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Transnational Kurdish Protest Patterns
Abstract by Vera Eccarius-Kelly On Session 121  (The Kurdish Spring)

On Monday, November 19 at 2:30 pm

2012 Annual Meeting

Abstract
This paper offers an interdisciplinary, comparative, and theoretical framework to evaluate parallels and differences between the Arab Spring and Kurdish Spring. Theories of post-colonial anarchism and mobility studies are used to examine how Kurdish dissent is expressed through social media, satellite TV, as well as through forms of armed resistance. Unstructured interviews with Kurds in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Turkey further contextualize the ways in which younger generations of Kurds aim to break away from established and frequently managed patterns of resistance. The interview data were collected between 2010 and 2012 and all respondents controlled their contributions rather than having to respond to a specific set of rigid questions. The paper’s theoretical framework relies on Canzler, Kaufmann, and Kesselring’s provocative collection entitled Tracing Mobilities (2008), in which the scholars defined the concept of mobility “as a change of condition by targeting three dimensions: movements, networks and motility.” Critiquing established parameters of social science research as overly state-centric, rigidly discipline-driven, and at times devoid of methodological innovation, mobility studies scholars demand exploratory paths (John Urry, 2007). My paper forges an unusual approach by examining patterns of dissent among young, mobile, and transnational Kurds. By combining mobility studies with post-colonial anarchist thought, I highlight changes in protest patterns among Kurds; at times described as the Kurdish Spring. Post-colonial anarchism is most commonly employed to capture the essence of anarchist movements outside of the proletarian, working class context. Post-colonial anarchism emphasizes opposition to social hierarchies and supports principles of self-management and self-determination by colonized population groups. Communal narratives such as those collected by Marina Sitrin in Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (2006) offer essential insights into movements that organize in opposition to super-imposed, hierarchical, and time-honored patterns of authorized resistance. My interviews explore to what extend younger Kurdish activists are influenced by ideas that are disseminated through post-colonial anarchists and accelerated through access to social media tools.
Discipline
International Relations/Affairs
Geographic Area
Kurdistan
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries