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The purpose of the study is to investigate the political and socio-cultural features of the life of Kurdish communities in Turkey, Syria, and Kazakhstan. Such methods as historical-genetic, systemic, predictive, structural-functional and comparative are used.The results of the study formulate the characteristic features of the life of the Kazakh Kurdish community at the present stage of historical development, assess the situation of the Kurdish population in Turkey, and analyse the attempts of the authorities to integrate them into Turkish society, determine the characteristics of the life of Kurds in Syria during the civil war, and explore the prospects for the Kurds to gain autonomy within any of the states or create an independent Kurdistan. This work may be useful for civil servants of the countries under study who implement policies in the field of strengthening peace, international and regional security, and maintaining interethnic stability in a multinational state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines intergenerational educational mobility among various ethnic and religious groups in Turkey. We focus on directional mobility and show that ethnic Kurds have significantly lower upward mobility than ethnic Turks, and Alevis observe marginally higher upward mobility relative to their Sunni counterparts. The region an individual is born into also makes a difference. Those who are born in the eastern part of the country exhibit lower mobility than those who are born in the west. There is a significant difference in mobility between men and women irrespective of their ethnic origin or religious affiliation as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article demonstrates how Hezbollah and the Zehra Foundation, both of which can be described as major components of the Kurdish Right involved in the process of forming the identity of the Kurdish nation, established historical figures such as Sheikh Said and Said-i Nursi in the founding myth of Kurdish identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between attachment style and emotion dysregulation in Kurdish individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs) in Eastern Turkey, a non-Western, Islamic society, in a descriptive cross-sectional design. This study was conducted with 216 individuals with SUDs who were treated at the SBU Van Training and Research Hospital Alcohol and Substance Addiction Treatment Center in Eastern Turkey between April 2023 and June 2023. Almost half of the participants (44.5%, n = 96) were between 18 and 30 years old and almost all were men (96.3%, n = 208). The most commonly used substances were heroin (46.3%, n = 100), marijuana (28.7%, n = 62) and synthetic cannabinoids (7.9%, n = 12). The results showed that higher levels of emotion dysregulation were associated with increased avoidant attachment and anxious attachment style. The study found that anxious and avoidant attachment styles were a significant predictor of emotion dysregulation. These findings suggest that attachment styles may play an important role in emotion dysregulation in Kurdish individuals with SUDs. Future research should investigate whether interventions targeting attachment-based interventions could be effective in reducing emotion dysregulation in Kurdish individuals with SUDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War period, the Iraqi Kurds encountered new political circumstances following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of nation-state formations. In this process, the regions inhabited by the Kurds were incorporated into the borders of various states, creating both opportunities and challenges for the Kurdish people. The movement led by Mustafa Barzani became a symbol of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy; however, internal divisions and external pressures limited the scope of the movement. The 1975 Algiers Agreement marked the end of Barzani's armed struggle and led to further fragmentation within the Kurdish political landscape. Under the leadership of Jalal Talabani, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) emerged as an alternative to Barzani's traditional leadership. The 1980s, marked by the Iran-Iraq War, presented a period of both repression and strategic opportunities for the Kurds, allowing for the formation of tactical alliances. Following the war, significant changes occurred in the political and military structures of the Kurds, and the autonomy struggle accelerated after the 1991 Gulf War, setting the stage for the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 1992. In the post-Cold War era, these historical experiences have played a decisive role in shaping the political trajectory of the Kurdish movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though diasporas no longer reside in their homelands, the proliferation of globalization and movement, as well as the exponentially increasing reach of the Internet has meant that the link between authoritarian regimes and their corresponding diaspora groups is very much alive. This paper argues that, in the Kurdish case, this link also extends to second-generation Kurds (who may not have directly encountered these authoritarian regimes). Drawing on ethnographic and interview fieldwork conducted with Kurdish university students in London, the paper argues that second-generation Kurds maintain a nexus with the authoritarian regimes of their 'homelands' in two ways: through their own local mobilizations against these regimes, as well as through their exposure to cultures of surveillance and fear instated by these regimes through the Internet. In a climate of ever-changing methods of political participation and influence, the paper calls for greater recognition of the role of the cyberspace in extending the reach of authoritarian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents data from interviews with eighteen individuals from Western countries who volunteered to fight in Syria with the Kurdish YPG against the Islamic State. We find that, despite predictions in the literature about ideological or religious indoctrination as the primary factor motivating foreign fighter mobilization, respondents described their decisions to join YPG determined by two