Society for the Rise of Kurdistan

Society for the Rise of Kurdistan (Kurdish: Cemiyeta Tealiya Kurd; Turkish: Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti) was an organisation formed in 1918, in Constantinople, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state in eastern Turkey.[1]

The Society based its statements to an independent Kurdistan on the Treaty of Sèvres and the ideas of Woodrow Wilson. The society formed many local branches in the eastern provinces of Turkey. Three months after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, the Society together with leaders of the Koçkiri tribe (Alevi–Kurd) revolted at Dersim in eastern Asia Minor.[1] It is documented that the organization was used by the English in order to fight against Turkish nationalists. It further aimed to promote the Kurdish language and culture. The society issued a weekly magazine named Jîn (Live) in 1918/1919. Jîn was published in Ottoman Turkish and Kurdish (Kurmanci and Sorani dialects).

During the Turkish War of Independence the organisation attempted an uprising, encouraged by British major Edward William Charles Noel, in 1921, but was defeated by the Turkish army within three months on June 17, 1921. Following the uprising, KTC was banned by the Turkish national assembly. One of its leaders Miqdad Midhad Badirkhan was the publisher of the first Kurdish newspaper Kurdistan in Cairo.

References

  1. 1 2 The Kurdish nationalist movement: opportunity, mobilization, and identity, by David Romano, p.28.
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