Title: Glorifying the Leader in the Kurdish Political Movement
Place of publication: Turkey
Publisher: jusoor
Release date: 2018

Glorifying or deification the leaders is a tradition that dates back to ancient times and took place in the East generally. This approach was used thousands of years ago as a way for motivating the loyalists and to make them sacrifice anything for the sake of the leader’s satisfaction. Glorifying the leader was an important priority for many totalitarian regimes throughout history.
The communist and socialist experiments in the twentieth century presented extreme models of glorifying the individual. Most of these models had an impact on the southern countries. The most notably are: Lenin (1870 – 1924), Stalin (1878 – 1953) USSR, Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976) China, Fidel Castro (1926-2016) Cuba, Kim Il-sung (1912-1994), and Kim Jong-Il (1941-2011) North Korea.
The Middle East witnessed its own approaches of glorifying the leader and developed them with special techniques, the most significant examples were as follows: Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000), Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), and Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011). Criticizing those leaders could lead to severe punishments such as torture and death in prisons. Moreover, many quotes from those leaders had turned into a source of wisdom, while pictures of them were spread in public and private institutions in addition to murals and statutes in the streets. Many glorifying titles and characteristics were given to those leaders such as the “Great Leader”, the “Eternal Leader”, and the “Inspiring Leader”….etc. Every single achievement was attributed to the leader in these countries and considered as an endowment or a gift towards the people.
It is important to study and analyze the positions of some movements and revolutionary parties who opposed those regimes, as these movements were affected by the general Middle Eastern approach of glorifying individuals with an important position in the society.
It is interesting to note that glorifying the leader by political movements is mainly associated with armed groups, and very rarely does it appear in non-violent political movements. This indicates that glorifying the leader is linked to the use force to impose it, and to gain respect from those who do not have faith in their leader.
The Kurdish reality is no exception to this phenomena. In some cases those who affiliate with a certain party, gain a title related to the party’s leader. For example, if someone is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), “Apoci” will be his/her title because the PKK leader’s title is “Apo”. While, if some is affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), “Barzani” will be his/her title because the KDP leaders are from Barzani’s family. Conversely, if someone is affiliated to Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), “Celalî” will be his/her title because PUK leader’s title is Jalal Talabani. [1]