The efficiency of this mechanism has meant that any regime’s deployment of this policy has become a source of inspiration for its successor regimes. The policy of demographic engineering and its different aspects can be observed in many regards. Demographic engineering, as a measure of altering the demographical composition of the subjected society, has two main purposes: first, reducing or disempowering the sociopolitical composition of the subjected ethnonational society and minimizing its potential threats toward the ruling regime; second, viewing assimilation and annexation as an efficient means of increasing the population size of the dominating ethnonational group(s). However, the main purpose is empowering the power position of the ruling group (Bookman, 2002, pp. 28–31).

The size of the population of a distinct ethnic group is decisive for the degree of success of its struggle. In Bookman’s (2002) words, “population size implies enhanced representation in political bodies, which translates into decision-making that tends to reflect the interests of that group” (pp. 25–26). Population size is a significant variable that can be transferred into political legitimacy, creating room for expression of demands in an organized fashion, paving the way for participation in the decision-making process and the right to make demands on the political system. Traditionally, ruling regimes of multiethnic societies have paid huge attention to the demographic elements of these societies and viewed demographic change as an effective policy in reducing the threats posed by ethnic communities.

Regarding the policies of demographic engineering, some regimes have followed different strategies to downplay the capabilities of ethnonational/religious communities. A combination of intertwined mechanisms, for example, assimilation, changing the numerical ratio, manipulation of censuses, forced immigration, changes of political boundaries, changes in criteria for obtaining citizenship or other changes in a group’s legal status, and in the worse cases genocide and ethnic cleansing (Pappe, 2006), have been common mechanisms deployed by different regimes regarding change in the demography of “others.” This happened particularly when the ruling regimes of multiethnic societies pursued the minimization of the threat of politicized national identity. In the Kurdish case, as highlighted by O’Shea (2004), “both Kurds and the Christians of Kurdistan were victims of ethnic cleansing policies, either planned or incidental” (p. 88). Consequently, these policies resulted in the Kurds’ current weak, fragmented and complex demographic position. The Kurdish population has several times and through different mechanisms been the subject of state policies of demographic changes, and different Kurdish communities and tribal societies have been forced to experience internal immigration and replacement.

The Safavid period witnessed the emergence of the process of systematic and politicized demographic change of the Kurdish society. Even though before Shah Abbas I (reigned from 1588 to 1629), previous Safavid kings had implemented this policy and Shah Abbas was obsessed with this strategy, he, one the most powerful despots of the Safavid era, is remembered as a strong centralist and a brutal monarch (Blow, 2009). The Kurdish semi-independent and tribal-confederative system in the western Iranian plateau suffered massively under his policy of centralization. Viewing the Kurdish attempt to maintain their autonomy as a threat to his power, Abbas implemented a comprehensive alteration of the Kurdish demography, and he enforced a mass deportation of many thousands of Kurdish families from their homelands in west Iran to the northern Khurasan. Inspired by Mohammad Ibn Al-Amid’s ⁶

Population Transfers

The Kurdish people have suffered from massive population transfers, a state policy characterized as ethnic dilution. According to Bookman (2002), ethnic dilution aims to “resettle populations of a particular ethnic group in order to dilute the different ethnic population of the receiving region” (p. 38). The Kurdish tribe of Cheshemgezeg (Zafaranlo) was among the first to be removed by Shah Abbas (Tawahodi, 1991, p. 14). The policy of ethnic dilution shares many features with ethnic cleansing: the displaced population are forced out of their native region against their own wishes and resettled and monitored by authorities while strictly prevented from returning to their home territory (Bookman, 2002, p. 40).

In practice, forced migration, the policy of replacing a considerable number of a population accompanied by livestock and chattels, to be permanently resettled in a region remote from their homeland has been deployed by different political regimes in Iran and the Soviet Union against ethnonational communities opposing the central governments’ political ambitions. For instance, Shah Ismail Safavid (reigned from 1501 to 1524) replaced exiled Kurdish leaders with the qizilbash (Redheads) officers who forced Kurds to convert to Shiism and changed the Kurdish demography through brutal violations of the population. The religious policies of the Shah Ismail, through occupying Kurdish and Arab areas, led to dissatisfaction among religious and intellectual leaders of these peoples (Amin, 1991, p. 16). The Safavid asserted control over the Kurds with considerable bloodshed (O’Shea, 2004, p. 70).

Shah Abbas, inspired by the idea of “exile, fragmentation and scorched-earth policy,” realized his political ambitions when he faced the resistance of tribal communities. The Kurdish–Safavid relations were fluctuating and complex; his overall policies, however, resulted in the further fragmentation of Kurdish identity and the division of the Kurdish homeland. There are a variety of examples of the Safavid deployment of the Kurds in defeating and conquering other Kurdish rebellions. For instance, Ahmad Khan’s ⁸

The historical records of this period provide with evidence showing that the Safavid viewed the Kurdish confederative system as a serious threat, consequently initiated its dismantling. This attention and interference was so massive that it can be characterized as an obsession with Kurdistan’s geopolitics (Borzoi, 1999, pp. 25–28). The process of replacing the Kurds was initiated by Shah Ismail and continued systematically under the reign of Shah Abbas. In this period (1598–1601), 45,000 Kurdish families from western Armenia and southern Caucasus were moved to Khurasan (Madih, 2007, p. 14). Viewing these events through contemporary lenses justifies the claim that the critical condition of the contemporary Kurdish struggle and the fragmentation of the Kurds have their roots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Different Narratives of Demographic Alteration

There are two dominating narratives for the Iranian state’s replacement of different ethnonational groups during different periods, articulated as defense and punishment. Among other Iranian rulers, Shah Abbas Safavid, Karim Khan Zand, Nader Shah Afshar, Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar and Reza Shah Pahlavi deployed the policy of deportation and forced migration, with different aims. Economic factors, defense and, more critically, minimizing threats of rebellion are commonly provided reasons for demographic alteration (Perry, 2006, p. 17).

The Iranian history provides several examples of conducting of demographic engineering through changing ruling regimes, since the sixteenth century. Due to the extent of the Safavid and the Pahlavi’s implementation of demographic engineering in Iran—particularly in the Kurdish region—these two periods are the focus of this study. Even though forced migration and internal replacement also took place during the reign of Karim Khan Zand, Nader Shah Afshar, and Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, these happened in lesser extent and consequently was its effect on the Kurdish confederative system much smaller. Compared to the Safavid and Pahlavi, some of these regimes (Zand, Afshar, and Qajar) had had a more peaceful relationship with the Kurdish tribal confederation. In this regard, these mentioned periods are treated as less critical than the eras of the reign of the Safavid and the Pahlavi.

For instance, while the Qajars with concepts such the mamalek (states) governed a “multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual society” by way of “a loose form of federalism where all ethnic groups were free to use, study, and develop their languages, literatures, cultures, traditions and identities” (Asgharzadeh in Elling, 2013, p. 173), through the era of the Qajars “strong tribes and tribal confederations such as the Qashqai, Lurs, Baluchis, Shahsevan, Kurds, and Bakhtiaris were the true suzerains of their respective regions” (Yaghoubian, 2014, p. 51). However, change of the political regime from Qajar to Pahlavi resulted in a dramatic change of state’s attitude toward the traditional local communities and tribal confederations. In the words of Rasmus Elling (2013), “the establishment of a centralized, modern state under the Pahlavis disrupted traditional patterns of life, uprooted the feudal system and crushed local autonomy” (p. 35). The first period of the reign of Pahlavi was the tensest era for the state–tribe relation and terminologies as “force migration (taxteqāpu), displacement and disarmament” were the most applied terms in describing the state–tribe relation (Moshfaghifar, 2007, p. 37).

Ibrahim Moshfaghifar’s (2007) study of Koch ve Eskan-e Ajbari-e tewayef-e Iran (internal displacement and forced migration of Iranian tribes) showed that there have been different motivations behind changing Iranian regimes’ implementation of forced migration and demographic alteration of the non-Shiite and non-Persian communities. For instance, “Shah Abbas I in order to defeat and avoid some uprisings and protect the countries northeastern borders from the attacks of Uzbek and Turkmen’s, implemented comprehensive examples of forced resettlement of some tribes” (Moshfaghifar, 2007, p. 25). While Nader Shah Afshar’s implementation of forced migration was aimed at promoting trade, agriculture and protecting borderlines in Khorasan, the Qajar forced migration of tribal communities, which took place through an era of Russian–Iranian war, was aimed at strengthening the country’s border areas. Arguably, the Pahlavi regime implemented drastic territorial, demographic and administrative changes aimed at limiting the activity and the autonomy-seeking demand of some tribes (Moshfaghifar, 2007).

