Emergent Conversation 24

Commissioned and Edited by Adnan Çelik & Deniz Yonucu

This series brings together contributions from across the four parts of Kurdistan as well as the Kurdish diaspora, particularly in Germany. Caught between regional and international powers amid the backdrop of the Syrian war and rising Turkish and Iranian hegemony, the Kurdish pursuit of liberation, democratic autonomy, and coexistence has been largely ignored by those powers, despite growing global awareness following the Rojava revolution. Today, what is at stake for Kurds is not so much the right to self-determination as the even more fundamental right to survival.

Introduction

Adnan Çelik, Deniz Yonucu

 

 

 

Colonization of Kurdistan: A Basic Geographical, Historical, and Theoretical Framework

Özlem Göner

 

 

 

Continuities of Exclusion: Anti-Kurdish Ideologies from Ba’athist Regimes to Syrian Islamist Opposition

Dastan Jasim

 

 

Some Anthropological Reflections on Iraqi Kurdish Political Parties

Hardy Mède

 

 

 

 

Jin, Jiyan, Azadî: Anti-Colonial Trajectory of a Revolutionary Feminist Slogan

Somayeh Rostampour

 

 

 

Embodied Counter-Narratives: Newroz, Subaltern Subjectivity, and the Politics of Cultural Visibility in Iranian Kurdistan

Massoud Sharifi

 

“Neither War nor Peace”: The Kurds on the Brink of Burning Their Weapons

Adnan Çelik

 

 

 

Owning the Narrative and Re-signifying Freedom: Society-Building and the Emancipatory Politics of Kurdish Mobilization

Rosa Burç

 

The Stateless and the State-like: PKK, FARC, and the Projection of Power

Jan Yasin Sunca

 

 

Contemporary Extractivisms in Northern Kurdistan

Eray Çaylı

 

 

 

Repressive Alignments: Germany and the Transnational Politics of Anti-Kurdish Lawfare

Deniz Yonucu & Kerem Schamberger

 

 

 

Adnan Çelik, anthropologist and historian, is an Associate Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS) in Paris. He is the author of Dans l’ombre de l’État : Kurdes contre Kurdes (Brepols, 2021), and co-author of Laboratories of Learning: Social Movements, Education and Knowledge-Making in the Global South (Pluto 2024) with M. Novelli, B. Kutan, P. Kane, T. Pherali, and S. Benjamin. He also co-authored La Malédiction: Le génocide des Arméniens dans la mémoire des Kurdes de Diyarbekir (L’Harmattan 2021) with Namık Kemal Dinç, and co-edited Kurds in Turkey: Ethnographies of Heterogeneous Experiences (Lexington Books, 2019) with Lucie Drechselová. His research focuses on political violence, memorial regimes, and transnational activism.

Deniz Yonucu is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Newcastle University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of anthropology, political theory, law & society studies, and urban studies. She has published extensively on topics related to policing, criminalisation, racism, and left-wing and anti-colonial resistance. Her work has appeared in various venues, including Current Anthropology, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Race & Class, City & Society and Social and Legal Studies. Her monograph Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul (Cornell University Press) is the winner of the 2023 Anthony Leeds Prize for the best book in urban anthropology.