Download or read book Anatomy of a Civil War written by Mehmet Gurses and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anatomy of a Civil War demonstrates the destructive nature of war, ranging from the physical to the psychosocial, as well as war’s detrimental effects on the environment. Despite such horrific aspects, evidence suggests that civil war is likely to generate multilayered outcomes. To examine the transformative aspects of civil war, Mehmet Gurses draws on an original survey conducted in Turkey, where a Kurdish armed group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been waging an intermittent insurgency for Kurdish self-rule since 1984. Findings from a probability sample of 2,100 individuals randomly selected from three major Kurdish-populated provinces in the eastern part of Turkey, coupled with insights from face-to-face in-depth interviews with dozens of individuals affected by violence, provide evidence for the multifaceted nature of exposure to violence during civil war. Just as the destructive nature of war manifests itself in various forms and shapes, wartime experiences can engender positive attitudes toward women, create a culture of political activism, and develop secular values at the individual level. In addition, wartime experiences seem to robustly predict greater support for political activism. Nonetheless, changes in gender relations and the rise of a secular political culture appear to be primarily shaped by wartime experiences interacting with insurgent ideology.
Download or read book Out of Nowhere written by Michael M. Gunter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the emergence of Syrian Kurds, who became game-changers in the Syrian civil war and potentially in Kurdish areas of other countries as well.
Download or read book The CIA War in Kurdistan written by Sam Faddis and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A valuable history [and] a stark warning to Washington policy and strategy makers.” —James Stejskal, former US Army Special Forces and CIA officer In 2002, Sam Faddis was named to head a CIA team that would enter Iraq to facilitate the deployment of follow-on conventional military forces numbering over 40,000 American soldiers. This force, built around the 4th Infantry Division, would, in partnership with Kurdish forces and with the assistance of Turkey, engage Saddam’s army in the North as part of a coming invasion. Faddis expected to be on the ground in Iraq within weeks, the entire campaign likely to be over by summer. Over the course of the next year, virtually every aspect of that plan for the conduct of the war in northern Iraq fell apart. The 4th Infantry Division never arrived, nor did any other conventional forces in substantial number. The Turks not only refused to provide support, they worked overtime to prevent the United States from achieving success. And an Arab army that was to assist US forces fell apart before it ever made it to the field. Alone, hopelessly outnumbered, short on supplies, and threatened by Iraqi assassination teams and Islamic extremists, Faddis’s team, working with Kurdish peshmerga, miraculously paved the way for a brilliant and largely bloodless victory in the North and the fall of Saddam’s Iraq. That victory, handed over to Washington and the Department of Defense on a silver platter, was then squandered. The decisions that followed would lead to catastrophic consequences that continue to this day. This is the story of the brave and effective team of men and women who overcame massive odds to help end the nightmare of Saddam’s rule. It is also the story of how incompetence, bureaucracy, and ignorance threw that success away and condemned Iraq and the surrounding region to chaos
Download or read book The Kurdish Conflict written by Kerim Yildiz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is highly topical considering the recent resurgence of violence by the PKK, the incursions into Northern Iraq by the Turkish army and security forces and Turkey's EU accession negotiations. Turkey has become an increasingly important player in Middle Eastern geopolitics. More than two decades of serious conflict in Turkey are proving to be a barrier to improved relations between Turkey and the EU. This book is the first study to fully address the legal and political dimensions of the conflict, and their impact on mechanisms for conflict resolution in the region, offering a scholarly exploration of a debate that is often politically and emotionally highly charged. Kerim Yildiz and Susan Breau look at the practical application of the law of armed conflicts to the ongoing situation in Turkey and Northern Iraq. The application of the law in this region also means addressing larger questions in international law, global politics and conflict resolution. Examples include belligerency in international law, whether the ‘War on Terror’ has resulted in changes to the law of armed conflict and terrorism and conflict resolution. The Kurdish Conflict explores the practical possibilities of conflict resolution in the region, examining the political dynamics of the region, and suggesting where lessons can be drawn from other peace processes, such as in Northern Ireland. This book will be of great value to policy-makers, regional experts, and others interested in international humanitarian law and conflict resolution.
Download or read book Turkey s Mission Impossible written by Cengiz Çandar and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a work of excavation of the modern history of Turkey, with the Kurdish question at its center, unearthed and exposed in Çandar’s captivating narrative. The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. The author weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow. Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.
