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The beginning of the twentieth century is considered the period of enlightenment for Kurds. Kurdish intellectuals of the era carried out activities to enlighten the Kurdish people, contributing to their national awakening. Part of these activities was the establishment of various associations and publication of newspapers and magazines, an example of which was the magazine Hetawî Kurd. The prominent intellectuals of the period wrote articles dealing with topics of daily matters as well as social and cultural issues for the periodical. They also suggested various solutions to the current issues and problems. In addition, they drew attention to the need for raising national awareness of Kurdish youth, the development of a Kurdish alphabet, educating Kurdish people, preserving the Kurdish language, history and literature to contribute to the world culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late century of the Ottoman Empire witnessed a bloom of periodicals published by civilian groups and peoples of diverse ethnicities and faiths. The Kurdish periodicals were not an exception and the Kurdish press embarked on its life with the daily Kurdistan first published in 1898 and lasted until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. During this period of twenty-five years, several Kurdish periodicals were published in wide geography that spans from Elazığ to İstanbul, from Cairo to London. These periodicals can be considered as the manifestation of national and cultural awakening among the Kurdish intellectuals in parallel with the sociological change the Kurdish society at large went through. It is imperative to understand their distribution network, their relationship with the readers and potential readers as well as the social and cultural interactions of the period in question. This article briefly introduces each of these periodicals together with the institutions and individuals involved and examines their approaches to local and international events and developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in world politics from the turn of the nineteenth century onward led the major empires of the era to the eventual collapse. Meanwhile, national movements that emerged within these empires started the process of nation-state formation. Each one of the peoples of empires went through their peculiar processes of enlightenment. The principal medium of such an endeavour was publishing activities with a marked emphasis on 'national unity'. Even though the seventeenth-century poet Ehmedê Xanî touched upon the topic of a unity in his Mem û Zîn it was not until the nineteenth-century press that Kurdish intellectuals markedly emphasized the issue of 'national unity' in the modern sense as a central problem. While trying to develop ideas for a solution to the issue, they often formulated the phrase "adaptation to the necessities of the time". This study deals with this issue and the reflection of this approach upon the Kurds and Kurdish press through the analysis of its formative period. The article also examines the discourse of 'national unity' in the context of the discussions of the popular ideas of the time, nationalism and nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]