Frontline Turkey

Frontline Turkey PDF Author: Ezgi Basaran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786722801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
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.

Frontline Turkey

Frontline Turkey PDF Author: Ezgi Basaran
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786722801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

NATO's New Front Line

NATO's New Front Line PDF Author: William Thomas Johnsen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description


Turkey Under Erdoğan

Turkey Under Erdoğan PDF Author: Dimitar Bechev
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300247885
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
An incisive account of Erdoğan's Turkey - showing how its troubling transformation may be short-lived Since coming to power in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey. Once a pillar of the Western alliance, the country has embarked on a militaristic foreign policy, intervening in regional flashpoints from Nagorno-Karabakh to Libya. And its democracy, sustained by the aspiration to join the European Union, has given way to one-man rule. Dimitar Bechev traces the political trajectory of Erdoğan's populist regime, from the era of reform and prosperity in the 2000s to the effects of the war in neighboring Syria. In a tale of missed opportunities, Bechev explores how Turkey parted ways with the United States and Europe, embraced Putin's Russia and other revisionist powers, and replaced a frail democratic regime with an authoritarian one. Despite this, he argues that Turkey's democratic instincts are resilient, its economic ties to Europe are as strong as ever, and Erdoğan will fail to achieve a fully autocratic regime.

Military Intervention and a Crisis of Democracy in Turkey

Military Intervention and a Crisis of Democracy in Turkey PDF Author: Mogens Pelt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786734990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Adnan Menderes' election to power in 1950 signalled a new epoch in the history of modern Turkey. For the first time a democratic government ruled the country, taking over Kemal Ataturk's political heirs, the People's Republican Party (CHP), and challenging the Kemalist elite's monopoly on the control of state institutions and society itself. However, this period was short-lived. In 1960, Turkey's army staged a coup d'etat and Menderes was hanged the following year. Here, Mogens Pelt beings by examining the era of the rule of the Democratic Party, and what led to its downfall. Among the chief accusations raised against Menderes by the army was that he had undermined the principles of the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk, and that he had exploited religion for political purposes. Military Intervention and a Crisis Democracy in Turkey furthermore, and crucially, examines the legacy of the military intervention that brought this era of democratic rule to an end. Although the armed forces officially returned power to the civilians in 1961, this intervention - indeed, this crisis of democracy - allowed the military to become a major player in Turkey's political process, weakening the role of elected politicians. The officer corps claimed that the army was the legal guardian of Kemalism, and that it had the right and duty to intervene again, if the circumstances proscribed it and when it deemed that the values of Ataturk were threatened. Indeed, these were precisely that ground on which the armed forces justified its coup d'etats of 1971 and 1980. This unique exploration of the Menderes period sheds new light on the shaping of post-war Turkey and will be vital for those researching the Turkish Republic, and the influence of the military in its destiny.

Turkey’s Mission Impossible

Turkey’s Mission Impossible PDF Author: Cengiz Çandar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498587518
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
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.

Turkey and the Kurdish Peace Process

Turkey and the Kurdish Peace Process PDF Author: Arin Savran
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472220675
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the Kurds in the Middle East became the largest ethnic group in the region without a state of their own. Divided between Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, the Kurds have fought for their right to exist as a distinct national group, as well as for governing themselves. Turkey and the Kurdish Peace Process provides a historical and conceptual account of events in order to detail the key conditions, factors, and events that gave rise to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) conflict in Turkey, as well as the conditions influencing the emergence, management, and collapse of the peace talks. Drawing from conflict resolution theories, this book investigates the transformation of key conflict actors and changes, over time, in their approach to the main conflict issues. Moreover, Arin Y. Savran expands the concept of conflict transformation to encompass the ideological transformation of a movement as a result of a rigorous and deep intellectual epiphany on the part of the political leaders—a phenomenon that is unusual and little is known about, making it all the more relevant to include in future theoretical approaches in peace process studies. Methodologically, she rethinks conflict transformation/resolution approaches to focus on shifts in beliefs and relationships that occur prior to a peace process or the start of peace negotiations, when often much focus on peace processes is on the post-agreement phase. This book is among the first comprehensive, scholarly accounts to date (in the English language) that analyzes the Kurdish peace process.

