Kurdish Studies

May 2021
Volume: 9, No: 1, pp. 129 – 152
ISSN: 2051-4883 (Print) | ISSN 2051-4891 (Online)
www.KurdishStudies.net

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33182/ks.v9i1.636

BOOK REVIEWS
Political violence and the Kurdish conflict: A review
Zerrin Özlem Biner, States of Dispossession: Violence and Precarious Coexistence in
Southeast Turkey, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020, 264 pp., (ISBN
9780812251753).
Salih Can Açıksöz, Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in
Turkey, Oakland: University of California Press, 2020, 272 pp., (ISBN: 9780520305304).
Reviewed by Marlene Schäfers, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Political violence, war and dispossession are realities that have resoundingly shaped Kurdish
life worlds, identity, and self-understanding throughout the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. Being denied a place within the order of sovereign nation-states that arose from the
ruins of the Ottoman Empire has had tremendous consequences for Kurdish populations in
Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, the four main countries occupying different parts of the Kurdish
heartlands. Without a recognized political status, Kurdish communities have been subjected
to projects of annihilation, integration and assimilation by the states ruling over them. These
projects have often employed different forms of violence in order to facilitate the
establishment of national sovereignty, ranging from the physical and embodied to the
epistemic and symbolic. They have relied on violence to simultaneously exclude Kurdish
subjects from and assimilate them into the fabric of the nation-state. How such violence has
shaped the life worlds and subjectivities, discourses and practices, aspirations and
imaginations of Kurds and other “minorities” is a question that a growing body of
anthropologically inspired scholarship has begun to explore over recent years. Much of that
scholarship has focused on the Turkish context, and the present two volumes to be reviewed
here are no exception. Nonetheless, they provide precious new insights into the complicated
effects of sovereign violence. Importantly, they approach the so-called “Kurdish question”
not as a self-contained instance of ethnic conflict but as embedded in broader histories and
logics of political violence in Turkey. The Kurdish conflict in this way becomes a vantage
point from where to explore the complex relations between different “minority communities”
situated at the margins of the nation-state (Biner) and the militarization of public life in Turkey
and the kinds of masculine subjectivities it produces (Açıksöz).
Zerrin Özlem Biner’s ethnography States of Dispossession masterfully shows how Kurdish life
realities in contemporary Turkey are intricately intertwined with broader histories of
dispossession, including those of the 1915 Armenian genocide and the violence perpetrated
against other Christian communities throughout the twentieth century. The book focuses on
what Biner calls the period of “violent peace” between the lifting of the state of emergency
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(OHAL) in the Kurdish regions in 2001 and the return to full-blown violent conflict in 2015.
Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Mardin during that period, Biner
is interested in how life is remade in the aftermath of war and violent loss at the “margins”
(understood both geographically and metaphorically) of the Turkish state. Biner uses Turkey’s
bid to register Mardin as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an entry point to investigate how
the city’s Kurdish, Arab and Syriac inhabitants have carved out new life trajectories during a
fragile peace period that witnessed the rise of commercialized multiculturalism and the
aggressive implementation of neoliberal urban policies. She traces how Mardinites engage
with the new forms of value created by these developments and how they often end up
entrapped in relationships of debt and obligation. Mardin emerges from her account as a
centre of fantasies of progress, development, and enrichment, while continuously being
haunted by the violence, losses and absences of the past.
Biner draws on a well-known corpus in anthropological and political theory to conceptualize
the ambiguity, suspicion, and mistrust that protracted conflict has inserted into the everyday
lives of her interlocutors. Key interlocutors are Veena Das, Michael Taussig, and Michael
Lambek, as well as Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler. Crucially, for Biner ordinary life is
not simply a space of hope, recuperation or healing after decades of violent conflict, but rather
a space of complicity and enduring ruination. Drawing on Lauren Berlant, Biner holds that
the Mardinites she interacts with are “cruelly attached” to the very forces that cause their
injury and dispossession, making them complicit in the ongoing ruination of the built
environment – mainly through digging for treasures – in the hope of social and political
mobility, which mostly fails to materialize. Six ethnographic chapters demonstrate how such
cruel attachments are (re)produced across a range of sites including Mardin’s stone houses,
the law and the land.
Following the introduction, which sets out the theoretical concerns and analytical framework
of the book, chapter 1 introduces the reader to the city of Mardin. It provides a history of the
region’s different religious and ethnic communities, highlighting the violence and
dispossession that Armenian, Syriac and Kurdish communities have been exposed to over the
course of the twentieth century. The chapter further zooms in on the various heritage-making
projects that ensued in the early 2000s, including most prominently the UNESCO World
Heritage bid. Biner shows how these projects’ promotion of an apolitical notion of
multicultural harmony have imbued the stone houses of Mardin’s old city with novel forms
of value tied primarily to heritage tourism and fostered the rise of new elites (mainly ethnic
Arabs and Kurds).
Chapters 2 and 3 then present ethnographic accounts of how this new value is articulated
through fantasies of treasures that many Mardinites believe are embedded beneath the stone
walls and grounds of their houses. In chapter 2, we get to know Veysi Bey, a local expert
digger for treasures who is convinced of the presence of underground riches while remaining
permanently indebted. Together with Veysi Bey, Biner explores the Old City where digging
has become an obsession for many, even if one that is shot through with anxiety. Houses have
their own agency here: they reject paint, shake when violated and cause premonitory dreams.
Access to their value passes through their ruination via digging; a bind that ties hope to
anxiety, wealth to dispossession.
Chapter 3 moves on to explore in more detail the jinns (cin) that guard the treasures of
Mardin’s stone houses and routinely prevent their appropriation. The chapter gives fascinating
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ethnographic insight into how jinns manifest as snakes or scorpions, how they appear in
dreams and can be tamed in rituals of hypnotization. Treasures and the jinns that protect them
are in Mardin never directly attributed to the Armenian genocide or to the displacement of
Christian populations. Stories about them are seldom critical of official historiography, nor
do they upend ethno-religious hierarchies. By foregrounding these ethnographic facts, Biner
circumvents a perhaps all too easy interpretation that would read jinns as instances of
subaltern consciousness or counterhegemonic discourse. Nevertheless, her ethnography
suggests that histories of violent dispossession constitute a moral subtext to stories about
treasures and the jinns that guard them. Stories about jinns, Biner maintains, may not critique
or even recognize genocidal pasts but they open up a space of encounter between past owners
of imagined treasures and those seeking to appropriate their riches.
Chapters 4 and 5 then take us beyond the realm of the Old City into the surrounding
countryside to bring into view the complicated relationships of Mardin’s Syriac communities
with their Kurdish neighbours and the Turkish state. Chapter 4 introduces us to İsa Bey, a
Syriac from Mardin who has spent much of his life outside Turkey. He is one of many Syriacs
in the diaspora who invested their hopes in a return to their villages, spurred by the end of
violent conflict and government promises made in the early 2000s. Biner follows İsa Bey in
his attempts to reclaim Syriac land and property around the nearby town of Midyat. Rejecting
traditional patronage relations with Kurdish tribal leaders and villagers, İsa Bey works instead
through a legal framework of rights and duties in order to counter the ongoing dispossession
of his community. Throughout endless bureaucratic and court battles, İsa Bey insists on
relating to the state as a rights and property-bearing citizen.
Chapter 5 focuses on the struggle by the Syriac Mor Gabriel Monastery against encroachment
on its land by both local Kurdish tribes and the state. A close reading of the history of this
struggle illustrates the Syriac community’s precarious position that leaves them at the mercy
of interventions by both local and state actors, highlighting the fragility of the law as a
purveyor of rights. Against this backdrop, İsa Bey’s insistence on the framework of the law
appears as a “cruel attachment” that relies on an optimistic mobilization of hope in the face
of its continuous disappointment.
The final chapter then returns to the Kurdish conflict and its repercussions in times of alleged
peace. Here, Biner provides a brilliant analysis of the Turkish state’s Compensation Law,
introduced in 2004 to award compensation for material losses incurred as a result of the
conflict between the Turkish armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). By
making the right to compensation conditional upon applicants’ renunciation of state
responsibility for any damage suffered, Biner argues, the law never functioned as a way of
offering accountability for state violence perpetuated throughout the 1990s. Quite to the
contrary, as it entitled members of the military forces and police officers to the same
compensation rights as forcefully displaced Kurdish villagers, the law erased any difference
between victim and perpetrator. But not only that, the state has further proceeded to
recuperate the money for compensation from convicted PKK militants and their families,
thus having its own benefit regime bankrolled by those it considers insurgent citizens. As
Biner argues, rather than producing reparative justice, the law in this way becomes a debt-
producing machine that mortgages the present and future of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens.
The book closes with an epilogue, in which Biner reflects on the warfare that has returned to
the Kurdish regions with the collapse of the peace process in 2015. Recounting intimate
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episodes in the lives of her Mardinite friends, she gives insight into the despair and resignation
caused by renewed warfare. For Biner, these episodes illustrate the “continuum of violence”
that mark the region and its inhabitants.
States of Dispossession makes important contributions to the study of contemporary life in
Turkey’s Kurdish regions. The way in which it investigates questions of violence and
dispossession through the vantage point of the built environment and the agency of spiritual
forces is a welcome move away from the focus on social movements and political parties that
prevail in the study of the Kurdish conflict. Focusing on the complex relations between
Syriacs, Kurds and the state in Mardin, it evades dichotomies that would oppose Kurds to
Turks, victims to perpetrators, resistance to oppression – dichotomies that continue to
pervade much scholarly literature and public debates. As such, this excellent book will be of