Throughout the recent history of Iran and under the reign of Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, different Iranian regimes deployed this policy against the Kurds/Lurs, the Bakhtiyaris and many other deprived and rebellious ethnonational peoples (Khazeni, 2009, pp. 96–198). Noteworthy, through the formative period of modern Iran, the reasons for these transportations were to punish and fragment opponents or unruly vassals; but also, it was an attempt to weld Iran’s disparate regions and independent peoples into a viable and united nation-state. According to Daid M. Blow (2009), there are different reasons for Shah Abbas’s policies, among them “to strengthen the defenses of a frontier […]; to remove a potential threat; to punish or weaken a tribe; or to secure an economic benefit” (pp. 50–56). Ramesh Farzanfar (1992) explained the reason for the deportation of the Kurds to Khorasan “in order to protect the frontiers against the Turkoman forays and to create fragmentation among the Kurds themselves” (p. 76). According to Lord Curzon, Shah Abbas I had by removing the Kurds from Kurdistan to Khurasan achieved two aims: first, getting rid of those challenging his authority and second, by using the Kurdish abilities for defense, he had consolidated his position in the northeast of Iran (cited in Tawahodi, 1991, p. 32).

The “Kemalist Monarchy” of the Pahlavi

From the early twentieth century and through the reign of Raza Shah Pahlavi (1925–1941), the Kurdish dissent with the Iranian state entered into a more politicized phase. McDowall (2004) emphasized that while “the Ottoman, Safavid and Qajar empires were all noted for ethnic pluralism and sought solely the acknowledgment of sultan or shah as suzerain” (p. 1), the Pahlavi rulers were more brutal, authoritarian and ruthless. The intelligentsia formulated a huge part of the Reza Shah’s policy and nationalist figures of the constitutional period in the early twentieth century; however, its implementation faced the opposition of different ethnonational and religious groups and leaders across Iranian society (Cronin, 2010, p. 161). There is much evidence that Kurds from different parts of Iran (including Khurasani Kurds) mobilized their resistance to the Pahlavi agenda (Cronin, 2010, pp. 67–68). Before the rise of Reza Shah, different Kurdish regions were ruled through different tribal-leadership formations; however, as a result of Reza Shah’s policy of confiscating land in Kurdistan and implementing enforced immigration and deportation, the Kurdish relations with the state changed drastically. The socioeconomic needs of Kurdistan were neglected. In Farzanfar’s (1992) words, “this relationship was, at times, based on conquest and coercion, i.e., when the state was weak these groups were practically independent and when it was stronger they were subdued” (pp. 465–466).

The ambition to overcome the trauma of Iran’s humiliation at the hands of foreign powers and the agenda of minimizing the political and economic share of non-Persian ethnonational groups accelerated Reza Shah’s process of modernization (Jalalpoor, 2012, pp. 54–55). The Pahlavis systematically denied the existence of these communities by deploying the Persian language and changing names and cultural symbols of the non-Persian ethnonational communities. Contrary to mainstream scholars who refer to Reza Shah as the man of order and modernization, and state-builder, Cronin (2010) defined Reza Shah’s era as a “state of disorder, chaos, and catastrophe.” She articulates his dynasty as a “Kemalist monarchy” because both Reza Shah and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk were determined secularists, founded their regimes on the theory and practice of ethnic nationalism and brutally suppressed dissent and opposition (pp. 3–4).

In line with the emergence of the modern nation-states in Turkey and Iran, the ruling elites of these countries viewed cultural and linguistic diversity and the ethnonational and tribal community as serious threats to their project of creation of a centralized and homogenized regime. Reza Shah and Ataturk, as the founders of the Iranian and the modern Turkish states, in an attempt to achieving their ambition of a strong and centralized nation-state, deployed a variety of exclusionary policies of homogenization and integration. According to Metin Yüksel (2016), these happened because “nation and nation-state building projects require a wide array of social, political and military operations such as assimilation, the exchange and settlement of population and ideological indoctrination” (p. 656). In this regard, both Reza Shah and Ataturk believed that modern nation-state building in Turkey and Iran “would require a low degree of cultural diversity and a high degree of ethnic homogeneity” (Yüksel, 2016, p. 658). Despite the existence of massive differences in the ethnographic compositions of these countries and differences in these states relations to their Kurdish subordinate, Reza Shah and Ataturk applied similar means of elimination or neutralization of the Kurdish population (Yüksel, 2016, pp. 656–658).

