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It is widely believed that the “Kurdish Issue” began after 1923, with the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. However, the Ottoman Empire had a Kurdish issue from a very early period. As early as the beginning of the 16th century, in the conflict with the Safavids, the attitude of the Kurdish Mirliks had enabled the Ottomans to establish dominance in the Middle East. In the early 19th century, the Kurdish Mirliks had become one of the biggest problems of the modernizing Ottoman Empire. As a result of dozens of military expeditions, the Ottoman Empire, which had eliminated the autonomous Kurdish Mirliks and established the “Kurdistan Province”, began to look for new solutions when it lost control of the region, the exact opposite of what it had intended. As if that were not enough, in 1880, Kurdish nationalism under the leadership of Sheikh Ubeydullah began to search for a homeland. Although the “Hamidiye Regiments” project of Abdulhamid II took the issue to another dimension, the Kurdish intelligentsia had begun to build a Kurdish nationalism of its own. Under the influence of the Committee of Union and Progress, Abdulhamid II During the Constitutional Monarchy, the Kurdish issue would now be the scene of attempts at assimilation of the Kurds. Undoubtedly, an important Kurdish issue was passed on from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic. Without sufficient evaluation of this issue, it does not seem possible to properly understand the Kurdish issue of the Republic. Alişan Akpınar: He graduated from the History Department of the Faculty of Letters at Istanbul University. He completed his MA at the same university with his thesis titled “Tribe School”. He is working on late Ottoman history and the Ottoman Kurdish issue in the Boğaziçi Performing Arts Society- Social Research Commission and Kurdology Studies Group. He has a book titled Aşiret, Mektep, Devlet (Aram Publications 2001). Books he contributed to: Emir Bedirhan (Bgst Publications, 2007), Hînkerê Zimanê Kurdî (Bgst Publications, 2008), Ottoman Kurdistan (Bgst Publications, 2011), Rojî Kurd 1913 (Istanbul Kurdish Institute Publications, 2013). Alişan Akpınar continues his studies on Kurds and Alevi communities in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.