interest to scholars of Kurdish, Armenian and Syriac studies and all those with an interest in
modern Turkey’s regime of governing difference. With regard to the latter, one might have
expected the author to engage more thoroughly with the literature detailing the emergence of
minorities and sectarianism as a mode of governance in the post-Ottoman world in order to
flesh out the historical underpinnings of the very different relations Kurdish and Syriac
communities have with the Turkish state. Moreover, while the author identifies what she calls
the “tribal order” as key for the complicated relations Kurdish Mardinites have with the state
and the Syriac community, particularly scholars in the field of Kurdish studies might have
liked to see a more detailed account of how this tribal order is organized and comes to exercise
power. Finally, readers might wonder whether the characterization of the Kurdish region as a
“space of death” (16) subjected to an unrelenting “continuum of violence” risks reducing the
complexity of everyday life in a region that sees humour, pleasure and joy complexly intersect
with suffering, harm and injury.
Salih Can Açıksöz’s Sacrificial Limbs provides an entirely different perspective onto the
reverberations of Turkey’s Kurdish conflict by taking us from Mardin to Istanbul, from the
lives of Kurdish and Syriac minoritarian citizens of Turkey to those of its Sunni-Turkish
majority. An ethnography of how discharged soldiers who have been permanently disabled
fighting against PKK guerrillas seek to rebuild their lives in the metropole, Sacrifical Limbs is a
brilliant analysis of how the sovereign violence unleashed in the framework of the Kurdish
conflict constructs masculine subjectivity and ultranationalist political agency in contemporary
Turkey. Açıksöz departs from the understanding that military service – a central rite of passage
for men in Turkey – constitutes a contract between male citizens and the state that secures
sovereignty for both sides. While men sacrifice their lives in military service to protect the
nation’s sovereignty, they are promised their own realms of petty sovereignty in turn, as
military service allows men to enter into employment, become property holding subjects and
figure as heads of households. For disabled veterans, however, this promise of sovereignty is
broken. As much as they are in public discourse celebrated as courageous heroes who have
made great sacrifices for the nation, in their everyday lives they face stigmatization for their
disability, often accompanied by a loss of real income and dependency on family care and
state benefits. Rather than sovereign masculine subjects, veterans emerge from military service
as gender non-conforming bodies, situated dangerously close to the figure of the equally
disabled and dependent beggar. Drawing on scholarship in political philosophy, feminist and
medical anthropology as well as disability studies, Açıksöz traces how disabled veterans
encounter this dilemma and seek to remake their sense of masculinity, many turning to
ultranationalist politics in the process. Veterans’ personal quest for masculine sovereignty in
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this way becomes entwined with nationalist attempts at restoring state sovereignty, their
dismembered bodies giving material form to nationalist anxieties about the dismembered
nation.
Açıksöz develops this argument over six chapters which are based on findings from fieldwork
with disabled veterans carried out in Istanbul between 2005 and 2008. Chapter 1 introduces
readers to the realities of Turkish military service. It depicts military service as an embodied
and affective experience which deeply invests soldiers’ bodies with symbolic value. Based on
the recollections of his interlocutors, Açıksöz vividly reconstructs what feels like “being on
the mountains” feels like for military conscripts: the bodily exhaustion, the boredom, the
anxiety and rush of the fight, the nearness of death. Açıksöz ties these experiences to historical
shifts in military strategy that have seen Turkish soldiers adopt elements of guerrilla warfare.
As conscripts become engaged in a mimetic exercise of “becoming guerrilla,” the mountains
turn from a space of othering into one of magical realism. Soldiers imagine them to be
populated by cyborg guerrillas with supernatural powers and seductive yet deadly Kurdish
female “terrorists.” Fantasies of sexual promiscuity amongst Kurdish guerrillas abound,
alongside ideas about emasculated Armenian fighters. Uncanny premonitions, warnings and
dreams accompany raw violence, in this way sacralising loss and injury and setting the stage
for the experiences of failure and stigmatization that follow when conscripts return not
victorious but injured.
Chapter 2 conceptualizes military service as foundational for both masculine and state
sovereignty. It shows how the promise of attaining masculine sovereignty over property and
the family through military service is broken for disabled veterans, who often experience
themselves as emasculated and infantilized as a result of their disability and the dependency
on family and welfare benefits it entails. Açıksöz outlines how veterans have been increasingly
sacralised in public discourse over the 1990s, ushering into a new regime of health, welfare
and political benefits aimed at taking care of the nation’s celebrated heroes. According to
Açıksöz, the aim of this regime is to restore disabled veterans as sovereign citizens and
(re)productive bodies through a range of technoscientific and socioeconomic interventions,
including the provision of high-end medical care and income-producing work (mostly via jobs
at government offices) as well as subsidized leisure facilities and even IVF treatment. The
state in this way seeks to pay back the debt that it has accrued with veterans following the
sacrifices they have made during military service.
Chapter 3 outlines in detail how disabled veterans stand at the intersection of two axes of
value, being at the same time venerated for their sacrifice and potentially abject for their
disability. Açıksöz shows how veterans virulently seek to distinguish themselves both from
street beggars and the disabled, since being perceived as either would misrecognize the
sacrificial nature of veterans’ disability, which is precisely what renders them national heroes
with near sacred status. In campaigning to alleviate the grievances that veterans nevertheless
experience on a daily basis as a result of their disability, they consequently turn neither to
rights-based activism via disability advocacy groups nor to class-based mobilization, but to
ultranationalist politics that is concerned, above all, with the restoration of national
sovereignty, hence promising the recognition of veterans’ sacrifice.
In chapter 4 Açıksöz outlines how disabled veteran activism takes form via a detailed
ethnography of two veteran associations in Istanbul, one the official veteran association that
stands in close contact with the state, the other an informal lobbying group founded by the
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mothers of martyrs and veterans. He shows how these associations, each in their own way,
function as sites for non-medicalized responses to experiences of loss and injury, allowing
veterans to find a sense of belonging and intimacy in a context where their everyday lives are
laced with experiences of masculine failure and stigmatization. Associations in this way create
durable “communities of loss” that are highly amenable to ultranationalist mobilization.
Chapters 5 and 6 then turn to the forms that such mobilization takes as veterans pursue a
vengeful politics that demands that Kurdish and Armenian “enemies of the nation” are made
to pay a deadly price in return for the sacrifice veterans have made during their military service.
Açıksöz details how the commuting of the death sentence for Abdullah Öcalan provoked a
“sacrificial crisis” amongst veterans, who felt themselves betrayed by a state for whom they
had sacrificed their limbs and now expected returns. Many took to protesting the decision by
taking off and displaying their prosthetic limbs, the material proof of their sacrifice for the
nation. Over time, Açıksöz argues, dissident intellectuals like Orhan Pamuk, Perihan Mağden
and Hrant Dink have become surrogate sacrificial victims instead of Öcalan. Detailing the
enjoyment his veteran interlocutors derived from being involved in protests against these
figures, Açıksöz masterfully captures the affective undercurrent of a sacrificial political logic
that is intent on violently remaking national sovereignty.
Finally, chapter 6 investigates the complicated relations that tie veterans to the state through
both economic and nationalist debt. As Turkey’s health care system has taken a neoliberal
turn, veterans are increasingly looking to private providers for their prostheses, often racking
up considerable debt in the process. Açıksöz focuses on several mediatized scandals when
banks allegedly repossessed veterans’ prostheses to cover these debts. The national outcry
that followed underlines how sacrificial logics of nationalism render the embodied sacrifice of
the soldier incommensurable with neoliberal accountability. As the central transcendental
value of the secular state, militarized self-sacrifice accrues debts that can never be repaid,
rendering the state forever indebted towards its veteran subjects.
In the epilogue, Açıksöz charts the course that imaginaries of nationalist sacrifice have taken
in Turkey since the end of his fieldwork. While disabled veterans were pushed to the back of
the political scene during the peace negotiations with the PKK, the return to warfare in 2015,
the failed coup attempt of 2016 and the Turkish military invasions in Syria have rendered
sacrificial logics once again central to the performance of state sovereignty.
Sacrificial Limbs brings together meticulous ethnographic insight with rigorous conceptual
analysis to shed light on the sacrificial logics that underpin the gendered and militarized
iterations of Turkish nationalism. Açıksöz has written a beautiful ethnography that provides
rare insight into the intimate lives of the protagonists of ultranationalist politics. It is a book
that approaches its interlocutors with critical empathy, seeking to understand and lay bare
what propels them to become protagonists in deadly violence. It makes for indispensable
reading for anyone interested in the political logics that drive Turkey’s authoritarian militarism
as it takes shape in the Kurdish regions and beyond. While much has been written about the
ideological underpinnings and political actors of Turkish nationalism, this book gives much
needed insight into the embodied, gendered and affective structures that underpin it.
One question that may nevertheless arise, particularly for scholars of Kurdish studies,
concerns the fate of Kurdish conscripts in the Turkish armed forces. Even if Açıksöz may
not have done research with Kurdish veterans, one wonders how they feature in the eyes of
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his interlocutors and within the army as an institution. If sovereignty is enacted through a
sacrificial bond between the state and its (male) citizens, are Kurdish conscripts – as ever
suspect citizens in Turkey – confronted with a pressure to (over)perform their loyalty to the
nation and the sacrificial bond it relies on? Is their commitment to the sacrificial logics of
sovereignty an object of doubt on the part of their comrades in arms? Or does Turkish and
Kurdish conscripts’ shared experience of military service lead to ties of cross-ethnic friendship
and male bonding? Posing these questions might allow to further elaborate how military
sacrifice becomes a central pillar of state sovereignty through the complex affective landscapes
it generates – traversing loyalty and devotion, suspicion and betrayal – and how such affects
powerfully shape (male) subjectivity in contemporary Turkey.

