The trajectory that the Republic of Turkey has followed since its establishment has been portrayed as a morality tale in which science, reason and progress have triumphed over the hidebound tradition, superstition and conservatism that were hallmarks of the Ottoman era. Indeed, certain Kemalists explained attempts at assimilation visited upon the Kurds as intended to ‘liberate’ Kurdish society from retrograde feudal and tribal forces that prevented its advance. Thus assimilation was portrayed as a civilising mission; within the educational system, Kurds were impelled to forget their language and forego their Kurdish identity, even as they were assured that there was no such thing. Stereotypes of Turk and Kurds evolved; these portrayed Turks as forward-looking, intent on modernisation, urbanised, the Kurds as an untamed rural people. A 1926 sketch remarked, ‘The typical Kurd is not a city man, but a dweller in stone-built villages snugly nestled in the rugged ravines in which the mountains of this region abound.’

Some of these clichés – that the Kurds are mountain folk with a culture rooted in village life – persist. Like all clichés, they contain elements of truth. Anna Grabolle-Ҫeliker notes that due to the relative ethnic homogeneity of village life, and shared experiences therein, the village assumes a salience in some evocations of Kurdish identity, particularly after migration to large cities such as Van, Diyarbakır, Ankara and Istanbul. That is not to say that village life is exclusively the domain of Kurds in Turkey, nor that Kurdish village life is peculiarly different to that of villages populated by Turks. Visiting villages in the Aegean littoral in the 1990s and villages near Diyarbakır between 2013 and 2015, I observed similar intra-community and intra-generational dynamics, the same daily rhythms of shepherding, milking, making bread and the like – nothing that immediately marked anything as Turkish or Kurdish. Even within solely Kurdish villages, individual lives vary considerably. On a dolmuş heading towards Mardin, I once witnessed an instance of the diversity of Kurds’ lived experiences. Beside me sat a well-dressed young couple, holding hands and watching YouTube on their iPhones. On my other side, leaning on the van's sliding door, stood a lad with a weather-beaten complexion and with dusty feet in well-worn flip-flops. He cradled a rattan cage housing a beloved ‘keklik’ (partridge) and dismounted at a lonely stretch of road bound for a distant hamlet.