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Halid Beg Cibran: The Soldier Who Founded Kurdistan's First Underground (1882–1925)

Updated: Apr 11

In the bleak political landscape of early republican Turkey, where Kurdish political organisation was being systematically dismantled and the promises made during the War of Independence were being methodically broken, a small circle of Kurdish officers and intellectuals gathered in 1923 to form Azadi — Freedom. It was the first underground Kurdish nationalist organisation of the Turkish republican era, a secret society of military men who had served the state that was now denying their people's existence. At the centre of this organisation was Halid Beg Cibran — a Kurdish tribal officer from the Muş region of eastern Anatolia who understood, better than most, that the promises of the War of Independence were not going to be kept. He was hanged in 1925, before the organisation he helped to build could fully demonstrate its potential. But the network he constructed, and the uprising that grew partly from it, set in motion consequences that the Turkish state would spend the rest of the twentieth century struggling to contain.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Cibran Tribe and the Kurdish Military Tradition

The Cibran — also written Jibranlı or Jibranli — were a Kurdish tribal confederation based in the region of Muş in eastern Anatolia, in the territory that is today Muş Province of Turkey. The region of Muş had long been part of the Kurdish highland world: a landscape of high plateau and mountain valley that had sustained Kurdish tribal society across centuries of Ottoman rule. The Cibran had established themselves as a militarily capable and politically significant force in the region, with a tradition of service in the Ottoman irregular cavalry — the Hamidiye regiments that Sultan Abdülhamid II established in the 1890s to pacify the eastern frontier.

This martial tradition was the world into which Halid Beg was born in 1882. He grew up in a tribal society that valued military prowess, that had experience of irregular warfare and of the complex politics of loyalty and resistance that characterised the Kurdish relationship with the Ottoman state. His family's standing within the Cibran gave him both the social connections and the cultural formation that would shape his subsequent career. He was not an urban intellectual who arrived at nationalism through books; he was a tribal leader who arrived at it through the experience of governing people who were being systematically marginalised by the state they had served.

Part 2: From Ottoman Officer to Kurdish Nationalist

Halid Beg Cibran entered the Ottoman military educational system and became an officer. He received training at Ottoman military schools and served in the officer corps of the late Ottoman Empire, acquiring the professional skills and institutional connections that would later make him an effective organiser of underground resistance.

The transformation from Ottoman officer to Kurdish nationalist was a gradual process shaped by the political upheavals of the early twentieth century. The Young Turk revolution of 1908, the Balkan Wars, the First World War, and the subsequent collapse of the Ottoman Empire each contributed to a deepening awareness among Kurdish officers of the gap between the inclusive rhetoric of Ottoman patriotism and the increasingly exclusive nationalism that was reshaping the state. By the time of the Turkish War of Independence, Halid Beg had developed a political consciousness that distinguished between his obligation to resist the Allied occupation and his expectation of Kurdish rights within any new state that emerged from the conflict.

Part 3: The War of Independence — A Kurd Fighting for Turkey

Like many Kurdish officers of his generation, Halid Beg Cibran joined the Turkish nationalist resistance in the War of Independence. The Kemalist movement's early rhetoric explicitly promised Kurdish participation in a state that would respect Kurdish identity, and for Kurdish officers who had spent their careers serving the Ottoman Empire, the prospect of a reformed Turkish-Kurdish political framework was preferable to the alternative: occupation by Greek, Armenian, or European forces.

Halid Beg served with the nationalist forces and earned the respect of his contemporaries as a capable military commander. His tribal connections in the Muş region made him an effective mobiliser of Kurdish irregular forces in support of the national resistance. After the Turkish victory and the establishment of the republic in 1923, he expected that the wartime promises of Kurdish participation and autonomy would be honoured. When it became apparent that they would not be — that the new republic was moving rapidly toward a centralised Turkish nationalism that had no room for Kurdish identity — his response was to begin organising resistance.

Part 4: The Birth of Azadi — The First Kurdish Underground

Azadi — the Kurdish word for freedom — was founded in 1923, the same year as the Turkish Republic. It was a secret organisation, built primarily from the network of Kurdish military officers who had served in the War of Independence and who were now watching with alarm as the Kemalist state systematically dismantled the institutions that had allowed Kurdish cultural and political life to exist within the Ottoman framework.

The founding of Azadi represented a qualitative shift in Kurdish resistance politics. Previous Kurdish revolts had been tribal or religious in character — the uprising of this chief, the rebellion inspired by that sheikh. Azadi was different: it was a political organisation, with a programme, a leadership structure, and a strategy. Its members were educated men — officers, professionals, intellectuals — who understood both the military dimensions of resistance and the political context in which any uprising would have to operate. Halid Beg Cibran was central to its formation and to the recruitment of the military figures who gave it its clandestine strength.

