|
Review Essay: Kurdish Scholarship Comes of
Age
10.10.2008
By Michael M. Gunter
|
|
|
October 10, 2008
Until recently, most books about the Kurds have
simply stressed how they have been exploited victims
and historic losers. Recently, however, Kurdish
fortunes have begun to ascend. Turkey's candidacy
for membership in the European Union (EU) has
elicited a host of necessary democratic reforms that
contain the admittedly tenuous promise of new
political, social and cultural rights for more than
50 percent of the ethnic Kurds in the world. What is
more, the two wars against Saddam Hussein have
resulted in a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)
that has granted the Iraqi Kurds an autonomy
bordering on virtual independence. Finally, the
Kurds in Iraq have at last found their long-sought
great-power protector in the United States. In The
Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the
Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008), I analyze this evolving situation.
These positive developments for the Kurds are
reflected in the maturity and sophistication of
Kurdish studies. For example, Denise Natali's The
Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in
Iraq,www.ekurd.net
Turkey, and Iran
(Syracuse University Press, 2005) is a nuanced
analysis of state-building policies and their
consequences for national-identity formation. Having
lived in various parts of Kurdistan for many years
and taught at Salahaddin University in the KRG
capital city Irbil, Natali has been able to amass an
impressive array of facts, which she has integrated
into various interpretative explanations for the
development of Kurdayeti, Kurdish national identity.
As Natali notes, whether Kurdayeti "is directed by
urban or tribal leadership, highly organized or
weak, ethnicized or Islamized, or compromising or
violent, [it] is determined by the political
boundaries and opportunity structures that emerge in
each state over time" (p. xviii).
David Romano's The Kurdish Nationalist Movement:
Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity (Cambridge
University Press, 2006) is also a refined
theoretical attempt to explain why such ethnic
minorities as the Kurds are mobilizing to demand
recognition and rights from the states within which
they reside. Well-versed in the complexities of
socialmovement theory, Romano proceeds to analyze
the Kurdish national movement in terms of three
approaches: opportunity structures, resource
mobilization and rational choice, and cultural
framing. He explains that "with mainstream political
parties unwilling or unable to address the Kurdish
issue [in Turkey] in anything but repressive terms,
and with civil society crushed under the [1980]
coup, the only form of dissent left was that which
the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] adopted; violent
subversion and guerrilla war" (p. 52). His
bibliography illustrates that he has been able to
place research on Kurdish nationalist resurgence
into the larger context of comparative politics.
Based on living and working in Iraqi Kurdistan from
1997 to 2000 and frequent return visits since then,
Gareth Stansfield in Iraqi Kurdistan: Political
Development and Emergent Democracy (Routledge Curzon,
2003) provides a wealth of factual data and
insightful interpretations. Indeed, Stansfield seems
to know practically everybody of importance in the
KRG, enabling him to speak with an authority that
others lack. As such, his work is the best available
in English on this de facto state and government and
how "Kurdish politicians and civil servants at a
variety of levels perceive their system to work" (p.
25). Recently, he built on these accomplishments by
becoming possibly the youngest professor in the UK
and the head of the only Kurdish-studies program in
the Western world,www.ekurd.net
at Exeter University.
His book Iraq: People, History, Politics (Polity
Press, 2007) integrates the Kurdish situation into a
unique and meticulous piece of research on
contemporary Iraq, packing an enormous amount of
information into a heuristic four-part framework
that encourages alternative interpretations of the
facts. Now Stansfield's latest study, The Kurds and
Iraq (Routledge, 2008), hones his analysis with new
insights into the history, society and political
development of Iraqi Kurdistan from the early
twentieth century to the present, as well as into
the Kurds' relationship with Iraq and their role in
its future.
