This article examines state building in Dersim with reference to local demands and the state capacity. It first analyzes how the Turkish nationalists aimed to transform the Dersim region. The focus then shifts to the local responses towards the state policies following the military operations of 1937 and 1938. I posit that the Kurds' relation with the state relied on pragmatism and negotiation rather than outright hostility. Moreover, I demonstrate that the locals' expectations from the state overlapped with the Turkish state's pre-operation agenda for the most part. Despite the local endorsement, the limited state capacity constituted a major obstacle in implementing land redistribution policy and expanding road networks with limited progress. The opening of schools, however, produced somewhat mixed results in the sense that the enrollment rates did not correspond to the increase in the number of schools.

theoretically informed explanation. This is not a problem as such, but one is left wondering why Toal introduces the above-mentioned concepts in the first place. Third, Toal's analysis fails to engage with the extant stock of constructivist-inspired analyses of Russian foreign policy in the field of international relations. In recent years, scholars such Andrei Tsygankov, Iver Neumann, Ted Hopf, Anne Clunan, and Tuomas Forsberg have provided an array of insightful studies that examine how Russia's national identity discourses and hunt for status have shaped its foreign policy behavior. In fact, several constructivist-inspired studies explicitly address Russia's interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. Given the overlap between critical geopolitics and constructivism, it would have been interesting to see how the conclusions reached by Toal differ from or relate to the findings of those existing works. These weaknesses notwithstanding, Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus is undoubtedly worth reading. Toal's analysis of the interplay between intrastate conflicts and great power politics, the detailed empirical accounts of the wars in Ukraine and Georgia, and the new survey data from eastern Ukraine and Crimea make the book a necessary resource for anyone interested in the international politics of the post-Soviet space. For a theoretically informed explanation of these dynamics and patterns, however, we have to wait for Toal's next book.