The Kurds In Erdo An S Turkey

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

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.

With a foreword by Noam Chomsky, this is the most up-to-date critical analysis of the problems faced by the Kurds in Turkey. Turkey has a long history of human rights abuses against its Kurdish population – a population that stretches into millions. This human rights record is one of the main stumbling blocks in Turkey’s efforts to join the EU. The Kurds are denied many basic rights, including the right to learn or broadcast in their own language. This book, written by a leading human rights defender, provides a comprehensive account of the key issues now facing the Kurds, and the prospects for Turkey joining the EU. Kerim Yildiz outlines the background to the current situation and explores a range of issues including civil, cultural and political rights, minority rights, internal displacement, and the international community’s obligations regarding Turkey.

This book examines the circumstances of the Kurds in 21st century Turkey, under the hegemony of the AKP government. After decades of denial, oppression and conflict, Kurds now assert a more confident presence in Turkey's politics - but does increasing visibility mean a rejection of Turkey? Recording Kurdish voices from Istanbul and DiyarbakA r, Turkey's most important Kurdish-populated cities, this book generates new understandings of Kurdish identity and political aspirations. Highlighting elements of Kurdish identity including Newroz, the Kurdish language, connections to religion, landscape and cross-border ties, it offers a portrait of Kurdish political life in a Turkey increasingly dominated by its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Within the context of Turkey's troubled trajectory towards democratisation, it documents Kurdish narratives of oppression and resistance, and enquires how Kurds reconcile their distinct ethnic identity and citizenship in modern Turkey.

This book analyzes the transformation of ethnic and religious political parties in Turkey with special focus on their role in the country’s democratization and regime changes. Turkey went through a process of autocratization under the rule of the AKP government over the last two decades. Scholars question the structural, agent-centered and cultural factors that led the country on this path, and provide the lessons learnt from this case for other cases of democratic decline or breakdown. This book contributes to this debate. It treats the three national elections (2002, 2007, 2015-June) as opportunities for democratization, in which the Islamist-successor AKP (in 2002, 2007) and the Kurdish-successor HDP (in 2015-June) managed to overcome identity politics and received the organized support from social groups outside of their traditional constituency. This book argues that in a semi-democratic context where repressive acts of the state (e.g. banning of parties, arresting politicians) have been subject to widespread public criticism, confronting the state becomes a salient issue. When these parties manage to frame this issue as one of democracy, they take ownership of it, and this then becomes an opportunity for democratizing the regime. This opportunity, yet, can be missed if the party follows an office-seeking strategy rather than a policy-seeking one.

This book covers over a century of history, from the emergence of Kurdish nationalism in the interwar period to the 2010s when, for the first time in modern history, Kurdish forces controlled two autonomous political entities in Iraq and Syria, as well as over a hundred municipalities in south-eastern Turkey. In these years of momentous advance for Kurdish forces across the region, Kurdish politics remains deeply divided into competing movements pursuing irreconcilable projects for the future of the nation. The author investigates the origins of the present divide in the history of Kurdish nationalism. The book turns the historical sociology to study nationalism as embedded in social conflicts through a comparative analysis of the history of the Kurdish movement in Iraq and Turkey, by reassessing the literature on Kurdish politics and filling its gaps with numerous interviews with witnesses and scholars.

At the core of the interest are the controversy on the political implementation of violence, the relevance of the international law for the conflict, the regional and foreign relations of the PKK, and the chances and obstacles of a peaceful democratic conflict resolution."--Jacket.