Joint seminar with the Anglo-Turkish Society
Thursday 20 June 2019 at 6.00pm
at the Royal Anthropological Institute
Speaker: Dr Cengiz Güneş, Open University
The Kurds in a Changing Middle East
Kurdish political activism has reached a new height in the beginning of the 21st Century with Kurdish movements in Iraq, Turkey and Syria establishing themselves as important political actors to become a significant force in the domestic politics of these states. The Kurds have a unique opportunity to consolidate their position and see their demands for Kurdish rights accommodated. It hasn’t been easy for the Kurds to reach where they are, but doubts persist as to whether their resurgence in the region is sustainable. As the Middle East is undergoing a tremendous process of transformation and with the conflict and civil war in Syria and Iraq continuing to ravage the power and authority of these states, a question to be asked is will the Kurds be a new force in the region?
While the highly volatile contexts within which Kurdish movements and entities are operating create difficulties for academic observers to evaluate Kurdish prospects, situating the state-level developments in different Kurdish conflicts within the developments at the regional level will nevertheless enable us to identify the factors that will affect the future developments in Kurdish politics in the Middle East.
Cengiz Güneş completed his PhD at the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK. His main research interests are in the areas of autonomy and the accommodation of minorities, peace and conflict studies, the Kurds in the Middle East, the international relations of the Middle East and Turkish politics. He is the author of The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London: Routledge, 2012) and The Kurds in a New Middle East: The Changing Geopolitics of a Regional Conflict (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) and co-editor of The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation, and Reconciliation (London: Routledge, 2014). He has presented papers in national and international conferences and published articles in New Left Review, Ethnopolitics and Peace Review. He is currently an Associate Lecturer and an Honorary Research Associate in Politics at the Open University, UK.
Booking essential: https://cengiz-gunes-lecture.eventbrite.co.uk
Contact: contact@angloturkishsociety.org.uk
Location : Royal Anthropological Institute
50 Fitzroy Street
London
W1T 5BT
United Kingdom
http://www.therai.org.uk
