Internal cultural imperialism: The case of the Kurds in Turkey

Salih, M. A.M.

doi:10.1177/1748048520928666

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Western cultural imperialism but to us, Kurds are resisting against an internal cultural imperialism established by the Turkish state in Upper Mesopotamia (Salih, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Counternarratives of Power in Kurds

Coskan¹,

Şen²

2022

Preprint

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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 sixteen Kurds in Van and Istanbul and we asked their understanding of power and their political reflections. 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.

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“…Western cultural imperialism but to us, Kurds are resisting against an internal cultural imperialism established by the Turkish state in Upper Mesopotamia (Salih, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Counternarratives of Power in Kurds

Coskan¹,

Şen²

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…So is dehomogenizing what is referred to as the "Global South," which has its own power dynamics: From the perspective of the "Global North," Turkey may seem similar to a "Third World" country resisting Western cultural imperialism but to us, Kurds are resisting against an internal cultural imperialism established by the Turkish state in Upper Mesopotamia (Salih, 2021). Following a decolonial praxis (Walsh, 2018), the interviews and their analyses have been just a step to combine research, reflection, and action together with the communities to which we feel tied.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can be alien to a Western rationalization of binary power dynamics. So is dehomogenizing what is referred to as the “Global South,” which has its own power dynamics: From the perspective of the “Global North,” Turkey may seem similar to a “Third World” country resisting Western cultural imperialism but to us, Kurds are resisting against an internal cultural imperialism established by the Turkish state in Upper Mesopotamia (Salih, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Coskan¹,

Şen²

2023

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology

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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.

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“…As anthropologist Stanley Thangaraj (2022) has demonstrated, the practice of ethnolinguistic othering in the Middle East has given birth to a form of “racialization” similar to what African Americans and Indigenous communities have historically experienced under colonial rule. Fatma Göçek (2015), Barış Ünlü (2016), Mahsuq Kurt (2021), and Mohammed Salih (2021) have also examined how the interplay of nationhood, language, and ethnicity in Turkey has generated an internal cultural imperialism centered on Turkish supremacy and the othering of non‐Turks.…”

Section: Kurds Statelessness and The Impossible Citizenrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Blood for bread: Necro‐labor, nonsovereign bodies, and the state of exception in Rojhelat

Mohammadpour

2023

American Anthropologist

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As members of a stateless nation that is geopolitically divided across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, Kurds are known mainly in the West as excellent fighters and political revolutionaries. Amid the devastation of war and political unrest, most Kurds struggle for economic survival. This is especially true for Eastern Kurds living under Iranian rule. They have seen their lands confiscated, their resources plundered, and their access to capital and educational mobility severely restricted. Moreover, under the rule of the Iranian Persian‐Shi'i necropolitics, Kurds have been culturally and economically subjected to a regime of internal colonialism that has eroded their capacity for economic survival. Building on the literature on sovereignty and violence, this article investigates the nexus between precarity, spatiality, and necropolitics as embodied in the practice of Kurdish cross‐border labor, or kolberi. I argue that the Iranian state deploys the discourse of a securitized borderland as a weapon to inflict a permanent state of exception on Rojhelat, condemning Kurds to the status of living dead through the imposition of precarious necro‐labor practice. Furthermore, this study articulates the border as an archive where registers of state necropolitics are deposited, preserved, and revealed in the lives of kolbers.

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Internal cultural imperialism: The case of the Kurds in Turkey

Cited by 8 publications

References 32 publications

Counternarratives of Power in Kurds

Counternarratives of Power in Kurds

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

Blood for bread: Necro‐labor, nonsovereign bodies, and the state of exception in Rojhelat

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