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From Fellow Townsmenship to Leftist Activism: Kurdish '68ers, Turkish Labor Party and Eastern Demonstrations
Abstract
The paper examines Kurdish political mobilization in the 1960s by focusing on the case of Eastern Demonstrations (Dogu Mitingleri). These demonstrations were led by the "Easterners" (Dogulular) group of the Turkish Labor Party (in collaboration with the local members of KDP in Turkey) in 1967 with the aim of voicing the demands and the grievances of Kurdish regions and the Kurds in Turkey. Eastern Demonstrations stand at the crossroads of the socio-political transformation that Turkey went through during the 1950s and the 1960s and the accompanying remarkable wave of political mobilization in Turkey. A wide range of social groups engaged in collective political action and negotiated with the state elites in different forms. To these various contentious groups - peasants, workers, students - of the decade, one should add the Kurds. The paper argues that a dynamic and relational historicization of this generation of Kurdish activists and the Eastern Demonstrations reveals the multiplicity of the 1968 experience in Turkey and provides an alternative narrative to the state-centered accounts of the history of Kurdish resistance.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
None