The Kurds have a reputation as a divided people. Writing in the late seventeenth century, the narrator of the Kurdish literary epic Mem û Zîn laments the Kurds’ ‘disunited, always rebellious and divided’ nature and their plight, despite their bravery and resilience, as vassals of others. The narrator might well have been prophesying the Kurdish future. After the apportioning of territory that occurred in the Middle East following the First World War, the Kurds remained divided and were rendered minorities in the newly formalised Turkish, Persian and Arab (in Syria and Iraq) states. Thereafter, as David McDowall notes, modern Kurdish history became marked by two distinct struggles, the first against the governments of the nation-states in which Kurdish peoples live, the second to forge a coherent sense of community and nationhood among themselves. New state boundaries formalised divisions between Kurdish communities. Hakan Yavuz argues that regional, religious and linguistic cleavages prevent the emergence of what he calls a ‘full-fledged Kurdish identity’.

In contrast, Kendal Nezan observed, at a pan-Kurdish conference in 1990, affinities among Kurds despite a ‘total lack of contact, in spite of huge distances that separated their homelands’. He argues that ‘being a Kurd means to share the same basic cultural identity forged by centuries of history’. Nezan is not alone in his conceptualisation of a shared Kurdish cultural identity. I have encountered the idea of pan-Kurdish identity and solidarity among Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Australia and Europe – in Iraqi Kurdish terminology this is known as Kurdayeti. Kurdayeti is sometimes regarded as a form of Kurdish nationalism that amounts to a desire for an independent Kurdish homeland. It is not a term that is commonly used by Kurds in Turkey. However, I use it here to describe a shared political identity that extends across borders and does not necessarily prefigure territorial claims but is a form of social and political capital used to protect Kurdish interests. In recent years, with the spread of modern communication technologies and alongside geopolitical developments, Kurdayeti has become more pronounced. It thus becomes a more potent force in Kurdish politics, which in turn has a bearing on politics in Turkey. This chapter examines the extent to which Kurdayetî is manifest in Turkey and the impacts it has in and for Turkey in the political and social arenas.