The Nature and Resource Field of the Kurdish Resistance in Turkey: A Dormant Resource

Saudi Arabia is A.M. Vasil'yev's Istoriya Saudovskoy Aravii (1745–1973), History of Saudi Arabia, 1745–1973 (Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Orientalism of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1982; 613 pp.)

Puritanye Islama? Vahhabizm i pyervoye gosudarstvo Sauditov v Aravii (1744/45–1818), The Puritans of Islam? Wahhabism and the First Government of the Saudis in Arabia, 1744/45 to 1818 (Moscow, Nauka Press, 1967; 264 pp.).

I.I. Proshin's Saudovskaya Araviya. Istoriko‐Ekonomichyeskiy ochyerk, Saudi Arabia: An Historical‐Economic Essay (Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of the Peoples of Asia of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1964; 303 pp.)

V.V. Ozoling's Ekonomika Saudovskoy Aravii, The Economy of Saudi Arabia (Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Orientalism of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1975; 208 pp.)

V.L. Bodyanskiy and M.S. Lazaryev's Saudovskaya Araviya poslyeSauda. Osnovniye tyendyentsii vnyeshneypolitiki (1964–1966 gg.), Saudi Arabia After Saud: Basic Tendencies of Foreign Policies, 1964–66 (Moscow, Nauka Press, 1967; 116 pp.)

L.V. Val'kova's Saudovskaya Araviya v myedzhunarodnikh otnoshyeniyakh,Saudi Arabia in International Relations (Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Orientalism of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1979; 224 pp.)

O. Gyerasimov's Saudovskaya Araviya, Saudi Arabia (Mos cow, Misl’ Press, 1977; 72 pp.) and Saudovskaya Araviya (Spravochnik), Saudi Arabia; A Handbook (Moscow, Nauka Press, 1980; 272 pp.)

Yakub Yusef Abdallah's Obyedinyenniye Arabskiye Emirati: Istoriya politiko‐gosudarstvyennogo razvitiya (xix v.‐nachalo 70‐ye godov xx v.), The United Arab Emirates: The History of Political‐Governmental Development (19th century to the early 1970s) (Moscow, Nauka Press for the Lumumba University, 1978; 152 pp.)

R.V. Klyekovskiy and V.A. Lutskyevich, is entitled Obyedinyenniye Arabskiye Emirati, The United Arab Emirates (Moscow, Misl’ Press, 1979; 159 pp.

‘Socio‐Economic Problems of Developing Countries’, which also includes a book by L. Zvyeryeva, entitled Kuveyt, Kuwait (Moscow, Misl’ Press, 1964; 112 pp.)

V.L. Bodyanskiy's Sovryemyenniy Kuveyt (spravochnik), Contemporary Kuwait: A Handbook (Moscow, Nauka Press for the Institute of Orientalism of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1971; 328 pp.)     

De-Europeanisation of Civil Society and Public Debates in Turkey: The Kurdish Question Revisited

Abstract

This study discusses the dynamics of de-Europeanisation and the changing impact of Europe on the politically mobilised civil society involved in the public debates concerning Turkey’s Kurdish question. The article first critically assesses how and in what ways the legal and constitutional reforms on the freedom of assembly required by the European Union (EU) changed the political structure in which civil society organisations (CSOs) operate in Turkey. It then examines the views of CSOs on the potential roles and limitations of the EU in the Kurdish question and the peace process which lasted between March 2013 and July 2015. It also delineates the reasons why the political context of Europeanisation is not seen as instrumental by these CSOs to framing and justifying their arguments.     