J. Andrew Bush, Between Muslims: Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan, Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press, 2020, 240 pp., (ISBN: 9781503611436).
Reviewed by Metin Atmaca, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Turkey
This book focuses on the everyday lives of various Kurdish individuals who consider
themselves as Muslim but having decided to turn away from devotional piety. The author
observes these individuals and analyses their discourses on piety, religion, and secularism in
light of several theories of contemporary anthropology. Bush compares and contrasts these
individuals’ “ordinary language” with Kurdish Sufi poetry, Quran, and Hadith (traditions of
the Prophet Muhammad). The language of the book is rich with vocabulary much pertinent
to the topic as he employs Kurdish poetry and Islamic history to mold his engagement with
his interlocutors into a meaningful text.
The book is the culmination of three years of ethnographic and archival research in the
Kurdistan Region of Iraq, more specifically Silêmanî (Sulaimaniyah) and Hewlêr (Erbil). The
author started visiting the region a year after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and each time
he returned there throughout a span of nearly a decade, he witnessed the dramatic changes in
the region. Consequently, his book focuses on six various figures, each one treated in a
chapter: a middle-class mother in her late fifties, an imaginary beloved existing only in poetry,
a husband with a tendency of polyamorous romance, a revivalist preacher trapped between
the West and the East, a father with an authority in the family, and finally a reader who will
read the book with the “perspective of their own ordinary relations”. Each of these figures
are somewhat connected with one another not personally but through textures of Islamic
tradition.
The author regards the hucre (madrasa) as the center for the Islamic tradition’s production of
knowledge. It is the main historical institution, which produces not only Arabic grammar and
Islamic doctrine but also aspects of piety in everyday life. Beyond that, in the nineteenth-
century it also served as a center for Kurdish classical poetry. The Sultan in the late Ottoman
period sponsored the hucre in an effort to preserve Islamic legitimacy. The institution also
became a place for resistance against the British occupation of Iraq and later an incubator for
Islamic movements in Kurdistan. The author engaged Islamic scholars, melas, and attended
classes on Arabic morphology in the hucre while conducting fieldwork.
By focusing on devotional piety in Iraqi Kurdistan, the author challenges – without sideling it
– the common view that the Kurdish nationalism and politics are more important than the

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dynamics of Islamic tradition for understanding the process of identity making and social life.
The author chooses to use “Islamic traditions in Kurdistan” instead of “Kurdish Islam” in
order to show that the Kurds experience Islam not in isolation but rather in engagement with
Arab, Turkish, and Persian Muslims. He also emphasizes that Iraqi Kurdistan has a distinct
political history from other parts of Kurdish regions because it does not perceive religious
piety as a threat to its political identity even though leftist ideas have shaped the Kurdish
national movement there (p. 17).
The author analyses extensively the relationship between the Muslim poet as “lover” and the
non-Muslim subject (kafir) as “beloved” in classical poetry from the early nineteenth to the
first half of the twentieth centuries. As the author subtly and succinctly states, in Kurdistan
“poetry is commonly recited throughout the course of everyday life” and “like the language
of preachers and politicians, poetry in Kurdistan is not only a language of art and beauty but
also of power and knowledge.” Thus, the author perceives Kurdish poetry “neither a
decorative mode of expression nor merely a subject of inquiry” but “an analytical frame
through which to approach the study of religious difference” (p. 22).
The poetry, particularly classical poetry, is apparent in the everyday life of Iraqi Kurds as
opposed to that of the Kurds in Turkey, where people have little knowledge of poetry in
Kurdish because of state’s suppression of the language. For a long time, more specifically
between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the poets of Kurmanjî Kurdish dominated the
literary milieu of Kurdistan. For the last two hundred years, since Sorani Kurdish started to
be used as a medium of communication in the region as Baban emirs sponsored local literati,
poetry became part of everyday life. Especially the poetic tradition of Silêmanî sets the region
on a different stage from the rest of Kurdistan. Bush presents some of vivid scenes of this
liveliness of poetry and the meaning of it for the locals. Bush also shows how the tradition of
poetry collections (diwan) remains alive as the process of making of it continues between the
editors and readers.
The author makes effort to understand Kurdish poetry in its own context instead of looking
into it through the prism of the Anglophone scholarship. He compares Kurdish poetry with
Persian classical poetry in order to show the parallels between both in terms of tropes, which
in Kurdish poetry are mostly shaped under the influence of Persian figures like Sa’di, Hafez,
and Attar.
In addition to other individuals, Bush introduces the reader to a Kurdish man, Newzad, who
turns away from piety but not Islam. Newzad presents his perspective of religious difference
between not only Muslims and Christians but also between Sunni Muslims and Shi’ite
Muslims. The man employs classical Kurdish poetry to justify his turning away from piety,
thus treating it as a “library that is sometimes plundered or looted, where concepts travel so
far from their homes as to be almost unrecognizable” (p. 103).
The Sufi landscape of Kurdistan was transformed during the nineteenth century with the
secularization of Iraq and later during the twentieth century under the influence of Kurdish
nationalism. Salafism filled the void that came about after Sufism diminished after the 1980s.
Bush presents this transformation by an exposition of ordinary relations between individuals
and people around them, offering a larger picture of religious landscape through the analysis
of these relations in the light of rich poetic literature and anthropological studies.

