Kurdish–Turkish conflict

Kurdish nationalist uprisings have periodically occurred in Turkey, beginning with the Turkish War of Independence and the consequent transition from the Ottoman Empire to the modern Turkish state and continuing to the present day with the current PKK–Turkey conflict.

According to Ottoman military records, Kurdish rebellions have been occurring in Anatolia for over two centuries. While large tribal Kurdish revolts had shaken the Ottoman Empire during the last decades of its existence, the modern phase of the conflict is believed to have begun in 1922, with the emergence of Kurdish nationalism which occurred in parallel with the formation of the modern State of Turkey. In 1925, an uprising for an independent Kurdistan, led by Shaikh Said Piran, was quickly put down, and soon afterward, Said and 36 of his followers were executed. Other large-scale Kurdish revolts occurred in Ararat and Dersim in 1930 and 1937. The British consul at Trebizond, the diplomatic post which was closest to Dersim, spoke of brutal and indiscriminate acts of violence and explicitly compared them to the 1915 Armenian genocide. "Thousands of Kurds," he wrote, "including women and children, were slain; others, mostly children, were thrown into the Euphrates; while thousands of others in less hostile areas, who had first been deprived of their cattle and other belongings, were deported to vilayets (provinces) in Central Anatolia. It is now stated that the Kurdish question no longer exists in Turkey."

The Kurds accuse successive Turkish governments of suppressing their identity through such means as the banning of Kurdish languages in print and media. Atatürk believed that the unity and stability of a country both lay in the existence of a unitary political identity, relegating cultural and ethnic distinctions to the private sphere. However, many Kurds did not relinquish their identity and they also did not relinquish their language. Large-scale armed conflict between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) occurred throughout the 1980s and 1990s, leaving over 35,000 dead.