Event Details - Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series (Spring 2009)
Talk: “When Democratization Radicalizes? The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey”
A talk by
Günes Murat Tezcür
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Loyola University
Discussed by
Macartan Humphreys
Associate Professor of Political Science, Columbia University
Followed by a reception.
Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Time: 4:15 - 5:45 pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Room 801
Bio:
Günes Murat Tezcür, PhD in Political Science (University of Michigan 2005). Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola University, Chicago (2005-). Recent scholarly articles explores political roles of religion, constitutionalism and judicial activism, and dynamics of ethnic conflicts in Iran and Turkey. Author of a book entitled "The Paradox of Moderation: Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey (forthcoming at the University of Texas Press in Spring 2010).
Abstract:
This paper addresses a historical puzzle: Why did the insurgent PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party - Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan), which was militarily defeated, which renounced the goal of secession, and whose leader was under the custody of the Turkish state, remobilize its armed forces in a time when opportunities for the peaceful solution of the Kurdish question were unprecedented in Turkey? The PKK's radicalization at a period of EU-induced democratization in Turkey counters the conventional argument that fostering democracy would reduce the problems of ethnic conflict. Explanations based on resource mobilization, political opportunity structures, and cognitive framing fail to provide a satisfactory answer. The paper argues that democratization will not necessarily facilitate the end of violent conflict as long as it introduces competition that challenges the political hegemony of the insurgent organization over its ethnic constituency. Under the dynamics of competition, the survival of the organization necessitates radicalization rather than moderation. As long as the insurgent organization successfully recruits new militants, democratization is not a panacea to violent conflict. The findings indicate that research on the micro-level dynamics of insurgency recruitment will contribute to a better understanding of ethnic conflict management. The data comes from multiple sources including ethnographic fieldwork (i.e., in-depth interviews and participation observation), statistical analyses of quantitative data (i.e., spatial autocorrelation and ecological inference), and systematic reading of original documents.
This talk is part of Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and Middle East Institute (MEI).
For more information, please contact Ahmet Kuru at ak2840@columbia.edu
or visit http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr/
Talk: “The Headscarf Ban and Women's Subjectivity in Turkey”
A talk by
Zeynep Akbulut Kuru
PhD Candidate, University of Washington, Seattle
Discussed by
Nadia Guessous
PhD Candidate, Columbia University
Followed by a reception.
Date: Thursday, April 9, 2009
Time: 4:15 - 5:45 pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Room 802
Bio:
Zeynep Akbulut is a PhD candidate in Near and Middle Eastern Studies
at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her dissertation is an anthropological analysis of women subjectivity in the case of the headscarf ban at universities and civil services in Turkey. Akbulut received her MA from Hartford Seminary on Muslim-Christian Relations.
Her publications appear in journals such as Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs and Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.
Abstract:
Wearing headscarf in Turkish Universities has been banned for more than ten
years. It has been problematic since early 1970s when women with headscarves
appeared in the public life by getting university education and working in public offices. With the 1998 soft coup d'etat, which led the "February 28 process," it took a bitter turn for women with headscarves. Women, who had entered universities, became unable to do so as a result of the February 28 process.
For this study, I have personally conducted in-depth interviews with 37 women who have been subjected to headscarf ban at universities and in public offices. With the enforcement of the ban, they have had to decide either to continue their education/job or to quit it. Some of
my interviewees have decided to take off their headscarves or found discreet ways to cover their hair like wearing wigs and hats, in order to continue their education or career. Some others have chosen to give up their schools or jobs in order to keep their headscarves. Either way, it has been a very stressful experience, which has brought social and psychological struggles into their life.
This paper, which is a part of a bigger dissertation, project will focus on decision processes that women went through and will try to understand the role of their agency while facing the headscarf ban. According to Foucault's paradox of subjectivation, the very process
and the conditions that secure a subject's subordination are also means by which she becomes a self-conscious identity. The imposition of the headscarf ban has also been a decisive moment for these women to question their identity as Muslim women. In the process of their decision making, these women tried to find an inner balance between their Islamic sensibilities and their desires to continue education and career. Looking into their decision-making processes could help us in understanding their reasons for wearing headscarves and their own articulation of it.
This talk is part of Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and Middle East Institute (MEI).
For more information, please visit http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr/
Talk: “Bureaucracy, Knowledge, and Control: Governing Minorities in Turkey and Israel”
A talk by
Ceren Belge
Postdoctoral Scholar, Harvard University
Discussed by
George Gavrilis
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Austin
Followed by a reception.
