The Kurds and the Future of Turkey

The Kurds and the Future of Turkey PDF

Author: Michael M. Gunter

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 1997-05-15

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9780312172657

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Since 1984, Turkey has suffered from an increasingly virulent guerrilla/terrorist insurgency led by the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers Party, headed by Abdullah Ocalan. By 1996, more than 20,000 people had been killed and another 2,000,000 displaced and 2,000 villages destroyed. At present, this crisis threatens to challenge the future of the country. Gunter analyzes the authoritarian tradition in Turkey and puzzles over the inability of Turkey to take the final steps toward democracy. He offers a solution that will allow the country to remain whole. Gunter's masterly analysis and proffered solution is necessary reading for anyone interested in Turkey and its troubling problem.

Understanding Turkey's Kurdish Question

Understanding Turkey's Kurdish Question PDF

Author: Fevzi Bilgin

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2013-06-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0739184032

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This edited volume, comprising chapters by leading academics and experts, aims to clarify the complexity of Turkey’s Kurdish question. The Kurdish question is a long-standing, protracted issue, which gained regional and international significance largely in the last thirty years. The Kurdish people who represent the largest ethnic minority in the Middle East without a state have demanded autonomy and recognition since the post-World I wave of self-governance in the region, and their nationalist claims have further intensified since the end of the Cold War. The present volume first describes the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, its genesis during the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, and its legacy into the new Turkish republic. Second, the volume takes up the violent legacy of Kurdish nationalism and analyzes the conflict through the actions of the PKK, the militant pro-Kurdish organization which grew to be the most important actor in the process. Third, the volume deals with the international dimensions of the Kurdish question, as manifested in Turkey’s evolving relationships with Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the issue regarding the status of the Kurdish minorities in these countries, and the debate over the Kurdish problem in Western capitals.

Turkey's Kurdish Question

Turkey's Kurdish Question PDF

Author: Henri J. Barkey

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0585177732

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The Kurds, one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Middle East, are reasserting their identity—politically and through violence. Divided mainly among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the Kurds have posed increasingly sharp challenges to all of these states in their quest for greater autonomy if not outright independence. Turkey's essentially democratic structure and civil society_ideal tools for coping with and incorporating minority challenge_have so far been suspended on this issue, which the government is treating almost exclusively as a security problem to be dealt with by force. For the West the situation in Turkey is particularly significant because of the country's importance in the region and because of the economic, political, and diplomatic damage that the conflict has caused. If Turkey fails to find a peaceful solution within its current borders, then the outlook is grim for ethnic and separatist challenges elsewhere in the region. This study explores the roots, dimensions, character, and evolution of the problem, offers a range of approaches to a resolution of the conflict, and draws broader parallels between the Kurdish question and other separatist movements worldwide.

The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey

The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey PDF

Author: Veli Yadirgi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-03

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1107181232

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An examination of the link between the economic and political development of the Kurds in Turkey, and Turkey's Kurdish question.

The Kurdish Question in Turkey

The Kurdish Question in Turkey PDF

Author: Cengiz Gunes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-23

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1135140634

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Almost three decades have passed since political violence erupted in Turkey’s south-eastern regions, where the majority of Turkey’s approximately 20 million Kurds live. In 1984, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) initiated an insurgency which intensified in the following decades and continues to this day. Kurdish regions in Turkey were under military rule for more than a decade and the conflict has cost the lives of 45,000 people, including soldiers, guerrillas and civilians. The complex issue of the Kurdish Question in Turkey is subject to comprehensive examination in this book. This interdisciplinary edited volume brings together chapters by social theorists, political scientists, social anthropologists, sociologists, legal theorists and ethnomusicologists to provide new perspectives on this internationally significant issue. It elaborates on the complexity of the Kurdish question and examines the subject matter from a number of innovative angles. Considering historical, theoretical and political aspects of the Kurdish question in depth and raising issues that have not been discussed sufficiently in existing literature, this book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Nationalism and Conflict, Turkish Politics and Middle Eastern politics more broadly.

Turkey’s Mission Impossible

Turkey’s Mission Impossible PDF

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.

Anatomy of a Civil War

Anatomy of a Civil War PDF

Author: Mehmet Gurses

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2019-02-28

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0472901168

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Anatomy of a Civil War demonstrates the destructive nature of war, ranging from the physical to the psychosocial, as well as war’s detrimental effects on the environment. Despite such horrific aspects, evidence suggests that civil war is likely to generate multilayered outcomes. To examine the transformative aspects of civil war, Mehmet Gurses draws on an original survey conducted in Turkey, where a Kurdish armed group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been waging an intermittent insurgency for Kurdish self-rule since 1984. Findings from a probability sample of 2,100 individuals randomly selected from three major Kurdish-populated provinces in the eastern part of Turkey, coupled with insights from face-to-face in-depth interviews with dozens of individuals affected by violence, provide evidence for the multifaceted nature of exposure to violence during civil war. Just as the destructive nature of war manifests itself in various forms and shapes, wartime experiences can engender positive attitudes toward women, create a culture of political activism, and develop secular values at the individual level. In addition, wartime experiences seem to robustly predict greater support for political activism. Nonetheless, changes in gender relations and the rise of a secular political culture appear to be primarily shaped by wartime experiences interacting with insurgent ideology.

Kurds in Turkey

Kurds in Turkey PDF

Author: Lucie Drechselová

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2019-06-27

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1498575250

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This ethnographic volume features fresh research by junior scholars of contemporary Kurdish studies. The contributions are assembled around four themes: women’s participation, paramilitary, space, and infrapolitics of resistance.

The Kurds in Erdogan's "New" Turkey

The Kurds in Erdogan's

Author: Nikos Christofis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1000531376

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This book focuses on the AKP government since 2002 during which time the state’s approach to the Kurdish Question has undergone several changes. Examining what preceded and followed the failed putsch of 2016, it explains and critiques that situates the Kurdish Question in its broader context. It stands out with the main objective to avoid any ‘policy-oriented bias’ through an interdisciplinary and multi-thematic approach. The volume discusses the state and policies in the Kurdish region of Turkey, as well as counter-hegemonic discourses that seek to reform existing institutions. Some chapters focus on the domestic aspects and gender perspectives of the Kurdish Question in Turkey, which focus has been taken over by recent developments in Syria and the Middle East in general. Other chapters include a range of new aspects of Turkish society and politics, and the international aspects of Ankara’s policies and its implications not only inside Turkey but also internationally. Taking both domestic and foreign policy aspects into account, the book offers a set of innovative explanations for the state of crisis in Turkey and a solid basis for thinking about the likely path forward. Scholars, researchers and post-graduates, interested in political theory, Kurdish and Middle East politics will find this book invaluable.

The Kurdish Question and Turkey

The Kurdish Question and Turkey PDF

Author: Kemal Kirisci

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 113521770X

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This volume examines the Kurdish question in Turkey, tracing its developments from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. The study considers: secession; federal schemes; various forms of autonomy; the provision of special rights; and further democratization.