The Kurds in Erdogan's Turkey

The Kurds in Erdogan's Turkey PDF Author: William Gourlay
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474459218
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book examines the circumstances of the Kurds in 21st century Turkey, under the hegemony of the AKP government. After decades of denial, oppression and conflict, Kurds now assert a more confident presence in Turkey's politics - but does increasing visibility mean a rejection of Turkey? Recording Kurdish voices from Istanbul and DiyarbakA r, Turkey's most important Kurdish-populated cities, this book generates new understandings of Kurdish identity and political aspirations. Highlighting elements of Kurdish identity including Newroz, the Kurdish language, connections to religion, landscape and cross-border ties, it offers a portrait of Kurdish political life in a Turkey increasingly dominated by its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Within the context of Turkey's troubled trajectory towards democratisation, it documents Kurdish narratives of oppression and resistance, and enquires how Kurds reconcile their distinct ethnic identity and citizenship in modern Turkey.

The Securitisation of News in Turkey

The Securitisation of News in Turkey PDF Author: Natalie Martin
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030493814
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
This book examines why Turkey has become infamous as a repressor of news media freedom. For the past decade or so it has stood alongside China as a notorious jailer of journalists – at the same time as being a candidate state of the EU. The author argues that the reasons for this conundrum are complex and whilst the AKP is responsible for the most recent illiberality, its actions should be taken in the wider context of Turkish politics – and the three way battle for power which has been raging between Kemalists, Kurds and Islamists since the republic was founded in 1923. The AKP are the current winners of this tripartite power struggle and the securitisation of journalists as terrorists is part of that quest. Moreover, whilst securitisation is not new, it has intensified recently as the number of the AKP’s political opponents has proliferated. Securitisation is also a means of delegitimising journalism – and neutralizing any threat to the AKP’s electoral prospects – whilst maintaining a democratic façade on the world stage. Lastly, the book argues that whilst the AKP’s securitisation of news began as a means of quashing the reporting of illiberality against wider political targets, since 2016 it has become a target in its own right. In the battle for power in Turkey, journalism is now one of the many losers.

A Modern History of the Kurds

A Modern History of the Kurds PDF Author: David McDowall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755600789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 729

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Book Description
David McDowall's ground-breaking history of the Kurds from the 19th century to the present day documents the underlying dynamics of the Kurdish question. The division of the Kurdish people among the modern nation states of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran and their struggle for national rights continues to influence the politics of the Middle East. Drawing extensively on primary sources - including documents from The National Archive and interviews with prominent Kurds - the book examines the interplay of old and new aspects of the struggle, the importance of local rivalries and leadership within Kurdish society, and the failure of modern states to respond to the challenge of Kurdish nationalism. In this new and revised edition, McDowall also analyses the momentous transformations affecting Kurdish socio-politics in the last 20 years. With updates throughout and substantial new material included, this fourth edition of the book reflects the developments in the field and the areas which have gained importance and understanding. This includes new analysis of the Kurdish experience in Syria; the role of political Islam in Kurdish society and Kurds' involvement in Islamist Jihad; and issues surrounding women and gender that were previously overlooked, from the impact of the women's equality movement to how patriarchal practices within the Kurdish community still limit its progress. The foundation text for Kurdish Studies, this book highlights in detail the changing situation of the Kurds across the Middle East.

Turkey, Power and the West

Turkey, Power and the West PDF Author: Ali Bilgic
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786730847
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
During the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and the AKP, the Turkish government shifted from a 'reactive' to an 'activist' foreign policy. As a result, many in the West increasingly began to see Turkey as a key actor in the international relations of the region, and indeed the wider international stage. Turkey and the West offers a unique approach to this transformation and considers questions of Turkish national identity and its relations with the West through the lens of gender studies. From the Ottoman Empire to the present day, the book constructs an image of Turkish foreign policy as reflecting a gendered insecurity - one of a 'non-Western' Turkish masculinity subordinated to a 'Western' hegemonic masculinity - and shows how Turkey's 'subordination' has in turn been internalised by its own politicians. Across a diverse range of sources, Bilgic takes advantage of new theories such as critical security studies (CSS) to paint a picture of a Turkish republic anxious to make its mark on the world stage, yet perennially insecure about its position as a global power. Turkey and the West is essential for students and researchers interested in Turkish politics and the international relations of the Middle East, as well as those with an interest in gender and identity studies.