The Falsifications of Professor Türkdoğan: A Rebuttal

The Falsifications of Professor Türkdoğan: A Rebuttal By Dr. Ali (Paul) White It has come to my attention that a Turkish academic, Professor Orhan Türkdoğan, has published blatant falsifications concerning my scholarly writings. These misrepresentations appear in the following book: Türkdoğan, Orhan (2008) Türk Toplumunda Zazalar ve Kürtler, Istanbul, Timaş. Professor Türkdoğan’s book Türk Toplumunda Zazalar ve Kürtler states: Zaza grupların bir kesimi, kendilerini Türk kükenli Kabul etmezseler bile, Kürtlüklerine yönelik görüşlerimizin haklılığı, son günlerde Batılı araştırmacılar tarafıindan da ileriye sürülmektedir. Nitekim. Paul White bu görüstedir. Avnı tezi (Türkdoğan, 2008: 13). This can be rendered into English as follows: The Zaza are part of a group of Turkish origin themselves, even if they do not admit, for, the Kurdish justification of our opinion is put forward in recent days by Western researchers. Indeed. Paul White has these arguments. The Avni thesis. In fact I have never, in all of my 63 years said anything of the sort! The claims of Professor Türkdoğan are utterly false, and this is transparently apparent without expending very much energy whatsoever. The first thing that needs to be said, to be brutally frank, is how sloppy and dishonest Professor Türkdoğan’s claims are. The only work by myself that he cites in his entire 610 page tome is that he only cites one apparent ‘work’ by myself to buttress his assertions, which he represents as follows: White, P. ed., Dynamics of the Kurdish and Kırmanc-Zaza Problems in Anatolia, 1996. This is also inaccurate. The text referred to here is actually a one page ‘Introduction’ to a collection of texts in this publication by the Zaza scholar Seyfi Cengiz, in which I thank all involved in translating and otherwise assisting in preparing Seyfi’s texts for publication, and introduce readers to Seyfi, an independent Zaza scholar. I offer no view myself, anywhere in the publication, to the origins of the Zaza people. The correct rendering of the reference to my Introduction is therefore actually as follows: Introduction to Seyfi Cengiz, Dynamics of the Kurdish & Kırmanc-Zaza Problems in Anatolia, published by the Kurdish Study Group of the Centre for the Study of Asia and the Middle East, Deakin University, June 1996. As the reader might be aware, I have written prodigiously on the Zazas, Turks and Kurds. I can categorically state that I have never contended that the Zazas are ‘kendilerini Türk kükenli’ (of Turkish origin). I could never make such a ridiculous assertion, for the simple fact that it is completely baseless. My PhD dissertation and the book based on it state that the Kurds are a distinct people and that some of those regarded as Zazas and ‘Alevi Kurds’ also consider themselves to be Kurdish. Other Zazas and so-called ‘Alevi Kurds’, I pointed out, consider themselves to be related to each other, but distinct from both the Kurds and the Turks. This can be verified in both the English and Turkish language versions of my PhD dissertation book: Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers? The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (Zed Books, London, 2000). İlkel İsyancılar mı? Devrimci Modernleştiriciler mi? (Türkiye’de Kürt Ulusal Hareketi (Vate Publishing House, Istanbul, 2012). And all my writings insist that the Kurds are a distinct, non-Turkish, people. My latest book reflects the same analysis as all the books by cited above: The PKK: Coming Down from the Mountains (Zed Books, London, 2015). My earlier writings consistently reflect the same analysis, if Professor Türkdoğan — or anyone else — wishes to check: ‘Die Entstehung kurdischer nationaler Identität unter kurdischen Frauen aus der Türkei in Nordwest-Melbourne, Australien’, in Siamend Hajo, Carsten Borck, Eva Savelsberg & Şukriye Doğan (Eds.), Gender in Kurdistan und der Diaspora, Münster, Unrast, 2004: pp. 327-45. Co-editor, with Joost Jongerden, of the book Turkey’s Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview (Brill, Leiden (2003) ‘The Kurds and Citizenship’, at the Conference Civilising the State: Civil Society, Policy and State Transformation (Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, Deakin University, Melbourne, 6 December 1999). ‘Citizenship under the Ottomans and Kemalists: How the Kurds were Excluded’, in Citizenship Studies, Carfax Publishing Co., Editor Prof. Bryan S. Turner, (Vol. 3, No. 1, 1999). ‘The Economic Marginalisation of Turkey’s Kurds: the Failed Promise of Economic Modernisation and Reform’, in Muslim Minority Affairs, Carfax Publishing Co., Special Guest Editor M. Hakan Yavuz. (Vol. 18, No. 1, April 1998.) ‘The PKK’s Role in Nation-Building’, in Savelsberg, E., Siamend, H., and Carsten, B. (1998) Between Imagination and Denial: Kurds as Subjects and Objects of Political and Social Processes, (Freie Universität, Berlin). ‘Turkey: From Total War to Civil War?’, in Remaking the Middle East, (Berg Publishers, April 1997). Extended review of Philip Kreyenbroek & Christine Allison (editors), Kurdish Culture and Identity (Zed Press, 1996), in The Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1. ‘Introduction’ to Martin van Bruinessen, “Aslını inkar eden haramzadedir”. The Debate on the Ethnic Identity of the Kurdish Alevis, published as a working paper at Centre for the Study of Asia & the Middle East at Deakin University Sep 1996. ‘Trapped in the Nationalist Mêvanxane’, in the Kurdish Newsletter, No. 2, June 1996. Editor, of Seyfi Cengiz, Dynamics of the Kurdish & Kırmanc-Zaza Problems in Anatolia, published by the Kurdish Study Group of the Centre for the Study of Asia and the Middle East, Deakin University, June 1996. Introduction to Seyfi Cengiz, Dynamics of the Kurdish & Kırmanc-Zaza Problems in Anatolia, published by the Kurdish Study Group of the Centre for the Study of Asia and the Middle East, Deakin University, June 1996. ‘Ethnic Differentiation among the Kurds: Kurmancî, Kızılbaş and Zaza’, in the Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, (Vol. 2, No. 2, Nov. 1995). Many of these publications can be viewed online, at: https://independent.academia.edu/AliWhite1 And: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ali_White2/publications I will leave it to the honest readers and scholars to verify the facts themselves. My conscience is clear: I am not guilty of making any ridiculous claims concerning Zazas, ‘Alevi Kurds’, Kurds or Turks.