There are many examples of a joint operation between the Iranian and Turkish armies aimed at defeating the Kurdish movements in both the countries. For example, the Mount Ararat Revolt (1927–1930) in Turkish Kurdistan was defeated following Turkish and Iranian army’s joint military operation against the uprising. There are many reasons linked to this, and similar cooperation between Turkey and Iran was seen in “adjusting the border to make the policing of the territory easier for each state has been among some of this cooperation” (Yüksel, 2016, pp. 657–658). “The jointly pursued operations of the Turkish and Iranian nation-states on Mount Ararat against the Kurds and the resulting settlement of the question of border in 1932 can thus be aptly located in the context of their nation and nation-state building projects aiming to make the Kurdish population legible” (Yüksel, 2016, p. 657).

Authoritarianism Versus Tribal Problem

Reza Shah’s construction of the Iranian nation-state was based on an authoritarian nationalist construction project, formulated around the agenda of ending “the tribal problem.” Cronin (2010) holds that:

The tribal problem was used to justify the primacy of the army in the national budget and the installation of military rule in the provinces, while the submission of tribal groups, however, achieved in practice, was deployed to burnish Reza Khan’s nationalist credentials and gather support for his wider agenda. (p. 20)

In the Kurdish case, Reza Shah copied the Turkish policy of assimilation without acknowledging that the history of the Kurdish–Turkish relations is quite different from the history of the Iranian–Kurdish relations. Reza Shah’s policy of modernization affected northern Kurdistan severely than other locations, and accordingly, this region as the most underdeveloped area of Kurdistan became the home of Kurdish nationalism. The existence of massive feeling of seteme melli (national oppression) contributed to the awakening of strong national sentiment (Borzoi, 1999, pp. 260–269). Tawahodi (1991) summarized the tyranny of Reza Shah in these words:

The dictator hanged and assassinated some of the Kurdish leaders and sent others into exile; he confiscated Kurds’ assets, forced their sedentarization, and banned from returning to their historical areas; he prohibited traditional Kurdish clothes; and he attempted to destroy the Kurdish language by establishing valueless schools that could not offer the Kurds anything. (p. 1)

Unlike Turkey, which had to build its national identity on the ruins of an empire, and Iraq, “an artificial creation of European colonialism,” Iran emerged from the First World War relatively intact, its border roughly corresponding to the ancient core of the Persian Empire (Ciment, 1996, p. 120). Reza Shah’s ambition of creating a homogenized Iranian national identity based on Persianness was considered as a fake construction of identity by the Kurds and many other non-Persian ethnonational communities.

The Pahlavi regime prohibited a major part of the non-Persian linguistic and cultural symbols. Following the defeat and assassination of the Kurdish leader Simko (1930), Reza Shah intensified his hostility toward Kurds and inspired by Ataturk’s example, he described the Kurds as mountain Iranians. Governmental institutions in Kurdish areas were governed by Persian and Azeri officials. These policies further isolated the Kurdish region from socioeconomic and cultural development. Consequently, Kurdistan became an underdeveloped part of Iran, experiencing several kinds of difficulties and deprivation. Reza Shah’s policy of confiscating the property of Kurdish tribes and compelling their permanent resettlement, enforcing them to adopt new sociocultural customs was a violation of the Kurdish lifestyle. His treatment of the Kurds led in many cases to socioeconomic issues like famine, massive poverty and mass unemployment. A top-down modernization and bottom-up resistance, or “reform from above and resistance from below,” is the best description of the relationship between the Pahlavis and the Iranian people, including the Kurds in Iran (Silwah & Ezzati, 2010, pp. 24–25).

