This study investigates the peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK, invoking the mutually hurting stalemate (MHS) and mutually enticing opportunity (MEO) formulations of Ripeness ...Theory. It questions why the negotiations failed although Turkey's conditions had become ripe for resolution. This research shows that even though the ripe moment occurred before the process steered the parties toward the negotiation table, their perspectives regarding the table ultimately changed due to both domestic and international developments. Hence, the MHS seized at the beginning of the process did not turn into the MEO that would lead to resolution.
This article expands upon recent attempts to shift focus to the material and earthly aspects of power to explore territorial politics and state power in Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast or ...Turkish Kurdistan. It focuses on the limestone caves scattered along the Upper Tigris Valley as a locus of geopower, examining the sociopolitical life of limestone caves in relation to the environmental geographies of oil extraction, development, and counterinsurgency. Examining three historical segments where the limestone caves of the Upper Tigris Valley have become objects of the Turkish state's attempts to govern Kurds and territorialize Turkish Kurdistan, this paper demonstrates the shifting configurations of geopower in Turkey vis-à-vis the Kurdish Question. As geological formations fundamental to the Turkish state's attempts to exert and secure territorial power, the caves of the Upper Tigris Valley have also been central to the ways in which Kurds in Turkey have attempted to unsettle state power and territorial politics. Surveying the workings of geopower through caves in Turkish Kurdistan, the article reveals the uneven and violent ways in which geological formations are entangled with hegemonic territorial politics and counter-hegemonic politics.
In the modern world the development of armed conflict leads to chaotization of the world order at all its levels.One of the manifestations of this threat is the strengthening of separatism, ...including the secession as its extreme form. Political practice shows that the secession the factor of long-term undermining of regional security. An alternative to secession is the federalization of the fragile states that is an effective measure for struggle against separatism and the resolution of the armed conflicts based on compromise. The article underlines that in the majority cases the federalization in fragile states could be realized only with active participation of external actors. In this regard the article explores German experience in the support of federalization in Iraq and Mali in the middle – second half of the 2010-s. These two countries are selected as cases of the Near East and Sahel regional systems. The scientific paper focuses on the usage by Germany of political-diplomatic and military tools. The article explores the evolution of the relations of Germany with the guide in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan) and Bagdad before and after the referendum on the question of Iraqi Kurdistan independence, 2017, September 25. In this regard the author shows the changing of German military assistance as an indicator of FRG`s approach to the Iraqi Kurdistan problem. The paper investigates German approach towards the «Tuaregs` question», the features of usage by Germany of diplomatic and military tools for the federalization of Mali. In the conclusion the author compares FRG`s tactics of the struggle towards the separatism in Iraq and Mali.
This study investigates Churchill's attitude towards the Kurdish question and explains how and why the idea of a Kurdish buffer state initially formed as part of Churchill's Middle Eastern strategy ...before ultimately being abandoned. It primarily focuses on the role of behind-the-scene officials in influencing and directing the policy decisions towards the future of Kurdistan. It argues that the contention between the Colonial Office and Baghdad did not reflect as much disagreement between Churchill and the High Commissioner of Baghdad Percy Cox, as previous works have suggested, as between their advisers, particularly Hubert Young, Assistant Secretary in the Middle East Department, and Gertrude Bell, Oriental Secretary at Baghdad. This study argues that behind the scenes, Young and Bell exerted great influence over the views of Churchill and Cox, respectively. Young's standpoint in favour of Kurdish independence influenced Churchill's initial advocacy of a Kurdish buffer state to protect British colonial interests in the Middle East. However, Bell was ultimately fundamental in determining the future of Kurdistan, contributing significantly to the absence of Kurdistan from the political map. She was at the core of British imperial policymaking for the Iraqi state through her significant influence over Cox regarding the political situation in Iraq. Facilitated by Churchill's indecision, Bell was successful in obstructing the implementation of the ethnographic approach advocated by the Cairo Conference, and finally, in preventing the establishment of an independent Kurdistan, instigating the perpetual complexity of the Kurdish question.