individual-level factors: The first was precipitating new information, such as viewing war crimes videos, which was an emotional tipping point for volunteers already interested in the conflict. The second factor was the preconditions, or permissive conditions, that permitted them to leave their home countries, such as the end of a lease. The data adds richness to models of militant activity by indicating that it may not be a linear transmissive process but one that is dependent on the alignment of variables specific to the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims at the investigation of the representation of the Kurds in well-known Persian novels published after the 1979 Revolution in Iran (1980–2011). The specific purpose of the research is to explore the type of the representation, possible patterns of representation, and the changes in representation of the Kurds in post-revolution Iranian novels as popular texts among Iranian readers. To this end, out of the novels published in the three decades of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, fifty great, award-winner and widely read Persian novels have been selected in a systematically random way. Next, the conceptual and analytic tool of representation was employed by the researchers to analyze the novels to understand the practice and modality of Kurdish representation, tease out the implied meanings in the novels and find out the general attitude of the producer of the representation. The results demonstrate that a number of strategies were used in the novels to depoliticize the Kurds and reduce them to cultural and anthropological categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the hydro-political relationship between Iraq and Turkey by applying the framework of hydro-hegemony. During the Cold War, the Turkish-Iraqi hydro-relationship was influenced by both contextual and structural factors. Before the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002, Turkish foreign policy toward Iraq mainly consisted of hard power decisions. Subsequently, Turkey has relied on both soft and hard strategies, enabling it to respond appropriately to the Iraqi fluid situation. Overall, the article traces these changes and argues that their hydro-political relationship was characterised by partial cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma communication in refugee families is increasingly recognized as an important relational dynamic influencing psychosocial well‐being, yet studies exploring interactional dynamics and meaning making at play in intra‐family trauma communication remain scarce. This article reports on a qualitative study with Kurdish refugee families including parents (N = 10) and children (N = 17) resettled in Belgium, aiming to explore practices on trauma communication within refugee family relationships. In a multiple‐phased qualitative design, semi‐structured family interviews and participant observation administered in the homes of the participant families are followed by parental interviews involving a tape‐assisted recall procedure to investigate observed intergenerational trauma communication and parent–child interactions. Data analysis shows parents and children seldom explicitly talked about the families' lived experiences of trauma. This silence was especially related to parental wishes to avoid their children's future involvement in violence. However, findings also indicate how the intra‐family transmission of memories of collective violence occurs in many subtle ways. Four modes of indirect trauma communication could be distinguished: (1) focusing on the repetition of violence in the present; (2) transmission of the collective trauma history; (3) family storytelling; and (4) interaction with meaningful objects of the past. These findings shed light onto the interwoven nature of personal–familial and collective trauma and loss and illuminate the meanings of silence and disclosure in the context of the Kurdish diaspora. In the final section, we discuss our findings and outline its clinical implications for family therapeutic practices in refugee trauma care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kurdish smugglers have been targeted and killed by security forces in Turkey's Van borderlands systematically and with impunity. In response, the killed smugglers' families and their lawyers conducted what I call vernacular counterforensics—the forensic examination both of the killings and of the legal authorities' failure to investigate them properly. Associating the Kurdish borderlands with terrorism, the legal authorities often avoided collecting evidence on the killings to make potential perpetrators remain unknown or legally authorize the killings. By documenting this impunity work through their counterforensics, Kurdish complainants and lawyers demonstrated the judiciary's complicity in the systemization of state anti‐Kurdish violence. While anthropological studies show that criminal law operates by individualizing violation claims and perpetrators, vernacular counterforensics illustrates a distinct use of criminal law that reveals, rather than blurs, the state crimes' systematic‐collective aspects. Rather than differentiating technoscientifically produced crime scene evidence from the political circumstances of state crimes, Kurdish complainants and their lawyers used the selective production of such evidence to corroborate the killings' unlawfulness and their systematic‐collective character. This dual use of forensic evidence permits us to rethink analytical and methodological premises that view forensic evidence as fully verifiable and universally applicable and contrast it against contextual and contingent knowledge forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conflict between the Perso‐Shiite state and its opposition, especially Kurdish political organizations in Iran/Eastern Kurdistan, and their subsequent suppression, has led to the migration of many Kurds since the early 1980s. This exodus has affected their political identification. Here, changes toward nationality and citizenship in the attitude of the first‐generation Kurdish immigrants with a leftist political background living in Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and France will be analyzed. From the perspective of the relationship