Demographical Change Through Administration Fragmentation

The policy of changing the demographic character of the non-Persian ethnonational communities into fragmented administrative entities, implemented by Reza Shah, was very comprehensive. In the case of the Kurds, deconstructing and fragmenting the Kurdish population into different administrative bodies, dominated by ethnonational groups other than Kurds, was shown to be an effective instrument in diminishing the capability of any Kurdish resistance to the central government. Reza Shah initiated the controversial taqseimate keshwari (administrative division) in 1938 (Nohekhan, 2013, pp. 117–124), a deconstruction of the administrative system that resulted in further division and fragmentation of Kurdish-inhabited areas and altered the relatively homogenized nature of the Kurdish society. Consequently, “the Kurds shared the province of Western Azerbaijan with a large Azeri population while in the province of Kermashan there existed a sizable Shii Kurdish community as well as other groups” (Farzanfar, 1992, p. 264). The majority of the Kurdish population inhabited the western and north-western areas of Iran. However, a huge number of Kurds were forcefully dispersed to other provinces such as Fars, Mazandaran and Khorasan (Saleh, 2013, p. 68).

The nationalist elite of Iran has viewed the so-called “tribal problem” as a matter of national insecurity, and this elite supported Reza Shah’s hostile policies towards the tribal system and viewed him as the deliverer of Iran’s national salvation. Reza Shah’s policy of “forced sedentarization in ending nomadism” fostered and intensified the hostile tribal–state relations. Cronin (2007) wrote that

Reza Shah’s massive experiment in social engineering—the settlement of the nomads and the complete political, social and cultural integration of tribal population into broader Iranian society—was brought to an abrupt end by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of August 1941 and his own enforced abdication the following month. (p. 191)

Shohre Jalalpoor (2012) maintained that the ethnonational diversity of Iran regarded as a major element of insecurity and territorial disintegration received Reza Shah’s attention. Many of these ethnonational groups had, through a long period, carried their tribal and territorial names as a matter of identification, and these names, for example, DehKurd, Lurestan, Khormel Abad, Khozestan and Arabestan, were geographically inscribed on the history of these areas and the memory of the people. The Pahlavis paid much attention to this issue, and at the first opportunity they changed these names. For instance, during the Pahlavi regime, the names of 44 Kurdish areas were Persianized. Reza Shah’s comprehensive policy of assimilation and alteration met different forms of resistance from local people (Jalalpoor, 2012, pp. 54–59).

During the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941–1979), to stop the Kurds creating a unified front of Kurdish nationalism in Iran, the regime divided the already altered geography of Kurdistan further. The regime split the northern part of the Kurdish region ⁹

Through the Qajar dynasty, Iran consisted of five Hokemrani (Governance). Chiefly, until the very early 20th century, the Kurdish population were concentrated in the Iyalets (political and administrative entities within the Iranian state) of Kurdistan, Kermashan, Lurestan and border areas of Iraq were mentioned as the second Hokemrani. Following the Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911), a new geographical administrative rule was approved by legislation (Cronin, 2010, pp. 67–68). However, Reza Shah implemented several changes remapping the geographic entities, with the former 8 provinces ¹⁰

Religion: The Sunni–Shiite Split

In understanding the shaping of the Kurdish question in Iran, Islam becomes essential. Religion, in particular, the Sunni–Shiite split, has been politicized. Since the establishment of the Safavid monarchy, and the use of Shiism as the official religion of the dynasty, Shiism has played a direct role in the last 5–6 centuries of development of the Iranian society, not least on the emergence and continuation of its current Kurdish question. In analyzing the Iranian Kurdish question, the role of religion ¹¹

According to Ali Ezzatyar (2016):

The history of Islamism in Kurdistan reveals important trends that are valuable in analyzing ongoing events in the broader region today […] prior to and during the development of pan-Kurdish nationalist ideas and institutions, Islamic identity with a uniquely Kurdish coloring was a vehicle of sorts for unity in Kurdistan. (p. 9)

The Kurdish people’s relation to religion is ambiguous and complex. Even though the majority of Kurds are Muslims and belong to the Sunni sect of Islam, religion has been an element of disintegration and division rather than unification and homogenization of different Kurdish identities. The discriminatory religious policy of Shah Ismail Safavid against the Sunni Kurds (Amin, 1991, p. 16), and the even more systematic repetition of this policy by the Islamic Republic, has established several forms of deep-rooted conflict between the Kurds and the Iranian state. This condition has resulted in the emergence of a grievance from the Kurdish position characterized as ‘double disintegration’ that the Kurds view themselves as having suffered religiously as well as ethnically from successive Iranian states.

