Musical spirits and poetic tongues: oral traditions in the cultural politics of Kurdish intellectuals (1920s-1940s)

ABSTRACT This article examines oral traditions in the discourse of Kurdish intellectuals between 1920s and 1940s. Through a critical and textual analysis of three main publications, namely Hawar [cry for help] (1932–1943), Ronahî [light] (1941–1943), and Roja Nû [new day] (1943 − 1946), it discusses the different ways in which oral traditions were seen as instrumental for crafting national selves, advancing literacy, and disseminating local histories. The article identifies the endeavours of Kurdish intellectuals as a form of romantic nationalism and approaches it within the theoretical framework of John Hutchinson’s cultural nationalism. It shows that Kurdish intellectuals’ interests in oral traditions were the outcome of complex, ideological positions and conditions, and that the cultural and the political were closely intertwined in their pursuits. Exploring those pursuits also informs us of the symbolic and political significance of expressive traditions in the contemporary cultural politics of Kurds in Turkey.


Introduction
This article examines oral traditions in the discourse of the Kurdish nationalist movement in the beginning of the twentieth century, during the period spanning from early 1920s to 1940s. It critically explores the national potential oral traditions represented for Kurdish nationalists and their utility in constructing Kurdish nationhood. By 'oral traditions' I refer to proverbs, folksongs, fables, epics, myths, stories, and their performers which are often described as folklore in their totality by the intellectuals who will be dealt with in this article. I approach the interests of early Kurdish intellectuals, namely the Bedirkhans, and foreign scholars' studies on Kurdish oral traditions through the framework of cultural nationalism, which is characterized by 'promoting a national language, literature and the arts, educational activities, and economic self-help'. 1 The Kurdish case can be situated within a context of what might be called a 'cultural turn' in the nationalisms of the Middle East, which denotes a trend where cultural expressive arts and traditions were considered as instrumental in constructing national identities, and laden with positivist ideals, symbolizing a modern, unique, and a progressive outlook. In early republican Turkey, the Turkish State's investment in folklore and expressive cultural arts occurred in the context of embracing a Latin alphabet for Turkish and modernizing efforts. 2 Historian Farzin Vejdani captured a similar trend in interwar Iran in the 1930s, where some leading intellectuals, and the State eventually, invested in folklore studies and expressive arts for nation-building purposes, and where folk materials were associated with notions of authenticity and modernity. 3 The early 1900s in the Middle East therefore shows a general concern for culture and its expressive arts for purposes of nation-building, characterized by the participation of intellectuals in these endeavours, and the proliferation of cultural institutions and circles, as well as journalistic practices. 4 In this context, expressive cultural traditions are seen as a tangible manifestation of cultural difference, uniqueness, authenticity, and creative potential. By placing the Kurdish example in such an intellectual and political environment, this article expands our understanding of cultural productions in the formative years of Kurdish nationalism, which can retrospectively explain the continued relevance of oral traditions and the cultural category in Kurds' political struggle in contemporary Turkey. 5 The political and the cultural in the Kurdish case do not constitute mutually exclusive fields. I use the concept of cultural pursuits to refer specifically to Kurdish and foreign scholars' interest in performers of oral traditions and their repertoire in the context of Turkey and Syria, and therefore it is not inclusive of Kurdish activism in Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan. Ultimately, the article argues that Kurdish intellectuals' interest in culture was the outcome of complex political and ideological conditions, representing an early form of Kurdish cultural politics, wherein expressive culture, namely oral traditions, were seen as instrumental for crafting national identities.
The article is divided into two parts. The first provides a biographical background about three Kurdish intellectuals, who are the three sons of Emin Eli Bey Bedirkhan, namely Celadet , Kamiran (1895Kamiran ( -1978, and Sureya (1883-1938) and the political and ideological environment in which they operated. In addition, this part includes Bedirkhan brothers' interest in Kurdish oral traditions, as well as the theoretical framework through which their endeavours will be approached.
Bedirkhan brothers came to interact with other Kurdish intellectuals during their stay in Syria, notably Cegerxwîn  and Osman Sabri . It is also important to take into consideration their communication and exchanges with French officials and scholars such as Roger Lescot, Pierre Rondot, and Thomas Bois. 6 Admittedly, Kurds and foreign scholars' interest in oral traditions predates the Bedirkhans and the foreign scholars mentioned here. 7 What distinguishes the approach of the Bedirkhans, however, is the increasing recognition of oral traditions' political utility and potential significance to constructing and expressing national selves, regardless of whether such objectives were realized in this period. And while I certainly do not assume that the Bedirkhans could solely stand for Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and Syria, especially in light of leadership disputes and claims of authority they came to face with the establishment of Khoybun [independence] for example, some of their interventions at this time, ranging from diplomatic representations, discourses on Kurds and their culture, as well as the invention of a Latin alphabet, have had a lasting legacy on Kurdish politics.