between individual and political organization, state and society/community, it seeks to uncover that how these migrants think about different collective political identities, how their views have changed, and which collective social identity has had most impact on shaping their political view. Following a qualitative approach, data were collected through in‐depth semi‐structured and focus group interviews. The findings show that the interviewees within the extra‐organizational Kurdish convergence in Europe have tried to reidentify themselves politically by moving away from the political climate of Iran, while Kurdishness shapes their view on nationality and citizenship. Although the European states officially recognize them as Iranian nationals, they themselves see this as an imposed citizenship. In their current situation, many of them, while emphasizing their Kurdish nationality and wishing for Kurdistani citizenship, prefer to be recognized only as citizens of European countries and not be attributed to Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we will read Bakhtyar Ali's My Uncle Jamshid Khan: Whom the Wind was Always Taking (2009) to investigate the plot and the characters depicted in the fiction, particularly, Jamshid Khan. Our analysis follows the close reading of the implications of the expressions and the concepts within the text. Drawing from the theoretical discussion, we will argue that Ali's novel doesn't merely depict the real incidents related to Kurds, but also, presents philosophical issues. The book seems to take readers to higher levels as Jamshid Khan is blown away by the wind. The focal point of our study is examining the metaphysical relation between the male persona and the wind. Eventually, the analysis will highlight the notions of anarchism, imagined communities, and cultural hegemony, which are integrated within the text. Hence, this article shows another side of the narrative which is read more as a fictive work rather than historical events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What strategies do competitive authoritarian regimes use to target local-level opposition gains? How and why can these strategies vary subnationally? We analyse how national-level identity politics shapes regimes' repression calculus at the local level. We suggest permissive prejudice leads regimes to choose harsher strategies in localities governed by stigmatized minority groups than in majority-led localities. To study this phenomenon, we identify three strategies varying in degrees of severity and visibility, and present an original dataset of repressive events in Turkey's municipalities from 2016–2022. We argue anti-Kurdish prejudice explains the ruling AKP's use of a harsh strategy of leader replacement in 149 cases of Kurdish-led municipalities yet only one Turkish-led municipality. Supporting our claim, the AKP used behind-the-scenes hamstringing to obstruct opposition mayors in Turkish-led municipalities. Our findings highlight the permissive and restrictive roles that identity politics plays in shaping local-level repression and wider patterns of authoritarian consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kurds of Iraq were the victims of a claimed genocide during the rule of the Ba'ath regime in Iraq in 1963. The Iraqi Ba'ath Party first came to power in February of 1963 and was ousted in November of that year; between June and October, it conducted military offensives against the Kurdish minority in Iraq in the name of destroying the Kurdish autonomy movement, then spearheaded by the nationalist Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). No estimated numbers exist on how many people were killed in that period, but an array of international and other reports, presented in this research, concurrently stated that the Iraqi government's mass violence against the Kurds amounted to genocide. These included private recognition by the relevant UK diplomats and officials. This article examines the foreign policy of the UK in relation to that reported genocide. It explores how the Cold War, regional interests, and a long-held aversion to Kurdish desires for self-rule led Britain not only to overlook the mass violence perpetrated by the Ba'ath government against Iraq's Kurdish minority in 1963 but also to support the regime. This policy was adopted in the face of credible information available to British officials reporting the Iraqi actions as a genocide. Britain continued to take the public position that the Kurdish issue in Iraq was an internal Iraqi matter while simultaneously seeking to foster good relations with the Ba'ath government by providing it with arms and diplomatic protection and seeking to undermine the Kurdish autonomy movement. Thus, a case study in the politics of genocide and how politics determines the response to these is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the natural environment during the Kurdish genocide in northern Iraq. The genocide killed between 50,000 and 180,000 people and destroyed some 4,500 Kurdish villages from the 1960s to 1980s, reach peak violence during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). The paper uses American, British, and Iraqi archival documents to analyse how the violence affected the natural landscape and how ecological conditions constrained the violence. Iraqi leaders regarded dams and other modes of environmental engineering as levers to facilitate agricultural modernization and social integration. Protecting and projecting hydraulic power justified greater military exertion. Iraqi leaders, frustrated by the lack of progress in development and hostile to the claims of Kurdish nationalism, resorted to more coercive options to combat guerrillas. But the inadequacies of military exertion prompted the government to redouble efforts to tame unruly nature and those who dwelled in it. This escalation contributed significantly to the lethal violence against rural Kurdish society. At a theoretical level, these findings highlight the troubling ways in which policies aimed to improve environmental conditions fold into campaigns of mass violence. The article also adds to understanding of violence in Iraq, showing how Iraq's attempts to use environmental engineering for development intersected with security concerns and