Hawar was a periodical published in Damascus from 1932 to 1935, then from 1941 to 1943. Its founding editor was Celadet Alî Bedirxan, a Kurdish intellectual and political activist.
Born in Constantinople in 1893, Celadet was a Kurdish nationalist. After the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Kemalists expelled him and his brother, who shared his views. They supported the Şêx Saîd rebellion in 1925 and the Ararat Rebellion 1930. The defeat of both uprisings was devastating.
In 1931 Celadet and his brother found refuge in Syria, which was then part of the French Mandate. Since politics and revolution now seemed inadequate for achieving a Kurdish state, they shifted their attention to culture.
They would try to develop a Kurdish national identity, to claim the millennia-old history of the Kurdish people, and to educate Kurds and unify them into a modern self-conscious force. They would validate Kurdish claims to independence based on historical research and thereby win Western sympathy for the Kurdish cause.
To pursue these goals, the Bedirxans published periodicals and books. In 1932 Celadet founded the magazine Hawar (The Calling). The first issue appeared on May 15, listing Celadat Alî Bedirxan as the owner and editor-in-chief. The mailing address was “The Kurdish Quarter, Damascus.”
The magazine, which was to appear bi-monthly, would not be the voice of any party or political organization. Rather, the editorial in the first issue asserted: “Hawar is the voice of knowledge. Knowledge is to know oneself; knowing oneself opens for us the way of salvation and beauty. Every person that knows himself can make himself known.”
Up to this point, Kurmanci language had been spelled in the Arabic alphabet. Celadet Ali Bedirxan created a new alphabet using Latin letters. So in that first editorial, he went on to explain that the magazine’s goals were to disseminate the new alphabet and teach it to Kurds, and to publish studies on Kurdish language, on classical and folk literature, on dance and song, customs, and the history and geography of Kurdistan.
The first twenty-three issues (which appeared from 1932 to 1935) contain pages of Kurmanci in both the Latin and the Arabic-Persian-alphabets (as well as a few pages in French). Then from issue 24 onward, the magazine used only Latin-alphabet Kurmanci. Hawar was the first publication to use this new alphabet, which also became known as the Hawar alphabet.
Hawar magazine was successful on its own terms. It was highly influential in building the Kurdish cultural movement in the Levant, and in disseminating the Latin-character alphabet, which Kurmanci today mostly uses.
Between 1935 and 1941 Celadet paused publication of Hawar as he was consumed by his other activities as a lawyer and a French professor. He resumed in 1941 and continued until 1943. From 1942 until 1945, he also published a separate monthly journal named Ronahî, comprising 28 issues. The end of the French Mandate in 1946 brought an end to Hawar, and to the Kurdish press and Kurdish cultural activities in Syria.
The New York Kurdish Cultural Center is proud to bring to the public five issues from the first year of Hawar. They were made available to us by Yek Kareric from his personal collection, for which we are grateful.
By presenting them here, we open a window through which Kurds today may recognize an essential piece of their heritage.
Sources:
Ahmet Serdar Akturk, Imagining Kurdish Identity in Mandatory Syria: Finding a Nation in Exile. Ph.D. Diss, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 2013.
Harriet Allsopp, The Kurds of Syria: Political Parties and Identity in the Middle East. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015.