Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: About one million Kurds are currently living in Europe. The majority of them are Kurds from Turkey, who came in 1960s and 1970s in the course of labor migration. In the 1980s and 1990s, another wave of Kurds came as political refugees. Especially the latter became engaged in a transnational mobilization effort to organize the Kurdish labor migrants who were so far not involved in the Kurdish cause for recognition and self-determination. Today, a relatively successful Kurdish movement has used the political opportunity structure of Europe a) to lobby national governments and European institutions to exert pressure on the human rights politics of Turkey b) to build-up a transnational network of the Kurdish minority in Europe and c) to support the Kurdish movement in Turkey. This paper will analyze the contradictory situation of Kurds as a minority both in Turkey and in Europe. It argues that the Kurdish community is remarkably empowered in Europe and actively attempts to build a transnational sphere of ?Euro-Kurdistan?, while Turkey still refuses to sign the Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as part of its EU candidacy (because it refuses to recognize the Kurds as its national minority). This conflicting situation puts strains on both the EU-Turkey relationship as well as on the relationship of the EU with its significant number of Kurds residing in Europe.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper addresses the forced internal displacement of an estimated 1 to 3 million Kurds in Turkey over the past 15 years during the course of the internal war between the Turkish military and the Kurdish guerilla movement in the southeast.
Internal displacement in Turkey is not simply a temporary humanitarian emergency, but rather, it is a social and political process. More concretely, I argue that internal displacement in Turkey is a deliberate policy pursued by the state to depopulate the Kurdish region in an attempt to eradicate the insurgency. This has had two outcomes, which constitute the subject matter of this paper. First, IDPs have de facto been stripped of their political and social rights as citizens, resulting in the creation of what I call ‘political non-subjects’. Second, as the civil war in the countryside has nearly come to an end, the “Kurdish problem” has been relocated to cities and re-emerged as urban poverty and issues pertaining to “urban citizenship.” Thus, although unable to exercise political rights, Kurdish IDPs may now be making new claims to the city through more indirect channels.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: My paper examines the role that state manipulation of population configurations and the use of relocation as a tool of pacification and control plays in the construction of ethno-national identities in post-imperial Turkey. By historically examining the displacement of some sectors of the Kurdish-speaking population between 1923 and 1947, I argue that despite the short-term benefits of containing resistance against the centralization and homogenization efforts of the state, in the longer term coercive relocation policies reinforced a more particularistic ethnic identification among the displaced communities, strengthened their ethno-nationalist claims, and caused further polarization, discontent and confrontation between them and the Turkish state. Methodologically, I contend that paying more attention to the dynamics of interactions between forced migrants and state will produce a better understanding of the causes and the consequences of politically induced population movements

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Societal security has become a prominent concept in the field of security studies and has been used to challenge the supremacy of state security as the dominant paradigm in security studies. It has achieved this success because it addresses intrastate conflicts and accounts for the role of the state as a primary source of insecurity in many parts of the world. However, the concept remains problematic for scholars because it is vastly understudied and because it has yet to identify who defines and provides security for non-state societies. Those that use this concept rely on the problematic assumption that society is capable of enunciating security threats against it. This paper argues that security cannot be understood outside of the state concept for two reasons: 1) societies are incapable of implementing the extraordinary means necessary to counter potential threats and 2) ultimately the international community determines who speaks security on behalf of non-state societies. Examining two cases: the Palestinians and the Kurds, this paper argues that these societies have at various times had numerous claimants to the role of securitising actor. In the Palestinian case, the PLO eventually secured the role of securitising actor, while both the PKK and the KDP have been unsuccessful to fill this role for the Kurds. I argue that the differences in the outcomes of these cases have not been due to any discernable decision on the part of their respective societies, but rather that of the international community. As such, societal security fails as a concept distinct from state security and can best be understood as one sector of state security.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Return migration constitutes an important part of the peace-building and reconciliation efforts. This project looks at the role that the several non-governmental organizations and international organizations (among which we can include the EU, some bodies of the Council of Europe and several financial institutions) play in the facilitation of the internally displaced (IDP) Kurds? return migration and reconstruction in the previous conflict-zone. It will address the problems the possible returnee population may face, obstacles in the reconstruction of the post-conflict environments in the new phase of the ?Kurdish Question? in Turkey, and the official and civic efforts to promote a ?peaceful? (post)-conflict environment in the regions, which produced Kurdish internal displacement. The analysis will focus on how these different players frame the conflict issues, in what areas they concentrate their efforts of peace-building and reconciliation and to what extent these efforts can be put in dialogue.