Автор: Hakan Özoğlu
Название: Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries
Издательство: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 2003045674
Язык: английский
Год: 2004
Формат: pdf
Размер: 13.6 Мб
Кол-во страниц: 205
Описание:
Entering the twenty-first century, the problem of Kurdish nationalism remains one of the most explosive and critical predicaments in the Middle East. With an estimated population of 20–25 million Kurds living mostly in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, there is a little doubt that the Kurds constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state of their own. In their efforts to establish their own state, Kurdish nationalist movements in the twentieth century were involved in many clashes with the governments of the states in which they resided. These confrontations claimed tens of thousands of lives, mainly those of civilians during the same period. In Turkey alone, the death toll for the most recent Kurdish uprising—that within the last decade and a half of the twentieth century—amounted to more than thirty thousand. At present, Kurdish nationalism is still regarded as a direct threat to the territorial integrity of the abovementioned states by their respective governments; and the fear is not entirely unjustified. The Kurdish question is evidently transnational in the modern Middle East, but it is also international. Sizable Kurdish diaspora communities live and actively participate in nationalist politics in many European countries, most notably in Germany, France, and Norway. Hence, the nationalist aspirations of the Kurds are of keen interest to the greater international community.