Hawar was linked to Celadet, and Ronahî was published as an illustrated supplement to it. Roja Nû, on the other hand, was associated with Kamiran, who is often described as its owner. The three publications dealt with language, culture, and politics to different degrees.

Literature review, context, and theory
The myriad of studies on the Kurds in the Ottoman Empire and during the early years of the Turkish Republic until the 1950s have already expanded our understanding of Kurdish nationalism by focusing on its manifestly political aspects such as revolts, politics of Kurdish notables, and aspects of Kurds' socio-political organization. 8 The Bedirkhans' political activities and networks in this period are particularly well documented. Jordi Tejel has shown the extent of the Bedirkhans' political activities, the political conditions within which they operated as well as the nature of their relations with the Frenchmandate authorities in Syria, and French officers interested in Kurdish matters, namely Pierre Rondot and Roger Lescot. 9 Stefan Winter has examined the relationship between the Bedirkhans and Kurdish communities in Jazira and Damascus. 10 Barbara Henning on the other hand has adopted an autobiographical approach to the Bedirkhans, critically examining their discursive strategies to establish themselves as legitimate leaders of the Kurds and their national struggle. 11 Ahmet Akturk has provided a textual analysis of the publications the Bedirkhan brothers issued in this period with reference to constructing a national identity and erecting Kurmanci Kurdish as a national language, as well as the readership and audience of their publications. 12  the instrumentality of oral poetry and their performers, dengbêjs, to the revival and preservation of Kurmanci Kurdish in the period 1925-1960. 13 While these works have successfully dealt with the cultural productions of the Bedirkhans, they have not extensively demonstrated the brothers' utilization of oral traditions and cultural politics, both of which are research themes of more contemporary Kurdish politics than of the past. 14 Michiel Leezenberg's engagement with Soviet scholarship on the Kurds in the early twentieth century has examined its interest in Kurdish linguistics. Leezenberg's work illuminated the ways in which Soviet scholarship investment in oral traditions led to a process he terms as the 'folklorization of the Kurds' where the Kurds' soul and character were thought to be reflected in their oral traditions, downplaying in the process the Kurds' literary, Islamic, and some premodern communalities they shared with other ethnic groups in the region. 15 Janet Klein has explored the Kurdish intellectuals' politicization of Kurdish proverbs to suit their nationalist discourse at the beginning of the twentieth century in the context of late Ottoman Turkey. 16 Martin Strohmeier has provided perhaps the most extensive engagement with the Kurdish intellectuals politically motivated cultural pursuits in early twentieth century. 17 Strohmeier has discussed folklore-related pursuits in some capacity, reducing them to a 'strategy which compensated for the lack of high culture'. 18 His analyses, however, have focused principally on literary productions, and more specifically the utilization of oral traditions and ideas about the folk into novelistic and poetic categories.
Building further on these works, this article specifically examines the significance of oral traditions in the discourse of the Bedirkhan brothers through the prism of Hutchinson's cultural nationalism with a discussion on oral traditions in the publications of the Bedirkhans in this period. In doing so, this article elucidates the intellectual history and cultural politics of Bedirkhan brothers. It addresses a gap in literature that specifically deals with oral traditions in their discourse at the turn of the twentieth century, by taking into account regional politics and trends, and the utility and symbolic capital of oral traditions for language purposes and nation-building. Studying intellectuals' overwhelmingly theoretical interest in oral traditions in this period helps better situate the generation of scholars, both Kurdish and foreign, who made collections of oral traditions post 1950s. 19 Their interest in oral traditions and repertoire in the period 1920s-1940s remained largely speculative and centred on the national potential and symbolic capital they represented, 20 while in the second half of the twentieth century they adopted a clearly content-based approach where they made several collections framed with similar conceptualizations. 21 The following brief account of the Bedirkhan family is necessary to locate them in the historical context they operated in, and it is essential to better contextualize their activism and the nature of their relationship to the Ottomans, all of which are, to different degrees, informative of their political undertakings in this period. The three brothers are heralded as some of the founding fathers of Kurdish nationalism, in view of their works on Kurdish language, history, and political activism in the period 1920s-1940s. The brothers, along with their father Emin Eli Bey Bedirkhan, were exiled to Isparta (a city in remote Anatolia) in 1906 and then Akka in 1907, following the murder of Ridvan Paşa. 22 The brothers returned to Istanbul for different periods of time, but only to leave again. Supporters of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk viewed them suspiciously for their perceived Kurdish nationalist and political activities, and for accompanying the British Major Noel to Eastern Anatolia to gauge the support of local Kurdish tribes for the British. 23 Celadet and Kamiran left the Ottoman lands in early 1920s to Germany where, Martin Strohmeier convincingly argues, they were exposed to a romantic nationalism with its emphasis on folklore and romanticization of the folk, before returning to the Levant. Sureya ended up in Cairo eventually, where he pursued journalistic activitiesuntil 1931 when he moved to France permanently. 24 Celadet in 1925, and Kamiran in 1927 left Germany to French-mandated Syria, where they heralded and actively pursued Kurdish politics. Pressured by Turkey, the French-mandate authorities in Syria warned them not to pursue manifestly political undertakings and interfere in Turkey's internal affairs, especially alongside border areas. Thus, Celadet and Kamiran sought ostensibly cultural activities, while also acting as brokers between the French authorities and Syrian Kurdish refugee communities arriving to Jazira in the 1920s. 25 Some of the brothers' landmark productions in Syria were Celadet's invention of a Latin script for Kurmanci Kurdish, the establishment of Khoybun organization in 1927, and the publications of the periodicals Hawar (1932Hawar ( -1943, Ronahî (1941Ronahî ( -1943, and Roja Nû (1943 − 1946 23 Ibid., 364-65. 24 Strohmeier, Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity, 100. 25 Henning, Narratives of the History of the Ottoman-Kurdish Bedirhani Family in Imperial and Post-Imperial Contexts, 92-93, 711. 26 Hawar's issues 1-23 were written in both Latin and Arabic scripts. The periodical completely adopted Latin characters following its 23 rd issue.
