With an estimated population of 35 million, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without an independent state of their own. The majority of Kurds live in Turkey, where they constitute 18 percent of the population. Since the foundation of the Turkish republic in 1923, the history of the Kurds in Turkey is marked by state violence against them and decades of conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish fighters. Although the continuous struggle of the Kurdish people is well-known and the political actors involved in the conflict have received much scholarly attention, little has been written from the vantage point of the Kurds themselves. Alemdaroglu and Goecek's volume develops a fresh approach by moving away from top-down, Turkish nationalist macro analyses to a micro-analysis of how Kurds and Kurdistan as historical and ethnic categories were constructed from the bottom up and how Kurds experience and resists marginalization, exclusion, and violence. Contributors looks beyond the politics of state actors to examine the role of civil society and the significant role women play in the negotiation of power. Kurds in Dark Times opens an essential window into the lives of Kurds in Turkey, generating meaningful insights not only into the political interactions with the Turkish state and society, but also the informal ways in which they negotiate within society that will be crucial in developing peace and reconciliation.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Ottoman state identified multiple threats in its eastern regions. In an attempt to control remote Kurdish populations, Ottoman authorities organized them into a tribal militia and gave them the task of subduing a perceived Armenian threat. Following the story of this militia, Klein explores the contradictory logic of how states incorporate groups they ultimately aim to suppress and how groups who seek autonomy from the state often attempt to do so through state channels.
In the end, Armenian revolutionaries were not suppressed and Kurdish leaders, whose authority the state sought to diminish, were empowered. The tribal militia left a lasting impact on the region and on state-society and Kurdish-Turkish relations. Putting a human face on Ottoman-Kurdish histories while also addressing issues of state-building, local power dynamics, violence, and dispossession, this book engages vividly in the study of the paradoxes inherent in modern statecraft.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Ottoman state identified multiple threats in its eastern regions. In an attempt to control remote Kurdish populations, Ottoman authorities organized them into a tribal militia and gave them the task of subduing a perceived Armenian threat. Following the story of this militia, Klein explores the contradictory logic of how states incorporate groups they ultimately aim to suppress and how groups who seek autonomy from the state often attempt to do so through state channels. In the end, Armenian revolutionaries were not suppressed and Kurdish leaders, whose authority the state sought to diminish, were empowered. The tribal militia left a lasting impact on the region and on state-society and Kurdish-Turkish relations. Putting a human face on Ottoman-Kurdish histories while also addressing issues of state-building, local power dynamics, violence, and dispossession, this book engages vividly in the study of the paradoxes inherent in modern statecraft.

With an estimated population of 35 million, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without an independent state of their own. The majority of Kurds live in Turkey, where they constitute 18 percent of the population. Since the foundation of the Turkish republic in 1923, the history of the Kurds in Turkey is marked by state violence against them and decades of conflict between the Turkish military and Kurdish fighters. Although the continuous struggle of the Kurdish people is well-known and the political actors involved in the conflict have received much scholarly attention, little has been written from the vantage point of the Kurds themselves. Alemdaroglu and Goecek's volume develops a fresh approach by moving away from top-down, Turkish nationalist macro analyses to a micro-analysis of how Kurds and Kurdistan as historical and ethnic categories were constructed from the bottom up and how Kurds experience and resists marginalization, exclusion, and violence. Contributors looks beyond the politics of state actors to examine the role of civil society and the significant role women play in the negotiation of power. Kurds in Dark Times opens an essential window into the lives of Kurds in Turkey, generating meaningful insights not only into the political interactions with the Turkish state and society, but also the informal ways in which they negotiate within society that will be crucial in developing peace and reconciliation.