“If I die, my children will pursue this case”: Counternarratives of power in Kurds.

Abstract

Despite hundreds of years of forced and violent assimilation from multiple sources, Kurds continue to exist as dissidents, progressing their ethnonational and cultural ways of being through an anticolonial resistance. Honoring the Kurdish existence by resistance, our motivation is to bring into light the “Kurdish power” that enables this kind of resistance within the Turkish nation-state borders. Guided by critical race theory and decolonial approach, we pursue Kurds’ counternarratives of power to dismantle the hegemonic representations of power and oppression while exposing systematic and systemic dynamics of racism. We interviewed 16 Kurds in Van and Istanbul, and we asked their understanding of power and their political reflections. By combining counternarrative and thematic analyses, we provide a multifocal, multisourced understanding of power, shaped around the multitudes of Kurdishness against Turkish oppression and violence. Counternarrators’ refusals of hegemonic oppression are intertwined with a strong belief in collectivity, a sense of nationhood is intertwined with multifragmentality, and imaginations of future are intertwined with agency, existence, and oppression.

Researching identity in the imposed boundaries of a nation-state: A meta-analytical review of identity and intergroup relations between Kurds and Turks.

“…Although more critical terminologies such as “state oppression against Kurds and Kurdish resistance in Turkey” (see Coşkan & Şen, 2023, 2024) have been used in some studies in recent years, which emphasize the structural inequalities inherent in the relationship between Turks and Kurds, we used the terminology of “Turkish–Kurdish conflict,” which is more prevalent within the social sciences literature (see Acar, 2019; Uluğ & Cohrs, 2017a, 2017b). However, we acknowledge that this terminology does not provide a nuanced representation of the historical and political context surrounding the issue.…”

Decolonization unnamed: Echoes of healing and refusal in the face of dehumanization and alienation.

“…She describes the ways in which the unseeing of the injustices that Palestinian face is a prerequisite for the continual settler colonial project. Meanwhile, Canan Cosken and Ercan Sen refuse to unsee or to deny the continued alienation and dehumanization of Kurdish people in the nation-state of Turkey in the context of their research, which strives to act in solidarity with liberation movements (Coskan & Sen, 2023). As an intentional departure from hegemonic representations of power, oppression, and conflict, Coskan and Sen (2023) take us to analyses offered by those who are the “unseen/unheard agents of change in everyday politics”; people who are positioned by the authors as “counternarrators.” These countenarrators bring to life the Kurdish ontological stance of “Berxwedan jiyanê,” which means existence by resistance.…”

“…Meanwhile, Canan Cosken and Ercan Sen refuse to unsee or to deny the continued alienation and dehumanization of Kurdish people in the nation-state of Turkey in the context of their research, which strives to act in solidarity with liberation movements (Coskan & Sen, 2023). As an intentional departure from hegemonic representations of power, oppression, and conflict, Coskan and Sen (2023) take us to analyses offered by those who are the “unseen/unheard agents of change in everyday politics”; people who are positioned by the authors as “counternarrators.” These countenarrators bring to life the Kurdish ontological stance of “Berxwedan jiyanê,” which means existence by resistance. We are guided through the vicissitudes of neocolonial state violence that alienate the histories, subjectivities, and liberatory imaginaries of Kurdish people at the frontlines of colonial violences.…”