The three brothers and their family were part of an urban Istanbul-based intellectual elite, where they grew up and gained their education. Arguably, they were somewhat disconnected from the Kurdish masses for whom they advocated and with which they shared little social and cultural capital. It was therefore necessary for them to be perceived as legitimate protagonists of the Kurdish cause. Drawing on the historical legacy of Botan principality, and, as Henning argues, 'relocating' their biographical trajectories from Istanbul to Kurdish regions were some of the main ways in which they established their legitimacy and justified their connection to the Kurdish cause. 27 The brothers' interest in popular culture and oral traditions would first seem at odds with their elitist educational background and upbringing, however, this interest should be read in relation to larger language and culture politics at the time. In other words, the brothers' interest in oral traditions can be read as instrumental, and the outcome of political currents at the time stressing cultural pursuits than a reflection of a background traditionally invested in folklore.
Hutchinson argues that research on nationalism has favoured state-oriented activities, or what he terms political nationalism at the expense of cultural nationalism. 28 With that, Hutchinson indicates that culture-related nationalist activities, some of which may include the promotion of language, arts, and literature, inter alia, with the ultimate aim of establishing national communities, are equally significant in the processes accompanying political struggle towards state and nation-building. 29 Cultural nationalists celebrate 'national cultural uniqueness' by invoking ethnic origins, aiming to unify different aspects of the nation, 'traditional and modern, agriculture and industry, science and religion-by returning to the creative life principle of the nation'. 30 Unable to act like a state, cultural nationalists aim to resurrect the nation in a bottom-up process. They 'establish informal and decentralized clusters of cultural societies and journals, designed to inspire a spontaneous love of community in its different members by educating them to their common heritage of splendor and suffering'. 31 Cultural nationalism, with its revivalist message, entailed a keen interest in archaeology, philology, and folklore. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that culture has been a constitutive element of the discourse of nationalist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken as a category that delineates distinctiveness and uniqueness, culture added to the force of the rhetoric of independence and self-determination. As Alan Dieckhoff argues, the use of culture in nationalism is 'an unavoidable step' as it serves as a 'testimony to the existence of the people'. 32 Cultural difference, conceived primarily, but not only, in terms of language and traditions, were seen as one of the prime legitimators of demands for nationhood and the right to self-determination.
