Abstract
This study seeks to shed light on the preliminary results and potential fruits that the era of so-called Arab Spring bears concerning the Kurds as an increasingly visible actor and an emerging nation in the region. Since the turn of the last decade, several countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region have witnessed to large-scale social and political upheavals that have since then been popularly referred to as “the Arab Spring,” “Arab Awakening,” “uprisings” or “revolutions”, “grassroots movements,” and “regime changes.” Usually one considers these changes either as optimistically progressive as springs based on revolutions or pessimistically dangerous for the future of the people in the MENA. It cannot be underestimated that these protest movements have had devastating effects for the shaping of the region and its geopolitical neighborhood (i.e., Europe). In this context, the Arab Spring cannot be seen as an exclusively Arab-related phenomenon due to several reasons.
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Notes
- 1.
For a study of the “Kurdish Spring” through the lens of the “contentious politics” vs. “high politics” debate, see Göksel (2015).
- 2.
The ANAP (Motherland Party) and the DYP (True Path Party).
- 3.
The DSP (Democratic Left Party) and the YTP (New Turkey Party).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
The party gained more than 13% of all votes in this election, becoming the first Kurdish-led party to successfully pass the 10% country-wide election threshold required to enter the Turkish parliament.
- 7.
Demirtaş and many other HDP members of the parliament have recently been imprisoned on charges of supporting terrorism; they remain in jail at the time of the writing of this work.
- 8.
- 9.
For a detailed study of “radical democracy,” see Tekdemir (2016).
- 10.
The “vanguard party” is a political/ideological term originally coined by Vladimir Lenin: “We shall have occasion further on to deal with the political and organizational duties which the task of emancipating the whole people from the yoke of autocracy imposed upon us. At this point, we wish to state only that the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory” (Lenin 1973, p. 29).
- 11.
For more information, see the website of Yekineyen Parastina Jin (Women’s Defence Units): http://www.ypgrojava.com/ku/index.php/ypj
- 12.
For more information on the practice of gender quotas within the Kurdish movement in Turkey, see Kavak (2012a, p. 166).
- 13.
Handan Caglayan’s (2007) work on the gender issue within the Kurdish movement puts forward an original critical approach toward the discourse of “women’s emancipation.”
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Kavak, Ş. (2018). The Arab Spring and the Emergence of a New Kurdish Polity in Syria. In: Işıksal, H., Göksel, O. (eds) Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59897-0_13
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