Books by Cengiz Gunes
Brill / Nijhoff, 2019
Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East: From
Theory to Practice, is novel from se... more Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East: From
Theory to Practice, is novel from several perspectives. It combines theory with facts on the ground, going beyond legal perspectives without neglecting existing laws and their implementation. Theoretical discussions transcend examining existing autonomy models in certain regions. It offers new models in the field, discussing such critical themes as environmentalism. Traditional concepts such as self-determination and well-known successful autonomy examples, including the Åland Islands, Basque and Catalonian models, are examined from different perspectives. Some chapters in this volume focus on certain regions (including Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) which have only recently received scholarly attention. Chapters complement one another in terms of
their theoretical inputs and outputs from the field.
Spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, Kurdistan is one of the hottest geopolitical areas in... more Spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, Kurdistan is one of the hottest geopolitical areas in the Middle East. It is a land inhabited by over 30 million people, representing one of the largest stateless "nations" worldwide. The Kurds play a crucial role in the region, and the so-called "Kurdish factor" has constantly been a key ingredient of recent Middle East crises: from the wars in Iraq under Saddam Hussein to the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Not to mention the strategic relevance that Kurdistan assumes as one of the oil-richest areas in the region. What new balances would an eventual victory of Kurds over IS create? What are the long-term goals of the Kurdish community? How to reach a solution to the Kurdish question able to satisfy all the actors involved? Can we envisage a common future for the Kurds or will they remain tied to the political destinies of the countries they live in? These are just some of the questions that this report tries to answer collecting contributions from leading international experts.
This book provides an interpretive and critical analysis of Kurdish identity, nationalism and nat... more This book provides an interpretive and critical analysis of Kurdish identity, nationalism and national movement in Turkey since the 1960s. By raising issues and questions relating to Kurdish political identity and highlighting the ideological specificity, diversity and the transformation of Kurdish nationalism, it develops a new empirical dimension to the study of the Kurds in Turkey.
Cengiz Gunes applies an innovative theoretical approach to the analysis of an impressively large volume of primary sources and data drawn from books and magazines published by Kurdish activists, political parties and groups. The analysis focuses on the specific demands articulated by the Kurdish national movement and looks at Kurdish nationalism at a specific level by disaggregating the nationalist discourse, showing variations over time and across different Kurdish nationalist organisations. Situating contemporary Kurdish political identity and its political manifestations within a historical framework, the author examines the historical and structural conditions that gave rise to it and influenced its evolution since the 1960s. The analysis also encompasses an account of the organisational growth and evolution of the Kurdish national movement, including the political parties and groups that were active in the period.
Bringing the study of the organisational development and growth of the Kurdish National Movement in Turkey up to date, this book will be an important reference for students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, social movements, nationalism and conflict.
Journal Articles by Cengiz Gunes
Kurdish Studies, 2020
This article explains the process of change in the political representation of Alevi Kurds in Tur... more This article explains the process of change in the political representation of Alevi Kurds in Turkey since the country held its first competitive election in 1950. It applies process tracing methodology to identify the dominant trends in Alevi Kurds' political representation and highlights how the mode of their political participation and representation evolved over time. The discussion presented here develops an explanation that connects the effects of key events and processes that have been shaping the outcome of this complex political phenomenon. The strong appeal among Alevi Kurds of the Turkish socialist movement and political parties associated with the secular republican regime is discussed before assessing the impact of the rise of Alevi and Kurdish movements on the Alevi Kurds' political representation. The barriers Turkey's restrictive political and legal order place on Alevi Kurds' political representation are also highlighted. Abstract in Kurmanji Temsîliyeta siyasî ya kurdên Elewî li Tirkiyeyê: Meylên dîrokî û veguherînên esasî
Nationalities Papers, 2020
This article focuses on the approaches and challenges to Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, Syria, and Tur... more This article focuses on the approaches and challenges to Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Accommodation of Kurdish rights via autonomy arrangements has a long history as an idea but negotiating actual autonomy agreements was often a fruitless task. However, the weakening of state power in Iraq since 1991 and in Syria since 2011 has created opportunities for Kurdish movements in these states to develop and consolidate their autonomous administrations. Consequently, in recent years, the debate on Kurdish autonomy in the Middle East has taken center stage in the regional political discourse. This article first discusses the literature on approaches to autonomy to set out the main models and assess their strengths and weaknesses. It then provides accounts of the models of autonomy that are either practiced or proposed by Kurdish actors or entities in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. The final section assesses the ability and suitability of the proposed or practiced models for the accommodation of Kurdish rights and demands and develops insights into how the current difficulties preventing the accommodation of Kurdish rights in the Middle East may be overcome.
