What the Kurds Can Tell Us about Ethnic Nationalism

Abstract

The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity. By David Romano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 290 pp., $75.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-85041-X), $29.99 paper (ISBN: 0-521-68426-9). David Romano's The Kurdish Nationalist Movement applies social movement theory to the analysis of ethnic mobilization, focusing on an in-depth case study of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey. Adopting the three dimensions of political process theory (opportunity, mobilization, and cultural framing) that were proposed in the influential edited collection by Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald (1996), Romano has almost certainly produced a more complete account of how and when ethnic mobilization occurs than either a structuralist, rationalist, or culturalist account alone could have done. At the same time, the caveat that applies to all rich, detailed case studies applies in this instance. Caution must be exercised when attempting to generalize from one case. However, Romano includes a limited comparative dimension in The Kurdish Nationalist Movement . Although the bulk of the book focuses on Turkish Kurds, Romano offers brief comparative chapters on Iraq and Iran as well. Moreover, because some Kurds have had the option to assimilate (especially in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran), the Kurdish case offers the opportunity to compare experiences across Kurdish communities themselves, namely, to compare those who assimilate with those who adopt a pan-Kurdish national identity. Although the best known proponents of the political process approach to social movement theory have seemingly adopted a mechanisms-based focus (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Tilly and Tarrow 2006), the idea that political openings can facilitate mobilization makes intuitive sense, which is one reason why scholars apply it despite some fuzziness about exactly what a political “opening” means. This vagueness has, however, led to a fierce debate about the stability and consistency of the concept of “political …