On 11 January 2016, 1128 academics in Turkey and abroad signed a petition calling on Turkish authorities to cease state violence in mainly Kurdish populated areas of the country, which had been under ...curfew and an extended state of emergency. The petition received an immediate reaction from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused the signatories of treason and terrorist propaganda. He subsequently demanded that public prosecuters launch an investigation. Criminalisation of the petition has been exacerbated by disciplinary action by universities against many of the signatories. Many have suffered insults, arrest, detention or suspension as a result of the ensuing smear campaign. This massive crackdown on academic freedom has been masked by discourses of counterterrorism, which have also been deployed to criminalise dissent more generally in Turkey as a part of a process of rapid "democratic retrenchment" since 2013. This article is an attempt to put the criminalisation of academics within the larger framework of human rights violations, increasing curtailments of academic freedom and rising authoritarianism in Turkey. It argues that the prosecution of the signatories of the petition is an extension of an established tradition of targeting academic freedom in times of political crisis in Turkey but is also a product of growing authoritarianism under the ruling party and President Erdoğan. It shows that counterterrorism laws can be extended far beyond eliminating security threats by instrumentalising them to suppress dissent in a declining democracy.
The Syrian conflict which started in March 2011 is well into its third year and its dimensions and implications are steadily moving beyond Syrian borders and the broader Middle East. Syria’s uprising ...has developed into a civil war between government forces and the opposition, motivated primarily by internal and external actors’ strategic and at times existential interests. This article examines the implications and dimensions of the Syrian crisis for the major actors in the region, including Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, the Gulf States, Israel and the Kurds. It argues that pitting a Shiite Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah axis against a Sunni Turkey-Gulf states axis is the most significant geo-political regional effect of the Syrian crisis. What is more devastating is not the division of the region along sectarian lines but the proxy war between the Shiite and Sunni factions.
In the article, the author analyzes the Kurdish question and national minorities’ rights. The aim of the article “Territorial Autonomy and National Minorities’ Rights: the Kurdish Question” is to ...analyze national minorities’ legal problems and the effect of religion on their solution. Territorial autonomy as an element of the territorial structure of a state is traditionally regarded as part of the state’s jurisdiction regulated by the national constitution. The research is based on a set of scientific methods, historical and comparative-legal approaches being the key ones. The historical method, used in the study, allows us to trace the evolution of approaches to territorial autonomy standards. The comparative-legal method, in its turn, permits us to compare different law enforcement norms. The article looks at the current problems related to the Kurdish question and its resolution.
MAIN IMPACTS ON THE SYRIA’S CRISIS Dzhygalyuk, Nataliya
Mìžnarodnì vìdnosini, suspìlʹnì komunìkacìï ta regìonalʹnì studìï,
10/2018
2 (4)
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The historical background that have influenced the Syria’s crisis is described, geographical position and demographic composition that makes Syria a convenient base for opposition forces, political ...contacts between France, Great Britain and Russia considering the situation in Syria are characterized. The attention is focused on the prerequisits that have lead to the crisis in Syria including both inner and external factors. In the article is mentioned two unsolved territorial disputes: the Shebaa Farms and Hatay region. Another issue, that makes Syria more diverse is Kurdish question. Colonial powers divided Middle East by not existing boarders. It has led Egypt and Syria to unite and establish the United Arab Republic. One more important question is coup d’état, which was led by representatives of the military elite Salah Jadid, Hafez al-Assad, Salim Hatum, Mustafa Tlas. The author mentioned that the civil war in Syria is mistakenly concidered to be a religious conflict. The origins of the Syrian vulnerability derive not from the sectarian divisions. In fact the deterioration of situation in Syria hugely depended on social and economic factors. Another important issue discussed in the article is that Bashar’s rulling led to the so-called Damascus Spring, which represented the most important civil society mobilization preceding the 2011 uprising.
Relying on a survey conducted in 2014 in 12 provinces in eastern Turkey, this article analyses the extent to which (a) ethnicity and religiosity shape Kurds’ electoral choices and (b) the Kurds in ...the East support the demand for education in Kurdish and the demand for self-rule for Kurds. The findings demonstrate that ethnicity is an important factor in shaping Kurds’ electoral choices and that the demands for education in Kurdish language and self-rule are backed not only by the vast majority of those Kurds who support the pro-Kurdish party but also by a significant number of those Kurds who support the AK Party.
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