Part 5: The Network — Officers, Sheikhs, and the Structure of Resistance

The political genius of Azadi's organisational strategy was its recognition that successful resistance required the coordination of two distinct social forces: the Kurdish military officers who provided technical competence and institutional networks, and the Kurdish religious leaders — the sheikhs of the Naqshbandi Sufi order who commanded the loyalty of the tribal and rural population. Neither force alone was sufficient. The officers had skills and connections but limited popular mobilisation capacity. The sheikhs had mass followings but limited organisational and military expertise.

Azadi worked to build bridges between these two networks. The critical connection was with Sheikh Said of Piran — a Naqshbandi sheikh with an enormous following across a wide arc of eastern Anatolia. Sheikh Said provided the religious legitimacy and popular mobilisation capacity that Azadi needed; Azadi provided the political programme and military organisation that the Sheikh's movement needed. When the uprising came, it would bear Sheikh Said's name — but the organisational infrastructure behind it was substantially Azadi's work.

Part 6: Sheikh Said and the Rebellion of 1925

The Sheikh Said Rebellion broke out in February 1925, earlier than planned and without the full organisational preparation that Azadi had envisioned. The immediate trigger was an incident in the village of Piran when soldiers attempted to arrest several Azadi members; the confrontation escalated rapidly into open revolt. Sheikh Said assumed leadership of the uprising.

The rebellion spread with unexpected speed across a wide arc of southeastern Anatolia, with tribal forces joining the uprising in region after region. At its height, the rebels controlled significant territory and posed a genuine challenge to Turkish state authority in the east. But the military disadvantage was severe: the Turkish Army rapidly mobilised against the uprising. The revolt was suppressed within two months. Sheikh Said was captured in April 1925. Halid Beg Cibran was among those arrested in the subsequent roundup of Azadi leaders.

Part 7: Arrest, Trial, and the Eastern Independence Court

The Turkish government responded to the rebellion with a ferocity that went far beyond military suppression. The Maintenance of Order Law, passed in March 1925, gave the government sweeping powers to arrest, try, and execute anyone deemed a threat to public order — and it was applied comprehensively against Kurdish political figures across the spectrum.

Halid Beg Cibran was tried before the Eastern Independence Court alongside Sheikh Said and other rebel leaders. The court was not an independent judicial body; it was a political instrument designed to eliminate the leadership of the Kurdish national movement. The proceedings were summary, the outcome predetermined. Halid Beg was convicted and sentenced to death.

Part 8: The Gallows — A Death That Echoed

Halid Beg Cibran was hanged in Diyarbakır on 28 June 1925, alongside Sheikh Said and forty-five other condemned men. He was forty-three years old. The tradition of Kurdish political organisation that Azadi represented never died, and the uprising of 1925 set a precedent for Kurdish resistance that the subsequent decades would build upon repeatedly.

Part 9: Legacy — The Soldier Who Sparked the Fire

Halid Beg Cibran's place in Kurdish history rests on two achievements. First, he was the primary founder of Azadi — the first modern Kurdish political organisation to operate clandestinely within the Turkish state. Second, through Azadi's connection with Sheikh Said, he was one of the architects of the 1925 uprising — the event that established the pattern of Kurdish-Turkish confrontation that would define eastern Anatolian politics for the rest of the twentieth century.

Neither achievement brought him victory in his own lifetime. Azadi was destroyed, its leadership hanged or exiled. The Kemalist state used the rebellion as justification for a comprehensive policy of Kurdish cultural suppression — banning the Kurdish language, closing Kurdish associations, deporting Kurdish leaders to western Anatolia. But history is not only measured in short terms. Every subsequent generation of Kurdish political leaders in Turkey has worked in the space that Azadi opened, and the fire lit in 1923 has never fully gone out.

Chronology of Halid Beg Cibran

1882 — Born into the Cibran tribal leadership in the Muş region of eastern Anatolia.

1919–1922 — Turkish War of Independence; serves with Kemalist nationalist forces.

1923 — Co-founds Azadi — the first modern Kurdish underground political organisation in Republican Turkey.

February 1925 — Sheikh Said Rebellion breaks out prematurely.

28 June 1925 — Executed by hanging in Diyarbakır alongside Sheikh Said and forty-five others.

References

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Halid Beg Cibran?

Halid Beg Cibran (1882–1925) was a Kurdish tribal leader and Ottoman military officer from the Cibran tribe of the Muş region. He is regarded as the primary founder of Azadi (Freedom) — the first modern Kurdish underground political organisation in Republican Turkey — and was a key architect of the 1925 Sheikh Said Rebellion. He was executed by the Turkish state at age 43.

What was Azadi?

Azadi, founded in 1923, was the first modern Kurdish political organisation to operate clandestinely within the Turkish Republic. Unlike previous Kurdish revolts, which were tribal or religious in character, Azadi was a structured political organisation built primarily from Kurdish military officers.

What was the Sheikh Said Rebellion?

The Sheikh Said Rebellion (February–April 1925) was the first major Kurdish uprising against the Turkish Republic. Led by Sheikh Said of Piran and drawing on the Azadi network, it spread across southeastern Anatolia before being suppressed by mass executions and comprehensive Kurdish cultural suppression.

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