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Time: 4:15-5:45 pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Room 801
Bio:
Ceren Belge received her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of
Washington and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard
Academy for International and Area Studies. Her research is at the
intersection of law, politics, and culture, and her areas of interest
include law and colonialism, legal pluralism, and ethnic conflict.
Ceren has published on rights politics in the Law and Society Review and
her recent paper on Bedouins and legal pluralism in Israel won the Baruch
Kimmerling Award for Best Graduate Conference Paper at the Association for
Israel Studies. Her dissertation, titled "Whose Law?: Clans, Honor
Killings, and State-Minority Relations in Turkey and Israel" examines why
these two states have reached puzzling accommodations with clans and extended
families in their minority populations while simultaneously rejecting their demands
for political autonomy. Ceren is currently working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation.
Abstract:
Immediately after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in
1923, and the State of Israel in 1948, Turkish and Israeli officials were
Confronted with the question of how to pacify and incorporate their Kurdish and
Palestinian populations, whom they did not regard as full members
of the new Turkish and Israeli nations. While Turkey adopted a zealously
assimilationist policy based on the denial of cultural difference between
Turks and Kurds, Israeli policy rested on the permanent separateness of
Jews and Arabs. In time, however, the authority of the Turkish government
over the Kurdish minority remained highly limited, while Israeli officials
were able to exercise far greater control over the Palestinian minority.
The paper examines this puzzle, using archival sources and ethnographic research.
I argue, first, that rather than a coherent and overarching "minority policy," the organization and everyday practices of the bureaucracy were crucial to shaping state-minority relations. Specifically, I claim that Turkey's rotating bureaucracy over its Kurdish population, and
Israel's government by Arab experts constituted two distinct modes of governance,
which generated different forms of state knowledge over the minority. Second, I show that the different modes of knowledge and control catalyzed different styles of everyday resistance within the minority communities. The paper aims to contribute to recent studies that examine the
sources of state power not exclusively in the outcomes of consciously designed policies, but in everyday practices, and in ways of knowing and seeing institutionalized in bureaucracies.
This talk is part of Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and Middle East Institute (MEI).
For more information, please contact Ahmet Kuru at ak2840@columbia.edu
or visit http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr/
Talk: “Governing Areas of Dissidence: Nation-Building and State-Minority Relations in Turkey and Morocco”
A talk by
Senem Aslan
Postdoctoral Scholar, Princeton University
Discussed by
Ayça Çubukçu
Postdoctoral Scholar, Columbia University
Followed by a reception.
Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Time: 4:15-5:45 pm
Location: International Affairs Building, Room 801
Bio:
Senem Aslan is a post-doctoral fellow in Near Eastern Studies at
Princeton. A graduate of the Department of Political Science at Bogazici
University in Istanbul, she completed her PhD at the University of
Washington, Seattle. Her primary interests are state-society relations,
symbolic politics, and nationalism. Her dissertation, titled "Governing
Areas of Dissidence: Nation-Building and Ethnic Movements in Turkey and
Morocco," analyzes the different state and nation-building strategies in
Turkey and Morocco and how these strategies helped create different forms of
ethnic mobilization among the Kurds and the Berbers.
Abstract:
This talk will concentrate on the outcomes of states' attempts to
govern "areas of dissidence," which are inhabited by culturally distinct
populations and are geographically hard to access by focusing on the cases
of the Kurds in Turkey and the Berbers in Morocco. While these areas present
similar challenges to states in terms of domination and control, the ethnic
movements that are born out of them can evolve in divergent ways. At the
time of their countries' establishment as modern nation-states, the Kurdish
and Berber communities presented similar challenges to the Turkish and
Moroccan state builders, respectively. Nevertheless, their relations with
the state have taken very different turns in the 20th century. This study
explores the reasons behind the relatively peaceful relationship between the
Berbers and the Moroccan state and the violent and confrontational
relationship between the Kurds and the Turkish state. It argues that state
attempts to "makeover" minorities, to force uniformity on them, in terms of
how they look, sound, and behave, as well as the level of state's
intrusiveness into people's daily lives, go a long way in explaining whether
state-ethnic group relations end up as confrontational or not. Through a
comparative historical analysis, it explains the different evolution of
Kurdish and Berber dissent by the different nation-building strategies of
the respective states, which varied because of these states' different paths
to state formation and different ways to achieve social control.
This talk is part of Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and Middle East Institute (MEI).
For more information, please contact Ahmet Kuru at ak2840@columbia.edu
or visit http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/cdtr/