ethnic marginalization to create more intensive repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study aimed to examine the mental health issues and trauma faced by Iraqi IDPs post-2014. Adhering to PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a literature search in PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, identifying 208 articles. After excluding 190 articles for duplication and ineligibility, we ultimately included 18 studies. The Joanna Briggs Institute critical evaluation checklist was used for quality assessment. Studies involved 5,764 participants from diverse ethno-religious groups including Arabs, Kurds, Christians, and Yazidis. Participants were mostly female (55.5%), male (38.4%), and the smallest and largest study samples were 29 and 1,256, respectively. Ages ranged from 12.18 to 43.34 years. The results revealed a high prevalence of PTSD at 61.9%, with depression and anxiety rates at 49% and 51%, respectively, and suicidal behaviours at 67.5%. Among IDP subgroups, PTSD and suicidal behaviours were particularly high among Yazidi-enslaved girls and women, at 90.6% and 67.55% respectively. Major trauma exposures included forced displacement, encounters with combat and violence, enslavement, and witnessing the death or abuse of relatives. Critical contributing factors to mental health problems were gender (being female), economic instability, prolonged displacement, exposure to combat, experiences of rape and torture, and limited access to services. The mental health support of this vulnerable population is critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Namûs describes a 'way of life' integral to Kurdish sociality and to the sense of self for many Kurds who live it in a plurality of ways. Constituting a form of power over the subject which can potentially take the form of domination, namûs is also a social relation of care and power between subjects and is integral to its subject's ethical relationship of self-to-self and processes of self-making. Post-Enlightenment and liberal frameworks of 'modern' selfhood, however, have tended to render namûs equivalent to 'honour' and 'honour-based violence' ('HBV'). Through this act of mistranslation, a life with namûs is constructed as violent, unworthy, racially inferior and harmful to women. Building upon multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in North Kurdistan, Turkey and Denmark, this article originally theorises namûs as a practice of ethical self-making that is epistemic, dignified and agentic in all its complexities. Women living with and through namûs actively work to cultivate this way of being, thereby interrupting the epistemic authority of liberal feminism. Namûs, this article argues, cannot be understood through blanket explanations of 'crime', 'oppression' and 'patriarchy', as the discourse on 'honour' would suggest. Breaking away from these injurious portrayals is, therefore, vital to realise global epistemological justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The words in each language carry a cultural background and can reflect the worldview of their creators and speakers throughout history. Initially, the semantic fields were quite limited, but through continuous experiences in nature and society, humans gradually expanded them. Birth and parenting represent fundamental human experiences, leading people to assign them a place in language and create specific words. As a child develops in a woman's womb, she is perceived differently, undergoing a transformation in how she is viewed. In the Kurdish language today, various terms exist for a pregnant woman, with "dūgyan" appearing to be unique to Kurds and holding significant cultural significance, offering insights into the Kurdish worldview. This article aims to explore the term "dūgyan" using a descriptive-analytical approach to unveil its cultural and linguistic nuances. A key finding of this study is that "dūgyan" reflects the Kurdish perspective on humanity in general and women in particular, showcasing deep respect for mothers and their children as living beings. The revered term "dūgyan" may be traced back to the matriarchal era of two to three thousand years ago, potentially originating from female creators. Moreover, the structure of this word reveals one of the earliest methods of word formation in the Kurdish language.

ÖZ: Bu çalışmada II. Abdülhamid döneminden II. Meşrutiyet dönemine miras kalan Osmanlı Devlet’in göç politikası, Kürt muhacir ve mülteciler özelinde karşılaştırmalı bir şekilde değerlendirilmektedir. Buna göre II. Abdülhamid döneminde, yoğun bir Müslüman muhacir topluluğunun Osmanlı topraklarına gelmesine, Müslüman nüfusun artmasına yol açacağı için olumsuz bir nazarla bakılmadığı görülmektedir. Zira çoğunluğunu Kafkasya’dan gelenlerin oluşturduğu bu muhacirler; savaş, kıtlık, Kürt aşiretlerinin saldırıları veya ekonomik sıkıntılardan ötürü çareyi göç etmekte bulan Ermenilerin bıraktıkları topraklara iskân edilecekleri için doğuda daha güvenli bir bölge oluşturulabilecektir. Bu yaklaşım Meşrutiyet’in ilanından bir süre sonra devam etse de zaman içerisinde bazı değişiklikler yaşanmış, özellikle Türkçülük düşüncesinin bürokraside hâkim olması nedeniyle Müslüman muhacirlerin iskânında İslamî bakış açısının yerini daha çok milliyet eksenli bir anlayış almıştır. Öyle ki Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nda savaş mıntıkalarından kaçmak zorunda kalan çok sayıda Kürt mülteci, milliyet ekseninde iskân edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Böyle bir politika izlenmesindeki temel amaç ise göçebe-yarı göçebe bir yaşam sürdüren Kürtlerin, Türklerin çoğunlukta olduğu Anadolu içlerine iskân edilerek yerleşik hayata geçişlerinin sağlanmasıdır. Bu sayede, vergi ve askerlik gibi birtakım mükellefiyetleri yerine getirecekleri planlanmış; kimliklerini, yaşam tarzlarını değiştirmeleriyle birlikte ise faydalı bir unsur olmaları hedeflenmiştir. ABSTRACT: The present study comparatively analyzed the migration policy of the Ottoman Empire inherited from the reign of Abdülhamid II to the Second Constitutional Period, with a special focus on Kurdish muhajirs (migrants, coined from the Arabic word meaning “one who migrated from Mecca to Medina”) and refugees. In this regard, it was observed that the arrival of a significantly