Abbas Vali, editor of Essays on the Origins of
Kurdish Nationalism (Mazda Publishers, 2003), has
assembled an important collection of pioneering
theoretical pieces on the origins and development of
Kurdish nationalism by such leading Kurdish
authorities as Hamit Bozarslan, Martin van
Bruinessen, Amir Hassanpour and Nelida Fuccaro. Each
essayist employs different methodological and
theoretical approaches and thus presents opposing
interpretations regarding the antiquity (primordial
interpretation) or modernity (constructivist
interpretation) of the Kurdish nation and its
nationalism. Vali himself maintains that "Kurdish
nationalist historical discourse is a product of
modernity, following the emergence of centralized
territorial states in Turkey, Iran and Iraq" (p.
97).
Recent Kurdish scholarship owes a double debt of
gratitude here to Robert Olson, who has not only
served for many years as Mazda's Kurdish series
editor, but has also written a large number of books
himself, including such recent works from Mazda
Publishers as The Goat and the Butcher: Nationalism
and State Formation in Kurdistan: Iraq since the
Iraqi War (2005); Turkey-Iran Relations, 1979-2004:
Revolution, Ideology, War, Coups and Geopolitics
(2004); Turkey s Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel,
and Russia, 1991-2000: The Kurdish and Islamist
Questions (2001); and The Kurdish Question and
Turkish-Iranian Relations: From World War I to 1998
(1998). At a recent conference, "The Kurds in
International Affairs," held at the Royal Institute
of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London
on December 19, 2007, Olson was introduced to the
audience as the author of must-reading for any study
of the Kurdish question.
Martin Strohmeier's Crucial Images in the
Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity: Heroes
and Patriots, Traitors and Foes (E.J. Brill, 2003)
offers a wealth of material previously available
only in scattered pieces analyzing the failed
antecedents (approximately to 1938) of contemporary
Kurdish nationalism as it played out in what became
modern Turkey. He illustrates how early would-be
Kurdish nationalists grappled with overwhelming
problems, including the nature of the Kurdish
relationship with the Turks and the primitive state
of affairs in Kurdistan, as well as with the Kurdish
language: "All Kurds were deeply if variously
enmeshed in social,www.ekurd.net
ideological, economic
and personal relations with the Turks.... These
bonds hampered the development of a self-assertive,
robust and distinct Kurdish identity" (p. 54). Then,
following World War I and the subsequent rush to
create nation-states in the Middle East, the Kurds
had no one to counter the appeal Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk)
made to Muslim loyalty.
Hakan Ozoglu's Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman
State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and
Shifting Boundaries (State University of New York
Press, 2004) not only proves a useful analysis of
the emergence of Kurdish nationalism, but also
places this process within the larger context of
nationalism studies in general. The author argues
that, as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated following
World War I, Kurdish notables had to seek a new
identity. "Kurdish nationalism appeared to be the
only viable choice for Kurds in the absence of a
functioning ideology such as Ottomanism. It was a
result of a desperate search for identity after
Ottomanism failed" (p. 117). Thus, "Kurdish
nationalism emerged as a full blown political
movement [only] immediately after... World War I,
when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist," and "was
not a cause of [the] empire's disintegration, but
rather the result of it" (p. 18).
Christopher Houston in Islam, Kurds and the Turkish
Nation State (Berg, 2001) examines theoretically
whether Islamism can unite Muslim Turks and Kurds in
a discourse that transcends ethnicity. Based on two
years of field work, the author argues that an
Islamic synthesis depends on its flexibility.
Already, however, the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
Justice and Development Party (AK Party) since
November 2002 and its victory in July 2007 have
added important new dimensions to the possibilities
of an Islamic solution.
Three recent studies of the Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK) in Turkey and its imprisoned leader Abdullah (Apo)
Ocalan offer different types of analyses. Paul
White, in Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary
Modernizers? The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey
(Zed Books, 2000) presents a very readable study of
the origins of the PKK and its future, based in part
on interviews with Ocalan himself and many of his
associates. The author examines the transformation
of peasants from what he terms social rebels into
modern Kurdish nationalists and concludes that the
PKK represents a qualitatively different sort of
leadership than did its historical predecessors.
