The dominant theme of works on the modern history of the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, where they form a significant portion of the population, is the struggle for self-determination. It has absorbed the attention of scholars of numerous nationalities. English, French, German, Dutch, American, Turkish, and Russian historians, besides Kurds, have investigated the so-called “Kurdish Question,” and they have done so from a variety of perspectives. Some have emphasized the development, or, more often, the lack of development of a Kurdish sense of national identity and have pointed to the resulting unfortunate consequences for political mobilization; others have focused on the policies toward the Kurds carried on by the four above-mentioned post-World War I states, which were themselves engaged in complex processes of modernization and the affirmation of nation-states; still other historians have accorded the great powers, mainly Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, a decisive role in determining the fate of the Kurds. All the works included in the brief survey that follows were published after 1950. This is not by chance; the sustained preoccupation of historians with the Kurds has flourished only in the past sixty or seventy years. Nonetheless, several generations of scholars have elucidated many fundamental issues of modern Kurdish history and, in so doing, they have brought the Kurds and their attempts to reinforce their sense of identity and achieve political autonomy and independence into the mainstream of the international scholarly discourse on nationalism and nation-building.

Of the general surveys of modern Kurdish history, perhaps the most comprehensive guide is David McDowall’s A Modern History of the Kurds (London, 1996). To begin with, he provides a relatively short account of Kurdish history before World War I, mainly of the 19th century, to serve as a general context, since he is mainly concerned with tracing the efforts of the Kurds to gain autonomy or independence and reach some level of cohesion in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran between the end of the war and the early 1990s. He is especially interested in following the evolution of political parties, and in his final chapter he analyzes the nature and aims of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and its efforts to lead a mass movement for self-determination in contrast to other parties, notably the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Iraq and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), which, he shows, were dominated from the top by elites. He is sympathetic overall to the Kurdish cause, but he is critical of individuals, especially those leaders who refused to put aside party rivalries and personal ambitions in the interest of achieving national goals. He bases his case on a careful reading of the secondary literature, mainly in English, and uses to advantage unpublished sources, in particular, materials from the British Foreign Office, and for the later 20th century, he enriches his narrative with interviews with participants in various parties and groups.

Two other works of a general character may be noted here. Although the classic presentation of Kurdish society by Basile Nikitine, Les Kurdes: Étude sociologique et historique (Paris, 1975, a reprint of the 1956 edition), does not have self-determination as its primary focus, it renders the indispensable service of placing the national movement and national sentiment within the broad framework of Kurdish social and cultural development. Little escapes Nikitine’s scrutiny, as he melds family, tribe, customs and way of life, religion, and literature into a comprehensive portrait of a people. A translation and adaptation of Nikitine’s work was published in Russian by R. Oganian, ed., Kurdy v plameni voĭny (The Kurds in the Flames of War; Moscow, 2005). The final chapter extends Nikitine’s coverage by offering an assessment of the Kurdish question since the 1960s and an evaluation of the actions of the PKK. Perhaps it is this chapter that suggested the change of title from Nikitine’s work.

The study of Kurdish politics and society by Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State (London, 1992), is fundamental for an understanding of the course of modern Kurdish history. He describes succinctly the chief determinants of social development and the condition of the national movement in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey from the 1960s to the 1980s, but his main concerns are with other matters: tribal and non-tribal Kurds (see KURDISH TRIBES) and whether nomads and peasants can be considered members of the same nation; the relationship of tribes to the state, that is, the Ottoman Empire, and whether the Kurdish emirates of the early 19th century represented incipient state formations; and Kurdish religious organizations and their leaders and how they may have affected broader trends of political and social development. He then shows how these various strands converged in the rebellion led by Sheikh Said in 1925. His book, in essence, deals with loyalties, traditional and contemporary, and suggests how they are related to nation, abstract and real. In a wide-ranging series of essays, Mullahs, Sufis and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society (Istanbul, 2000), he has gone deeply into issues of identity and religion. Particularly illuminating are pieces on the relationship between the Kurds and Islam and on the influence of the Sufi orders in rural Anatolia in the early decades of the 20th century. Similar themes preoccupy authors in a collection of essays edited by Martin van Bruinessen and Joyce Blau, Islam des Kurdes (Paris, 1998).

General works on Kurdish nationalism as a whole are relatively abundant, and most of the accounts cited here cover Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Of much value as an introduction to the matter, at least up to the mid-1940s, is Wadie Jwaideh, The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development (Syracuse, N.Y., 2006). The text is a doctoral dissertation submitted in 1960, and thus it lacks the historical perspective that has enabled later analysts to discern long-term 20th-century trends and judge the accomplishments and failures of organizations and individuals. Nonetheless, it is a remarkable and, in many respects, pioneering work. Jwaideh uses materials in European languages, mainly English and French, and in Arabic, Kurdish, and Persian to create a revealing comparative study of Kurdish nationalism in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. He aims, in particular, to explain why the Kurds were unable to formulate and carry out a coherent plan of action to achieve national goals. He draws our attention, as many others do, to the generally negative effects of the involvement in Kurdish affairs of the powers outside the region, and he emphasizes the role of Great Britain in Iraq and of the Soviet Union, especially during and just after World War II, in Iran. But whatever influence outsiders may have exerted on Kurdish initiatives, he argues that Kurdish leaders themselves were ultimately responsible for the internal political disarray that prevented the Kurds from forming a united front against their opponents. Another general survey covering the period from before World War I to 1976 in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran is Chris Kutschera’s Le Mouvement national kurde (Paris, 1979). Well-informed, he describes events and trends chronologically and in detail. Amir Hassanpour in Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918-1985 (San Francisco, 1992) takes a somewhat different approach to Kurdish nationalism. He examines in detail the crucial role of language and culture in sustaining the Kurds’ struggle to affirm their identity in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Chapters on state language policies, book publishing, the newspaper press, and education reveal the formidable obstacles to self-determination they faced and at the same time suggest the strength of their sense of community.

On the origins of Kurdish national movements and the Kurds’ own perception of their identity and historical role three works, each treating the matter in a specific way, deserve mention here. In a series of articles in Kurdish Ethno-Nationalism versus Nation-Building States (Istanbul, 2000) Martin van Bruinessen deals with fundamental issues of Kurdish nationalism. He is concerned, in the first instance, with what precisely constituted Kurdishness for Kurds, and to arrive at an answer he examines how they dealt with diversity among themselves and what their relation to fellow Muslims—Turks and Alevis—might be. He reveals the complexity of Kurdish society in articles devoted to the religious, tribal, and ethno-national aspects of Kurdish uprisings in Iran. Here (and elsewhere) he makes clear the inherent contradictions between a largely tribal society without a tradition of the nation-state and the Iranian elites, who embodied the ambition to create such a state. He leaves no doubt either about the prevalence of violence as a fact of life in Kurdish society, as exemplified in Turkey by such events as the suppression of the Dersim revolt in 1937-38 and the guerrilla war carried on by the PKK in the 1990s. Another work of note on Kurdish identity and its early manifestations is Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism (ed. Abbas Vali, Costa Mesa, Calif., 2003). In it five specialists investigate the intellectual sources of Kurdish self-identity and expressions of it in modern nationalist undertakings. Hamit Bozarslan, Martin van Bruinessen, Abbas Vali, and Amir Hassanpour emphasize, in particular, the value of Kurdish historical and literary writings for the construction of a national identity between the 16th century and the 1980s. Against this background Bozarslan analyzes the changing relationship of the Kurds to the Ottoman and Republican Turkish state in the years immediately after World War I. An original approach to these matters is Maria T. O’Shea’s Trapped between the Map and Reality (New York, 2004). Drawing on the data of anthropology and geography as well as history, she measures the contradiction between the Kurds’ growing intellectual and cultural self-awareness in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, on the one hand, and their inability to give political life to the geographic concept “Kurdistan,” on the other.

