International Colony Kurdistan

Ismail Besikci is a renown Turkish sociologist who specializes on Kurds in south-eastern Turkey. He has authored several important works on Kurdish social organization and the continuing plight of Kurds today. He has also been imprisoned in Turkey most of his adult life because he has spoken out on the Kurdish issue. Be?ikci argues that the Turkish state has been practicing a policy of genocide against Kurds over the past 80 years.International Colony Kurdistan is probably Besikci's most open critique of the present division of Kurdistan, an ethnically contigious area (mainly) between Turkey, Iran and Iraq - with a Kurdish population of over 20 million people. Be?ikci argues that, for all their political differences, there is a longstanding understanding between these regional states to deny Kurds the right of self-determination and nationhood.Ismail Besikci's International Colony Kurdistan was originally published in 1991 and led to the imprisonment of the author in Turkey. The book remains a roadmap for our understanding of Kurdistan today.

Kurdistan is among the world’s most notorious cases of self-determination denied, and the reasons why this outcome remains unachieved reveal as much about the biases of international law as they do about the merits of the case for Kurdistan. On the centenary of the Treaty of Lausanne, 24 July 1923, the last of the international instruments establishing the new international order after World War I, this book explores the potential blind spots of international law regarding its differential application in the Middle East. Tracing self-determination over the past century, the work explores how the law applies to Kurdish aspirations and to what extent the Kurds can rely upon the current law of self-determination to achieve internationally recognised statehood. The book offers an exhaustive historico-legal analysis of changing international legal concepts and geopolitical upheaval, providing a blueprint for Kurdish selfdetermination in international law. Shedding light on the law’s structural biases, it represents a comprehensive historico-legal account of Kurdish aspirations for territorial independence within international law literature, offering a guide to relevant legal problems. It will be of interest to students and academics focused on international law, specifically, peoplehood, statehood, secession, human rights law, political science, and anthropology. Moreover, policymakers, government officials working in peace and conflict, research and advocacy institutes, think tanks, as well as scholars of international relations, historians, political scientists, regional specialists, diplomats, and non-governmental organisation activists will find it a useful reference. The book also illuminates the human rights status of the Kurds in their host states, making it relevant to scholars and activists. Its findings have implications extending beyond Kurdistan to self-determination struggles in Scotland, Catalonia, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

The book presents a theoretical and practical approach to international social work. It uses examples from Germany with a long tradition of social work and focuses on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which is in a pioneering phase in teaching social work while at the same time experiencing a highly explosive situation in global politics. Socio-political challenges such as violence, traumatization, (religious) fundamentalism, ethnicization, changing gender relations, flight and migration call for a professional examination of social work as a human rights profession in international comparison.

Since the end of World War I, the Kurds have had no national rights, and their country Kurdistan was divided and occupied by Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and former Soviet Union as an international colony, and the Kurds have been prosecuted, massacred, assimilated and denied the very basic human rights. Whether the Kurds are demanding full independence or a more limited autonomy or extension of electricity for their villages, in these States the Kurdish people face severe restrictions and harsh oppression. Here is some of what happened to western Kurdistan as an example to the rest of Kurdistan.

Kurdish Politics in the Middle East analyzes political and social dimensions of Kurdish integration into the mainstream socio-political life in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. Its central thesis is that ethnic conflict constitutes a major challenge to the contemporary nation-state system in the Middle East. Long vanquished is the illusion of the "melting pot," or the concept that assimilation is an inexorable process produced by "modernization" and the emergence of a relatively strong and centralized nation-state system in the region. Perhaps no single phenomenon highlights this thesis more than the historical Kurdish struggle for self-determination. This book's focus is on Kurdish politics and its relationship with broader regional and global developments that affect the Kurds. It does not claim to cover everything Kurdish, and it does not promote the political agenda of any group, movement, or country.

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.

An Anthropogenic Table of Elements provides a contemporary rethinking of Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, bringing together "elemental" stories to reflect on everyday life in the Anthropocene. Concise and engaging, this book provides stories of scale, toxicity, and temporality that extrapolate on ideas surrounding ethics, politics, and materiality that are fundamental to this contemporary moment. Examining elemental objects and forces, including carbon, mould, cheese, ice, and viruses, the contributors question what elemental forms are still waiting to emerge and what political possibilities of justice and environmental reparation they might usher into the world. Bringing together anthropologists, historians, and media studies scholars, this book tests a range of possible ways to tabulate and narrate the elemental as a way to bring into view fresh discussion on material constitutions and, thereby, new ethical stances, responsibilities, and power relations. In doing so, An Anthropogenic Table of Elements demonstrates through elementality that even the smallest and humblest stories are capable of powerful effects and vast journeys across time and space.