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Besides ordinary individuals, the author focuses on a radical preacher, Mela Krêkar. After
massacres of Kurds in Halabja by Saddam’s forces Mela Krêkar became one of the leaders of
Islamic Movement of Kurdistan. In 1991 he left for Sweden as a refugee and later was
imprisoned in Norway and Italy because of his links with radical groups. The author tests,
compares and contrasts the material he collected during his ethnographic fieldwork. He
focuses on individuals such as Newzad’s brother to try to understand whether their doctrine
(‘eqide) was shaped by Mela Krêkar, who has a much wider audience in Kurdistan. By focusing
on Mela Krêkar’s sermons in detail, he shows how the preacher is not as conservative as he
is perceived by many but is a revivalist. Some of his views, such as his stance with the family
relations, may even have been influenced by secular liberalism. Although he is a Salafi, at the
same time he employs Sufi piety as well as Kurdish poetry in his preaching.
All in all, this is a beautifully written account of various individuals that one may come across
in Iraqi Kurdistan’s everyday life. The author meticulously puts together his material, which
he collected in fieldwork along with the rich collection of the poetry he closely studied. The
book could have included a map of the region and some images of the cities and the people
included in his fieldwork. On the other hand, by leaving such images out, the author might
have intended to force the imagination of the readers and make them to “think comparatively”
through the prism of “their own everyday lives” by relating “to others across lines of religious
difference” (p. xv).

Mneesha Gellman, Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic minority rights

movements in Mexico, Turkey, and El Salvador, London and New York: Routledge, 2018,
226 pp., (ISBN: 9781138597686).
Reviewed by Vera Eccarius-Kelly, Siena College, United States
In Democratization and Memories of Violence: Ethnic minority rights movements in Mexico, Turkey, and
El Salvador, Mneesha Gellman examines communal mobilization patterns to advance cultural
rights. Her complex study centers on theories of social movement, memory studies, and the
power of the narrative voice in relation to violent historical pasts that propel marginal
communities to differing levels of activism. In a range of socio-political contexts, Gellman
dissects how and under what conditions cultural mobilizers (rather than ordinary members of
communities) pursue claims-making activities to advance language rights. Gellman presents a
succinct analytical model to categorize narrative productions for social mobilization among
four Latin American communities and two ethnic groups in Turkey. It is noteworthy that in
both her introductory and concluding sections, she acknowledges the need for more extensive
decolonization work that ought to shape research with and among indigenous and marginal
communities. For instance, she suggests considering participatory action research as a way to
integrate indigenous voices as equal partners rather than relying on the voices of communal
mediators.
Gellman identifies and grapples with research limitations that are frequently encountered in
political ethnographies by affirming the significance of reflective discussions related to the
positionality of researchers and growing security concerns for research participants. Such
methodological reassessments are long overdue for researchers engaged in political
ethnographies among marginal communities. This is also the case in the field of Kurdish
Studies, where Gellman’s remarks should reverberate intensively as systematic repression by
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state agents and efforts to silence the marginalized have been magnified over time. For a fuller
discussion related to such debates, critical researchers (and graduate students) should consult
Methodological Approaches in Kurdish Studies: Theoretical and Practical Insights from the Field (2019)
edited by Bahar Baser, Yasin Duman, Mari Toivanen, and Begum Zorlu (this reviewer
contributed to the collection).
Over a period of four years (2009-2013) Gellman pursued qualitative interviews and engaged
in extensive participant observation across six different communities located in Mexico, El
Salvador, and Turkey. Her analysis is grounded in a comparative historical approach that
analyzes under what conditions community activists might pursue institutional types of
claims-making, centered on the notion of participating in avenues provided and granted by
state agencies. She also explores under what conditions community activists pursue extra-
institutional claims-making efforts, which can include both non-violent and violent means. It
turns out that her selected case study communities rely on many diverse opportunities to
claims-making in an effort to coerce and shame states, yet only some frontline activists engage
in violent means. This outcome, of course, also reflects the particular selection of her case
study communities and the type of access states grant to carry out research. Furthermore, it
also matters if states engage in long-term and systemic cooptation efforts or if ongoing
patterns of violence shape communal narrations, and if a supportive international audience
exists that might magnify specific voices.
Her rigorous case study project offers fascinating insights into political behaviors among
cultural activists within three (in some cases now formerly) democratizing countries. Her first
community is located in Mexico and focuses on Tzotzil indigenous members in Acteal,
Chiapas, where villages continue to struggle against the consequences of extreme socio-
economic marginalization, systemic racism, and structural violence. Tzotzil speakers show
clear evidence of high levels of mobilization through claims-making activities and their
reliance on intensive memories of state violence. Gellman contrasts the mobilization of this
Tzotzil community to the Triquis in Oaxaca, which demonstrate mobilization, yet not to the
same level as the Chiapanecan communities. Similarly, in her other Latin American examples,
she contrasts Nahua in Sonsonate to Lenca in the Department of Morazan, El Salvador.
Nahua community leaders are mobilized and oriented toward public claims-making through
assertions of language protections. This stands in contrast to her findings among Lenca
communities, who have pursued a more cautious and private approach to remembering the
extreme waves of violence they experienced. Many Lenca claim a mestizo background today
(Spanish-speaking and belonging to the ethnically mixed majority population), perhaps in an
effort to escape the profoundly anti-indigenous racism that often marks their position in
Salvadoran society (as well as across the border in Honduras).
Any researcher familiar with the complexities of communal narratives and language claims in
Latin America may wonder how the other two case studies related to Dersim Alevi Kurds and
Armenians in Istanbul were selected as comparative case studies. Dersim Alevi Kurdish
accounts, however, allow for parallel perspectives and can be related to narrated experiences
by generations of Tzotzil community members in terms of their violent encounters with state
agents and their high levels of cultural mobilization. The case study focus on Armenians in
Istanbul reminds us of some of the grim experiences with cooptation, silencing, and
systematic assimilation that both Nahuat speakers and Lenca have encountered in El Salvador.

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 Book Reviews 139
Ethnic minority communities, a term Gellman critically examines in relation to Dersim Alevi
Kurds, pursue diverse approaches to collecting narratives that explain how communities
demand cultural rights. While most rigorous comparative studies related to minority
communities offer an assessment of governmental policies in reaction to mobilization, we
rarely gain such diverse narrative insights into how decisions are made by activists within
specific mobilized minority communities. Gellman’s approach offers deeply meaningful ways
of integrating activist voices, even if the political framing of the case studies can appear
outdated by now (her field work was carried out a few years ago). Gellman provides us with
detailed mobilization accounts that link state violence to claims-making approaches and
informs our understanding of how communal rights protections are shaped by particular
activists in differing communities.
Her interdisciplinary and comparative approaches require us to recognize that many of us lack
significant expertise in one area or another, which can be a barrier in the comparative field
(this reviewer, for example, has spent extended periods of time among only four of the six
communities discussed in this study). While comparative approaches are essential to grappling
with questions related to patterns of mobilization for cultural claims, they may also raise
challenges for communities (or frontline activists) by questioning nationalist claims to
uniqueness, originality and authenticity. A project that compares six communities and
integrates such extensive field work into a larger framework requires the researcher to be
deeply committed over a period of many years. Gellman’s contribution highlights the
significance of linking communal claims-making across states that are driven to pursue
assimilation and homogenizing policies—a constant across these diverse cases. Gellman’s
work provides us with various paths forward by offering an outstanding analytical structure
that brings together collective narratives of mobilization in the face of memories of state
violence. Kurdish Studies could benefit from more such detailed cross-national and
comparative narratives in the future.

