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When and under what conditions do ideologically similar nationalist parties adopt different positions and discourses about refugees and immigrants? We address this question by examining nationalist parties' approaches toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. Documenting these differences based on an original Twitter dataset and party manifestos, we argue that electoral dynamics under the new presidential system have shaped nationalist parties' discourses about refugees in the country. In particular, we explore how pre-electoral alliances and a strategic opening in the political space have motivated nationalist parties to amplify, ambiguate, or silence their otherwise conservative and nativist refugee discourses. Additionally, we maintain that urbanization has influenced the discursive strategies of nationalist party elites toward immigrants and refugees, giving rise to contradictory forms of nationalism in urban areas, including both far-right and liberal nationalisms. Overall, this study offers valuable insights into the complex interactions between refugee politics, electoral dynamics, nationalism, and urbanization in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zeki SARIGIL, Ethnic Boundaries in Turkish Politics: The Secular Kurdish Movement and Islam (New York, New York University Press, 2018) Ethnic Boundaries in Turkish Politics: The Secular Kurdish Movement and [...]

Kurds of Modern Turkey: Migration, Neoliberalism and Exclusion in Turkish Society By Cenk Saracoglu New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2011, 256 pages, ISBN 9781848854680, $92. As the Kurdish question in [...]

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This article contributes to the debate on whether federalism leads to ethnic accommodation and is peace-preserving through comparing the methods of ethnic accommodation in federal and unitary states. Rather than focusing on a large dataset, this article offers an in-depth picture of the role the two systems play in ethnic accommodation, offering a more nuanced understanding. The Kurds (Iraq and Turkey) and Tamils (India and Sri Lanka) have been chosen as they form territorial minorities in both federal and unitary states. The article suggests that federalist states offer a degree of acceptance toward political, cultural and economic equality with ethnic minorities. However, federalism may not be the cause of ethnic accommodation; it may be on the one hand the expression of a state willing to concede cultural, political and economic equality to an ethnic minority, or on the other hand induce such behavior. Thus, federalism without recognition of such equality does not guarantee ethnic accommodation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pro-Kurdish nationalist mobilization in Turkey was mostly built on the right to self-determination aligned with the Marxist-Leninist ideology for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the early 1980s and ethnic minority rights for the secular-leftist pro-Kurdish legal parties in the 1990s. The Turkish state mostly framed the legal and illegal pro-Kurdish mobilization as 'the enemy of the state' and 'the enemy of Islam' in its counter-insurgency efforts. However, in the 2000s, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish legal parties became more tolerant and inclusive toward Islamic Kurdish identity by mobilizing their sympathizers in events such as 'Civic Friday Prayers' and a 'Democratic Islamic Congress'. This move aimed to function as an antidote to the rising popularity of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurdish Hizbullah in the early 2000s. In other words, Islam and pious Muslim identity has increasingly become contested among Turkish Islamists, Kurdish Islamists, and the secular Kurdish nationalists. This article seeks to unpack why, how, and under what conditions such competing actors and mechanisms shape the discursive and power relationships in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some insurgencies attain their ultimate goal of statehood while others never do? Although explanations for insurgency success based on political will, natural resources, geography or diaspora involvement have advanced our understanding of the conditions under which insurgencies are likely to succeed in pursuing their statehood agenda, they have not adequately addressed the critical role of the major external actors (e.g. USA, UK, European Union, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)) and how significant these actors are in shaping the fate of many insurgencies around the world. In an effort to develop a model that explains insurgency outcome, this paper argues that external support or lack thereof is likely to shape insurgency outcome. When major external actors support insurgency, the movement is likely to succeed in pursuing its statehood agenda. Otherwise, the movement is likely to reconsider its political agenda if it lacks the necessary external support from major actors. This argument is demonstrated by a comprehensive study and comparison of two cases of insurgency, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested – “hyphenated” – with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy – an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to explore why and how some local armed uprisings are able to go global with a transnational image of ‘social justice’ while others fail to build such image despite becoming transnational. The cases to be analyzed in the article are the pro-Kurdish mobilization in the leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey and the pro-Mayan Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) movement in Mexico. In explaining the relative success of the latter, the study seeks to make connections with the globalization literature in general and the transnational social movement literature in particular. Particularly, the article focuses on the ability of social movements to market their causes in international arena with a good image. Overall, this study lays out several key strategic differences between the two movements such as the holding and the use of arms, duration of armed resistance, and the leadership and organizational structure to unpack why some social movements are more successful to market their causes as a just cause within ‘global civil society’ and why others fail to do so ending with being listed as a terrorist organization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars have primarily debated the anatomy of Turkishness within the framework of an ethnic versus civic dichotomy. Arguing that such an approach would be inconclusive and less explanatory, this article approaches Turkishness from a singularity/plurality framework. First, the article emphasizes the singular nature of Turkishness - defined as monolithic nationhood - in the early Republican years that rejected any alternative identity approaches other than the definition of the state elites. Second, the article argues that the homogenization of the nation by the new state targeted those who considered themselves Turks as well, especially those who did not fit the 'ideal' or 'imagined' Turk (i.e. Muslim but secular, urban, and Western). The final section analyses the persistence and change in the monolithic nationhood in Turkey throughout the twentieth century and considers the implications of the state's recent identity policies on the meaning of Turkishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of nationalism and ethnicity have long studied when and how nationalist discourses on the one hand and national and ethnic identities on the other are often socially constructed along with their outcomes of ethnic disputes and nationalist polarizations. However, studies on the deconstruction processes of the nationalist discourses, their evolution over time and degrees of ethnic peace and moderation have mostly been limited. By taking the case of Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms in Turkey, this article argues that two competing elite discourses of nationalism have moderated rather than aggravated each other. The article explores the dialectical relationship between the nationalist discourses of the Turkish and Kurdish political elites, especially since the 1980s. Theoretically framing Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms in Michael Hechter's typology of state-building nationalism versus peripheral nationalism, respectively, it is argued that while the Turkish state has become distant from forced assimilation and homogenization goals, pro-Kurdish political mobilization, particularly the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has become distant from claims to independent statehood and ethnic autonomy along with respect for Turkey's territorial integrity. These evolving agendas are discussed within the interdependent relationship of both nationalist discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews the book "The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950," by Ugur Ümit Üngör.