Theorists of nationalism emphasize the leading roles intellectuals often took in nationalist movements. In fact, the phenomenon of nationalism has been long argued to be primarily a bourgeois one, spearheaded by intellectuals; indeed, across the Middle East, 27 Henning, Narratives of the History of the Ottoman-Kurdish Bedirhani Family in Imperial and Post-Imperial Contexts, 92-93, 711. 28 Hutchinson, 'Cultural Nationalism.' 29 Hutchinson's theoretical framework is not traditionally applied to non-state actors. In the case of the Kurds, a stateless group, the ultimate aim is achieving nation-building narrative and a state, as opposed to working within one. intellectuals and the elite have been the architects of nationalist movements. 33 Tom Nairn, drawing on Scottish nationalism, writes that 'nationalism was from the outset a "bourgeois' phenomenon"'. 34 In a similar vein, Smith regards intellectuals as leaders in nationalist movements. Intellectuals engage in 'historicizing' the culture of the people they advocate. To make the masses sense an attachment to the territory on which they live, they portray the homeland in poetic terms, turning 'lakes and mountains, rivers and valleys into authentic repository of popular virtues and collective history'. 35 Nationalists, remarks Smith, think of nations as 'primordial' entities that had an existence in the remote history. 36 The activities of the early Kurdish intelligentsia in the twentieth century fit into Smith and Hutchinson's explanations of cultural nationalism. The political pursuits and efforts of early Kurdish nationalists have produced a fairly impressive number of cultural productions. It is important to note that by designating the Bedirkhans' activities as cultural nationalism I do not suggest they were not political but that political and cultural nationalisms do not necessarily constitute mutually exclusive aspects of nationalism, particularly in the Kurdish case. I join Dieckhoff in his call to abandon dichotomous approaches which treat nationalism as either entirely political or cultural. 37 When examining publications of the period from the 1920s through to the 1940s, it becomes apparent how Kurdish leading intellectuals aimed at unifying, popularizing, and lending voice to Kurdish historical and contemporary experiences. The Kurds' divisions along social, religious, tribal, linguistic, and inter-ethnic lines made their rather intermittent mobilizations for national rights challenging at the beginning of the twentieth century when nationalist sentiments swept the region. 38 In stressing a common culture, the Bedirkhans intended to create a discourse that would enable Kurdish populations to belong to and identify with, irrespective of their religion, social status, and political orientation. The Bedirkhans took a main part in the establishment of Khoybun in 1927 and led a discourse that emphasized unifying the different religious and tribal strata of the Kurdish communities in Syria, Turkey, and, to a lesser extent, Iraq. 39 Khoybun was thus able to bring together actors from diverse socio-cultural and political backgrounds and with different worldviews under its umbrella, which it succeeded to manage initially, before disputes erupted among its members over leadership, political activities, and programme. 40 Lacking the resources of a nation-state to forge an identity, Kurdish intellectuals resorted to emphasizing cultural categories. Bedirkhans' turn to cultural endeavours through Khoybun, as Tejel has argued, should be also understood as the result of the failure of more concretely political pursuits, the main one being the Ararat revolt in 1930. 41

Oral traditions and nationhood
Ferhengok [mini dictionary] column in Hawar defines folklore as follows: Folklor (m): This is an English word originally. But it has found its way to all the languages of the world today, and that is why we included it in our own language. The Kurds of Qefqas [Caucasus] have already put it in our language, where they have published a book titled «Folklora Kurdmancî». Folklor refers to the all the customs, stories, and songs that emerged from the people, and which have been transmitted between generations. Folkore is a compound word, and it means the knowledge of a people (sic). 42 Celadet and his brother Kamiran showed a remarkable interest in Kurdish oral traditions such as folksongs, folktales, short stories, lullabies, fables, myths, and proverbs. Their interest in these expressive elements and the category of 'culture' in the period extending between the 1920s and 1940s, I argue, served four interrelated purposes. Firstly, preserving oral traditions and popularizing them through the few outlets available at the time, such as Hawar, was intended to assist in the newly invented and embraced Latin-alphabet for Kurmanci. Secondly, to construct a moral community bound by a set of familiar customs and traditions. As Kurdish populations found themselves divided along ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian lines at the dawn of the 20 th century, it was essential to create a sense of homogenous community for claims of nationhood. Thirdly, oral traditions are portrayed as being of historical value, which gives the Kurdish experience historical depth, itself considered as contesting state-centred narratives. The idea of historical depth legitimizes Kurdish presence by recourse to history. Kurdish interest in history in this period runs parallel (perhaps in opposition) to official and non-official denial of Kurdish language and history. 43 Finally, as in other cultural nationalisms, highlighting folkways and traditions attests to the uniqueness of the nation and its distinctiveness, which are qualities Kurdish nationalists emphasized through Khoybun.

Musical Kurdish spirit
Kurdish and foreign scholars in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attributed natural, musical, and poetic qualities to the Kurds and by extension to Kurdish language. Martin Strohmeier has argued that the Bedirkhan brothers, during their time in Germany, were exposed to and influenced by Romanticist ideas about the nation. 44  orientalist scholarship more generally, reinforced this influence. 45 While the brothers' German connection and its influence is a well-established idea, it cannot be overemphasized. 46 The Bedirkhans and other intellectuals they worked with were wellinformed of regional political currents and the significance of 'culture' as a politically useful category. Additionally, as Henning showed elsewhere, the Bedirkhans' intense investment in cultural pursuits was conditioned in many ways by the pressures and opportunities the French-mandate authorities provided and imposed. 47 Ascribing interest in oral traditions solely to influences of romantic nationalism leaves little room for the impact of the regional context where these efforts were taking place. 48 Kurdish activities were in part a response to repressive states-practices vis-à-vis expressions of Kurdish culture in the wider Middle East and Turkey more specifically.
The folklore-related endeavours highlighted in Hawar confirm romanticist influences, nonetheless. The interest of the two brothers in oral traditions manifested in how they adapted them into novelistic and poetic categories in their own works, as shown by Strohmeier, and in the way they sought to preserve and disseminate them through Hawar and Roja Nû, with ample examples of short stories, folksongs, tales, and proverbs. In its first publication, Hawar lists seven objectives, two of which pertain to folkloric materials specifically: a) 'collecting stories, short stories and Kurdish songs and disseminate them'; b) '[to] examine Kurdish dances and songs'. 49 By 'examining', they primarily meant the content of the songs and not their musical construction. Even though both brothers played the violin and enjoyed listening to classical music, perhaps suggesting some familiarity with music as a scholarly discipline, the lack of musical notations of the material they published in both Hawar and Roja Nû suggests they were not interested in the musical constructions of folksongs. The issue continues by stating that 'we have to speak the language of our parents and to learn from Kurdish stories and songs'. 50 This, too, underlines an interest in the content or the repertoire of the tradition more generally, than strictly the stylistic and musical aspects of it. Hawar's twenty-first issue includes an obituary for a 'comrade' called Îlyas Efendî. In it, Celadet comments on how Efendî had a nice voice. 51 To prompt Efendî to perform a song for him, Celadet draws reference to an encounter in Germany between him and a certain German professor who admired Kurdish musical traditions quoting him to have said: 'I  53 Reminiscent of anthropological approaches in first half of the twentieth century, the works of Nikitine and Bois on the Kurds are characterized by an overly holistic outlook, examining different aspects of culture, stressing their linguistic and ethnic difference consequently. In this work, Bois depicted a rather romanticized image of the Kurds, as being rooted in antiquity, reflecting the qualities of the nature they are inhabiting, and of possessing a poetic imagination. As the title suggests, Bois draws his conclusions based on folklore. Similarly, Basile Nikitine's extensive works on the Kurds between the 1920s and 1960s, especially his translations of Kurdish poems and songs into French, showed his interest in oral traditions. In his book Les Kurdes, Nikitine makes discussions about Kurdish history, culture, traditions, and the sociopolitical structure of the Kurdish community. The last chapter of Nikitine's book is titled 'Kurdish Literature', wherein he lists fifteen songs, or 'lâwj', as he calls them, as evidence of the richness of Kurdish folklore. 54 Nikitine's selection included some songs that drew on clashes between the Kurds and the Turks, thus accentuating Kurdish ethnic and political difference, a reality apparent in their songs which underline a conflictual relationship with the Turks. 55 Sureya Bedirkhan highlighted the poetic quality of Kurdish language and the Kurds along similar lines. In the introductory pages to a paper he presented at the Social Anthropology Congress, Sureya cites Paul Beider at length: 'Kurdish language is fundamentally poetic, it embraces and deals with all aspects of nature' and how Kurds are a poetic people. 56 He further stresses the importance of traditional poet-singers (dengbêj) as preservers of Kurdish literature. 57

Language standardization
Oral traditions in the form of stories, proverbs, and songs had been a primary research material for studies on Kurdish language, political life, and social organization in the 1920s. 58 With the Bedirkhans, engagement with oral traditions as music and repertoire were in association with standardization efforts. Like Ottoman Turkish, Kurmanci Kurdish had 52 Celadet Bedir-xan, 'Bîreke Îlyas Efendî, ' Hawar, 1933. 53  previously been written in Arabic characters. With Celadet's invention of a Latin-alphabet, oral traditions were considered a useful means to popularize it. Celadet wrote numerous grammatical studies on Kurdish language some of which were published throughout the issues of Hawar. 59 In turning to folklore and oral traditions as means of studying, researching, and standardizing Kurmanci Kurdish, they mirrored Turkish efforts around the same period. Clearly, the Kurds were dispersed in different countries, spoke different dialects, and some defined themselves differently such as the Zaza. So '[H]ow do you create a sense of "homeland" for people who are either divided into small localities or scattered outside the chosen area?', asks Anthony Smith, 'the answer is to endow the chosen area with poetic and historical connotations, or rather with an historical poetry'. 60 References to the history of the Kurds and their origins characterize some of the poems of Celadet, Kamiran, and other contributors to Hawar, such as Cegerxwîn whose poems would later be sung by Kurdish artists, namely Ciwan Haco and Sivan Perwer in the 1970s and 1980s. Oral traditions are also a form of historical poetry, as it draws on events in the past in a style that is singing and storytelling. Kamiran considered the folk repertoire as a shared one, and of a unifying quality. For example, Kamiran underscored the role of oral traditions in Kurdish life in his novel Der Adler von Kurdistan [The Eagle of Kurdistan], where most of the characters in the novel show fondness of music. 61 In one of the scenes, Kamiran presents two dengbêjs, who sing confronting each other in antiphony. One of them is from Diyarbakir (the largest Kurdish-populated city in southeast Turkey) and the other one is from Sanandaj (a Kurdish city in modern-day Iran). Despite the fact that the two dengbêjs, according to the novel, are from two cities distant from each other, they share a Kurdish musical tradition which is understood and enjoyed by all the listeners in the novel. 62 The symbolism expressed in the scene implies that Kurds have common ways and a shared folklore which they can enjoy irrespective of their geographic location and linguistic differences. 63 Folksongs thus serve as a unifying force extending intelligibility of Kurdish across borders and dialects. As Hutchinson notes, 'cultural nationalists consider the nation as a spontaneous solidarity', and so they aim to create unity among the different strata of society. 64 This is precisely what Hawar attempted to achieve by publishing its materials in Kurdish Sorani and Kurmanci throughout the first 23 issues, utilizing both Arabic and Latin scripts in a bid to bridge linguistic varieties and to undermine differences. 65 Intellectuals' stress on language should be also understood in the context of the Turkish state's ban on references to Kurdish ethnicity, and which naturally extended to speaking and singing in Kurdish in the newly declared republic in 1923. 66 In addition to the official prohibition of speaking Kurdish, it was 'scientifically' subsumed under Turkish or assigned an inferior position. 67 One can find different genres of folksongs in most issues of Hawar, they are subscribed to a 'stranvan' [singer]. In Ronahî, which succeeded Hawar, folksongs are published under a section titled 'strana Kurdmanci' [Kurmanci song]. With Roja Nû, which emerged after Hawar, this section was re-titled as 'Strana Kurdi' [Kurdish song]. The subtle transformation of the section's name indicates a national framing of the material beyond regional dialects.
