Abstract:

Academia is believed to be a place or community to tell the truth, and to be able to say the truth needs first a critical point of view. By doing so academics/intellectuals fulfil their social responsibility, which sometimes puts them on the spot and creates a conflict between what s/he is doing and what s/he is expected to do. The power structure wants the academics to be accordant with its official policy and discourse, namely doing their duties, and mostly they move in the frame that has been demarcated in a way that reinforces power. This relationship affects their approaches towards what is going on around, especially political issues. The situation of modern Turkish academia, raised in the 1930s, can be evaluated in this framework. At the beginning of the 1930s Turkish academia played a crucial role in constructing a scientific base for the state’s official policy and discourse, and did not intervene in any political issues. One of the issues that state was very sensitive about was the Kurdish issue, and the academics who were interested in this topic paid a price for it. This article examines this situation of Turkish academia, their attitudes towards political issues, their efforts to be critical toward official policy, and the price they paid for it in the context of the Kurdish question, with specific reference to the case of Academics for Peace. Although the canonization of literary and non-literary works is an old phenomenon, the national canon appears in modern period with spread of nationalism and foundation nation state. In this canon some particular literary works are chosen in order to show existence and continuity of a nation and this work is strengthened as representation of national character by various literary commentaries. We also witness the efforts on the part of Kurdish intellectuals to construct a national canon from the start of spread of idea of nationalism. Within this framework, Xani’s Mem û Zin emerged as the fundamental source of the national canon and Xani as the forerunner of Kurdish national thought. Although this thought first presented itself in a poem of Haci Qadri Koyi, it was systematized in later Kurdish journals and newspapers owing to the intellectual efforts of some members of Bedirxani family. Shortly thereafter, this thought was reinforced through various printings of Mem û Zin, anthologies and histories of Kurdish literature and publications of literary and academic works on this topic. 

Keywords: