A new book that provides a fresh approach to studies on Kurds in Turkey, co-edited by Turkish sociologists, Ayça Alemdaroğlu from Stanford University and Fatma Müge Göçek from University of Michigan, has been published by Syracuse University Press.
Kurds in Dark Times: New Perspectives on Violence and Resistance in Turkey, in the words of its co-editor Alemdaroğlu is “a work of dedication and years of work amid the pandemic”.
The new book, with afterwords written by Kurdish scholar and author Hamit Bozarslan, includes 13 essays from 14 authors, which overall offer the reader an in-depth look into the lives of Kurds in Turkey, by focusing on how the social perception of “Kurds” and “Kurdistan” were constructed and transformed throughout modern Turkish history.
The concept of “Turkishness” emerging as part of Turkey’s official doctrine on ethnic identity, the instrumentalisation of Kurds for Turkey’s colonialist policies, the racial attitudes towards Kurdish migrant farmworkers in Turkey’s west, and Kurdish women’s struggles are among the remarkable topics covered in the book.
“This tome is a wonderful collection illuminating the Kurdish situation in Turkey,” wrote Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a prominent American sociologist from Duke University in his review of the book.
Utrecht University’s professor emeritus and an expert on Kurdish and Turkish studies, Martin van Bruinessen, praises the authors for their consistent approach to “present the view from below,” and describes the volume as “an admirable set of essays on what it means to live as Kurdish women and men in today’s Turkey, documenting the many forms of everyday oppression and resistance.”
The book’s co-editor Alemdaroğlu is the Associate Director of the Program on Turkey and a Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.
The other co-editor, Fatma Müge Göçek, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, is an award-winning scholar, with her book Denial of Violence analysing the prosecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.
Kurds in Dark Times: New Perspectives on Violence and Resistance in Turkey is available in both print and digital copies.
