Kurdish Nationalism and the State: The case of Kurdish State in the Mahabad Republic

Abstract

As a historical fact, in the political systems of the 20 century, the actors in the international community always have been the states. The fact is so powerful that one cannot walk out of the world of nation-states. But in the meantime, the states as the representation of nations brought out war, peace, and by the name of nations have consolidated domination and authority of a class or an ideology. On the one hand, state as a utopia, is the driving force behind the emancipation of none-state nations, and on the other hand, the state represents a kind of domination and totalitarianism. For the Kurds, of course, the state also existed as a desire and utopia in the ideology of Kurdish nationalism. And this desire has adopted by different rhetorics and articulated by very different ideologies. In this term, for the Kurds, state as a manifestation of domination and totalitarianism in the form of ruling states, as well as emancipatory ideology has shown her Janus’s face. Despite the fact that the concept of Kurdish nationalism was still a controversial and hence, other concepts used in Kurdish nationalism can also be contested and discussed, considering all these problems, this essay attempts to analyze the relationship between nationalism and state in the rhetoric of Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad. In doing so, by considering two important newspaper published in the dawn of attendance theory and practice in Rojhelat (East Kurdistan), this essay tries to analyze the links between nationalism and the state.