large Muslim muhajir group to the Ottoman lands was not viewed negatively during the reign of Abdülhamid II, as it would lead to an increase in the Muslim population. The reason behind this was that these muhajirs, the majority of whom came from the Caucasus, would be settled in the lands left by Armenians who had migrated due to war, famine, attacks by Kurdish tribes, or economic difficulties, and thus a safer region could be created in the east. Although this approach was maintained for an extended period of time after the proclamation of the Constitutional Monarchy, certain changes occurred over time, and the Islamic perspective was replaced by a more nationalist-oriented understanding in the resettlement of Muslim muhajirs, especially as the Turkist idea became dominant in the bureaucracy. Thus, attempts were made to settle many Kurdish refugees fleeing from the war zones during the First World War on the axis of nationality. The main purpose of such a policy was to ensure that the Kurds, who led a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, were settled in Anatolia, where Turks were the majority. In this way, it was envisioned that they would fulfill certain obligations, such as taxation and military service, and that by changing their identities and lifestyles, could become a useful element.

Jihan, a former Kurdish guerilla fighter, struggles to gain medical treatment for the health problems she suffers as a result of war and trauma. The provision of care in Turkey has been motivated by ethno-political security concerns. Therefore, medical encounters are characterized by silences, not-knowing and of averting danger. Based on theories of ignorance, I explore how experiences of war and torture constitute dangerous knowledge that are difficult to share in a context, without a guaranteed therapeutic safe space. Patient and doctor navigate mistrust, silences and proxy-reasons in an attempt to deal with the traumata and violent experiences left unsaid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital inclusion for equitable and healthy aging. Older immigrants experience unique needs and challenges in using information and communication technologies compared to other older adults. Despite the proliferation of digital learning programs for older adults, there is minimal evidence of digital literacy learning needs and strategies relevant to older immigrants. The aim of this study is to explore learning approaches and digital engagement amongst Arabic-speaking older immigrants. This community-based qualitative descriptive study used co-designed group digital learning sessions. Two organizations supporting local ethnocultural communities in a municipality in Alberta, Canada recruited 31 older immigrants who spoke Arabic, Farsi, and Kurdish. Data collection included semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and observations of digital learning sessions. A total of seventeen learning sessions were completed with nineteen participants each attending five to six sessions. Findings highlight the iterative nature of the program sessions, the importance of catering to participants' interests, the relevance of peer support, and language, sensory and digital variability barriers to learning. Digital literacy programs for immigrant older adults should adjust for language learning needs, maintain a flexible approach, tailor lessons to individual needs, foster social support, and address external factors such as limited digital access and transportation barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary literature has chiefly studied the Kurdish issue from a macro-political perspective. In this paper, we focus on ordinary Kurdish youth's everyday responses to stigma and discrimination from the majority Turkish group and connect them to the macro-political context. Drawing on 29 qualitative in-depth interviews with Kurdish students in Izmir, we document that this group seeks to negotiate their belonging in the face of their characterizations as backward, terrorist, and disloyal. The findings suggest that these youth respond to stigmas, depending on contextual dynamics, by specific destigmatization strategies such as confronting, managing the self, assuming individual responsibility, and avoiding. We argue that ongoing armed conflict stigmatizes Kurds as separatists, and invisible markers between Kurds and Turks make hiding ethnicity the primary destigmatization strategy for Kurds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative interviews with 66 Sunni Muslim Kurdish elites, this study reveals that Kurdish Islamic circles in Turkey are not monolithic, homogeneous or fixed. Some willingly or unwillingly maintain their Islamic identity as a primary reference point for self‐consciousness, motivation for collective action and political aspirations, often at the expense of ethnopolitical mobilization. Others combine Kurdish national claims with an Islamic orientation, pursuing a path of coexistence between the secular and the religious in the expedition towards nationhood. In the competitive interplay between religion and nationalism, Islam acts as a restraining force on the rise of national sentiment among Muslim Kurds. In the symbiotic interplay, Islam no longer serves as an obstacle to delay Kurdish mobilization but rather accommodates secular norms and values in favour of welcoming national zeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the securitization of the Kurds and other opposition groups along with an anti-Western discourse has become a useful political strategy for the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in Turkey. The party used these security framings to put the opposition on the defensive by equating Turkey’s survival with the maintenance of AKP’s rule. This securitization of domestic politics has also shaped the content of the category of ‘enemy’ in foreign policy with particular repercussions for Turkey’s policy towards Syria. Drawing on a discourse analysis of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Twitter posts between May 2013 and May 2023, and declarations made by prominent AKP government figures, this article reveals that the government has used securitization as a strategic tool to reinforce populist dualities. The article also shows that vague and situational