Mesut Yegen

• Istanbul Şehir University

This article challenges two established views in the literature on Turkish nationalism. First, that Turkish nationhood in the early republican era was civic and ethnic and, second, that, while Turkish nationhood was inclusive and egalitarian in constitutional texts, in the early years of the Turkish Republic and in the case of Turkish citizens of M...

This article examines the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK), which has become one of the prominent actors in Kurdistan and the Middle East since its inception in the mid-1970s. My basic aim is to explain how the PKK became a significant agent, a maker in the Middle East, contributing to the dissolution of the decades-long...

This essay examines Marxist Turkish left’s engagement with the Kurdish question in Turkey. It aims to portray, on the basis of some first-hand material, the theoretical inclinations and political attitudes of the main legal and illegal Marxist parties and organizations concerning the Kurdish question. It basically argues that the Turkish Marxists’...

In 2004, the Turkish government adopted a compensation law for the Kurdish victims of forced displacement during the armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkish military in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Acclaimed by the UN and the EU as a successful example of a domestic reparations program, the law enhanced Turkey's chances for the opening of t...

This essay argues that the 2011 election results point to a number of important conclusions concerning the Kurdish question in Turkey. First, the Kurdish party will continue to be the main actor in "Kurdish question politics." Second, the AK Party has been unable to halt the rise of the Kurdish party in a number of provinces with large Kurdish popu...

This article explores the public images and citizenship status of Turkish-citizen Kurds in Turkey. Kurds in Turkey mostly have been seen as prospective-Turks and accordingly have been subject to the assimilationist practices of citizenship throughout the Republican period. However, recent signs suggest that this image and status of the Kurds are no...

RomanoDavid, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Pp. 290. $80.00 cloth. - Volume 40 Issue 3 - Mesut Yeğen

This essay aims to review the contemporary debate on citizenship with a focus on the present dilemma of the institution of citizenship between equality and difference. Citizenship today seems to have become stuck between a categorical commitment to either universalism or particularism. It is as if there is no alternative but to opt for either assim...

Yeğen analyses the sudden appearance of the uncanny term 'Jewish-Kurds' in the language of Turkish nationalism. He sees the term as a symptom of a new idea of 'we-ness' (Turkishness) in Turkish politics. Analysing citizenship texts and practices in Turkey, he argues that the frontiers of Turkishness as designated by Turkish citizenship have always...

This article addresses the ways in which Turkish nationalism has perceived the Kurdish question. It is shown that both Turkish nationalism and the Kurdish question have passed through some paradigmatic moments in the twentieth century. This, I argue, has shaped the way that the Kurdish question has been perceived by Turkish nationalism. While the K...

La suppression des emirats kurdes puis du caliphat bouleversa l'autonomie des Kurdes envers l'Empire ottoman. La contribution tribale a la resistance kurde face a la centralisation ottomane etait incontestable. L'oppression de la peripherie et des identites ethniques etaient inseparable dans la reformation ottomane de meme que la resistance de la p...

BLDSC reference no.: DX221043. Thesis (doctoral)--University of Essex, 1994.