Historical memory: how do we remember 1514 and 1914?

The year 2014 is both the hundredth anniversary of the First World War and the anniversary of the Battle of Chaldiran, which took place in 1514 and which hardly anyone remembers. Both events deserve to be remembered, commemorated, and even re-evaluated again in terms of many of the conflicts or chains of events we are going through today.

Interestingly, however, there is no significant event aimed at understanding and analyzing the First World War, which brought with it the shaping of today's Turkey and even of the Middle East. Yet many of the events we are living through in the Middle East today are directly related to the results of this war.

After the First World War, the Ottoman lands spread across three continents were torn to pieces; while one of these pieces remained as the Republic of Turkey, established on Anatolian soil, more than twenty states were established in the other places. The sharing and governing of these states is still one of the most important problems for all countries, because both the world's most important energy resources and its historical symbolic capital lie in these lands.

The emergence of the Israel problem today, and the formation of the Palestinian cause, are likewise directly related to the results of this war. As a matter of fact, almost the whole of the Middle Eastern geography today was a single country attached to the Ottomans a hundred years ago. Historical conditions force Turkey to return to accounts hastily closed a century ago. Even if Turkey does not demand that this account be settled again, what is happening in this geography demands it. To regard Turkey's interest in this geography as a luxury interest is the doing of those who cannot grasp the depth of this geography and its history. Even if Turkey does not want it, it is being drawn into this arena.

The year 1514, in which Yavuz Sultan Selim's Chaldiran campaign against the Safavids took place, is a date not only in terms of confronting the Safavids but also one at which the fates of the Turks and the Kurds, and in fact of many other peoples, intersected. After this date the Islamic world was reshaped, and an order that would probably last 400 years from that day's decision was established.

To try to understand what happened in 1514 through different angles of thought and to discuss the future of Turkish-Kurdish political relations today, a workshop titled "Turkish-Kurdish Political Relations and the New Century on the Five Hundredth Anniversary of 1514" took place recently at the Strategic Thought Institute, moderated by Orhan Miroğlu, SDE Coordinator of Historical Memory Studies.

Of course, seeing the year 1514 as one of the important historical junctions of the Kurdish-Turkish meeting today has to do with the problems we are living through today. In resolving our present problems, what kind of inspiration can the 1514 meeting, that is, the agreement reached as a result of this meeting that took place upon İdris-i Bitlisi's calling Yavuz to help against the Safavids, give to the problems being experienced today between the parties?

When one needs to appeal to history, there are undoubtedly other dates that can be found in the context of relations between Turks and Kurds. The 1071 Battle of Manzikert is also an important date; Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem with the trust he received from Nureddin Zengi, a rightly guided Muslim ruler who was a Turkish bey, is also an important moment of historical meeting. The Kurdish nationalist tries to forget Saladin's dimension as conqueror of Jerusalem and to leave only his Kurdishness.

When you set aside the mission of conquering Jerusalem, and especially when you ignore the Turkish bey Nureddin, who raised him and charged him with this mission, and his father Imad ad-Din, nothing remains of Saladin.

From here it is in fact possible to take signs of a common destiny, continually recurring in history, concerning the historical missions of both communities. Kurds and Turks were together within the framework of the ideals of Jerusalem, the Caliphate, justice and the unity of Islam. But only Kurds and Turks? Are these not ideals that brought seventy-two nations together? To read the whole event as if it had been lived only between Turks and Kurds stems from being stuck on merely today's events.

Undoubtedly a person does not remember anything at random. Even to remember, a desire, will, motivation and intention are needed. What will we remember, and why will we remember?

Why do today's Kurdish youth insistently remember the years 1914 and 1925 instead of 1071, 1187 and 1514? Because some people remind them only of those dates.

Of course it is not possible to forget the year 1925. Since the approach that began to deny the Kurds and ignore the Kurds is fresher in memories in its effects, it is all the easier to remind them of it. But does its being fresher in memories mean that it has been interpreted correctly?

The Kurdish nationalist remembers this event by drawing from it a hostility toward the Turks and insists on remembering it so. This is the worst conclusion that can be drawn from this event, and it leads him gradually to fall into that deadly trap prepared for him in 1914, the trap of racism.