Customized Forms of Kurdishness in Turkey
Customized Forms of Kurdishness in Turkey

Author: Ceren Sengül

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1498573576

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The discussions on Kurds of Turkey mostly refer to them as if they are one homogeneous group, with different forms of being Kurdish mostly overlooked. Yet, Kurds have been scattered all across Turkey; they differ in terms of the language they speak; they have also been subject to different policies of the Turkish state in different periods. How can we take these factors into account when discussing Kurdishness in Turkey? That is, in which ways does a Kurd living in a small city in Southeast Turkey differ from a Kurd living in Istanbul? How does being a native Kurdish speaker play a role in forming Kurdishness? What about different state rhetoric in different periods? By focusing on these three main questions, this book offers a detailed account on the diversity of experiences of Kurdishness. Based on her fieldwork in five different field sites in Turkey, Dr. Şengül illustrates, through narratives of her respondents, how Kurdishness is exhibited in different, personalised, and customised forms across different contexts in Turkey. Each substantive chapter in the book analyses a different element that plays a role in constructing these different forms of Kurdishness: state rhetoric, localities, and the language use. By arguing that there is not one single way of exhibiting Kurdishness, this book challenges any standard definitions of Kurdishness, and defines it as the daily (re-)negotiation of state rhetoric and everyday practices individuals experience.

Kurds in Turkey
Kurds in Turkey

Author: Lucie Drechselová

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2019-06-27

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1498575250

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Kurds in Turkey: Ethnographies of Heterogeneous Experiences is the newest contribution to the bourgeoning Kurdish Studies literature. The edited volume unites eight junior scholars who offer ethnographic studies based on their latest research. The chapters are clustered around four main headings: women’s participation, paramilitary, space, and infrapolitics of resistance. Each heading assembles two chapters which are in dialog with each other and offer complementary and at times competing perspectives. All four headings correspond to the emerging domains of research in Kurdish studies. Authors share a micro-level focus and take extensive field work as the basis of their argument. In the wake of massive urban destructions and renewed warfare in the Kurdish region in Turkey, this volume also stakes a stance against the memoricide of the Kurdish municipal experience and cultural production.

Turkey’s Mission Impossible
Turkey’s Mission Impossible

Author: Cengiz Çandar

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1498587518

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This is a work of excavation of the modern history of Turkey, with the Kurdish question at its center, unearthed and exposed in Çandar’s captivating narrative. The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. The author weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow. Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.

The Geopolitics of Turkey–Kurdistan Relations
The Geopolitics of Turkey–Kurdistan Relations

Author: Mustafa Demir

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1498571646

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The main objective of this book is to understand the extent and the motives behind the shift in Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Kurdistan Regional Government (hereafter the KRG) from an alternative globalist perspective, and to do so it examines a ten-year period of Turkey’s foreign policy on the KRG, from 2003 to 2013. Despite the shadows casting by its history, Turkey has developed relations with the Kurdish government to the level of a strategic partnership within the last decade, following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The book identifies and analyses the factors that determine Turkey’s foreign policy towards the KRG by providing a historical account of Turkey’s approach towards a Kurdish polity, illuminating the extent of the shift in Turkey’s foreign policy by looking at some dislocatory moves, and identifying and analyzing regional and global motives behind the Turkey–KRG rapprochement that led Turkey to abandon its traditional policy temporally towards the Kurdish Region of Iraq within the period this work is focused on. The book brings the global dimension to the discussion and suggests that developments at the global level play a significant role in shaping the regional and internal contexts in which the partnership between Turkey and the KRG was established. And in conclusion it argues that Turkish foreign policy towards the KRG shifted between 2007 and 2013 due to the intersection of regional and global fault lines and competition between global power blocks, the United States, Russia and China over energy resources and strategic trade and transit energy routes.

