From Şükrü Sekban to Hasip Kaplan: A History of Turkification in Kurdish Politics

Rastinews —

Former Şırnak MP Hasip Kaplan's post of a photo of Turkey's national women's volleyball team celebrating its European championship with Turkish flags, captioned with three prayer-hands emojis, has triggered a legitimate debate in Kurdish public opinion.

This isn't about the women volleyball players' achievement. Nor is it right to equate athletes with crimes committed by the state. But the symbol a politician chooses is never separate from his past or from the memory of the people he represents.

Especially when that politician spent years declaring, "Kurds exist, Kurdistan exists."

Especially when he vowed to hold someone accountable for Roboski.

Especially when he defended the Kurds' right to self-determination.

Three prayer emojis are no longer just three emojis. They mark a political transformation — or rather, a deepening loss of memory within Kurdish politics.

The scene recalls one of the most contested figures in Kurdish history: Dr. Şükrü Mehmed Sekban.

From Xoybûn to Turkish nationalism

Sekban was no outsider to the Kurdish political struggle. He was active in the Kurdish Society for Mutual Aid and Progress, the Society for the Rise of Kurdistan, and in the founding of Xoybûn.

He argued that Kurds were a distinct people, that Kurdish should be recognized as an official language, and that Kurds should gain political rights in their own territory.

In a 1923 letter addressed to Mustafa Kemal titled "What Do the Kurds Want from the Turks?", he proposed an order in which Kurds could live alongside Turks while preserving their own identity. Ankara never gave him the answer he hoped for.

After the Sheikh Said rebellion was crushed, key figures in Kurdish politics moved to Syria and Lebanon. Celadet and Kamuran Bedirxan, Memduh Selim, İhsan Nuri and other Kurdish intellectuals founded Xoybûn in Bhamdoun, Lebanon, in 1927.

Sekban was among that founding circle.

Xoybûn organized the Ararat rebellion both politically and militarily, sending İhsan Nuri to the region. But once the uprising was suppressed, Sekban reversed the political line he had spent years defending.

According to accounts passed down by Kurdish historians and writers, and accepted in Kurdish political memory, Sekban wrote to Mustafa Kemal seeking permission to return to Turkey. Mustafa Kemal is said to have made the return conditional: Sekban would have to write a work championing the Turks and arguing that Kurds and Turks shared the same origin.

Sekban duly published the pamphlet La Question Kurde — The Kurdish Question in 1933.

Where he had once argued that Kurds were a separate people, he now claimed Kurds and Turks shared a common origin, and opposed any separate Kurdish political struggle.

This was more than a change of mind. An intellectual who had defended Kurdish identity and Kurdish political rights renounced his own past and took shelter in the theses of Turkish nationalism.

His pamphlet was later cited as one of the foundations for the claim that "Kurds are Turks." The pen of a Kurdish intellectual from Xoybûn's founding circle came to be used to deny the Kurds themselves.

There is no excusing what Sekban did.

Exile, defeat, illness, or the wish to go home cannot justify a man renouncing the identity of the people he had defended for years, drifting into Turkish nationalism, and surrendering his own pen to a politics of denial.

A person may want to return to his country. But that should never come at the price of putting his own people's existence up for debate.

From Roboski to three prayers

Hasip Kaplan, too, is no ordinary social media user.

He served as an MP for Şırnak. He built his political career within the DTP, BDP and HDP. From the floor of parliament, he spoke up for the existence of Kurds, of Kurdistan and of the Kurdish language. He argued that the Kurdish question was a national issue that transcended any single party or organization.

Kaplan was also among those who pursued the Roboski case.

On December 28, 2011, Turkish warplanes bombed Roboski, killing 34 Kurdish civilians. Many of the dead were children. Relatives had to carry the mutilated bodies down the mountain on the backs of mules.

At the time, Kaplan said the case would be taken to international courts, declaring: "Whoever is responsible will be tried, even if it's the president."

Today, that same Kaplan posts three prayer emojis beneath a photo of the national team dominated by Turkish flags:

🙏🙏🙏

Of course, anyone can celebrate a sporting achievement. But it is fair to ask what symbols, and in what political climate, a man who spent years doing politics in the name of the Kurdish people chose to celebrate a Turkish national triumph.

Because the photo holds the Turkish flag, the Turkish national team, and Turkish national euphoria. Of Kurdistan, of Roboski, of the wounded memory of the Kurdish people — the things that built Kaplan's political identity — there is no trace at all.

That is precisely the objection.

A lawyer who once demanded accountability for Roboski — what account does he now consider settled?

A politician who once said "Kurdistan exists" — what political gain now has him praying before the Turkish national narrative?

What has Kurdish politics gained?

As the "Terror-Free Turkey" process is being discussed, Kurdish politics is visibly accelerating its Turkification.

Yet Kurdish has not been accepted as a language of education. The constitutional status of the Kurds remains unrecognized. The trustee regime has not been fully dismantled. No one has been held accountable for Roboski. The fate of the disappeared has not been disclosed. Mass graves remain unopened. Cases of families denied their relatives' bodies remain unresolved.

With the Kurdish people's wounds still open, why the rush?

What right have Kurds won that makes some Kurdish politicians so eager to appear in the state's victory photo?

What justice has been achieved, that the past is being forgotten?

What reckoning has taken place, that Kurds are expected to set their memory aside?

This is not peace.

Peace does not mean Kurds dissolving into Turkishness. Silencing the guns does not mean Kurds giving up their language, their identity and their historical rights. Supporting coexistence in Turkey does not require denying Kurdistan.

A democratic solution means building an order in which different peoples can live with equal rights — not attaching oneself to the national identity of the stronger side.

Without recognition of the Kurds' collective rights, without a reckoning with the past, and without justice, this display of conformity is not a solution — it is an erosion of identity.

Why do three emojis carry so much weight?

The pamphlet Şükrü Sekban published in 1933 marked one of the great ruptures in Kurdish political history. A man who once defended Kurdish rights put his own pen at the service of a thesis meant to deny the Kurds.

Hasip Kaplan's post is certainly not a book. But its symbolic weight cannot be dismissed.

Sekban's pamphlet gave Turkish nationalists grounds to say, "Even someone from Xoybûn's own circle admitted the Kurds are Turks."

Kaplan's three emojis send the state a different message:

You can fold Kurdish politicians into the Turkish national narrative without ever recognizing the Kurds' language, status or historical rights.

That is where the real danger lies.

Hasip Kaplan is free to decide for himself what to celebrate. But the Kurdish people also have the right to question the transformation of a man who spent years doing politics in their name.

Someone who once said "Kurds exist, Kurdistan exists" — why is he now praying before Turkish flags?

A lawyer who once demanded accountability for Roboski — what account does he now consider closed?

Şükrü Sekban's transformation took an entire pamphlet to contain.

Hasip Kaplan's fit into three emojis.

Sometimes it doesn't take a long book to drift away from a people's memory.

Three symbols suffice:

🙏🙏🙏