The Role of Orientalists in Creating "Otherness" in Two Discourses of Iranian and Kurdish Nationalism

For about a century, some Kurdish parties have faced the contradiction of "maintaining the integrity of Iran" and "respecting the Kurdish identity". Historical research indicates that this problem did not exist in Iran's past and it was formed at the same time as the conquest of the West and the beginning of oriental studies. This problem has caused a lot of problems in the field of macro-national policies; Problems that have not been systematically analyzed and require deep research in this field. The main question of the current research is: What role have Orientalists played in creating "the other" in the two discourses of Iranian nationalism and Kurdish nationalism? The hypothesis of the present research is: Oriental studies led to the construction of Iranian identity in a coherent ethnic group, namely "Aryans". In response to this issue, a Kurdish identity was formed, the main feature of which was independence. This situation provided a suitable space for the competition of two discourses and the definition of the other party as "the other". The findings of the research indicate that orientalists have played an important role in placing the two discourses of Iranian and ethnic nationalism in competition with each other and defining each as the "other" of the other party. In the studies of orientalists, Iranian identity was defined by emphasizing the Aryan race and the Persian language, and other racial and linguistic identities were rejected as temporary elements. Therefore, the attempt to homogenize the culture that was the result of oriental studies and foreign interference is one of the main reasons for defining national identity as another local identity and vice versa. The current research will examine the historical developments related to the research topic from a discourse point of view by using the discourse analysis method of Laclau and Mouffe. Data collection has been done by using library-documentary tools and has been analyzed by descriptive-analytical method.