Seevan Saeed, Kurdish Politics in Turkey: From the PKK to the KCK, London and New
York: Routledge, 2017, 150 pp., (ISBN: 978-1-138-19529-5 (hbk); 978-1-315-63848-5 (ebk)).
Reviewed by Michael M. Gunter, Tennessee Technological University
In his fast-paced, informative analysis, Professor Seevan Saeed begins by asserting, “the main
concern of this book is answering the question of why the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
has transformed itself into the Union of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK)” (p. 2). He quickly
explains, “that the answer . . . is that the PKK failed to achieve its objectives through a purely
political struggle. In the wake of this failure, the Kurdish national struggle transformed into
the KCK, because . . . [it] delivered on social and cultural development and strategies that
promoted Kurdish nation building in the context of the Turkish state rather than armed
struggle as the only response to establish an autonomous and sovereign Kurdish nation state”
(pp. 2-3). Indeed, “during a period of ten years, this change has visibly occurred through
establishing hundreds of civil, cultural, social and political autonomous organisations that have
different aims and structures and all are under the umbrella of the KCK” (p. 136). Thus, “the
KCK has been established on the ashes of the PKK” (p. 8). However, despite these successes
around its new policy of Democratic Autonomy—which Saeed defines in part as “a bottom-

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up project . . . alternative for the state” (p. 63), the KCK ironically has been “less successful
in the process of internal democratisation within its structure” (p. 136).
The author divides his book into six concise chapters bookended by an introduction and
conclusion. In the introduction, he details his methodology: “I undertook forty qualitative
interviews for this research with the key players of the movement within and outside Turkey
between June 2011 and September 2015 . . . [and also used] several governmental documents
and policies on the southeast of Turkey” (p. 5). In addition, the list of references following
each chapter and bibliography at the end further illustrate Saeed’s wide usage of secondary
sources. Later, however, he explains that “the reason for focusing mainly on the Western
academic literature is the lack or limitation of free and unbiased studies in Turkish, Iranian
and even universities in Arabic countries with regard to the Kurdish question” (p. 16).
In the first chapter, Saeed presents his theoretical approach, elaborates upon such key
concepts used frequently in the book as nationalism and nation, Kurdish nationalism, and
social movements, and engages in a useful literature review, among others. He tells the reader,
“the rationale behind utilizing social movement theories is that the KCK as the movement of
the Kurdish national struggle is regarded as a social movement in this book” (p. 21). “The
specific focus in this book is to analyse the Kurdish national struggle, or more specifically,
institutional evolution and transformation (as a social movement) in the specific context of
northern Kurdistan/southeastern Turkey” (p. 23). The second chapter critically examines the
historical background of the Kurdish national struggle throughout Kurdistan, but particularly
in what is now Turkey, where Saeed engages it as a reaction to Turkish nationalism. Possibly
unwittingly, Saeed seemingly agrees with Turkey’s claim that the Syrian-Kurds’ Democratic
Union Party (PYD) and its militia the Peoples Defense Units/Womens Defense Units
PYD/YPG/YPJ are largely operating under the PKK, when he writes: “The PYD, the YPG
and the YPJ are all under the hegemony and umbrella of the KCK” (p. 39). Similarly, he also
agrees with the Turkish government’s claim that the legal, peaceful pro-Kurdish Peoples
Democratic Party or HDP, that still has some 50 MPs in the Turkish parliament, is under the
PKK: “What is important to be said here is that the HDP . . . is directly under the hegemony
and direction of the KCK” (p. 10). The only reason Saeed could admit this is his belief that
the KCK actually was new and different from its supposed predecessor, the PKK.
Citing S. Toprak, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2009, Saeed mentions, “that in Turkey there are
forty-nine different identifiable ethnic and religious minorities” (p. 44). However, this figure
is much lower than the one given earlier in the mammoth study of 659 pages by Peter Alford
Andrews, Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, 1989: “In Turkey there are seventy-two and a
half peoples” (p. 18), the fraction referring to the Roma. Saeed also lists the well-known claim
that the “30-40 million” (p. 32) Kurds “are the largest ethnic group of stateless people in the
world” (p. 32). However, this assertion ignores the more than 70 million stateless Tamils in
India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and elsewhere.
Chapter 3 narrows the discussion specifically to the history of the PKK and more recently the
KCK. The author begins his chapter with Abdullah Ocalan’s rather arcane claim/insight:
“The Kurdish people simultaneously exist and do not exist. The Kurds are human being[s],
yet they are not. There are more paradoxes of this kind” (p. 50). Saeed tells us, “Arguably, [the
imprisoned PKK leader] Ocalan himself is obsessed by the theory of conspiracy. He sees
every political step around him and against the Kurds through the spectacles of conspiracy
theory” (p. 55). When the present reviewer visited the PKK leader in March 1998 in what was
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then his Syrian redoubt, he also noted how often Ocalan referred to developing events as a
“game.” Problematically, Saeed asserts, “most of the founders of the PKK . . . were from
non-Kurdish ethnic backgrounds. It is fascinating that . . . the founders of Turkish nationalism
. . . were mainly Kurds and other ethnic minorities” (p. 59).
Saeed also claims, “There are several characters on the scene that have no real powers.
Nonetheless, there are some hidden actors that have essential invisible powers” (p. 73). The
author applies this specifically to the Kurds and the KCK. Whether these specifics are
examples of the chapter’s opening arcane Ocalan citation or not may simply be part of the
mystery. Thus, for what it is worth, Saeed presents a detailed organization chart of the KCK
on page 71 that may or may not detail where the real power is in the organization. He also
claims, incorrectly in the opinion of this reviewer, that the Kongra-Gel (Kurdistan Peoples
Congress), which supposedly acts as the legislature of the KCK in distinction to the Kurdistan
National Congress (KNK), which supposedly acts as a more broadly-based congress for all
the Kurds, is located “mainly . . . in the Kurdistan mountains” (p. 66). In actuality, both
legislative bodies meet periodically in Brussels.
The fourth chapter looks at how the KCK has changed civil and legal activism since it
supposedly succeeded the PKK in 2005. “Under the umbrella of the KCK, there are hundreds
of organisations from small to medium and large in size” (p. 77), including “even smaller
parties such as Hak-Par and KADEP . . . working directly or indirectly, compulsorily or
voluntarily under the control . . . of the KCK” (p. 77). This is largely so as the PKK/KCK in
effect has created a parallel state within the official one.
In Chapter 5, Saeed examines the KCK’s two main projects: The Road Map and Democratic
Autonomy. The former involves the Kurdish armed struggle entering “a period of inaction,”
establishing a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” and the Turkish government
“approving the legality of the KCK” (p. 101). The latter comprises “Ocalan’s post-state ideas”
(p. 102). It means, “Empowering [the Kurdish] people without touching the border and
sovereignty of the Turkish state” (p. 111). In other words, Ocalan claims that “the process of
the nation building can be developed without going through the process of . . . building the
nation state” (p. 47) as supposedly “the KCK does not want to harm the sovereignty of the
states that Kurdistan has been divided into” (p. 80). However, “it is difficult to discuss . . .
democratic autonomy, since even the authors of the project seem to define it in contradictory
terminologies” (p. 111). They “do not understand what Democratic Autonomy exactly
means” (p. 113). Not surprisingly, “implementation of this project is unbearable by the
Turkish state” (p. 111).
In the sixth and final chapter, the author critically offers further comments regarding the
reasons behind the transformation from the PKK to the KCK. This segues into what might
be the book’s biggest misconception—supposedly its major theme—that the KCK has
succeeded the PKK. Despite Saeed’s repeated emphasis on the one-dimensional PKK having
been submerged into the new multi-dimensional KCK since 2005, time and developments
have demonstrated that the name PKK has stuck, while that of the KCK has not. Indeed,
even senior PKK members have told such to this reviewer.
So why was there the attempt to change the name? Certainly, one reason was to remove the
PKK from the Turkish, U.S., and EU terrorist lists, a maneuver that failed. Another reason
for the attempted name change, as Saeed emphasizes, was to reflect the PKK’s new, much
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142 Kurdish Studies
larger role. Thus, what this book really involves is an analysis of how the PKK has grown and
evolved into a much larger, multi-dimensional organization. The book’s subtitle should simply
be altered to reflect this reality. Then most of what Saeed has written would remain valid.
Furthermore, the manuscript is often repetitious and would benefit from a final editing for
fluency in English. This having been said, one might counter that repetition can be the source
of knowledge, while this reviewer would never be able to pen even a sentence in Kurdish or
Turkish. In his own way, the author communicates very successfully.
This book also has a list of abbreviations (acronyms), bibliography, and index. The author
represents a rare combination of an academic and activist participant whose knowledge and
intuitive insights will reward the close reader with a deep understanding into the Kurdish
movement in Turkey. His study will be useful for academics, government practitioners, and
the intelligent lay public.

