Xoybûn

Xoybûn or Khoyboun (full name: Xoybûn - Ciwata Serxwebuna Kurd), meaning oneself/being oneself in Kurdish, was a nationalist organisation of Kurds that is known for leading the Ararat rebellion, commanded by Ihsan Nuri.

Establishment

On October 5, 1927, in Greater Lebanon, Xoybûn was founded by Memduh Selim and his colleagues with the involvement of former members of Kurdish nationalist organisations like Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti, Kürt Teşkilat-ı İçtimaiye Cemiyeti and Kürt Millet Fırkası, together with Kurdish intellectuals who took refuge in Iraq, Iran and Syria, at the house of Vahan Papazian, who was a member of the central committee of Dashnaktsutyun.

Mehmet Şükrü Sekban, Celadet Alî Bedirxan, Memduh Selim, Haco Agha, Ramanlı Emin, Ali Rıza, Bozan bey Shahin, Mustafa bey Şahin and Süleymniyeli Kerim Rüstem Bey were elected as members of the first central committee of Xoybûn.

Ararat rebellion

Xoybûn under the leadership of Celadet Alî Bedirxan, Kamuran Alî Bedirxan, Ekrem Cemilpaşa, Memdûh Selîm and others, decided to promote Ihsan Nuri, a former officer in the Ottoman and Turkish armies, to general (pasha) and sent him to Erzurum with 20 comrades. They published a newspaper named Agirî. The Republic of Ararat declared its independence on October 8, 1927.

The central committee of Xoybûn appointed Ibrahim Haski, who was one of the chieftains of Jalali tribe, to the governorship of Agirî Province and Ihsan Nuri to the post of general commander of the Kurdish Armed Forces. Xoybûn also made appeals to the Great Powers and the League of Nations.^[3]

It was the chief "instigator" of the Ararat rebellion, where the Kurdish Republic of Ararat was founded and subsequently put down by Turkish forces in 1931.

References

1. Martin van Bruinessen, "Zaza, Alevi and Dersimi as Deliberately Embraced Ethnic Identities" in '"Aslını İnkar Eden Haramzadedir!" The Debate on the Ethnic Identity of The Kurdish Alevis' in Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Anke Otter-Beaujean, Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East: Collected Papers of the International Symposium "Alevism in Turkey and Comparable Sycretistic Religious Communities in the Near East in the Past and Present" Berlin, 14-17 April 1995, BRILL, 1997, ISBN 9789004108615, p. 13.
2. Martin van Bruinessen, "Zaza, Alevi and Dersimi as Deliberately Embraced Ethnic Identities" in '"Aslını İnkar Eden Haramzadedir!" The Debate on the Ethnic Identity of The Kurdish Alevis', p. 14.
3. Mehmet Köçer, "Ağrı İsyanı (1926-1930)", Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Cilt: 14, Sayı: 2, s. 385. Archived September 2, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. (Turkish)