Interest in folk traditions and music in the region were closely related to language standardization and nation-building. Nearly a decade before the publication of Hawar, interest in folk traditions and music increased in Turkey in the aftermath of the declaration of the republic in 1923. It coincided with the adoption of Latin scripts for Turkish and the efforts of standardizing it. In 1920, the Turkish Ministry of Culture (The Turkish Folklore Society) proposed the first initiative to collect folksongs in Turkey. But the actual collection was not carried out until 1926 when a group from Turkey's music conservatory set out on expedition to collect folksongs. Four other expeditions were conducted between 1927 and 1932. 68 Turkish Aşik minstrel tradition was seen as a source of pure Turkish language. 69 This rings true in how dengbêjî was seen as a repository of Kurdish language, and how oral traditions more generally were considered for linguistic advancement and standardization efforts. It will be difficult to argue that the Bedirkhans were not aware of Turkey's linguistic efforts with reference to music. 70 Nonetheless, such practices index the emergence of a trend that invests in music and oral traditions as a way of consolidating national languages and exalting folk traditions, in search of the soul of a people.
Relatedly, standardization of Kurdish was part of efforts to prove that it is capable of being a language of civilization. As Klein has shown, linguistic endeavours about Kurdish predated Bedirkhans' ideas: By 1919, calls for language reform and development had turned into full-fledged 'plans', which Kurdish intellectuals hoped to put into action. The Kürdistan Teâli Cemiyeti (Society for the Elevation of Kurdistan) revived the Kurdish Society for the Diffusion of Learning (Kürd Tamim-i Maarif Cemiyeti), which had been established before the war, and published a twenty-point plan for national education. 71 It is with Hawar, Ronahî, and Roja Nû that linguistic advancement and ideas about Kurdish language and civilization are presented with more force and materialized more tangibly. It goes without saying that one of the primary goals of these journals was to establish a national language, which will consequently qualify the Kurds as a nation with a distinct language. 72 Just as much as folksongs were seen as containers of 'historic' information, they were also viewed as a repository of Kurdish language and literature. As an article in Hawar stated, folk songs are an archive for Kurdish because 'in one way, it [i.e. a folksong] contains contemporary words, and in another it includes questions and vocabularies that are some hundred years old and which do not exist in the spoken language today, they have been lost'. 73 One of Hawar's primary aims, in addition to publishing materials on Kurdish history and culture, was to introduce and popularize the Latin alphabet Celadet devised for Kurmanci. Folkloric repertoire was seen as an aid in the process, as it already held an appeal thanks to the familiarity of the populations with it. It is worth noting that the designation of Kurdish oral traditions as a form of 'literature' becomes more prominent in this period. Sureya Bedirkhan, for instance, describes oral traditions as 'Littérature Populaire'. 74

History and literature
Hutchinson notes that cultural nationalism holds a 'romantic conception of the nation as a historical community', where intellectuals take a leading role as they consider themselves 'giving authentic voice to a collective historical consciousness', and by rendering the past 'a living experience'. 75 Through Hawar, the Bedirkhans tried to popularize folksongs not only by transcribing them but also by engaging the readers in the collection efforts for two purposes: historicizing and reviving Kurmanci Kurdish language. Concerning 'historicizing' purposes, the Bedirkhans attempted to draw attention to the local history of Kurdish tribes and some socio-political and historical events pertaining to them. A short entry in the twenty-ninth issue captures the conjuncture of literacy, folklore, and language. In the 'readers column' of Hawar's twenty-ninth issue, Mîrza Hişyar calls for the assistance of readers to collect folksongs, while pointing out to their instrumentality for literacy purposes: Our youth who cannot author themselves and yet want to help us, for them there is a deep, wide, and large fountain that never runs out: «folklor», meaning stories, short stories, songs [. . .] our readers can obtain all these from the dengbêjs and story tellers [ In addition to stressing their historical valence, the repertoire of oral traditions is imbued with a creative literary potential that can be realized through transcribing. Thus, transcribing oral narratives inspires literary pursuits and provides a facile path to authorship, as transcriptions would come under the names of collectors. Clearly, then, the turn to transcribing oral traditions is intimately related to literacy in Kurmanci Kurdish and literariness, the ability to produce written works. The appeal lies in the assumed familiarity with the tradition and its narratives, as well as in the assumed ease of access to performers. 73 Hawar, 'Dersxane, ' Hawar, 6 March 1933. 74 Bedr-Khan, 'La Littérature Populaire et Classique Kurde.' 75 Hutchinson, 'Cultural Nationalism,' 75-80. 76 Hawar, 'Stûna Xwendevanan, ' Hawar, 10 June 1941. It is worth noting that the paragraph preceding this section makes the case that not everyone could write or author books.

