Democratic Representation in Plurinational States: The Kurds in Turkey (Comparative Territorial Politics) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3030011070 ISBN 13: 9783030011079

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Synopsis

This book examines modalities for the recognition and political participation of minorities in plurinational states in theory and in practice, with a specific reference to the Republic of Turkey and the resolution of the Kurdish question. Drawing on the experience of Spain and Eastern Europe and other recent novel models for minority accommodation, including the Ottoman experience of minority autonomy (the Millet System), the volume brings together researchers from Turkey and Europe more broadly to develop an ongoing dialogue that analytically examines various models for national minority accommodation. These models promise to protect the state’s integrity and provide governmental mechanisms that satisfy demands for collective representation of national communities in the framework of a plurinational state.

About this title

About the Author

Ephraim Nimni is Visiting Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict at Queen's University Belfast, UK. He has published widely on minority rights, models of national self-determination that do not require separate nation states, multiculturalism and the applicability of the national cultural autonomy model to contemporary multination states, and on the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Elçin Aktoprak was Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara University, Turkey, until she was dismissed as per the emergency decree in February 2017. Her research interests are theories of nationalism, minority issues in Europe, the Kurdish question, conflict resolution and peace studies. 

Review

“How to resolve Turkey’s century-long Kurdish issue, which is the principle obstacle hindering the democratisation of the country? Self-determination, secession and statehood, federalism, territorialized or supra-territorial forms of autonomy, multi-national democracies...? This book revisits these political, administrative, juridical, cultural economics formulae, which were already vividly debated by the so-called Austro-Marxist school at the beginning of the twentieth century. The contributors to this volume do not suggest a ready-made road-map, but through the variety of readings they offer, they allow us to understand the consubstantiality of democratization and resolution of national questions in the world of the twenty-first century.” (Professor Hamit Bozarslan, EHESS, France)

“How best to achieve minority representation in plurinational states? In 2015 the contributors to this book conferred in Ankara as the second phase of the “Kurdish Opening” was coming to an end. Since then, several have been dismissed from their university posts by an increasingly authoritarian regime. The achievement of Nimni and Aktoprak is to have brought together interventions by scholars located in Turkey and in Western Europe, which provide penetrating insights and possible solutions not only for the Kurds, but for minorities everywhere.” (Professor Bill Bowring, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK)

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 3030011070
• ISBN 13: 9783030011079
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 271
• Editor: Nimni Ephraim, Aktoprak Elçin