Four other volumes probe the inner workings of the Kurdish national movements in the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic, Iraq, and Iran in the 20th century. The studies in Les Kurdes et le Kurdistan: La Question nationale kurde au Proche-Orient (ed. Gérard Chaliand, Paris, 1978), provide a solid and sobering foundation for further study: Kendal Nezan traces the process of Kurdish nation-building in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey from the early 19th century to the 1970s, emphasizing the generally oppressive environment in which it developed, the hostile attitude of middle-class Turkish political parties toward the Kurds, and the divisions among the Kurds themselves; A. R. Ghassemlou, for many years leader of the KDPI, provides an ample description of Kurdish social and historical development in Iran as a necessary context within which to explain the course taken by the Kurdish movement there and judge the nature of the political forces arrayed for and against it; Ismet Chériffe Vanly, a prominent Kurdish exile leader, analyzes the political and armed struggle of the Kurds for autonomy in Iraq and the policy of the Iraqi government toward them between 1961 and 1975. He spares neither side from sharp criticism of their objectives and tactics. All three authors clearly support the Kurdish cause, and their perspectives and direct involvement in events make their accounts essential reading. Hassan Arfa, chief of staff of the Iranian army, 1944-46, and ambassador to Turkey, 1958-61, also draws on his own experience in The Kurds: An Historical and Political Study (London, 1996). He judges men and events based on an insider’s view, and he supplies information which is not readily available elsewhere. His assessments of the nature of Kurdish nationalism and of the contradictory play of tribal and other local aspirations that thwarted united action and his estimates of the strength of the forces opposed to Kurdish independence are balanced. They lead him to conclude in 1965 that even if Turkey, Iraq, and Iran denied the reality of a Kurdish question, a Kurdish problem nonetheless existed. Soviet specialists in Kurdish affairs survey the evolution of the Kurdish national movement in Kurdskie dvizhenie v novoe i nove ĭ shee vremya (The Kurdish Movement in the Modern and Contemporary Era; ed. M. A. Gasratian, Moscow, 1987). They focus on issues facing the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran from the late 19th century up to the 1980s, and besides political ideologies and parties they trace the changes in Kurdish society and economic life. They follow these events against the background of tribal revolts and earlier organizing and educational activities by mainly middle-class intellectuals, and they draw on a wide variety of published sources and other works in Russian and on the Russian, Western European, and Near Eastern newspaper press. The essays in Kurdish Awakening: Nation Building in a Fragmented Homeland (ed. Ofra Bengio, Austin, 2014) examine diverse aspects of Kurdish identity and national aspirations in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Noteworthy are studies of Kurdish integration in Iraq and of the emergence of an Iraqi-Kurdish identity as Kurdish novelists write in Arabic, and analyses of the place of women in Kurdish nation building in Turkey, of the rivalries among the generations in the Kurdish movement in Syria, of the maintenance of a Kurdish identity in Iran, and, more generally, of the competing goals of the national movement and tribalism. A survey that stands by itself as a unique exposition of Kurdishness and the Kurdish historical destiny is Susan Meiselas, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (2nd ed., Chicago, 2008). She has gathered a magnificent collection of photographs and contemporary newspaper accounts of events in Kurdistan between World War I and 2004. The ample accompanying commentary and captions form a connected and moving account of the Kurds’ struggle for self-determination.

The general works mentioned above indeed concern themselves with the international dimensions of the Kurdish movements as well as their internal course. But the Russian historian M. S. Lazarev, in particular, views the process of Kurdish nation-building between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second from the perspective of the great powers, primarily Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, in Imperializm i kurdskiĭ vopros (1917-1923) (Imperialism and the Kurdish Question; Moscow, 1978) and Kurdistan i kurdskiĭ vopros (1923-1945) (Kurdistan and the Kurdish Question; Moscow, 2005). He amply demonstrates, on the basis of the extensive use of Soviet archive materials and a rich bibliography of works in European languages, especially Russian, that the circumstances of the time worked against attempts by the Kurds to achieve independence in any of the territories they inhabited. Among the reasons he cites are: the determination of the great powers to pursue their own interests in the region and the slight regard they showed for Kurdish aspirations; the rejection by the governments of the region of the Kurds’ right to self-determination as contrary to their own ideal of the nation-state; and the very nature of Kurdish society, which impeded the concentration of material resources and the forging of spiritual unity on behalf of the national cause.