Two dengbêjs
To understand further the symbolic and political values the Bedirkhan brothers attached to performers of oral traditions, it is significant to draw on a story penned by Kamiran Bedirkhan, titled 'two dengbêjs'. Despite its simplistic nature and a slightly confusing beginning, it is one of the most potent pieces in Hawar on the assumed national symbolisms of oral tradition and their performers, and their potential instrumentality in the Kurdish national struggle. In brief, the short story reflects the expectations of Kurdish intellectuals and their aspirations in unifying the Kurdish historical experience and present life. Two Dengbêjs starts with a colourful description of the charms of a palace, where the oppressor (Zalim) of Qurdistan lives. 77 Two dengbêjs, one young and one old, are on their way to the palace to 'soften the heart of the oppressor' whose tyranny has been growing harsher. When they enter the palace, they see Zalim sitting on the throne like a black cloud. The dengbêjs are portrayed as patriotic persons whose mission is to ease the suffering of the nation and to rise up against oppression. 'Qurdistan' and 'Sinemxan' reflect each other and each stand for the other; Kurdistan is a woman, metaphorically speaking, who is kept in marriage with Zalim by force. It would be an exaggeration to state that Kamiran actively called for the creation of a politically-oriented repertoire, despite the allusion to a notion of politically committed art in this story. The last two sentences narrated in Kamiran's voice could be understood as a commentary and prediction on his part that since the Ottoman Empire have lost many regions over which it had authority, such as the Balkans, it is likely that the current Turkish state may lose authority over Kurdistan as well.
The Bedirkhans attempted to disseminate folksongs by transcribing and publishing them in Hawar. Despite the limited circulation of these periodicals, they had a diverse list of subscribers. Ahmet Akturk showed, for example, how Hawar readers were as diverse as mullahs, imams, merchants, schoolteachers, pharmacists, British and French mandate officials, as well as scientific societies. 79 The widespread non-knowledge of the Latin alphabet meant that the Bedirkhans assumed the reading experience would be a collective one. That is, subscribers were not lay individuals, but figures with the ability 77 Hawar used the letter 'Q' for 'K' in its first 26 issues, before it switched to using 'K'. 78 Qamiran Bedir-xan, 'Two Dengbêjs (Du Dengbêj), ' Hawar, 8 May 1933. 79 Akturk, 'Imagining Kurdish Identity in Mandatory Syria: Finding a Nation in Exile,' 107-8. to attract crowds for whom they would communicate the content. 80 The brothers' literacy project was simultaneously collective and interactive requiring tutoring efforts on part of some leading figures for the rest of the community. Of course, Hawar provided grammatical instructions and linguistic explanations for their readers without assuming them to have a prior knowledge.