conceptualizations in securitization processes provide useful channels through which the government shapes and legitimizes its foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational institutions are places of identity formation and reformation, contributing differently to existing identity politics. In the author's biographical narrative interviews with people who position themselves as Kurds, conducted as part of her PhD project, "Experiences of Racism among Kurds in Germany—Functions and Effects of (Not) Speaking About Anti‐Kurdish Racism," the author frequently encounters instances of devaluation of Kurdish identities due to racialization and everyday invisibilization. The professional demands on educational institutions, on the other hand, require them to give resonance and validity to the multitude of identities and diversity of experiences in society and to make these visible. A critical pedagogy of decolonization involves overcoming colonized perspectives and acquiring alternative forms of knowledge. The author adopts a decolonial perspective to acknowledge and problematize the mechanisms of invisibilization and identity erasure, and thus not only shifts the content of hegemonic orders of knowledge but also enables the recognition of different modes of articulation. This article asks, what characterizes anti‐Kurdish racism, and how does it impact Kurdish individuals within the German educational system? Through interview excerpts, the author addresses how these questions can be structurally addressed through biographical clues in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution explores in what ways the Kurdish experience may be called "colonial" and, by extension, what decolonizing Kurdish studies would or could amount to. Specifically, it explores whether and to what extent Kurdish vernacular learning may be qualified as "Indigenous learning" as it appears in decolonial critiques. The article suggests a genealogical approach to the epistemic dimensions of coloniality to explicate the radical historicity of knowledge and to make visible relations of domination and resistance in the field of knowledge and learning. Early modern Kurdish vernacular learning, it will be argued, was produced under the domination of Persian and Arabic, and to some extent it amounted to heresy, that is, an act of symbolic resistance. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the vernacularization of Kurdish language and learning in the seventeenth‐century Ottoman Empire and in Mollah Mahmûdê Bayazîdî's encounter with nineteenth‐century Russian imperialism and Orientalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014 and the fight of both Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces as well as the Syrian Kurdish forces of the People's Protection Units (YPG, Yekîneyên Parastina Gel) and the Women's Protection Units (YPJ, Yekîneyên Parastina Jin) against them, Western journalists tried to gather information quickly. Locals were happy to share as much as possible, as ISIS was a great danger. As an often forgotten population under permanent occupation seeking visibility, the Kurds allow Westerners unparalleled access to the field and provide unpaid or underpaid labor, hoping that the world will see their struggle. This deepened the disparity between Kurdish journalists, academics, and writers and their Western counterparts. Using postcolonial theory on the mindset of colonialized peoples, this article shows how the fear of being forgotten, the material disparity between colonizers and colonized, and the coloniality of local political actors are obstacles for Kurdish professionals. Looking at a focus‐group discussion and two interviews with Kurdish journalists, fixers, and translators from Iraq and Syria, the comparison shows that both autonomous regions are projects that sought to end decades of occupation and now face challenges that show similarities and differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special‐issue introduction highlights the burgeoning movement toward decolonizing Kurdish studies, outlining its challenges and opportunities within the academic landscape. Central to the authors' discussion is the concept of the coloniality of power, which offers a framework for understanding the enduring oppression faced by Kurds within the context of ongoing colonial domination in the Middle East. The introduction delves into themes of historical erasure and academic marginalization, shedding light on the struggle for recognition within not only national and regional variants of area studies such as Turkish, Arab, Iranian, and Middle East studies but also the Euro‐American academy more broadly. Furthermore, the introduction underlines the potential of decolonial methodologies in reshaping the study of Kurds and Kurdistan, emphasizing the significance of amplifying voices from the ground, including those of Kurdish intellectuals, activists, and politicians. Through critical reflexivity and engagement with diverse perspectives, the editors of this special issue call for a reimagining of Kurdish studies that prioritizes epistemic decolonization, centering the experiences and agency of Kurdish communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this descriptive survey is to examine the correlation between women's employment and the quality of their family relationships in Mahabad, a Kurdish city in the northwest of Iran. This locale has distinct cultural norms and perspectives concerning female employment. The statistical sample consists of all married women aged between 20 and 60 years and employed within the urban areas of Mahabad from 2017 to 2018. This group encompasses a total of 2,995 individuals (N = 2995). Employing Cochran's formula, the sample size was determined to be n = 350. Participants were selected through multi-stage clustering and systematic random sampling methodologies. Data were collected through a researcher-designed questionnaire, with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient estimated at 0.89, indicating satisfactory reliability. Descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were employed for data analysis, including the chi-square test and percentage frequency distribution tables. The study's central hypothesis was validated using the chi-square test