The Kurdish Question in Turkey, Iraq and Beyond

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes M. Casier and J. Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London: Routledge, 2011), pp.221. $133.00, ISBN 978-0415583459 (hardback). R. Lowe and G. Stansfield (eds.), The Kurdish Policy Imperative (London: Chatham House, 2010), pp.211. $24.95, ISBN 978-1862031999 (paper). J. Jongerden and A.H. Akkaya, ‘Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK’, in Casier and Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey, pp.123–42. For accounts that contradicts this, see M.H. Yavuz, ‘Five Stages of the Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol.7, No.3 (2001), p.10; M. Heper, The State and Kurds in Turkey: The Question of Assimilation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p.156. Aliza Marcus's journalistic account of the PKK, largely from their perspective, also connects Öcalan to the DDKO. A. Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York: New York University, 2007), p.23. Jongerden and Akkaya, ‘Born from the Left’, p.127; this connection to the ADYÖD ‘AYÖD’ has also been made by McDowall. D. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 3rd ed. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p.420. Marcus also shows a later connection with ADYÖD. Marcus, Blood and Belief, p.28. Ibid., p.124. Ibid., p.135. Ibid., p.134. A.H. Akkaya and J. Jongerden, ‘The PKK in the 2000s: Continuity through Breaks?’, in Casier and Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey, pp.152–3, 156–7. Ibid., p.152. N. Watts, ‘The Missing Moderate: Legitimacy Resources and pro-Kurdish Party Politics in Turkey’, in Lowe and Stansfield (eds.), The Kurdish Policy Imperative, pp.97–115. Ibid., p.100. This chapter highlights a number of important themes covered in great depth in an excellent recent work by Watts. N. Watts, Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey (Seattle: University of Washington, 2010). Ibid., p.99. Casier and Jongerden, in their introductory chapter, make such a claim for one Kurdish movement spearheaded by Abdullah Öcalan. Casier and Jongerden, Nationalisms in Turkey, p.8. J. Klein, ‘Turkish Responses to Kurdish Identity Politics: Recent Developments in Historical Perspective’, in Lowe and Stansfield (eds.), The Kurdish Policy Imperative, pp.79–96. Ibid., pp.86–92. O. Grojean, ‘Bringing the Organization back in: Pro-Kurdish Protest in Europe’, in Casier and Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey, pp.182–96. M. Casier, ‘The Politics of Solidarity: The Kurdish Question in the European Parliament’, in Casier and Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey, pp.197–217. C. Scalbert-Yücel, ‘The “Liberalization” of Turkish Policy towards the Kurdish Language: The Influence of External Actors’, in Lowe and Stansfield (eds.), The Kurdish Policy Imperative, pp.116–29. R. Lowe, ‘The serhildan and the Kurdish National Story in Syria’, in Lowe and Stansfield (eds.), TheKurdish Policy Imperative, pp.161–79. For one late account, see H. Özoğlu, ‘Does Kurdish Nationalism Have a Navel?’, in Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 2011), p.220. S. Wolff, ‘The Relationships between States and Non-state Peoples: A Comparative View of the Kurds in Iraq’, in Lowe and Stansfield (eds.), The Kurdish Policy Imperative, p.20. Lowe and Stansfield, The Kurdish Policy Imperative, p.4. M. Yeğen, ‘The Kurdish Question in Turkey: Denial to Recognition’, in Casier and Jongerden (eds.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey, p.73. Yeğen, ‘The Kurdish Question in Turkey’, pp.67–84. L. Anderson, ‘Internationalizing Iraq's Constitutional Dilemma’, in Lowe and Stansfield (eds.), TheKurdish Policy Imperative, p.146. Wolff also proposes an ethnic and creedal-based power-sharing scenario though he writes that ‘this need not happen in an ascriptive, Bosnia- or Lebanon-style way, but it can be ensured by way of specific rules of executive formation.’ Wolff, ‘The Relationship between States and Non-state Peoples,’ p.25.