This article focuses on the PKK’s (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) nationalist mobilization of the Kurd... more This article focuses on the PKK’s (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) nationalist mobilization of the Kurds in Turkey in the past 30 years. By drawing on the concepts of ‘hegemony’ and ‘myth’, it examines the constitution of Kurdish political subjectivity and the representation of Kurdish identity and difference in political discourse. It reflects on the ideological and political debates over strategy and the contestation over identity that numerous Kurdish political organizations took part in during the 1970s. It then examines the PKK’s subsequent hegemony over Kurdish politics in Turkey from the 1980s onwards by highlighting the factors that have enhanced its appeal among the Kurdish communities. This is done first through tracing the growth of the PKK’s organizational network, and second, analysing the representation of its struggle in political discourse and artistic form to its target groups.
Ethnopolitics, Jan 1, 2009
Book Sections / Chapters by Cengiz Gunes
On 12 September 1980, when the Turkish army carried out a coup d'état, very few in its upper eche... more On 12 September 1980, when the Turkish army carried out a coup d'état, very few in its upper echelons would have predicted that Turkey would spend the next two decades fighting the longest and most intense of Kurdish uprisings. The widespread torture that the army inflicted on the Kurdish political activists in prisons, together with the widespread oppressive measures they used to intimidate ordinary Kurds during the subsequent three years that they ruled Turkey, were seen as necessary and sufficient to suppress the rising tide of Kurdish political activism once and for all. So brutal was the army's response that the leader of the military dictatorship and Turkey's seventh president, Kenan Evren, went even a step further than any of the country's previous rulers by effectively banning the use of Kurdish language. 1 The practices associated with the military rule continued long after civilian rule returned on 6 November 1983. However, ultimately the army's iron fist proved ineffective once the guerrilla campaign led by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK in the Kurdish acronym) began to gather pace from the late 1980s onwards. During the 1970s, the PKK was one of the many new political groups that emerged on the Kurdish political scene in Turkey. 2 Its cadres were influenced by Marxism and the PKK's national liberation discourse, which articulated Kurdish identity and national demands with demands for socioeconomic equality. Its guerrilla campaign proved to be a vigorous challenge of the state's rule in Kurdish majority areas. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the scope and depth of the PKK's guerrilla campaign increased significantly, and through its widespread political consequences
Questo capitolo si occupa di ripercorrere lo stato del conflitto tra lo Stato Islamico (IS) e i c... more Questo capitolo si occupa di ripercorrere lo stato del conflitto tra lo Stato Islamico (IS) e i curdi, dando conto delle tendenze principali e delle motivazioni dietro gli attacchi dell'IS contro i curdi in Siria, Iraq e Turchia. La conquista di ampie porzioni di territorio in Siria e in Iraq nel 2014 e nel 2015, nonché la capacità di compiere attentati terroristici a livello globale, hanno fatto dell'IS una delle maggiori minacce alla sicurezza internazionale degli ultimi decenni. Le atrocità di cui si è macchiato nei confronti di varie comunità in Iraq e in Siria, in particolare di quella dei curdi yazidi, e la distruzione di numerosi siti del patrimonio storico e archeologico hanno suscitato la condanna pressoché unanime della comunità internazionale. A sua volta, la resistenza che le forze curde hanno opposto in Siria e in Iraq al terrore e al caos seminati dall'IS ha suscitato grande ammirazione in tutto il mondo.
Uploads
Books by Cengiz Gunes
Theory to Practice, is novel from several perspectives. It combines theory with facts on the ground, going beyond legal perspectives without neglecting existing laws and their implementation. Theoretical discussions transcend examining existing autonomy models in certain regions. It offers new models in the field, discussing such critical themes as environmentalism. Traditional concepts such as self-determination and well-known successful autonomy examples, including the Åland Islands, Basque and Catalonian models, are examined from different perspectives. Some chapters in this volume focus on certain regions (including Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) which have only recently received scholarly attention. Chapters complement one another in terms of
their theoretical inputs and outputs from the field.
Cengiz Gunes applies an innovative theoretical approach to the analysis of an impressively large volume of primary sources and data drawn from books and magazines published by Kurdish activists, political parties and groups. The analysis focuses on the specific demands articulated by the Kurdish national movement and looks at Kurdish nationalism at a specific level by disaggregating the nationalist discourse, showing variations over time and across different Kurdish nationalist organisations. Situating contemporary Kurdish political identity and its political manifestations within a historical framework, the author examines the historical and structural conditions that gave rise to it and influenced its evolution since the 1960s. The analysis also encompasses an account of the organisational growth and evolution of the Kurdish national movement, including the political parties and groups that were active in the period.
Bringing the study of the organisational development and growth of the Kurdish National Movement in Turkey up to date, this book will be an important reference for students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, social movements, nationalism and conflict.
Journal Articles by Cengiz Gunes
Book Sections / Chapters by Cengiz Gunes
Theory to Practice, is novel from several perspectives. It combines theory with facts on the ground, going beyond legal perspectives without neglecting existing laws and their implementation. Theoretical discussions transcend examining existing autonomy models in certain regions. It offers new models in the field, discussing such critical themes as environmentalism. Traditional concepts such as self-determination and well-known successful autonomy examples, including the Åland Islands, Basque and Catalonian models, are examined from different perspectives. Some chapters in this volume focus on certain regions (including Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) which have only recently received scholarly attention. Chapters complement one another in terms of
their theoretical inputs and outputs from the field.
Cengiz Gunes applies an innovative theoretical approach to the analysis of an impressively large volume of primary sources and data drawn from books and magazines published by Kurdish activists, political parties and groups. The analysis focuses on the specific demands articulated by the Kurdish national movement and looks at Kurdish nationalism at a specific level by disaggregating the nationalist discourse, showing variations over time and across different Kurdish nationalist organisations. Situating contemporary Kurdish political identity and its political manifestations within a historical framework, the author examines the historical and structural conditions that gave rise to it and influenced its evolution since the 1960s. The analysis also encompasses an account of the organisational growth and evolution of the Kurdish national movement, including the political parties and groups that were active in the period.
Bringing the study of the organisational development and growth of the Kurdish National Movement in Turkey up to date, this book will be an important reference for students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics, social movements, nationalism and conflict.
Fevzi Bilgin and Ali Sarıhan (eds.), Understanding Turkey’s Kurdish Question, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2013, 250 pp., (ISBN: 978-0-7391-8402-8).
Michael M. Gunter, Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War, Hurst Publishers, London, 2014, 169 pp., (ISBN: 978-1-84904-435-6).
Mohammed Shareef, The United States, Iraq and the Kurds: Shock, Awe and Aftermath, New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2014, 234 pp., ISBN-13:
Latif Tas, Legal Pluralism in Action: Dispute Resolution and the Kurdish Peace Committee, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, 208 pp., (ISBN-13: 978-1472422088).
Galia Goran and Walid Salem (eds.), Non-State Actors in the Middle East: Factors for Peace and Democracy, Oxon: Routledge, 2013, 230 pp., (ISBN-13:
Mehmed S. Kaya, The Zaza Kurds of Turkey: A Middle Eastern Minority in a Globalised Society. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011, xii, 223 pp., (ISBN 978-1-84511-875-4).
Shanna Kirschner, Trust and Fear in Civil Wars: Ending Intrastate Conflicts, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, 189 pp., (ISBN: 978-0-7391-9641-0)