First, since most of the Kurds practice Sunni Islam, they are religiously different from the Persian ethnic majority and the ruling regimes. This places Kurds in the position that Gareth Stansfield (2014) identified as “double minorities” (p. 77). Second, a significant part of the Kurdish people inhabiting Khurasan, Kermashan and Ilam is Shiite and do not share the same political aspirations as the Sunni Kurds (Farzanfar, 1992, p. 76). Consequently, religion, similarly to geopolitical factors, has caused division within Kurdish society. The contemporary religious demography of Iran is a product of historical transformations that, broadly speaking, includes Shiite and Sunni Islam, Zoroastrianism and some other minority religious groups. Particularly, since the sixteenth century, Kurds’ religious difference with the ruling regimes of Iran has been considered as a source of conflict.

During different stages of the Kurdish movement, the Kurdish grievance has been led by a combination of tribal and religious leaders. Therefore, Ezzatyar (2016) holds that “the role of Islam in this complex array of cultural and ideological identities is a unique one by regional standards” (pp. 9–10). The existence of religious and cultural diversity among Kurds at the current time has not had a decisive effect on the politics, conditions and abilities of the Kurdish movement, even though these differences have slowed the movement and affected the internal cohesion and unification of the Kurdish society; in many regards, these difference have been used by the enemies of the Kurds in dividing the Kurdish society and the Kurdish national movement.

The significance of the role of Sunni Islam for the emergence and direction of the Kurdish movement became more visible with the advent of the Safavid dynasty and its ambition to create a centralized state system with Shiism as the state religion. The Kurds’ resistance to conversion and joining the Shiite–Safavid ideology, hand in hand with their resistance to centralization, were among the initial roots of the Kurdish question in Iran. For instance, Halo Khan, an influential Kurdish leader in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, viewed the Safavid as a huge threat to Kurdish autonomy. When Halo Khan heard that his son (Ahmad Khan) had married Sayede Bigum, the sister of Shah Abbas, and had established kinship with the qizilbash (the Redheads), he could not hide his disappointment. He clearly stated that the alliance between his son (Ahmad Khan) and the Safavid would lead to the fall of Kurds/Kurdistan at the hands of the Rafezin (a disparaging term for Shiite Muslims).

The role of Islam/religion persists in the Kurdish question and should not be underestimated. Religion is best characterized as a paradoxical and contradictory factor. Describing the Kurdish society as “religious-secular,” Ezzatyar (2016) wrote that this condition is “defined by both a relative lack of orthodox religiosity among the population and, incongruously, an essential role for nominally Islamic leadership and symbolism” (pp. 10–11). Despite the examples of the contribution of religious leaders to the Kurdish movement, this movement has been mainly classified as nationalist rather than religious (Cronin, 2010, p. 185). The style of the leadership of every Kurdish uprising until the early twentieth century was framed around a combination of tribal and religious leadership (Ghassemlou, 1965). For instance, Simko’s rebellion remains one of Iran’s most significant ethnic uprisings of the twentieth century, with tribal, nationalist and religious characteristics. On the other hand, religious difference and discrimination have been used as a means of highlighting and enhancing claims of deprivation and grievances (Ezzatyar, 2016).

Conclusion

This study has highlighted that the Kurdish–Iranian state relations have, since the late sixteenth century, increased in complexity. As result of the rulers of different Iranian regime’s intensification of the implementation of the policy of demographic engineering, increased dissatisfaction and grievance among the Kurds. Successive ruling regimes of Iran have had a hostile attitude to the ethnonational communities’ desire for self-determination and autonomy. The policy of demographic engineering has been deployed largely as an effective strategy for minimizing the capability of any ethnonational movement in Iran. Due to the challenge of the Kurdish movement, the Kurdish population has been a target of the Iranian state’s policy of demographic engineering. This policy has left a variety of adverse effects within Kurdish society. At present, due to this policy, Kurds are suffering from issues like identity and geographical fragmentation. The obsession of different ruling Iranian regimes with changing Kurdish demography has resulted in confusion: one can find Kurds in Khurasan practicing Kurdish culture and having a strong feeling of Kurdishness, and conversely, Kurds are living inside the Kurdish territory quite confused about what defines their identity. Besides, the complex and diverse composition of some areas of Kurdistan has meant that it is challenging to demark the exact border of the Kurdish territory in Iran.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.