The Alevi question and the limits of citizenship in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The Alevi question in Turkey is not only about a manifestation of the demands for religious freedoms and pluralism but also an issue of citizenship at least for the last three decades. This article argues that as a result of the rise of the Alevi identity and collective capacity of the Alevis to formulate demands in the national and international public spheres, the issue has increasingly turned to a matter of struggle for the long-denied equal citizenship rights of the Alevis in Turkey. Expected failure of workshops process, namely Alevi Opening, during the second term of the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP) period increasingly brought a sense of the disappointment among the Alevi organizations due to the fact that the issue was not managed with a perspective based on equal citizenship rights but with a discussion on the authenticity and originality of the Alevi demands. Enduring silence for the solution of the Alevi question in the last decade would lead Alevi organizations to the search for the extension of the self-creation of the survival mechanisms without the state support. This paper, within these considerations, is based on the demands of the Alevi society in Turkey and their struggle for the legal recognition, which increasingly challenged the Turkish form of secularism and citizenship regimes today.     

The Kurdish image in statist historiography: the case of Simko

This article focuses on the uprising in 1918–1922 of Ismail Agha of Shikak (a.k.a. Simko) in Iranian Kurdistan and how he has been portrayed in Persian historiography. Painting Simko simply as another Kurdish rebellious chief with no nationalist aspirations leaves important questions unanswered. Simko introduced a number of firsts in Kurdish political history to Iranian Kurdistan, yet his innovations have generally been overlooked. Simko was conscious of, informed by, and founded his politics upon the communal distinctions deemed to legitimize varying degrees of Kurdish self-rule. In addition to his political and military activities, Simko co-founded the first Kurdish school in Iran, published the first Kurdish–Persian newspaper, and made Kurdish the official medium of his reign. This article draws on memoirs, personal accounts, and other unexplored primary documents to show a more complex picture of Simko's resistance, problematizes some idées reçues about Simko and his ethno-nationalism, and explores inconsistencies in the existing literature on the subject.     

Communal violence and ethnic polarization before and after the 2015 elections in Turkey: attacks against the HDP and the Kurdish population

Given its duration and intensity, the decades-old civil war in Turkey between the Turkish state and the PKK has resulted in relatively low levels of lethal inter-communal conflict between Kurdish and Turkish populations. However, around the June 2015 elections an unprecedented wave of systematic anti-Kurdish violence swept across western Turkey. The paper will assess these events in relation to literature on communal riots and electoral violence. It will consider the impact of state led anti-Kurdish discourse and the growth of the HDP, as potential factors that aggravated the dormant tensions and laid the groundwork for widespread inter-communal violence.     

The fundamental characteristics of the Kurdish nationhood project in modern Iraq

The protracted Iraqi-Kurdish conflict has plagued the country since the creation of Iraq in the 1920s. Iraqi-Kurdish relations are dominated by the clash of two contradictory nationhood projects: Kurdish and Iraqi. The Kurdish nationhood project was constructed with the perspective that the Kurds as a nation, could qualify for but is deprived of, achieving nation-state status. Based on the Kurdish project, Kurdistan and Iraq consist of two separate homelands: the Arab part of Iraq, which is part of the greater Arab homeland, and Iraqi Kurdistan which is part of the Greater Kurdistan region.     

Politics in the Kurdish periphery: clan networks and local party strategies in a comparative perspective

Despite the return to violence and state repression in the Kurdish conflict, the ruling Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (Justice and Development Party – AKP) has remained the only alternative to the Kurdish National Movement (KNM) for Turkey's Kurdish citizens. What local-level strategies did the AKP employ in Kurdish areas to reinforce its national-level appeal to Islamic values? Under what conditions did local vote-seeking strategies help the AKP to overcome its pro-Kurdish rivals at the ballot box? This article examines the politics of local coalition building in the periphery of the Kurdish landscape – Bingöl and Mu?. Despite their many similarities, the two cities voted for different political parties in national elections. This article examines how the AKP's local party organizations interacted with local authority structures, recruited influential local elites, and pursued new voters. The vitality of clan networks in parts of Bingöl enabled the AKP to build a reliable local coalition. The gradual weakening of clan networks in Mu? and their permeation by the KNM prevented a similar coalition. Instead, the parties of the KNM were able to take advantage of divided clan networks to win national electoral contests in the province.