The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics
The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics

Author: Günes Murat Tezcür

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 0190064897

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The study of politics in Turkey : new horizons and perennial pitfalls / Güneş Murat Tezcür -- Democratization theories and Turkey / Ekrem Karakoç -- Ruling ideologies in modern Turkey / Kerem Öktem -- Constitutionalism in Turkey / Aslı Ü. Bâli -- Civil-military relations and the demise of Turkish democracy / Nil S. Satana and Burak Bilgehan Özpek -- Capturing secularism in Turkey : the ease of comparison / Murat Akan -- The political economy of Turkey since the end of World War II / Şevket Pamuk -- Neoliberal politics in Turkey / Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra -- The politics of welfare in Turkey / Erdem Yörük -- The political economy of environmental policymaking in Turkey : a vicious cycle / Fikret Adaman, Bengi Akbulut, and Murat Arsel -- The politics of energy in Turkey : running engines on geopolitical, discursive, and coercive power / Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın -- The contemporary politics of health in Turkey : diverse actors, competing frames, and uneven policies / Volkan Yılmaz -- Populism in Turkey : historical and contemporary patterns / Yüksel Taşkın -- Old and new polarizations and failed democratizations in Turkey / Murat Somer -- Economic voting during the AKP era in Turkey / S. Erdem Aytaç -- Party organizations in Turkey and their consequences for democracy / Melis G. Laebens -- The evolution of conventional political participation in Turkey / Ersin Kalaycıoğlu -- Symbolic politics and contention in the Turkish Republic / Senem Aslan -- Islamist activism in Turkey / Menderes Çınar -- The Kurdish movement in Turkey : understanding everyday perceptions and experiences / Dilan Okcuoglu -- The Transnational Mobilization of the Alevis of Turkey : from invisibility to the struggle for equality / Ceren Lord -- Politics of asylum seekers and refugees in Turkey : limits and prospects of populism / Fatih Resul Kılınç and Şule Toktaş -- A theoretical account of Turkish foreign policy under the AKP / Tarık Oğuzlu -- US-Turkey relations since WWII : from alliance to transactionalism / Serhat Güvenç and Soli Özel -- Turkey and Europe : historical asynchronicities and perceptual asymmetries / Hakan Yılmaz -- Turkey's foreign policy in the Middle East : an identity perspective / Lisel Hintz -- Turkey and Russia : historical patterns and contemporary trends in bilateral relations / Evren Balta and Mitat Çelikpala -- Citizenship and protest behavior in Turkey / Ayhan Kaya -- Gender politics and the struggle for equality in Turkey / Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat -- Human rights organizations in Turkey / Başak Çalı -- Truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives in Turkey / Onur Bakiner -- The politics of media in Turkey : chronicle of a stillborn media system / Sarphan Uzunoğlu -- The AKP's rhetoric of rule in Turkey : political melodramas of conspiracy from "ergenekon" to "mastermind" / Erdağ Göknar -- The transformation of political cinema in Turkey since the 1960s : a change of discourse / Zeynep Çetin-Erus and M. Elif Demoğlu -- Political music in Turkey : the birth and diversification of dissident and conformist music (1920-2000) / Mustafa Avcı.

Kurdish Identity, Islamism, and Ottomanism
Kurdish Identity, Islamism, and Ottomanism

Author: Deniz Ekici

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1793612609

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A major common misconception in scholarship on Kurdish journalistic discourses is that Kurdish intellectuals of the late Ottoman period cannot be portrayed as Kurdish nationalists. This theory prevails because of the belief that they not only endorsed and promoted Pan-Islamism and Ottoman nationalism instead of Kurdish ethnic nationalism, but also because they allegedly eschewed political demands and instead concerned themselves with ethno-cultural issues to articulate forms of “Kurdism” rather than “Kurdish nationalism.” Refuting this underlying misconstruction of the nexus between Pan-Islamism, Ottomanism, and Kurdish nationalism, this book argues, based on empirical findings, that the Kurdish periodicals of the late Ottoman period served as a communicative space in which Kurdish intellectuals negotiated and disseminated an unmistakable form of Kurdish nationalism. It claims that hegemonic Ottomanist and Pan-Islamist political thought were used in pragmatic ways in the service of burgeoning Kurdish nationalism, but were rejected altogether when they were no longer useful to fostering Kurdish nationalism.