Download or read book Conflict Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East written by David Romano and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, central governments historically pursued mono-nationalist ideologies and repressed Kurdish identity. As evidenced by much unrest and a great many Kurdish revolts in all these states since the 1920s, however, the Kurds manifested strong resistance towards ethnic chauvinism. What sorts of authoritarian state policies have Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria relied on to contain the Kurds over the years? Can meaningful democratization and liberalization in any of these states occur without a fundamental change vis-à-vis their Kurdish minorities? To what extent does the Kurdish issue function as both a barrier and key to democratization in four of the most important states of the Middle East? While many commentators on the Middle East stress the importance of resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute for achieving 'peace in the Middle East,' this book asks whether or not the often overlooked Kurdish issue may constitute a more important fulcrum for change in the region, especially in light of the 'Arab Spring' and recent changes in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Download or read book Frontline Turkey written by Ezgi Basaran and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-30 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turkey is on the front line of the war which is consuming Syria and the Middle East. Its role is complicated by the long-running conflict with the Kurds on the Syrian border - a war that has killed as many as 80,000 people over the last three decades. In 2011 President Erdogan promised to make a deal with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), but the talks marked a descent into assassinations, suicide bombings and the killing of civilians on both sides. The Kurdish peace process finally collapsed in 2014 with the spillover of the Syrian civil war. With ISIS moving through northern Iraq, Turkey has declared war on Western allies such as the Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Unit) - the military who rescued the Yezidis and fought with US backing in Kobane. Frontline Turkey shows how the Kurds' relationship with Turkey is at the very heart of the Middle Eastern crisis, and documents, through front-line reporting, how Erdogan's failure to bring peace is the key to understanding current events in Middle East.
Download or read book Voices from the Front written by N. Mater and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These riveting first-hand accounts of Turkish soldiers who have fought in the nasty internal war against the Kurds speak to universals: the shock of entering military life and the traumas of warfare; the changes in personality and relations with family and friends, the lingering emotional effects of violence, and the difficulties in returning to the 'real world', to borrow a phrase from Vietnam vets. Corruption, disillusionment and despair alternate with the small victories of humanity overcoming hellish conditions. Mater's reportage is in the best tradition of revealing the surreal, illuminating the universal truth of war's devastation. At a time when American troops are again caught in a vicious insurgency, the Kurdish issue has high visibility, and Turkey is a major actor in the Middle East, the experiences of these former soldiers resonate.
Download or read book Sold Out US Foreign Policy Iraq the Kurds and the Cold War written by Bryan R. Gibson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the ways in which US policy toward Iraq was dictated by America's broader Cold War strategy between 1958 and 1975. While most historians have focused on “hot” Cold War conflicts such as Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, few have recognized Iraq's significance as a Cold War battleground. This book argues that US decisions and actions were designed to deny the Soviet Union influence over Iraq and to create a strategic base in the oil-rich Gulf region. Using newly available primary sources and interviews, this book reveals new details on America's decision-making toward and actions against Iraq during the height of the Cold War and shows where Iraq fits into the broader historiography of the Cold War in the Middle East. Further, it raises important questions about widely held misconceptions of US-Iraqi relations, such as the CIA's alleged involvement in the 1963 Ba'thist coup and the theory that the US sold out the Kurds in 1975.
Download or read book Blood and Belief written by Aliza Marcus and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the inside story of Kurdish guerrilla movement. This book combines reportage and scholarship to give an account of PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Download or read book Iraqi Kurdistan the PKK and International Relations written by Hannes Cerny and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Due to its primacy in explaining issues of war and peace in the international arena, the discipline of International Relations (IR) looms large in analyses of and responses to ethnic conflict in academia, politics and popular media - in particular with respect to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East. Grounded in constitutive theory, this book challenges how ethnic/ethno-nationalist conflict is represented in explanatory IR by deconstructing its most prominent state-centric models, frameworks and analytical concepts. As much a critique of contemporary scholarship on Kurdish ethno-nationalism as a detailed analysis of the most prominent Kurdish ethno-nationalist actors, the book provides the first in-depth investigation into the relations between the PKK and the main Iraqi Kurdish political parties from the 1980s to the present. It situates this inquiry within the wider context of the ambiguous political status of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, its relations with Turkey, and the role Kurdish parties and insurgencies play in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Appreciating these complex dynamics and how they are portrayed in Western scholarship is essential for understanding current developments in the Iraqi and Syrian theatres of war, and for making sense of discussions about a potential independent Kurdish state to emerge in Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan provides a comprehensive and critical discussion of the state-centric and essentialising epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies of the three main paradigms of explanatory IR, as well as their analytical models and frameworks on ethnic identity and conflict in the Middle East and beyond. It will therefore be a valuable resource for anyone studying ethnicity and nationalism, International Relations or Middle East Politics.