at a 5% significance level. Consequently, the research findings substantiate that, within the context of Mahabad, employed women exhibit a higher quality of family relationships than their unemployed counterparts. Given the historically limited discourse on the circumstances of Kurdish women in smaller regions, and the prevailing tendency to focus primarily on the challenges faced by women at the lower strata of society, this research serves as a valuable contribution towards a more comprehensive understanding of the lives of this particular cohort of Kurdish women residing in the modest city of Mahabad. By delving into the dimensions of employment and the quality of their marital relationships, this study strives toward shedding light on the positive impacts of women's participation on their family dynamics. The insights gleaned from this research hold the potential to serve as a model that can be extrapolated to benefit women in other regions across the Middle East in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging with state-centric perspectives on sovereignty, and particularly Giorgio Agamben's work, this article argues that despite sovereignty's permanence at the level of the state, the principles upon which it is built can change dramatically. Further, such change may in turn greatly transform the reach and power of the state itself. Using the trial of King Charles in 1649 as a case for of how divine right was replaced by embryonic popular sovereignty through an act of sacrifice, the article contends that several new revolutionary movements are now in turn aiming to overturn popular sovereignty in a similar way. Drawing on secondary material and fieldwork contextualization, the article contends that the Kurdish movement in Syria is currently struggling to disaggregate the state's people into a host of peoples, whose opportunities for political participation depend upon conforming to an ideologically construed vision of human nature. This, the article suggests, may set the frame for revolutionary resistance in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the turn of the twentieth century, the Kurds in Iran have faced various forms of linguistic exclusion. As part of a genealogical project, this article aims to track the lineages of this exclusion. The linguistic exclusions are inscribed in a field of discursivity, which, tracking one of its lineages, turns our attention to the orientalist interventions. The article discusses two complementary projects: the authentication of the Persian language and the othering of the Kurdish language. These projects were made possible by the hegemony of territorial and linguistic discourses over orientalist studies in Iran. Orientalists proposed a periodization of Iranian languages, dividing them into old, middle, and modern eras, with Persian represented as the sole language that has ever existed throughout history, based on their decoding of ancient manuscripts. Meanwhile, the Kurdish language was completely marginalized, and Persian was represented as the essence of all Iranian languages and, consequently, as the language of all Iranians. As a result, an ontological and epistemic horizon emerged, on which all subsequent instances of othering of the Kurds became possible. Finally, the article also examines the ways in which the Kurds have resisted the linguistic exclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey and Israel are known, respectively, for profound conflicts with their Kurdish and Palestinian minorities. Economic and legal liberalization waves raised hopes for expanded civic and socioeconomic inclusion but instead both countries swayed to populism. "Why were the Kurdish and Palestinian politics of hope destroyed and what did it take to do so?" We argue that the HDP and Joint List's electoral in the 2010s threatened Erdoğan's and Netanyahu's authoritarian ambitions and in their endeavours to doom Kurdish and Palestinian aspirations, these leaders and their parties drew on practices and sentiments from the toolkit of populism. While the repression of the HDP has not abated, Netanyahu's replacement in June 2021 with a diverse coalition, including an Islamic party, has dented Israeli populism but simultaneously forestalled aspirations for civic equality. Despite the dissimilarities between the cases, our comparison teases out the common trends of populist politics that threaten domestic minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Facebook's censorship of Kurdish political activism at the request of the Turkish government. I argue that Facebook's censorship of political voices belonging to the marginalized Kurdish community is an articulation of platform coloniality, an outcome constituted by the intersecting of the social media giant's global political economy imperatives with racialized and hierarchized conceptions of human worth. The effects of platform coloniality are exacerbated due to it being mediated by the Turkish nation-state's internal colonial politics and militarist regional policies, thus intensifying the marginalization of Kurds inside and outside Turkey. Covered in a typical neoliberal discourse of freedom and human rights, platform coloniality represents a continuation of the age-old patterns of Western power and its flow toward the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minorities are particularly vulnerable during times of emergency, particularly those that challenge the state. However, it is not understood how minorities can be targeted through emergency decrees despite the government agreeing they had nothing to do with the reasons for declaring the state of emergency. The Turkish emergency in 2016 highlights this little-understood tendency where the government constructed an emergency around a threat from coup plotters, but then much of the subsequent extraordinary legislation targeted the Kurdish minority. We argue that this was possible because the Turkish government engaged in modular emergency rule. Modular emergency rule combines modes of ordinary rule with emergency powers, thus blurring the boundaries between the two. Emergency measures were laid on top of already existing policies that sought to restrict Kurdish politics in public life. In this way, modular emergency rule became more than just a transient form of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kurds and Armenians are indigenous peoples of the Near East. Historically, Armenians resided in the Caucasus and Anatolia, while the Kurds inhabited Upper Mesopotamia and southwestern Iran. Although the places where Kurds and Armenians lived were close to each other, the question of when, where and how the relations between the two communities began has not been answered due to the lack of comprehensive research on the subject. Armenian historians were interested in Armenian-Kurdish relations in the early 9th century and conducted preliminary studies. Although some researchers, including N. J. Marr, found the Kurds to be closer to Georgians and Armenians than the Caucasian peoples, this view did not gain wide acceptance. Since the early 20th century, some Kurdish intellectuals have claimed that the two communities share the same religion, lineage, and culture, though these assertions were not supported by rigorous research. Moreover, Armenian chronicles provide limited information about any significant historical partnership between the two groups. Modern Armenian historians tend to dismiss these Kurdish claims as unreliable. This article seeks to answer the question of when, where, and how relations between Kurds and Armenians began during the Middle Ages. As there are no extant Kurdish sources describing the early history of the Kurds, Armenian chronicles, Islamic historical sources, and the works of modern scholars were consulted. According to the evidence found in Armenian chronicles and Islamic sources, Kurdish-Armenian relations appear to have originated in the 10th century. This conclusion is based on primary source material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Kurdish Studies is the property of International Journal of Kurdish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mukaddime Journal is the property of Mukaddime Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mukaddime Journal is the property of Mukaddime Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Afyon Kocatepe University Journal of Social Sciences / Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Afyon Kocatepe University (AKU) Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Artuklu Kurdology is the property of Artuklu Kurdology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the establishment of the modern Iranian nation-state in 1923, successive regimes and governments of Iran have pursued an intricate policy of suppressing and persecuting its Kurdish people, presenting a significant threat to the Kurdish national identity, culture, and society. The successive Iranian regimes have, along with military means, employed the state's cultural, educational, religious, and economic institutions to accomplish their goals of assimilating and conquering the Kurds. An examination of Kurdish history and politics in Iran reveals that while the international community has some knowledge of the Iranian state's extensive deployment of military force and explicit militarization of Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat/East Kurdistan), the broader psychological and nonmilitary (soft power) practices employed to suppress the Kurdish movement, identity, and culture are lesser known to the outside world. By focusing on mass media and policies of "divide-and-rule" as measures and mechanisms used by the Iranian state to subdue its Kurdish citizens, this article aims to provide an analysis of the post-1979 state-Kurdish relationships in Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article disentangles the nexus between coloniality, territoriality, and gendered necropolitics of state in Iran and how it shapes the lives of the Kurdish female cross‐border laborers (kolbers, in Kurdish) in Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat, in Kurdish). Drawing on Achille Mbembe's notion of “necropolitics,” we conceptualize kolberi as a work of death that subjects Kurds to indiscriminate and collective punishment through necro‐disciplinary measures, exposing them constantly to precarious conditions. The necropolitics of Kurdish female kolberi underlines how the meaning of death, like the meaning of life (in biopolitics), is produced and managed through elements of embodiment―bodies, of who kills, and of who is marked for death and for taking life. We interviewed 13 Kurdish women in Rojhelat who have been involved in kolberi over the last few years. By bringing the gendered dimension of kolberi to the forefront, our article theorizes the experiences of women kolbers as occurring in a “death world”―a world where female kolbers' lives are perpetually endangered by the state apparatus of death and silenced by the patriarchal regime of “truth.” Our analysis reveals a form of state violence that highlights the gendered expression of “colonized subjects.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A trained physicist, Kurd Lasswitz (1848–1910) is best known as a novelist, the father of modern German science fiction, and as a historian of science, the initiator of the modern historiography of atomism. In the late 19th century, Lasswitz engaged in an intense dialogue with the emerging Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, contributing to shaping most of its defining tenets. By the end of the decade, this research had grown into a two-volume Geschichte der Atomistik (1890), which remains the most successful example of neo-Kantian historiography of science. Lasswitz combined attention to historical detail with the search for the intellectual tools (Denkmittel) without which the 'fact of science' would be impossible. In particular, Lasswitz regarded Huygens' kinetic atomism as a historical model of a successful scientific theory, shaped by the interplay of two conceptual tools: (a) substantiality, the requirement for identity of the subject of motion through time, which found its scientific expression in the extensive atom; (b) variability, the intensive tendency to continue in an instant, which found its conceptual fixation in the notion of 'differential'. By raising the problem of individuality in physics, Lasswitz offers a unique perspective on the utilization of the history of science in 19th-century neo-Kantian thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]