The Kurdish Model of Political Community
The Kurdish Model of Political Community

Author: Hanifi Baris

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-01-28

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1793600015

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The Kurdish Model of Political Community: A Vision of National Liberation Defiant of the Nation-State undertakes a task long due in Kurdish studies: addressing common misunderstandings about and outlining theoretical implications of Kurdish politics. Hanifi Baris develops his arguments with an historical examination and finds apathy towards and a resistance to state-building in Kurdistan. Accordingly, Baris argues, this tendency to establish self-government with distaste to state-building has enabled major Kurdish movements in Turkey and Syria to develop a form of political community that constitutes a viable alternative to those based on theocratic, imperial and national sovereignty. Thus, Baris concludes, rather than being a conflict between competing nationalisms, the current Kurdish conflict in Turkey and Syria is between competing visions of political community.

Methodological Approaches in Kurdish Studies
Methodological Approaches in Kurdish Studies

Author: Bahar Baser

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1498575226

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This edited volume presents thirteen contributions that reflect upon the practical, ethical, theoretical and methodological challenges that researchers face when conducting fieldwork in settings that are characterized with deteriorating security situations, increasing state control and conflicting inter-ethnic relations. More precisely, they shed light to the intricacies of conducting fieldwork on highly politicized and sensitive topics in the region of Kurdistan in Iraq, Syria and Turkey as well as among Kurdish diaspora members in Europe. This volume is multidisciplinary in its focus and approach. It includes contributions from scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from sociology and political science to social psychology and anthropology. The complexity of security situations, and the atmospheres of distrust and suspicion have led the contributors to be creative and to adapt their research methods in ways that at times transcend disciplinary boundaries and conventions. Relatedly, the contributions also open the often-considered Pandora’s box of discussing the failures in what is often a “messy” research field, and how to adopt one’s methods to rapidly changing political circumstances. This necessitates greater reflexivity in existing power relations of the surrounding context and how those affect not only the interaction situations between the researcher and the participants, but also raise questions for the overall research process, concerning namely social justice, representation and knowledge production. The contributions unravel this by unpacking positionalities beyond ethnicities, discussing how gendered and other positionalities are constructed in fieldwork interactions and by illustrating how the surrounding structures of power and dominance are present in every-day fieldwork. What differentiates this book from the existing literature is that it is the first academic endeavor that solely focuses on methodological reflections aimed to the field of Kurdish Studies. It offers a comprehensive and multidisciplinary account of scholars’ fieldwork experiences in the Kurdish regions and as such, it is also of value to scholars conducting or about to conduct fieldwork in conflict regions elsewhere.

The Kurds in the Middle East
The Kurds in the Middle East

Author: Mehmet Gurses

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1793613591

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While dramatic changes taking place in the Middle East offer important opportunities to the Kurdish century-long struggle for recognition, serious obstacles seem to keep reemerging every time the Kurds anywhere make progress. The large Kurdish geography, extending from western Iran to near the eastern Mediterranean, and a century of repression and denial have engendered various Kurdish groups with competing and at times conflicting views and goals. The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics, with an emphasis on continuity and change in the Kurdish Question, brings together a group of well-known scholars to shed light on this complex issue.

Media and Politics in Kurdistan
Media and Politics in Kurdistan

Author: Mohammedali Yaseen Taha

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-06-26

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1793611041

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Media and Politics in Kurdistan studies the relationship between the media and politics in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). KRI is approached as a case study, as an example of the struggle between authoritarian and democratization efforts at the same time. The book contributes towards understanding the dynamics of the media systems in the KRI and attempts to participate in the theoretical discussion of media and politics in this region. The research outcomes show which parts of the press, how many of them and for what length of time the press in the KRI has been owned/controlled by political parties. This book also studies the system of political parties and particularly as related to the press.