Ali Kemal Ozcan's Turkey's Kurds: A Theoretical
Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan (Routledge,
2006) is a sophisticated theoretical analysis based
on prolonged observations, an unstructured interview
with Ocalan, and an illegal questionnaire from
Kurdish respondents in several Kurdish-populated
cities in Turkey. The author was even permitted to
join the PKK's education program at its Central
School in Syria in summer 1994. All this enables AH
Ozcan to elucidate what he terms "the PKK's
massification - its sources and dimensions among the
people of Kurdistan" (p. 18). On the other hand, he
argues repeatedly that, given the PKK's total
abandonment of all its national liberation
objectives since Ocalan's capture in 1999, its
policies should now be defined as an "identity
liberation movement, rather than a national
liberation movement" (p. 233).
Aliza Marcus's Blood and Belief: The PKK and the
Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York University
Press, 2007) is an excellent journalistic analysis
of the PKK based on the author's lengthy and
detailed interviews with very knowledgeable former
PKK members now mostly living in European exile. A
weakness is that she apparently did not interview
current PKK members and is also very sketchy about
the current situation. At times, Marcus's major
theme appears to be Ocalan's "cult of personality"
(p. 210), "narcissism" (p. 266), and sheer
"paranoia" (p. 135). He [Ocalan] "always was
concerned about challenges to his authority and to
the unity of the PKK under his authority" (p. 90).
On the other hand, Marcus explains that Ocalan "also
could be politically savvy and reasonable" (p. 211).
In the end, however, Ocalan proved unable to parlay
his initial successes into permanent military gains.
Nevertheless, "Ocalan in captivity became a symbol
of the Kurdish nation - oppressed, imprisoned, used
and then discarded by nations with other interests
at heart" (p. 280). Marcus concludes that "the
Kurdish problem will remain because the answer lies
in Turkey opening a real dialogue with Kurds, and
taking it from there" (p. 304).
Asa Lundgren's The Unwelcome Neighbour: Turkey's
Kurdish Policy (I. B. Tauris, 2007) is a concise
jargon-free analysis of how Turkey's foundational
rationale for its own existence as a supposedly
non-ethnic state explains its adamant opposition to
an Iraqi Kurdish state: "Kurdish self-rule in
northern Iraq is a challenge to the ideological
foundation of the Turkish state, that is, to the
idea of the unitary nation-state in which ethnicity
is an irrelevant phenomenon in the public and
political sphere" (p. 120). Indeed, "Ankara's . ..
strong objections to Kurdish self-rule and the
insistence that Iraq remains intact is not primarily
based on concern about the unity and sovereignty of
Iraq but ultimately on concern about the unity and
sovereignty of Turkey" (p. 124).
Metin Heper in The State and Kurds in Turkey: The
Question of Assimilation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
rejects what he terms "the present paradigm of the
assimilation-resistance-assimilation model in
respect to ethnic conflict" (p. 2) to explain the
Kurdish problem in Turkey. Instead he takes on
practically all the authors reviewed here as well as
some important Turkish scholars, such as Kemal
Kirisci and M. Hakan Yavuz, and maintains: "The
[Turkish] state has not resorted to forceful
assimilation of the Kurds, because the founders of
the state had been of the opinion that for long
centuries, both Turks and Kurds in Turkey,
particularly the latter, had gone through a process
of acculturation, or steady disappearance of
cultural distinctiveness as a consequence of a
process of voluntary, or rather unconscious,
assimilation" (p. 6). Therefore, the Turkish state
is simply "trying to hinder the de-acculturation of
the already acculturated" (p. 7).
Joost Jongerden's The Settlement Issue in Turkey and
the Kurds: An Analysis of Spatial Policies,
Modernity and War (E.J. Brill, 2007) presents a
sociological study of the "return to the villages
and rehabilitation of the war-torn region" (p. xxii)
in Turkey following what seemed like the end of the
PKK uprising after the capture of Ocalan in February
1999. He traveled extensively in the region and
interviewed refugees in the west of Turkey. His
analysis places these events in the broader
historical context of other population displacements
in the region and Turkey's earlier resettlement
policies.