Another way the Bedirkhans sought to popularize folksongs was by informing their readers about the few radio stations that broadcast Kurdish music. By the 1940s, radio broadcasting was popular and in use by the majority of Middle Eastern countries. Despite the states' strict monopoly of them in the context of the Middle East, Kurdish activists managed to exploit their potential in spreading nationalist ideas to some extent. The state's strong monopoly over the media in Turkey meant no Kurdish materials was allowed to be aired easily. Yet Kurdish music found a few outlets in the media and broadcasting stations of the neighbouring countries, namely Armenia (1940s-1950s) and Iraq. In its twenty-seventh issue, Hawar draws the attention of its readers to radio stations in Baghdad and Beirut and the fact that they presented some of their materials in Kurdish. 81 In fact, Kamiran Bedirkhan worked for a while in Radio du Levant in Lebanon in the 1940s as a Kurdish speaker. 82 An announcement in the same issue reads: We have heard some Kurdish music broadcast by a radio station in Caucasia several times, but we could not identify it yet. If the readers know the radio station and its frequencies, let us know and we would happily publish the information for our readers. 83 Broadcasting traditional music would become an essential part of promoting ethnic and national awareness throughout the second half of the twentieth century, as radio broadcasting became more established in the Middle East. Of special significance are Radio Yerevan and Radio Baghdad. Traditional Kurdish musical materials constituted a large amount of the materials broadcasted in the Kurdish sections of each station. 84 According to McDowell, traditional Kurdish music broadcasted by Radio Yerevan played an active role in reviving and strengthening a sense of identity among the Kurds in 1950s and 1960s. 85 Radio Yerevan broadcasted Kurdish materials in early 1930s. By 1955, it had a Kurdish section that presented news in Kurdish and aired Kurdish music, establishing itself as a hub for Kurdish folksingers in those years. Unable to sing in Turkey, Kurdish performers would make the journey to Yerevan to sing at the station. Radio Yerevan achieved high popularity among the Kurds of Turkey throughout 1950s and 1960s largely because of the music it aired. Its signal could be received not only in the Kurdishinhabited areas in Turkey, but also some parts of Kurdish Syria and Iraq. The station's appeal among the Kurdish population was due to Kurdish folksongs along with Anatolian-style music, with musical instruments familiar to listeners. It is estimated that more than 8,000 songs have been recorded at the station over the years, making it one of the largest archives of Kurdish music. 86

Conclusion
Drawing on John Hutchison's notion of cultural nationalism, and more generally, on Anthony Smith's ideas of cultural and ethnic nationalisms, this article argues that Kurdish intellectuals of early twentieth century have tried to popularize, historicize and archive Kurdish oral traditions. The article places these pursuits within the regional context of the Middle East at the turn of the twentieth century, where political investment in the culture category had intensified. It sheds light on the politics of culture within the Kurdish nationalist movement, with special reference to oral traditions, or what is nowadays referred to by the umbrella term dengbêjî, which continues to occupy a prominent place in the Kurdish political rhetoric in Turkish Kurdistan. 87 The Bedirkhans' efforts to achieve a kind of 'spontaneous solidarity' among the Kurds by stressing a common culture and underscoring its musicality did not go far, not for the lack of their determination or ambition, but rather because of the lack of means to create it, even on a small scale. Despite activity for more than thirty years, the influence of Kurdish intellectuals did not go beyond a group of literate circles. It would be an overstatement to suggest that Hawar or any other Kurdish periodical that followed in that period managed to either reach or achieve a wide circulation. 88 In the 1920s as in the 1960s, literacy in Kurdish was largely limited to a handful of circles. Despite the novelty of the invented Latin-based alphabet, significant political restraints towards the Kurds in French-mandate Syria and the geographical distance from their target audiences, not to mention limited resources, the Bedirkhans were still able to lay down an ideological foundation that became critical to the successive Kurdish political movements in Turkey and their recent cultural politics. This article has aimed at widening our understanding of the potential of oral traditions in crafting national selves in the formative and early years of Kurdish nationalism. It has drawn its analyses from Hawar, Ronahî, and Roja Nû, even though the latter two did not feature as directly as Hawar in this piece. The three periodicals serve as a productive commentary on Kurdish political conditions and aspirations in this period. The Bedirkhans took centre stage in the analysis as they were the most prominent advocates of Kurdish nationhood at the time and played an important role in its development.
This article has situated Kurdish cultural activism in that time within a broader movement or trend in the region that endeavoured cultural pursuits as one of the primary bases for mobilizing, legitimizing, and crafting national selves. The Bedirkhans' approaches to oral traditions in French-mandate Syria mirrored Soviet scholarship on the Kurds and Turkish state cultural policies (1920s-1940s) in that they both were both motivated by interest in language, ethnic identity, and history. In Turkey, the state interest in Turkish folk music took place in a context of linguistic reforms, modernization, identity politics, and nation-building.
Some of the concerns that motivated the Bedirkhans such as linguistic advancement, ethnic difference, and contesting state's historical narrative are manifest in the rhetoric of the Kurdish movement in Turkey today. The concerns, despite nuanced ideological underpinnings, remain similar as the political climate and conditions render Kurds' cultural expression in Turkey limited, restricted, and in certain cases, still forbidden. Given the highly contested field of culture in Turkey between the Kurds and the state, it comes as little surprise that the Kurdish political movement would devote much attention to the cultural element since the 1980s. 89 Undermining ethnic diversity and cultural heterogeneity has been an element of Turkish modernity and nationalism in the twentieth century. It is within such framework that the cultural field is present, and it continues to be a significant site of activism and contestation, one that needs to be saved, revived, and asserted. For the Kurdish political movements in Turkey, the cultural remains by and large very closely connected with the political. The renewed interest unfolding in the cultural category can be seen as a continuation of earlier approaches and understandings underpinning cultural expression.