On the Kurdish national movement, in general, and the striving for self-identity, in particular, Hamit Bozarslan places the Kurds within the context of major events in the region in La Question kurde: États et minorités au Moyen-Orient (Paris, 1997). He seeks to understand for himself and to explain to others why the governments of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria treated their Kurdish minorities as objects sometimes of coercion and at other times of assimilation. He wonders why violence is so fundamental an aspect of the Kurdish question, not only in the style practiced by the four countries, but also in the structure of Kurdish society itself. His discussions of these matters illuminate the relationship generally between political majorities and minorities. David Romano, in The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity (Cambridge, U.K., 2006), asks similar questions. He uses the Kurds to test hypotheses about the nature of national movements in the 20th century and accords the Kurdish case a prominent place in his discussion of the theoretical literature on nation and nationalism. The studies in The Kurdish Question and the 2003 Iraqi War (ed. Mohammed M. A. Ahmed and Michael M. Gunter, Costa Mesa, Calif., 2005) focus on recent developments in Kurdish national movements in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Of particular interest are their conclusions about how events in one country affected the fortunes of the Kurds in the other two. Yet, it is also clear that formidable impediments both inside and outside the Kurdish communities prevented united Kurdish action.

Works on the Kurdish national movement in Anatolia in the time of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic focus on the activities of upper-class elites and the well-educated between the 1890s and 1930s. Gunter Behrendt, in Nationalismus in Kurdistan: Vorgeschichte, Entstehungsbedingungen und erste Manifestationen bis 1925 (Hamburg, 1993), devotes ample attention to the 19th-century background. He describes changes in the nature and evolution of Kurdish tribal society and the growing power of the sheikhs, notably of Ubaydullah (ʿObayd-Allāh), the leader of the great uprising of 1880. He then covers the rise of Kurdish, mainly urban, elites and their struggles, first with the Ottoman state and then with the Turkish Republican government under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and he ends his account with the failed uprising led by Sheikh Said in 1925. His survey of these events leads him to the conclusion, shared by others, that a sense of Kurdish national identity did not lie at the heart of Kurdish nationalism, but rather that the emergence of Kurdish nationalism was the expression of a growing desire to create such an identity. It is thus not surprising, he thinks, that Kurdish nationalism arose far from Kurdistan, in Istanbul. Robert Olson’s The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925 (Austin, 1989) covers similar ground. Both authors provide rich material for further debate about the genesis and characteristics of modern Kurdish nationalism. They emphasize the essentially tribal and peasant nature of Kurdish society and the relative insignificance of the middle class, and they point to the contradictions between the traditional rural leadership and the educated and Europeanized urban elites. They suggest that the conflict arising over the Kurds’ aspirations to nationhood and the Turkish nationalists’ determination to create a Turkish national state was almost inevitable. Their surveys are in many ways invaluable, but they do not take into account the theoretical literature on nation and nationalism, and thus they do not link the Kurdish case to the general phenomenon of modern nation-building, an undertaking that would illuminate the distinctiveness of the Kurdish movement. In Kurdskaya problema v Turtsii (1986-1995) (The Kurdish Problem in Turkey; Moscow, 2001) M. A. Gasratian undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of the situation of the Kurds in Turkey. He examines the political parties of the Kurds, including the radical PKK, and offers a persuasive explanation for their lack of unity; he analyzes the foundations of the legal Kurdish opposition and condemns the repressive measures of Turkish authorities; and he emphasizes the contributions of Kurdish communities in Western Europe to the Kurdish cause in Turkey and places their activities within the general framework of Western policies toward the Kurdish question. Aliza Marcus in Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York, 2007) provides a thorough and sympathetic, but not uncritical account of the armed struggle of the PKK to liberate the Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey. Besides an extensive bibliography of published works, she uses numerous interviews with members of the PKK, which constitute a unique source and enhance the originality of her approach. In the same critical spirit she provides and nuanced portrait of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Many authors analyze the generation of Kurdish elites that emerged in the two decades preceding the outbreak of World War I. A useful introduction is Hakan Özoğlu’s Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State (Albany, N.Y., 2004). It provides substantial historical background on the Kurds’ situation in the Ottoman Empire and then examines the social and intellectual origins, the organizations, and the aspirations of their elites. A significant contribution to the group portrait of this generation and the genesis of the Kurdish question in the Ottoman Empire is Djene Rhys Bajalan’s Jön Kürtler: Birinci Dünya Savası’ndan önce Kürt Haraketi (1898-1914) (Istanbul, 2010). He links Kurdish nationalism to the general course of nation formation of the period and assigns it a distinct place in the awakening of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. His description of Kurdish elites and their associations and, especially, their relations with the Young Turks is succinct and thorough. Another investigation of great value in understanding these matters is Dzhalile Dzhalil (Celilê Celil), Iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskoĭ zhizni Kurdov v kontse XIX-nachale XX vv. (On the History of the Social-Political Life of the Kurds at the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Century; St. Petersburg, 1997; tr. as Kürt Aydınlanması, Istanbul, 2000). Its analysis of Kurdish political and educational organizations and newspapers offers crucial insights into the world of ideas of the Kurdish elite and, hence, the nature of the national movement. Naci Kuttay describes in detail the connection of mainly upper-class Kurds to the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress in Ittihat-Terakki ve Kürtler (Istanbul, 1991). It shows how essential this association was for the intellectual formation of those Kurds who led the early national movement. On prominent members of the Kurdish elite during the period the works of Malmîsanij are invaluable: on the first Kurdish newspaper and its editor: Abdurrahman Bedırhan ve İlk Kürt Gazetesi Kurdistan (Spånga, Sweden, 1992); on the most prominent Kurdish family engaged in the early national movement, the Badrkhans: Cızira Botanlı Bedırhaniler (Istanbul, 2000); on an early supporter of the Committee of Union and Progress: Kürt Milliyetçiliği ve Dr. Abdullah Cevdet (Uppsala, 1986); on Said-i Nursi, a mullah and a moderate who promoted Kurdish social and cultural causes: Said-i Nursi ve Kürt Sorunu (Uppsala, 1991); and on the first legal Kurdish student organization, which functioned in Istanbul with branches in the provinces between 1912-22: Kürt Talebe-Hêvî Cemiyeti (Istanbul, 2002). Malmîsanij has also investigated the relations between the central Kurdish organizations in Istanbul and elites in other cities in Yirminci Yüzyilin Başında Diyarbekir’de Kürt Ulusçuluğu (1900-1920) (Istanbul, 2010). He suggests that there was closer coordination between the center and the provinces than historians have generally recognized.

