Understanding today’s Kurdish movement: Leftist heritage, martyrdom, democracy and gender

Abstract

Though an important political actor in Turkey, and also in Syria, Iraq and Iran, there are few detailed socio-political accounts of the Kurdish movement’s main political actor in Turkey, the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK). This may be considered an important demerit of not only Kurdish and Turkish Studies but social and political sciences in general. In this special issue, we aim to address what may be less a gap in the literature than an academic blind-spot. Wit...