Role of the Democratic Party in the Resistance Escalation of Large Landowners in the First Phase of Land Reform in Iranian Kurdistan

The provisions of the first stage of land reform limited the amount of the large landowner’s proprietorship to a six dângs of one village. Although the articles of this law had the common aims at the whole of the country, the land holders confronted various reactions to them. In the province of Kurdistan as a region that will be studied in this research, the contradictory conflicts took place against the program. In this research, the problem is that the implementation of land reform was one of the programs and principles of the Democratic Party and it must have fundamentally backed this program. With regard to this issue, why did it oppose program and support landowners? According to finding of the research, the party increased the resistance of the land holders vis-à-vis land reform and pushed them toward the armed uprisings. Although this program was one of the main demands of the party, it defined land reform as a means of suppressing social discontents. Besides, it looked at the program as a threat to the Kurdish nationalism’s opinions, because local governments and tribal leaders must have lost their power by implementation of land reform and therefore, the power of central government must have replaced them and the party must have encountered serious problem to get its goals. Financial dependence of the party on landowners and simultaneity of the movement of Kurdistan of Iraq with land reform and its expanding to Kurdistan of Iran had an important role on the approach of the party’s members to the land holders and the program.