This thesis attempts to ascertain the implications for human rights when rebels become the only advocates of a population targeted by mass violence. The specific focus is placed on the case of Kurdish rebel organisations from Iraq and Turkey. Lacking an ability to organise freely within either state, these groups established a presence in the more open political environment of the West where they undertook efforts aimed at winning global support. After setting a theoretical basis in chapters one and two, the case studies that follow begin with an overview of the causes of the violence experienced by the Iraqi and Turkish Kurds, before proceeding to assess how this violence was represented on the global stage by the rebel organisations and their representatives. The time period assessed runs from the immediate aftermath of World War One through to the present day. Whereas previous studies of advocacy in International Relations have looked closely at the actions of more benign actors such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, this study is more concerned with what happens when important human rights abuses go unnoticed. In such a context, rebels often become a people's only representatives. The result is that the message presented to the global community is one that conforms to the interests of the rebel organisation. This raises major questions and problems for millions whose perspectives might not match with rebel aims. In short, what is not said is more important than what is said. This focus on rebel-directed activism also casts serious doubts on the value of advocacy by exploring its role in reproducing rebel power at the expense of those that are most in need of support. It was only when Kurdish activists were able to establish an independent perspective that some of these limitations were addressed. In this, the act ivities carried out by the London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP) are especially notable. By helping bring cases to the attention of the European Court of Human Rights, the KHRP has helped give voice and obtain tangible results for ordinary Kurds who never figured prominently in the agendas of any Kurdish rebel faction.

This dissertation is an attempt to pose a challenge to the reified image of Kurdishness and Kurdayeti (awakening Kurdish nationalism), from an ethnographical perspective. The focus group is the comparatively understudied Kurmanji-speaking Kurds of Urmia county in Iran, both in rural and urban contexts. The questions is why do the Kurds of this study, in particular, and Kurds all over the Middle East, in general, have a high potential for mobilization during politically charged moments? / 博士(グローバル社会研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in Global Society Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

Traditional thinking on security fails to explain the security predicament of Third World states. These states, with their existence assured by international recognition, are not primarily concerned with externally generated threats. Their internal characteristics violate the tenants of the realist theory, because they have more than one nation within their borders. The domestic conditions of these states make them internally insecure and weak---the threat of ethnic conflict great. / As such, placing security in the military sphere alone, ignores these contradictions which lead to an insecurity dilemma. Thus, the concept of security needs to be broadened to include, not merely the military but also the political, societal and economic factors. The threat posed to state security from dissenting ethnic groups is both a domestic and foreign policy issue. It is within this discussion, that the thesis examines Turkey's security predicament with regards to her Kurdish minority.

Diss. Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This study is based on the relationship between the Kurds and the Left in Turkey between 1960s and 1990 in Turkey. The question of identity is discussed in terms of the continuities and ruptures in the discourse(s) of the Left in Turkey on the 'eastern question' and 'Kurdish (national) question' in this period. The main question of the research is how the Kurdish identity was constructed in the discourses of Yön, TKSP (Türkiye Kürdistanı Sosyalist Partisi - Turkish Kurdistan Socialist Party), and the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê - Kurdistan Workers' Party). Three sample publications/organizations representative of the leftist discourse in the period were selected to show the Left's treatment of the Kurdish question by using periodical publications, memoirs, clandestine organizational documents and through discourse analysis.

This dissertation concentrates on a circular labor migration from the provincial towns of the Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey, to rural areas of western Turkey. Each year, an estimated one and a half million workers migrate west with their families for several months to work in rural jobs such as farm labor, sharecropping, forestation, and charcoal making. Based on a total of sixteen months of ethnographic research between October 2014 and August 2016, following the migrant workers between their hometowns and work sites, this dissertation uses this labor practice as an ethnographic lens to analyze both the socio-political conditions under which this labor practice is shaped, and the material practices through which economic surplus is produced, managed, and distributed. Exploring the everyday life in the hometowns of the migrant workers, it investigates the racialized and regionally-divided class formation in Turkey, which heavily relies on labor migration from the Kurdish region. These power relations are also reproduced in western worksites through racialized and securitized practices of labor discipline and labor control. In this labor regime, the Kurdish family not only fulfills functions of social security and social reproduction, but also directly becomes the unit of production and the social hub through which relations of production are organized. However, the temporary character of this labor practice also allows the Kurdish migrant workers to construct a life in their hometowns that is not entirely determined by the structures of political domination and exploitation but is shaped through kinship, neighborhood politics, and everyday relations of multiple subjectivities to their material surroundings.

Why do some ethnic groups mobilize in violent ways whereas some others mobilize by using peaceful methods? And why do some ethnic groups seek integration while some others pursue separatist goals? This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework to answer these questions. It suggests that a state’s ethnic incorporation policies shape both why (centripetal or centrifugal aims) and how (peaceful or violent methods) ethnic groups mobilize. It argues that (1) consocitionalism recognizes ethnic groups and grants a degree of political autonomy to them, yet limits individuals’ political participation via non-ethnic channels of political participation; and, therefore, it leads to peaceful and moderately centrifugal ethnic mobilizations; (2) liberal multiculturalism recognizes ethnic groups, grants a degree of political autonomy to them, and allows individuals to participate in politics via non-ethnic channels; and, therefore, it leads to peaceful and moderately centripetal mobilizations; (3) civic assimilationism neither recognizes ethnic groups nor grants a degree of political autonomy to them, yet allows individuals to participate in politics via non-ethnic channels; and therefore it leads to peaceful and centripetal mobilizations of groups which lack pre-existing ethnic mobilization; but it leads to moderately violent and centrifugal mobilizations of groups which have strong pre-existing ethnic mobilizations; and (4) ethnocracies neither recognize ethnic groups nor grant a degree of political autonomy to them, and they also limit individuals’ political participation via non-ethnic channels. Therefore, they lead to centrifugal and violent ethnic mobilizations. The dissertation uses a mixed method research design. The hypotheses are tested based on the Minorities at Risk data as well as the case studies of ethnic Turks in Bulgaria and Cyprus, and Kurds and the Roma in Turkey. The case studies benefit from an extensive field research in Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Turkey using original interviews with former and current guerillas, guerilla families, political activists, and politicians from each ethnic group under scrutiny and archival research on newspapers and legal documents. The findings indicate that politics of ethnic accommodation are not only an explanation for the causes of different ethnic mobilization patterns, but also a feasible remedy for ethnic disputes spanning all over the world. / text

This dissertation aims to illuminate the changing nature of the Kurdish contention in Turkey since the 1990s as well as its ubiquitous dissemination among the Kurdish grassroots through examining the repercussions of political violence and the relocation of the grassroots from rural to urban centers. My understanding of the recent internal displacement of Kurdish citizens in Turkey in the late 1980s, but en masse in 1990s relates the issue to three overarching intertwined trajectories; 1) the end of the cold war, resulting in the changing nature of political violence and of identity politics; 2) the incursion of neoliberalism and the changing paradigms regarding the nature of state-society relations, resulting in a tendency for decentralization and a decline in the welfare functions of the state 3) the increasing salience of new international concerns--particularly international human rights rhetoric--and their influence domestically. Against this backdrop, I examine how the displacement of Kurdish citizens on a large scale has become part of the changing nature of the Kurdish Question, and in turn has started to redefine its contemporary face in Turkey in the 1990s. I argue that following the 1990s, the Kurdish question in Turkey has [re]surfaced as 1) a problem of political legitimacy between the state and (Kurdish) citizens affected by conflict and displacement 2) an ethno-nationalist claim, 3) a poverty and social citizenship problem. I analyze these three propositions in relation to three main processes. First, I propose that new dynamics have been introduced into the state/center-citizen/periphery relations, through which 'legitimate' Kurdish citizens and secure spaces/geographies are distinguished by the Turkish state in contrast to the 'illegitimate,' 'so-called', 'undeserving' and/or 'suspicious' ones. This process, in turn, brought in question the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of the displaced Kurdish citizens. Second, previously existing Kurdish contention has turned into an ethno-political issue, which is entrenched among the Kurdish masses mired in poverty in the urban centers of southeastern Turkey. Finally, the discontents of neoliberal restructuring in the form of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion have converged with the ethnicized discontent prevailing among the Kurdish masses in the city centers in southeastern Turkey.

In contrast to their history of rebellion and hostility to the Iraqi state since its creation in the 1920s, since the removal of Saddam's regime the Iraqi Kurds have been involved in 'rebuilding' the country. Determining the future of the disputed areas of northern Iraq is the main reason behind this Kurdish involvement and it is one of the two Kurdish objectives in Iraq. The other is the quest to establish an independent state of Kurdistan. The relations between the two objectives are particularly complicated, as are the Iraqi and Kurdish issues. On the one hand it is difficult to imagine that the Kurds will declare an independent state without Kirkuk, or if they do so it is unclear how that state could be economically viable. On the other hand, it is hard for the Kurds to convince others to help solve the sensitive issue of Kirkuk if they assert their claim for independence. In other words, control of Kirkuk and independence are inseparable elements of the Kurdish strategy, but the former will guarantee the success of a Kurdish state whereas asserting independence would jeopardise the control of Kirkuk if it was the Kurds declared strategy in the present situation.