Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde: The Kurdish Parliamentarian Who Built the First Institutions of a Nation (1878–1933)

In the dying decades of the Ottoman Empire, when the Kurdish people were beginning to develop the political consciousness that would eventually coalesce into a national movement, a small group of educated Kurdish men in the cities of the empire took on the difficult work of building the institutions through which that consciousness could find expression. They founded journals, established societies, sat in parliament, and wrote manifestos — doing the unglamorous, essential work of cultural and political organisation that precedes every national awakening. Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde was one of these men.

Born in Diyarbakır in 1878 into a prominent Kurdish family that had long been part of the city’s commercial and intellectual elite, he became one of the leading Kurdish political figures of the late Ottoman period. He served in the Ottoman parliament. He was a founding member of the Kurdish cultural organisations that were among the first to articulate Kurdish identity in institutional form. He lived through the collapse of the empire, the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish War of Independence, and the establishment of the Republic — and died in 1933, having watched the political window for Kurdish self-expression close as definitively as any window in modern Kurdish history.

His story is the story of a generation: Kurdish intellectuals who believed, in the final years of the empire, that the political conditions for Kurdish cultural and political expression were finally opening — and who lived to see that belief shattered by the specific form that Turkish nationalism took when it came to power.

Table of Contents

1. Part 1: Diyarbakır and the Kurdish Urban Elite

2. Part 2: The Kurdish Cultural Awakening in Istanbul

3. Part 3: Member of Parliament

4. Part 4: War and the Armenian Genocide

5. Part 5: The Republic and Its Consequences

6. Part 6: Legacy

7. Chronology

8. References

9. Frequently Asked Questions

Part 1: Diyarbakır and the Kurdish Urban Elite

Diyarbakır — the great walled city on the Tigris, built of black basalt and known as the unofficial capital of Kurdish cultural life in the Ottoman Empire — was the world into which Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde was born in 1878. The Pirinççizâde family were part of the city’s established commercial elite — their name deriving from the rice trade that had built their fortune — and they occupied the position that such families held in Ottoman provincial cities: influential in local affairs, connected to both the Ottoman administrative world and the Kurdish tribal and religious networks of the region, and educated in both the classical Islamic tradition and the new currents of Ottoman reformist thought.

Diyarbakır’s Kurdish identity was unmistakable and unashamed. The city had been the centre of Kurdish literary and cultural life since the medieval period — it was the city of Melayê Cizîrî and the broader tradition of classical Kurdish poetry. Into this environment, Aziz Feyzi grew up with a clear sense of his Kurdish identity and an awareness of the literary and cultural heritage that that identity entailed. His subsequent career as a Kurdish political activist was rooted in this formation.

Part 2: The Kurdish Cultural Awakening in Istanbul

The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 — which restored the Ottoman constitution and briefly created a political opening for all the empire’s communities — was the catalyst for a burst of Kurdish cultural and political organisation. In Istanbul, Kurdish intellectuals established the Kurdish Students’ Hope Society (Kürt Talebe Hevi Cemiyeti) and other organisations dedicated to Kurdish cultural development. Kurdish-language publications multiplied. Societies for the ‘rise’ and ‘progress’ of the Kurdish people were founded.

Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde was among the Diyarbakır Kurds who engaged actively with this opening. He was a member of the Kürd Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti — the Kurdish Mutual Aid and Progress Society — one of the principal Kurdish cultural organisations of the constitutional period. These organisations operated within the framework of Ottomanism: they argued for Kurdish cultural rights not as a challenge to Ottoman unity but as an expression of it, claiming that a truly constitutional empire had to accommodate the cultural identities of all its peoples.

Part 3: Member of Parliament

Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde served as a member of the Ottoman parliament, representing Diyarbakır in the representative institutions of the late empire. This parliamentary career placed him at the centre of Ottoman political life at a moment of extraordinary turbulence: the Balkan Wars, the political struggles between the CUP and its opponents, the growing tension between Turkish nationalism and the multi-ethnic Ottomanism that Kurdish intellectuals generally preferred. In parliament, he was one of the Kurdish voices arguing for a constitutional framework that genuinely respected the empire’s diversity.