On the Kurdish movement in Iraq between World War I and the first Gulf War in 1991 the general works mentioned earlier contain solid overviews. Of more specialized works, C. J. Edmonds’s Kurds, Turks, and Arabs; Politics, Travel, and Research in North-Eastern Iraq, 1919-1925 (London, 1957) is a unique source of information, part memoir and part commentary. He draws on his own first-hand knowledge of Iraq and the Kurds gained from his years as an official in the British administration of Iraq and later as an adviser to the Iraqi government. His exposition of the evolving policy of the British and of their attempts to organize the administration of Iraq, especially their dealings with Sheikh Mahmud Barzinji, and his account of his participation in the Mosul Commission are indispensable for understanding the course of events. Of much value also is Kurdistan during the First World War (London, 1994) by the Kurdish historian Kamal Madhar Ahmad. In this well-documented, balanced account he examines the efforts of the great powers, notably Great Britain, Germany, and Russia, to gain predominance in Mesopotamia and shows clearly how at the end of the war the British and other victors largely ignored Kurdish interests, despite earlier promises about an independent homeland. Sh. K. Mgoi, Kurdskiĭ natsional’nyĭ vopros v Irake v noveishee vremya (The Kurdish National Question in Iraq in Most Recent Times; Moscow, 1991) surveys the history of the Kurds from World War I to the so-called Declaration of 11 March 1970 by Saddam Husain granting the Kurds extensive autonomy. Drawing on Soviet archive sources, he describes the struggle for Kurdish autonomy as an aspect of the democratization of political life in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. He views matters from a Marxist-Leninist perspective and is thus critical of the role of the “imperialist powers,” that is, the West, and of the “bourgeois-chauvinist” forces in Iraq. By contrast, he finds the actions of the Soviet Union positive, and he strongly sympathizes with national-democratic elements, that is, the left, among the Kurds and Iraqis, notably the Iraq Communist Party. Complementing Mgoi’s work in some ways and offering a different perspective in other ways is Sa’ad Jawad’s Iraq and the Kurdish Question, 1958-1970 (London, 1981). He covers the main events of this critical period in Kurdish-Iraqi relations between the overthrow of the monarchy and the Declaration of 1970, but his viewpoint is primarily Iraqi rather than Kurdish. He thus treats the Kurdish question as an aspect of Iraqi politics and can discern no solution to the dilemma that would allow the Kurds to separate from Iraq. Another work that views the Kurdish movement from an Iraqi perspective is Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (3rd ed., Cambridge, U.K., 2007). The Kurds are only one of many issues that concern him, but his approach to Kurdish-Iraqi relations is well-informed and balanced. Dler Khamad, Natsional’no-osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie v irakskom Kurdistane (1975-1991 gg.) (The National-Liberation Movement in Iraqi Kurdistan; St. Petersburg, 1999) elucidates political maneuverings and divisions within the Kurdish leadership.

On the Kurds in Iran, besides the general works already noted, O. I. Zhigalina makes a comprehensive investigation of the Kurdish movement in Iran based primarily on Soviet archive sources and an extensive bibliography of published materials in Russian in Natsional’noe dvizhenie Kurdov v Irane (1918-1947) (The National Movement of the Kurds in Iran; Moscow, 1988). William Eagleton, an American foreign service officer, gives a first-hand account of the brief existence of the Republic of Mahābād in Iran in The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London, 1963). Of particular importance are his observations on the involvement of the Barzanis and the turns in Soviet policy and his conclusions about the fate of the Republic being decided largely by great-power ambitions in the region.

Several other kinds of works may also be mentioned here. An invaluable reference work is Michael M. Gunter’s Historical Dictionary of the Kurds (Lanham, Maryland, 2004). Besides the dictionary proper of persons, places, and institutions, it contains a fifty-page bibliography of works in English on all aspects of Kurdish life. A history and bibliography of the Kurdish press by Malmîsanij and Mahmûd Lewendi, Li Kurdistana Bakur û li Tirkiyê Rojnamegeriya Kurdî (1908-1992) (Kurdish Journalism in North Kurdistan and in Turkey; vol. I, 2nd ed., Ankara, 1992; vol. II, Stockholm, 1992), is an indispensable instrument for exploring Kurdish political, intellectual, and cultural history. The authors have included many local and ephemeral publications. A periodical, The Journal of Kurdish Studies (ed. Keith Hitchins, Joyce Blau, and Christine Allison, six issues published during 1995-2008 in Louvain, Belgium), published new work on the history, society, and culture of the Kurds of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

The works mentioned in the preceding pages, taken together, provide a valuable account of the Kurdish national movement and offer precious insights into the origins and nature of Kurdish self-identity. Much remains to be done, as is usual in history and related disciplines, in order to deepen our understanding of the Kurdish phenomenon. Among the areas where additional research would yield fruitful results, especially for the period after World War I, the following may be mentioned: scholarly biographies of the leading figures of the Kurdish movement; studies of the Kurdish newspaper press (see Kurds. Kurdish Media Culture), of its role in various political and social situations, and of the editors and writers who gave it life; an analysis of literary works and their authors from the perspective of political, social, and intellectual movements to see how they reflect national and local identities and reveal the spirit of the times; the role of women in the national movement and in Kurdish society in general; efforts by Kurdish leaders to promote economic development and organize a Kurdish “national economy”; and intellectual influences from Europe and the Middle East among the Kurds. Of great value, too, would be the study of Kurdish nation-building in comparison with similar movements elsewhere and the use of the Kurdish case in general theoretical discussions of the origins and nature of the modern nation and nationalism.