Download or read book A People Without a State written by Michael Eppel and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numbering between 25 and 35 million worldwide, the Kurds are among the largest culturally and ethnically distinct people to remain stateless. A People Without a State offers an in-depth survey of an identity that has often been ignored in mainstream historiographies of the Middle East and brings to life the historical, social, and political developments in Kurdistani society over the past millennium. Michael Eppel begins with the myths and realities of the origins of the Kurds, describes the effect upon them of medieval Muslim states under Arab, Persian, and Turkish dominance, and recounts the emergence of tribal-feudal dynasties. He explores in detail the subsequent rise of Kurdish emirates, as well as this people’s literary and linguistic developments, particularly the flourishing of poetry. The turning tides of the nineteenth century, including Ottoman reforms and fluctuating Russian influence after the Crimean War, set in motion an early Kurdish nationalism that further expressed a distinct cultural identity. Stateless, but rooted in the region, the Kurds never achieved independence because of geopolitical conditions, tribal rivalries, and obstacles on the way to modernization. A People Without a State captures the developments that nonetheless forged a vast sociopolitical system.
Download or read book Rojava written by Thomas Schmidinger and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kurdish territory of Rojava in Syria has become a watchword for radical democracy, communalism and gender equality. But while Western radicals continue to project their own values onto the revolution, the complexities of the situation are often overlooked or misunderstood. Based on over 17 years of research and fieldwork, Thomas Schmidinger provides a detailed introduction to the history and political situation in Rojava. Outlining the history of the Kurds in Syria from the late Ottoman Empire until the Syrian civil war, he describes the developments in Rojava since 2011: the protests against the regime, the establishment of a Kurdish para-state, the conflicts between the parties about the administration of the Kurdish territory and how the PYD and its Peoples Councils rule the territory.The book draws on interviews with political leaders of different parties, civil society activists, artists, fighters and religious leaders in order to paint an complex picture of the historical conflict and the contemporary situation.
Download or read book Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in Turkey written by Spyridon Plakoudas and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-04 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to answer the “why” and “how” questions about the insurgency of the PKK, a militant left-wing group of Turkey’s Kurds, in Turkey. The PKK has been inter-locked in an intermittent war against Turkey since 1984 in the name of Kurdish nationalism. The author combines insights of Strategy and IR - from strategy and tactics in irregular warfare to peace negotiations between state authorities and insurgents, with data from qualitative research, to achieve two inter-related objectives: first, assess the current state of affairs and predict the future course of the conflict and, secondly, draw general conclusions on how protracted conflicts can end and how.
Download or read book The Kurds written by Kevin Mckiernan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-03-07 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping front-line portrait of the Kurdish people during the buildup to war and its aftermath by a journalist who has covered the region for over a decade.
Download or read book The Kurdish Tragedy written by Gerard Chaliand and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 1994-06 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to the Kurds ranges from the long-lost origins of the Kurdish people through to the latest twists and turns of post-Gulf War western policy. The book provides a detailed analysis of the political situation of the Kurds in contemporary Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Download or read book Behind Enemy Lies written by Patrick Cockburn and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this urgent and timely book, Patrick Cockburn writes the first draft of the history of the current crisis in the Middle East. Here he charts the period from the recapture of Mosul in 2017 to Turkey's attack on Kurdish territory in November 2019, and recounts the new phase in the wars of disintegration that have plagued the region, leading to the assassination of Iranian General Sulemani. Cockburn offers panoramic on-the-ground analysis as well as a lifetime's study of the region. As author of The Rise of Islamic State, and the Age of Jihad, he has proved to be leading, critical commentator of US intervention and the chaos it has wrecked/ And here he shows how, since Trump entered the White House promising an end to the Forever War, peace appears a distant possibility with the continuation of conflict in Syria, Saudi Arabia's violent intervention in the Yemen, the fall of the Kurds, riots in Baghdad, and the continued aggression towards Iran. While ISIS has been defeated, it is not clear whether it has disappeared from the region. Trump's policies has appeared to pour petrol on the flames, emboldening the other superpowers involved in the proxy wars. Following the collapse of the deal with Iran, and the threat of war crimes, is a new balance of power possible?