Part 4: War and the Armenian Genocide

The First World War and the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1916 confronted Kurdish political figures from Diyarbakır with one of the most morally catastrophic situations in modern history. Diyarbakır province was among the regions where the genocide was carried out with particular ferocity, under the direction of the provincial governor Mehmed Reshid. The Armenian community of Diyarbakır — a significant and culturally vital population that had lived alongside the Kurdish population for centuries — was largely destroyed. Kurdish figures in the region occupied different positions in relation to these events: some participated in the violence, some were bystanders, and some, at great personal risk, provided shelter and assistance to Armenians.

The genocide was not only a moral catastrophe; it was a political one for Kurdish intellectuals who had advocated for a multi-ethnic Ottomanism in which Armenians, Kurds, Turks, and others would coexist within a constitutional framework. The destruction of the Armenian community demonstrated, with terrible clarity, what the CUP’s Turkish nationalism was actually prepared to do when it perceived a minority community as a political threat.

Part 5: The Republic and Its Consequences

The establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the subsequent suppression of Kurdish cultural and political life destroyed the world in which Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde had built his career. The Kurdish cultural organisations he had helped to build were banned. The Kurdish language was suppressed in public life. The Sheikh Said Rebellion of 1925 and its brutal suppression demonstrated the Republic’s determination to destroy any Kurdish political organisation. Diyarbakır — the city that had been the centre of Kurdish cultural life — was subjected to a sustained programme of cultural erasure.

Pirinççizâde died in 1933, in the midst of this period of suppression. He had lived to see the political opening of 1908 close as definitively as it had opened — to see the constitutional promise of Kurdish cultural rights replaced by a nationalist programme that denied those rights absolutely.

Part 6: Legacy

Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde belongs to the generation of Kurdish political pioneers who did the foundational work of the Kurdish national movement in the last years of the Ottoman Empire. They were not successful in the immediate political sense — the Kurdish cultural autonomy they sought was not achieved in their lifetimes and would not be achieved for generations afterward. But they established the precedents, built the organisations, articulated the arguments, and produced the intellectual framework that subsequent generations of Kurdish activists would build upon. In Diyarbakır, the city that shaped him, his memory belongs to the tradition of Kurdish political consciousness that the city has always embodied.

Chronology of Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde

1878 — Born in Diyarbakır into the Pirinççizâde commercial and intellectual family.

1908 — Young Turk Revolution; Kurdish cultural organisations proliferate; active in Kurdish political life in Istanbul and Diyarbakır.

1908–1918 — Serves as member of the Ottoman parliament representing Diyarbakır.

1915–1916 — Armenian Genocide; destruction of the Armenian community of Diyarbakır.

1923 — Turkish Republic established; Kurdish cultural suppression begins.

1925 — Sheikh Said Rebellion suppressed; Kurdish political life in Turkey effectively destroyed.

1933 — Dies in Diyarbakır.

References

1. Jwaideh, Wadie. The Kurdish National Movement. Syracuse University Press, 2006.

2. McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds. I.B. Tauris, 1996.

3. Olson, Robert. The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism. University of Texas Press, 1989.

4. Zürcher, Erik Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. I.B. Tauris, 2004.

5. Wikipedia contributors. Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aziz_Feyzi_Pirin%C3%A7%C3%A7iz%C3%A2de

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde?

Aziz Feyzi Pirinççizâde (1878–1933) was a Kurdish intellectual and politician from Diyarbakır who served in the Ottoman parliament and was a leading figure in the Kurdish cultural organisations of the late Ottoman period. He represents the generation of Kurdish political pioneers who did the foundational institutional work of the Kurdish national movement in the empire’s final decades.

What role did Diyarbakır play in Kurdish cultural history?

Diyarbakır has been the centre of Kurdish cultural and intellectual life in Anatolia for centuries. The city produced some of the greatest figures of classical Kurdish literature and served as a focal point for Kurdish political consciousness from the late Ottoman period onward. For Kurdish intellectuals like Aziz Feyzi, Diyarbakır was not merely a place of origin but an identity — a connection to the deepest roots of Kurdish culture and history.

What was the Kurdish political landscape like after the Young Turk Revolution?

The restoration of the Ottoman constitution in 1908 created a brief political opening for Kurdish cultural and political organisation. Kurdish societies, journals, and political organisations proliferated in Istanbul and across the empire. Kurdish intellectuals argued for cultural rights within an Ottomanist framework. This opening was progressively closed as the CUP consolidated its Turkish nationalist programme, and was extinguished entirely by the Turkish Republic’s systematic suppression of Kurdish cultural and political life after 1923.