Brendan O'Leary, John McGarry and Khaled Salih
(eds.) in The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) offer a
very able collection of articles dealing with the
rise of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in
northern Iraq. The collection is particularly strong
in its analysis of federalism and how it might be
applied successfully to the Iraqi Kurds. The
Canadian model presents some of the most interesting
insights. A chapter by Gareth Stansfield illustrates
how, in effect, the KRG itself has attributes of a
quasi-federal system between the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal
Talabani.
Faleh A. Jabar and Hosham Dawod (eds.) in The Kurds:
Nationalism and Politics (Saqi, 2006) provide
another worthy collection of articles and attempts
to rethink the concept of ethnicity from a
theoretical perspective. Two other useful
collections edited by Mohammed M. A. Ahmed and
myself and published by Mazda Publishers in 2005 and
2007, respectively, are The Kurdish Question and the
2003 Iraqi War, and The Evolution ofKurdish
Nationalism, Mohammed M. A. Ahmed also has
contributed importantly to recent Kurdish studies as
the founder and president of the Ahmed Foundation
for Kurdish Studies, a non-profit, non-partisan
organization promoting Kurdish studies. In addition,
one should mention the Institut Kurde de Paris,
which was established in February 1983 and has long
been headed by Kendal Nezan. This institute is
arguably the oldest and most important such
organization in existence. In 1996, Najmaldin O.
Karim (a prominent neurosurgeon and formerly the
personal physician of the legendary Mulla Mustafa
Barzani) established a Washington Kurdish Institute
in Washington, D.C., and is possibly the
best-informed U.S. citizen on events in the KRG.
Kerim Yildiz has played an important role as the
executive director of the Kurdish Human Rights
Project (KHRP) in London. The KHRP has successfully
argued many cases concerning human-rights violations
against ethnic Kurds in Turkey before the European
Court of Human Rights. Recently, Yildiz also
published, with Pluto Press in London, four pithy
studies of the Kurdish situation: The Kurds in Iraq:
The Past, Present and Future (2004); The Kurds in
Turkey: EU Accession and Human Rights (2005); The
Kurds in Syria: The Forgotten People (2005); and
(with Tanyel B. Taysi) The Kurds in Iran: The Past,
Present and Future (2007).
Among a number of journalistic accounts, Quil
Lawrence's Invisible Nation: How the Kurds ' Quest
for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East
(Walker and Company, 2008) and Kevin McKieraan's The
Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland (St.
Martin's Press, 2006) are the best. Lawrence deals
only with the Iraqi Kurds, while McKiernan covers
both the Turkish and Iraqi Kurds. Both authors have
spent a considerable amount of time on the ground
and communicate their experiences and insights
engagingly.
Lokman Meho has published with Greenwood Press two
useful bibliographies The Kurds and Kurdistan: A
Selective and Annotated Bibliography (1997) and
(with Kelly L. Maglaughlin) Kurdish Culture and
Society: An Annotated Bibliography (2001). Recently,
Michael L. Chyet published the most impressive
Kurdish Dictionary: Kurmanji-English (Yale
University Press, 2002). In my Historical Dictionary
of the Kurds (Scarecrow Press, 2004) I made an
initial attempt to compile an encyclopedia of
entries dealing with the Kurds and Kurdistan. It is
the first such work for a non-state nation in a
lengthy series of such dictionaries published for
many years for independent states.
Despite this impressive recent scholarship, some
would still argue that Martin van Bruinessen's Agha,
Shaikh and State: The Social and Political
Structures of Kurdistan (Zed Books, 1992) and David
McDowall's A Modern History of the Kurds (I. B.
Tauris, 1996) remain the two leading studies in the
field. Finally, of course, I recognize that I have
probably inadvertently omitted other recent works
that deserve mention. In addition, numerous studies
of Kurds have been published in other languages as
well as by the Kurds themselves. Taken together, all
of these works amply demonstrate that recent Kurdish
scholarship has come of age.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
mepc org
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 