Kamuran Bedirxan

Kamuran (left), Sureyya (middle) and Celadet Bedirxan (right).

Kâmuran Ali Bedirxan also Kamuran Aali Bedir-Khan ( Kurdish : Kamiran Alî Bedirxan , Turkish Kamuran Ali Bedirhan ; born August 21, 1895 in Istanbul / Ottoman Empire ; † December 6, 1978 in Paris ) was a Kurdish politician, lawyer and writer.

family

He comes from the Bedirxans family, who ruled the principality of Botan with the capital Cizre for centuries as autonomous vassals of the Ottomans . His grandfather Bedirxan Beg rebelled against the Ottomans at the end of the 19th century and after his defeat was deported to Istanbul with his family. Kamuran's father Emin Ali Bedirxan was politically active in the Kurdish movement and was the founder of the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti , of which Kamuran was also a member. His brother Celadet Ali Bedirxan was also politically active and the creator of the Latin Kurmanji alphabet .

Kamuran had been married to the Polish Princess Nathalie d'Ossovetzky, who died in 1975, since 1954. The couple had no children.

Career

Kamuran attended the French Galatasaray High School in Istanbul. Between 1905 and 1908 his family had to leave the city because of the murder of the Istanbul prefect and lived in Isparta and Beirut . He later studied at the Darülfünun in Istanbul law and worked as a lawyer. In 1918, like others from his family, he became a member of the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti. After the loss of the First World War, a movement against the occupiers and the Sultan began under Mustafa Kemal . Kamuran was an opponent of this movement and was ordered by the government in Istanbul and the British to sabotage the planned 1919 Congress of Mustafa Kemal in Sivas and arrest Mustafa Kemal. He set out with several men, including his brother, the Governor of Harput and the British officer Edward WC Noel , but the venture failed.

Kamuran was an opponent of Kemalism and when the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923, he had already left the country for Germany. He lived with his relatives in Munich and then did his doctorate in Leipzig . From 1927 he stayed in Syria , joined the Xoybûn organization and helped his brother publish the Kurdish newspaper Hawar (English: call for help). Between 1943 and 1946, Kamuran published the Kurdish and French-language magazine Roja Nû ( Eng .: New Day) in Beirut . The following years he lived in Germany and France. In the thirties he stayed in Berlin and met the Iranist Karl Hadank . In 1948 he became a teaching member of the Institut national des langues et civilizations orientales in Paris .

From 1960 he became the European spokesman for the Iraqi Kurds, led by Mustafa Barzani . He established important contacts between the Kurds and Israel . Israel saw the Kurds as a suitable means to weaken Iraq militarily and to tie up the Iraqi army in northern Iraq. 1970 Kamuran retired.

Kamuran died in 1978. He was posthumously named co-founder of the Kurdish Institute in Paris .

Works (selection)

• Dilê qurên min. Ji giyanê bavê min - Kurdish poetry antology, 1923 Damascus
• Snow of light - collection of poems, 1935 Berlin
• Memorandum on the situation of the Kurds, 1948 Paris
• Le Kurde sans Peine textbook, 1953 Paris
• Langue kurde, 2 volumes, 1953 Paris

source

• Hakan Özoğlu: Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries . Suny Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7914-5993-4 .
• Text by Birgit Ammann about Kamuran Bedirkhan

literature

• Malmîsanij : Cızira Botanlı Bedirhaniler ve Bedirhani Ailesi Derneği'nin Tutanakları , Avesta Publishing House

Web links

• Photo by Kamuran Bedirxan
• Pariste bir Kürt Prensi Kamuran Bedirhan , article by Soner Yalçın from the Hürriyet of October 25, 2009