The Kurdish Question Revisited

Edited by Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef

While the Kurds were once a marginal study in Middle East Studies, they have moved to center stage in recent years
Syria, Iraq, and Turkey have all seen a rise in the importance of the "Kurdish question"
Most up-to-date examination of the place of the Kurds in the modern world
The world's leading experts on the history and culture of the Kurds collaborate in what will become a benchmark volume on this transnational people

The Kurdish Question Revisited

Edited by Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef

Description

The Kurds, once marginal in the study of the Middle East and secondary in its international relations, have moved to center stage in recent years. In Turkey, where the Kurdish question is an issue of national significance, and in Iraq, where the gains made by the Kurdistan Regional Government have allowed it to impose its authority, moves are afoot to solve 'the Kurdish Question' once and for all. In Syria, where the Kurds have borne the brunt of the Islamic State's onslaught as they defended their three self-declared cantons of Afrin, Kobane, and Cezire, and in Iran, where they struggle to express their cultural distinctiveness and suffer disproportionately at the hands of the Islamic Republic's security and intelligence services, the picture is less positive. Yet the situations in both countries remain in flux, affected by developments in Iraq and Turkey in a manner that suggests we may have to revise the notion of the Kurds being forever divided by the boundaries of the Middle East and subsumed into the state projects of other nations.
The contributors to The Kurdish Question Revisited offer insights into how this once seemingly intractable, immutable phenomenon is being transformed amid the new political realities of the Middle East.

The Kurdish Question Revisited

Edited by Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef

Introduction

Gareth Stansfield (University of Exeter) and Mohammed Shareef (University of Exeter)

PART I

REFLECTIONS ON IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND THE NATION

1. Social Movement Theory and Political Mobilization in Kurdistan

David Romano (Missouri State University)

2. Religion Among the Kurds: Between Naqshbandi Sufism and IS Salafism

Michiel Leezenberg (University of Amsterdam)

3. New Perspectives on Writing the History of the Kurds in Iraq, Syria and Turkey: A History and State of the Art Assessment

Jordi Tejel (Graduate Institute of Geneva)

4. Politics of Memory: Kurdish Ethnic Identity and the Role of Collective Forgetting

Hakan Özo?lu (University of Central Florida)

5. 'Being in Time': The Kurdish Movement and Quests of Universal

Hamit Bozarslan (EHESS Paris)

6. Separated but Connected: The Synergic Effects in the Kurdistan Sub-System

Ofra Bengio (Tel Aviv University)

7. Fact and Fiction in Modern Kurdish Narrative Discourse

Hashem Ahmadzadeh (University of Stockholm)

8. Political and Everyday Religion in Kurdistan

Diane E. King (University of Kentucky)

9. The Shifting Borders of Conflict, Difference, and Oppression: Kurdish Folklore Revisited

Christine Allison (University of Exeter)

10. Kurdish Music in Armenia: The Music of the Yezidis

Nahro Zagros (University of Soran)

PART II

THE KURDISH QUESTION AND TURKEY

11. The Sheikh Ubeidullah Rebellion of 1880

Sabri Ates (Southern Methodist University)

12. Journalism Beyond Borders: The Bedirkhans and the First Kurdish Gazette, 1898-1902

Janet Klein (University of Akron)

13. Mobilisation of Kurds in Turkey during the 1980s and the 1990s

Cengiz Gunes (The Open University)

14. Turkey's Kurdish Problems, The Kurds' Turkish Problems

Bill Park (King's College London)

15. The Transformation of Turkey's Kurdish Question

Henri Barkey (The Wilson Center)

16. Contrasting Turkish Paradigms Towards the Volatile Kurdish Question: Domestic and Foreign Considerations

Michael M. Gunter (Tennessee Technological University)

17. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK): Radical Democracy and the Right to Self-Determination Beyond the Nation-State

Joost Jongerden (Wageningen University)

18. The PKK, the Kurdish Movement, and the Emergence of Kurdish Cultural Policies in Turkey

Clémence Scalbert-Yücel (University of Exeter)

PART III

THE KURDISH QUESTION AND SYRIA

19. The Curious Question of the PYD-PKK Relationship

Zeynep Kaya (LSE) and Robert Lowe (LSE)

20. Kurdish Political Parties and the Syrian Uprising

Harriet Allsopp (independent scholar)

PART IV

THE KURDISH QUESTION AND IRAN

21. The Kurdish Conundrum and the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979-2003

Nader Entessar (University of Southern Alabama)

22. Identities and Ethnic Hierarchy: The Kurdish Question Revisited in Iran

Olivier Grojean (Aix-en-Provence)

23. Fellow Arians and Muslim Brothers: Iranian Narratives on the Kurds

Walter Posch (Austrian National Defence Academy, Vienna)

PART V

THE KURDISH QUESTION AND IRAQ

24. The Kurdish Experience in Post-Saddam Iraq

Gareth Stansfield (University of Exeter)

25. Arabisation as Genocide: The Case of the Disputed Territories of Iraq

Mohammed Ihsan (University of Erbil)

26. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq's Higher Education Boom - A Gender Perspective

Katherine Ranharter (University of Exeter)

27. Water and Development in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Greg Shapland (University of Exeter)

28. Peace Education in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Evolution and Limitations

Kelsey Shanks (University of Exeter)

29. The Iraqi Kurdish Response to the 'Islamic State': Political Leverage in Times of Crisis

Benjamin Isakhan (Deakin University)

30. In Pursuit of Friends: The Kurdistan Region's Foreign Affairs and Diplomacy

Renad Mansour (Carnegie - Beirut)

31. A Paradigm Shift in US-Kurdistan Region Relations Post-2014: The Evolution to a Strategic Partnership

Mohammed Shareef (University of Exeter)

32. Re-claiming Halabja

Nicole Watts (San Francisco State University)

33. Media, Political Culture, and the Shadows of the Militia War in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Andrea Fischer-Tahir (Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin)

34. Experiences of Honour Based Violence, and Moving Towards Action in Iraqi Kurdistan

Nazand Begikhani (University of Bristol) and Gill Hague (University of Bristol)

35. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Federal Constitution: A Perimeter Plinth of State Territorial Integrity or a Stepping Stone to Secession?

Francis Owtram (University of Exeter)

The Kurdish Question Revisited

Edited by Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef

Author Information

Gareth Stansfield is Professor of Middle East Politics and Al-Qasimi Chair of Arab Gulf Studies; Mohammed Shareef is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter.