Recent conceptual improvements within the literature of ethnicity open new ways of addressing previously ignored or overlooked features of ethnicity. In this study, my main aim is to reconsider the Kurdish issue in Turkey in light of a significant conceptual innovation made by Rogers Brubaker (2002). He makes a distinction between the terms ethnic category and ethnic group and suggests that ethnic group should not be taken as given and/or constant but as something variable and happening. Brubaker suggests that groupist approaches to ethnicity, race and nationalism pave the way for essentializing and naturalizing, something that prevent analysts from exploring the processes, strategies and actors of ethnic group formation. For eschewing this “methodological groupism,” he suggests analysts to focus on the roles of ethnic political entrepreneurs in forming ethnic groups out of ethnic categories. Because scholars of ethnicity largely pay attention to the successful examples of ethnic groupness, as Brubaker argues, they fail to detect, in many cases, the failed group-making efforts of ethnic entrepreneurs. This study builds on and empirically contributes to this significant conceptual approach by applying it to an empirical case. Following the lead of Brubaker, I will empirically illustrate that in phenomenal world ethnic category and ethnic group refer to distinctive facts by examining the Kurdish issue in Turkey. Despite the presence of encouraging conditions–i.e., large population size, violence, economic deprivation and ethnic polarization, the majority of the Kurds in Turkey do not support Kurdish political elites who has formed a Kurdish ethnic group for achieving certain political goals. In this sense, the Kurdish issue in Turkey, I believe, is of significance for two reasons. First, it indicates the importance and validity of Brubaker’s conceptual innovation even in a highly polarized ethnic setting where an ethnic group is already in place. Second, Kurdish case helps us refine and further develop Brubaker’s conceptual framework for future theoretical and conceptual advancement in the related literature.

During the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Defense Units’ (YPJ) defense of the Syrian city of Kobanî , female commander Meysa Abdo asks American women to support the Kurdish resistance against the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Abdo states that she “expects” women especially to help because the Kurdish guerrillas “are fighting for the rights of women everywhere” (October 18, 2014). The YPG leader goes on to reassure feminists that they are not obligated to join the armed struggle but adds that Kurdish female guerrillas “would be proud if” some were so inclined. Abdo’s assertion that armed struggle can be a “feminist tool of practice” is, at best, a “problematic narrative” (Manchanda, 2004) for most feminists, the suggestion that political violence may produce feminist subjectivities beyond that of victim, perpetrator, or “sexual decoy,” unthinkable. However, the failure of feminist curiosity to engage with the armed struggle of women like Abdo, reinforces not only the patriarchal state’s monopolization of the means of violence but its meaning also. While feminist history ignores the feminist struggles of Kurdish female fighters, “western” journalists simplistically celebrate them as Middle-Eastern milicianas and the Turkish government dismisses them as terrorists. Based on fieldwork in Doğubayazıt, Turkey, including funerals of Kurdish female guerrillas, commemorations of female martyrs, and protests, as well as the writings of guerrillas and their representations in Kurdish music, this paper argues that the struggle of Kurdish female guerrillas reminds us of feminism’s long history of armed struggle and its debt to anti-colonial resistance.

Under what conditions ethnicity becomes and the basis of political mobilization? Why does religious identity limit the appeal of ethnic nationalism among some members of a group but not for others? This paper, based on original research in Iran, is informed by social identity theory and institutional approach to politics of ethnicity to address these questions. According to an influential perspective, the effect of preexisting sociopolitical cleavages on political behavior is strongly conditioned by military power of the insurgents and incumbents and their ability to establish territorial control. Another important perspectives suggest that identity has an independent effect on political behavior in civil war conflicts. Religious, linguistic, and racial differences between a group and the national identity are likely to facilitate contentious political action. A third perspective adopts an institutional approach and identifies ethnic exclusion preventing avenues of social mobility for members of a group as the source of ethnic mobilization. Informed by these alternative theoretical perspectives, this paper analyzes ethnic mobilization and support for PJAK among the Kurds in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Kurds of Iran exhibit significant internal divisions along linguistic (Kurmanci versus Sorani dialects) and sectarian (Sunni versus Shiite) following identifiable geographical lines. While social identity perspectives would expect these divisions directly affect the patterns of recruitment into the Kurdish insurgency, territorial control perspectives would suggest that the effects of these divisions would be secondary to the dynamics of armed clashes. Furthermore, an institutional perspective would suggest that Shiite Kurds would be unlikely to join the insurgency as they would have greater representation in the Iranian state. The paper tests these opposing expectations on the basis of several original sources in Persian, Kurdish, and Turkish including information about 1) the armed clashes between various Kurdish insurgent groups and the Iranian security forces between 2004 and 2015, 2) Kurdish activists executed by the Iranian regime since 2007, and 3) Kurdish insurgents who fought and killed in Iran, Syria, and Turkey since the early 1990s. Initial findings suggest that insurgent recruitment among the Kurds in Iran transcends linguistic divisions but is limited by sectarian cleavages. Recruitment remains weak among Shiite Kurds with greater access to the Iranian state. Consistent with social identity and institutional perspectives, religious identities associated with political representation moderate the effects of ethnic exclusion and armed conflict and reduce the saliency of ethnic mobilization.