Mohammedali Yaseen Taha, Media and Politics in Kurdistan. How Politics and Media
are Locked in an Embrace, London: Lexington, 2020, 145 pp., (ISBN: 9781793611031).
Reviewed by Kerem Schamberger, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany.
Research on Kurdish media is still in its infancy. While its role in the creation of Kurdish
identities has received some attention (see e.g. Sheyholislami, 2011), and Hassanpour's
Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918-1985 (1992) is still the frame of reference for
all media researchers in this field, questions of communication studies on the structural nature
of Kurdish media have so far been underexposed. This is now changing with Media and
Politics in Kurdistan by Mohammedali Yaseen Taha. At least for Southern Kurdistan. His
analysis of the media system in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) provides exciting insights
into the structure of Kurdish media, the interplay between journalism and politics and their
dependence on ruling parties. More specifically, on the central political actors in the region,
especially the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK).
Using the framework of Hallin and Mancini's Three Models of Media and Politics (2004) and
its four dimensions – media market, political parallelism, journalistic professionalism and the
role of the state – Taha's research is designed to connect to international discussions on media
systems. The author counters the accusation of the purely Western perspective of this
approach by including a fifth dimension: the historical development of the KRI media system,
which Voltmer (2013) also calls path dependency. "To understand the way in which the media
have developed in the KRI, a thorough understanding of the political and cultural history of
the region (...) is required" (Taha, 2020, p. 68). Therefore, in chapter 2 Taha traces the parallel
development of the media and the political system in Southern Kurdistan (since 1992 known
as KRI) from 1961, the beginning of the "mountain rebellion" (p. 46) until 2014 and "the
media of autonomy" (p. 58). In doing so, the author partly slips into a very strong focus on
the political side, which would probably not have been necessary in such detail. This could
also be due to the fact that he himself sat in parliament as a member of the KDP from 2013
to 2018. All in all, the structure of the book is stringent and logical and is divided into four
major chapters.

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 Book Reviews 143
The methodological approach is a triangulation of document analysis (legal texts, newspaper
articles, archives), a questionnaire that was answered by 131 journalists and 57 members of
parliament (almost 50% of all elected parliamentarians!), and six interviews with experts (p.
11). Who exactly he interviewed, however, is not revealed. Thus, he refers to an appendix at
the end of the book (p. 12). However, this aforementioned appendix is missing. Overall, the
book would have deserved better editing. There are repeated references to appendices that do
not exist, unnecessary repetitions (e.g. p. 67), inaccuracies in dates (e.g. in the information on
the duration of the September Revolution, p. 46-48), missing page references in citations,
incorrect bibliographical references in the index and missing names (e.g. at p. 77 the surname
of the Kurdistan editor Bedirxan is missing) and a confusing arrangement of tables (e.g. p. 104).
This nit-picking, however, does not diminish the relevance of the book. For even if the
empirical material cannot be viewed due to the missing appendices (and could probably only
be made partially accessible for data protection reasons), Taha has created a data basis that is
unique in previous research on KRI media.
For here the author's political background proves to be a tremendous advantage: open access
to politicians and journalists of the KDP, but also of other parties. Against this background,
Taha succeeds for the first time in empirically proving the direct control of the press by the
media departments of the parties or individual politicians. For instance, in one of the
conducted interviews Ako Mohammed, Rudaw's Director General, says: "Mr. Nechirvan
Barzani is the main support for this institution and it belongs to him" (p. 72). In other words,
the President of KRI owns the best-equipped media group in Kurdistan and thus an important
instrument maintaining his and KDPs power. Such statements could have put journalists in
KRI in distress so far. For example, the independent journalist Kamal Chomani narrowly
escaped imprisonment in 2018 because he had publicly assigned K24 to Masrur Barzani,
nowadays the prime minister of the KRI. Now journalists like him can refer to this
publication. Nevertheless, Mohammed denies any contact between Rudaw and the KDP and
does not see himself as an official political party media (p.72). Taha suggests the term "semi-
party media" for these media. The term "shadow media", coined by Chomani (2014), could
also be appropriate here. That is, media that claim to be independent, yet are backed by
powerful politicians and parties. Also, the statement of Azad Hamadamin, Secretary General
of the Kurdistan Journalists' Union, according to whom "more than two hundred pieces of
land have been distributed by the syndicate to its journalist members" (p. 99) to ensure their
loyalty in this institution controlled by the KDP and PUK is remarkable and would not have
been possible without the trust of the interview partners in the researcher. The focus of the
analysis is mainly on KDP and PUK media, but the New Generation Movement (NRT) and
Gorran (KNN) play a small role. It is not clear why media close to the PKK, such as the Roj
News news agency based in Slemani, is not mentioned at all. Although the PKK does not play
a role in KRI at the parliamentary level, it does play a role in the everyday political life.
Taha classifies the KRI media system in the (Western influenced) grid, developed by Hallin
and Mancini, of the polarized pluralist model, with small press markets, a high level of
politicization, a low level of professionalism, and strong state intervention, but critically notes
that a final classification would only be possible "as long as full attention is paid to the
specificity of each case" (p. 12). Here it has to be discussed whether the last point of the state
intervention in KRI is correct at all, in a situation where it is difficult to talk about state
structures, the control over the Peshmerga is still in the hands of the parties and the KRI area
is divided into a "yellow" and a "green zone".
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144 Kurdish Studies
All in all, the book offers a great gain in knowledge for communication scientists, but also for
scholars interested in the close relationship between politics and journalism not only in
Kurdistan.
References
Amir Hassanpour, Nationalism and language in Kurdistan, 1918-1985, San Francisco: Mellen Press, 1992.
Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini, Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Jaffer Sheyholislami, Kurdish identity, discourse, and new media, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Kamal Chomani, Independent media fades in Iraqi Kurdistan, Ekurd Daily, 2014.
https://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2014/8/state8247.htm
Katrin Voltmer, The Media in Transitional Democracies, Cambridge: Polity, 2013.

Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Yiannis Kanakis, "God First and Last": Religious Traditions
and Music of the Yaresan of Guran. Volume I: Religious Traditions, by Philip G.
Kreyenbroek, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020. XIV+188 pp., (ISBN 9783447114240).
Reviewed by Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University, Netherlands
This slim volume was apparently written to accompany a presumably more substantial and
fieldwork-based study of the ritual and musical practices of the Yaresan (also known as Ahl-
e Haqq) of Guran by the ethnomusicologist Yiannis Kanakis that is still forthcoming.
Kreyenbroek, a specialist of Iranian religions, has written on the Iranian background of the
Ahl-e Haqq religion and Yezidism before and returns here to some of his favourite themes.
His studies of Yezidism, written in collaboration with knowledgeable Yezidi intellectuals, have
established themselves as authoritative overviews of the state of the art and works of reference
(Kreyenbroek, 1995; Kreyenbroek and Rashow, 2005). A work of similar scope and ambition
on the Ahl-e Haqq religion would certainly be welcome. In the thirty years that have passed
since the last book-length attempt to present a synthetic overview (Hamzeh’ee, 1990), much
new information has become available. Many primary sources, which had long been kept
hidden from outsiders, have become more widely available through printed editions of kalām,
the sacred texts in which the tenets of this religion are expressed. A modest number of
anthropological studies (by Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Navid Fozi and Martin van Bruinessen)
investigate how myth and ritual interact with social relations among the Guran Ahl-e Haqq.
The most important recent contribution, based on extensive fieldwork among the Guran and
reflecting access to the inner world of the Ahl-e Haqq, is the PhD research by the
ethnomusicologist Partow Hooshmandrad (2004), which remains as yet unpublished apart
from a brief article (2014).
These and many other works are listed in the bibliography and some are summarily referred
to in the text, but nowhere does Kreyenbroek engage critically with them. He does not attempt
a synthetic overview but instead offers a more modest collection of materials for the study of
the Ahl-e Haqq religion (Yaresanism or Yāri, as he often calls it). The book is a rather quaint
miscellany of bits and pieces of information on Yāri, some parts very interesting but, in spite
of the book title, not all of them concerning the Guran. The author’s own relevant fieldwork
consisted of a visit to the Kaka’i village of Hawar in Iraqi Kurdistan, which represents another,
and in his view older, tradition of Yāri than the Guran tradition. For his understanding of the
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 Book Reviews 145
Guran Yaresan, he leans heavily on a single knowledgeable informant in the diaspora, Sayyed
Fereidoun Hosseini, and on a written systematic exposition of the Yaresan belief system by
the latter’s father, Sayyed Wali, who was a knowledgeable kalāmkhwān though not a widely
recognized authority on doctrine. Extracts from Sayyed Wali Hosseini’s “exegesis” are
translated in an appendix.
Kreyenbroek devotes a considerable part of the book to a search for origins of the Yaresan
religion (which he argues have to be sought in a non-Zoroastrian variety of Western Iranian
religion) and the comparison of isolated elements of Yaresan cosmology with older Iranian
ideas. In fact, he appears more interested in Yaresan texts and traditions for the light they may
shine on older Iranian religion than for their own sake. Thus he proceeds to “construct a
hypothetical Indo-Iranian myth of creation which is similar in many ways to that found in the
Yāri tradition” (p. 11) – note the “hypothetical”: the argument is highly speculative and
moreover hardly relevant to the Yaresan belief system. Central to this myth is the primordial
sacrifice of a bull, which Kreyenbroek keeps referring to throughout the book (pp. 11, 17, 27,
81) although it has no place in Yaresan kalām or oral tradition. Bull sacrifice was most
strikingly present in the Roman cult of Mithras, which had followers among the soldiers on
Rome’s Iranian frontier (encompassing part of present Kurdistan) two thousand years ago
and in which Kreyenbroek shows a strong interest (p. 16-17). There is, however, no indication
that Mithraism left any traces in the later Yaresan religion – unless we take as such
Kreyenbroek’s speculation that the concept of Satan as the Peacock Angel in Yaresanism and
Yezidism may “[go] back to that of Mithra, who […] is said to be ‘both wicked and very good
to men’” (p. 27).
The direct origin of the Peacock Angel concept as well as the idea that Satan is a tragic rather
than evil figure and never lost God’s favour, however, is more likely to be found in Muslim
cosmologies and Sufi texts of the classical period, where both are well attested (Awn, 1983).
It is of course possible that these ideas ultimately have Iranian origins, but Muslim and
Christian thought in the medieval period reflects many other influences. This is also true of
the Yezidi belief system, as Eszter Spät (2010) and Artur Rodziewicz (2014) have shown, in
pointing out remarkable parallels with classical Greek and especially Hellenistic ideas. An
exclusive focus on Iranian religions as the template for Yaresanism may obscure as much as
it illuminates. For understanding the emergence and early history of the Yaresan community
I would suggest that much is yet to be learnt from a stronger focus on Muslim thought and
Sufi practices of the period of upheaval during and following the Mongol conquests, roughly
1250-1500 CE.
In a chapter on “mythical” and “factual” history, Kreyenbroek attempts to reconstruct the
history of the community from its sacred texts and oral tradition. He sees Soltan Sahak and
his companions, who appear in myths as manifestations of God and is angels, as historical
persons who established the first Yaresan community in Perdiwar (near Hawraman) and Baba
Yadegar as one of two rival successors to leadership. He believes that it was Baba Yadegar
who led most of the community south towards Dalahu, the present home of the Guran
Yaresan. The other would-be successor, Shah Ebrahim, is associated with Baghdad but his
descendants constitute one of the holy families (khāndān) present in many Yaresan
communities, notably in Iraq as well as Iran. (Many of the other khāndān are affiliated with
Baba Yadegar.) The small community in Hawar that Kreyenbroek briefly visited claims

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descent from a group that migrated west from Perdiwar. Its traditions differ significantly from
those of the Guran, and he assumes that they represent the original Perdiwari belief system.
Among the sacred texts, Kreyenbroek distinguishes between Perdiwari and later kalām. He
pays most attention to the former group, and only lists the titles of some of the later ones,
although among the Guran these are better known than the Perdiwari kalām and quoted more
often to explain a point of belief. For the teachings contained in the later kalām, he depends
on the very general observations by Sayyed Fereidoun and the “exegesis” by Sayyed Wali
Hosseini. Sayyed Wali was one of the men that I have elsewhere called “systematizers” of the
tradition, who organized the disparate and often mutually incompatible narratives of the kalām
into a coherent and meaningful whole. His synthesis appears to correspond closely with that
of Ka Karim, the most knowledgeable kalāmkhwān in the household of Sayyed Nasreddin, the
pir (highest religious authority) of the Guran (Bruinessen, 2014).
Given the author’s interest in kalām as the most authentic embodiment of Yaresan religious
ideas, his dismissal of the most substantial body of relevant scholarship, the work of
Mohammad Mokri, comes as something of a surprise. Mokri edited, translated and annotated
a large number of Gurani kalām, Perdiwari as well as later ones, in a series of books and journal
articles (in the Journal Asiatique). This includes the one often considered as the earliest
exposition of Ahl-e Haqq cosmology and sacred history (Mokri, 1977). Kreyenbroek refers to
another version of this text (51, 55) but largely ignores Mokri, citing only some of his other
work. In the introduction he briefly mentions the existence of Mokri’s editions of kalām and
remarks that the nature of Mokri’s comments “suggests that his approach to religion was
strongly informed by sociology” (4), which apparently was sufficient reason not to engage
with them. I also find it hard to judge the quality of Mokri’s translations and interpretations,
but he was in close contact with Yaresan over a long period of time, and his work is the only
systematic presentation of kalām in a western language. Any serious study of Ahl-e Haqq kalām
will, in my opinion, have to start with a reappraisal of Mokri’s monumental oeuvre, whatever
the final verdict will be on his interpretations.
The book under review is neither “strongly informed by sociology” nor very systematic, and
its value consists mainly in the odd bits and pieces of information it contains. These include
the author’s notes on Hawar, notes on the treatment of the community in Iran by the
authorities of Islamic Republic, and several self-representations by prominent Yaresan,
notably Sayyed Wali Hosseini and his son, as well as the translation of a document prepared
by the late musician and religious authority from Sahne, Sayyed Khalil Alinezhad, in response
to an inquisitive interrogation by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Ahl-e Haqq doctrine and
ritual obligations.
References
Awn, P. J. (1983). Satan's tragedy and redemption. Iblis in Sufi psychology. Leiden: Brill.
Bruinessen, M. van (2014). Veneration of Satan among the Ahl-e Haqq of the Gûrân region, Fritillaria
Kurdica: Bulletin of Kurdish Studies, 3-4, 6-41. https://www.kurdishstudies.pl/?en_fritillaria-
kurdica.-bulletin-of-kurdish-studies.-no.-3-4,77.
Hamzeh'ee, M. R. (1990). The Yaresan: A sociological, historical and religio-historical study of a
Kurdish community. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.
Hooshmandrad, P. (2004). Performing the belief: Sacred musical practice of the Kurdish Ahl-i Haqq
of Guran. (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis). Berkeley: University of California.

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Hooshmandrad, P. (2014). Life as ritual: devotional practices of the Kurdish Ahl-i Haqq of Guran. In
Kh. Omarkhali (ed.), Religious minorities in Kurdistan: beyond the mainstream (pp. 47-64).
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kreyenbroek, Ph. G. (1995). Yezidism. Its background, observances and textual tradition. Lewiston,
NY: Mellen Research Publications.
Kreyenbroek, Ph. G. and Rashow, Kh. J. (2005). God and Sheikh Adi are perfect. Sacred poems and
religious narratives from the Yezidi tradition. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Mokri, M. (1977). La Grande Assemblée des Fidèles de Vérité au tribunal sur le mont Zagros en Iran
(Dawra-y Diwana-Gawra). Paris: Klincksieck.
Rodziewicz, A. (2014). Tawus Protogonos: Parallels between the Yezidi theology and some ancient
Greek cosmogonies, Iran and the Caucasus, 18, 27-45.
Spät, E. (2010). Late antique motifs in Yezidi oral tradition. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.

Seyedeh Behnaz Hosseini, The Yārsān of Iran, Socio-Political changes and Migration,
Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 229 pp., (ISBN 978-981-15-2634-3).
Reviewed by Hamidreza Nikravesh, Free University of Berlin, Germany
This book consists of five chapters. In the first chapter, “Research Overview”, Hosseini
elaborates on the theoretical framework of her research, literature review, methodology, data
analysis as well as challenges which she experienced while working on the topic. The main
purpose of this research is “to understand how beliefs and ethnic identity between Yārsāni
are expressed through diaspora” (p. 3). She seeks to find out what happened to the ethnic-
religious identity of the Yāresān1 once they departed Iran, their homeland, and settled to
Sweden. Qualitative interviews with more than 120 participants in Iran, Iraq, and Sweden
provide the data for her research.
The second chapter revolves around 'Identity and Diaspora.' Applying the concept of
“transnationalism”, Hosseini asserts that the Yāresān in Sweden define their identity such that
they feel no border between themselves and non-Yāresān Kurdish people from Iraq, Iran,
and Turkey. Also, based on this definition, they can accept ethnically diverse Yāri believers,
like Turk and Persian Yāresān, as their own. The political and social freedom in Sweden
encourages some Yāresān to be involved in political activism. As an example, she mentions
“The Yārsān Democratic Organization” whose task is to pursue “political and social rights for
Iranian and Iraqi Yārsāni'' (p. 73).
The predominant theme in chapters three, 'Yārsāni Religious Practice and Identity', and four,
'Yārsāni Religious Innovation and Transformation' is the Yāri religion and its transformation
under the influence of external factors. In these chapters, Hosseini seeks to elucidate the
historical context in which the Yāresān community and Yāri religion have survived and
redefined their identity despite the external forces in Iran and Sweden. Moreover, she explains
how they have overcome tensions and have come up with new definitions for their religious
identity.
In the last chapter, 'Yārsāni Community and the Internet', the author points to a fascinating
topic: how Yāresān have implemented social media (in this case, Facebook) to rebuild and

1 The author uses Yārsān, and Yārsāni as its adjective form; however, based on the local pronunciation of this word, I preferred
to use Yāresān for the community and, as the Kalāms suggest, Yāri for the religion. In the text, wherever I have quoted directly
from the author, her opted form has been kept.
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148 Kurdish Studies
revive their identity, which has been under assimilative policies for centuries. She examines
how the freedom on the internet, which is neither under the authority of Seyyeds, the traditional
religious leaders of the community, nor the political pressures of governments like the Islamic
Republic of Iran, has enabled the Yāresān to redefine their identity. The author coins the term
“facebook shrines” (p. 155) to refer to spaces where one might virtually engage in religious
activity and discussions.
To address the main question of this research, i.e., how the religious identity of the Yāresān
has changed by living in the diaspora, it is essential to show how “living in diaspora” (external
factor) has impacted the “individual/communal interpretation” (subjective religion) of the
Yāri religion (objective religion). While Hosseini's study is a pioneering work on the Yāresān
community in the diaspora, it suffers from a number of problems:
As a general critique of the epistemology of this book, the author occasionally failed to keep
the distinction between subjective and objective religion. Subjective religion applied to the
world of individual ideas and sentiments which each and every believer might have held.
Indeed, subjective religions are individual interpretations of objective religions. Almost any
culture has a segment that can be objectively denominated religion. These areas of human
culture have their institutions, rituals, and specified rules to obey by the followers. All these
aspects are tied together through certain structures of myth and belief about humans, gods
and the universe (Kaufman, 1958: 58-9). In the course of history, religions can transform
objectively, i.e., some new institutions, ideas and sources may have emerged and some old
beliefs, concepts and rituals may have been abandoned. To describe the factual history of a
religion, since the goal is to describe the facts not the individual judgments, it is crucial to
select the appropriate sources.
Particularly in chapter three and four, Hosseini gives an account of the historical
transformation of the religion, which she tends to consider as “assimilation”. From her rather
essentialist viewpoint, the Yāri religion has roots in “Indo-Iranian” (p. 2) and “Persian
religions” (p. 20). This religion remained intact, she reveals, until the Safavid era during which
the religion was “assimilated” under the force of Shi'a Islam. By this time, Ali as “the first
prophet of Shi'a” (the consentaneous title for Ali, however, is Imam not Prophet) (p. 137) has
permeated the Yāri religion and, subsequently, he was praised by the believers. She does not
support these claims with any credible historical data such as documents, narrations or
reports. Since they are not supported by any references to any historical sources, it seems that
the author got these ideas from her interviewees. As a matter of fact, the Iranologists in the
20th century who studied the Yāresān community explained certain similarities between the
ancient Iranian religions and the Yāri religion. Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in
Iran, the Yāresān community experienced the oppressive policies superimposed by the Islamic
government. As a reaction, many educated Yāresān, based on the scholarly works of
Iranologists, coined a new identity for the Yāri religion, which hitherto consisted of certain
Sufi elements and Islamic concepts. In their interpretation, Yāri religion is a pure outcome of
ancient Iranian religions and has no affiliation with Islam which was the dominant religion
after the Islamic revolution. This idea has a loud echo in Hosseini's work and might have
entered her works through her interviews. The epistemological problem occurred when the
author objectified these ideas and narrated the factual history of the Yāri religion based on
these subjective sentimental ideas.

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 Book Reviews 149
In contrast to the inspiration the author received from the ideas of her interviewees, when the
reader seeks to know more about those individual’s ideas in the second and fifth chapters,
they do not frequently appear in the volume. However, the author has already claimed that
this book is written based on 120 qualitative interviews, roughly 50 direct references are made
to the interviews throughout the book. The sporadic direct references to the interviews, which
are sometimes missing the key information about the age, gender, place, and background of
the interviewee, may increase the risk of generalization and even petitio principii. It is hard for
the reader to follow the voice of interviewees in many passages, and this results in an unclear
image of what she is supposed to offer: the transformed interpretation of the believers living
in the diaspora. Some passages in the book have no reference, neither to the interviews, nor
to secondary sources. In such cases, it is not clear who is talking, the author or the anonymous
interviewees. Instead, the book is interpolated with references to many theoretical works
which may distract the reader from the main line of the book.
To explain what the Yāri religion is as an objective system of ideas and concepts, the author
has mostly, if not always, relied on secondary sources. Almost no references are made to the
original verses which are believed by the community to be holy, i.e., Persian/Kurdish Kalāms;
the only exception is one single verse in Gūrāni on page 180, which has been transcribed
incorrectly. Moreover, on some occasions, a critical assessment of the data presented in the
secondary sources is missing, which results in presenting confusing, and at times,
contradictory information on the Yāri religion. For example, she writes that the Yāri religious
corpus, Kalāms was transmitted orally until 700 years ago, when the followers started writing
down their religious teachings (pp. 62, 182). In contrast to this, she later states that the
transition from oral to written transmission happened most likely in the “nineteenth century”
(p. 94).
Writing on the geography of the Yāresān's homeland, she posits that they are now “especially
concentrated in Hūrāmān, Iranian Kurdistan” (p. 2). However, as Kreyenbroek (2020: 33)
reports, while the community did originally emerge in Hawrāmān, no Yāresān community
currently exists there. Some inaccuracies occurred in the linguistic data she provides, for
example the author considers Gūrāni a Kurdish language (pp.18, 22, 53, 135) while since
K.Hadank and O.Mann’s groundbreaking publication of 1930, Die Mundarten der Gûrân, it has
been commonly accepted that Gūrāni and Kurdish are two separate languages belonging to
the northwestern branch of new Iranian languages. In another passage, she writes that by the
time Yāresān had converted to Islam, their language had shifted to ''Kurmanji'' (p. 18). Even
if we accept the reality of such a linguistic shift, which is not supported by any historical
evidence, Kurmanji speakers in Iran live in northern Khurasan and partly in western
Azerbaijan; no Kurmanji speakers live in the Yāresān regions (Blau, 1989 :327-9.). Finally,
some proper names have been written incorrectly and partly inconsistent. Among all, Sultan-
Sahak (p. 20), Sultan Isaac (p. 21), San Sahak (p. 22), and Sultan Suhak (p. 177) are all referring
to one single proper name. The author transcribed Kurdish sound /-aw-/ as 'ū' which is
unusual; for example, Hūrāmān (p.2) instead of Hawrāmān (although once occurred
inconsistently as Hoorami (p. 10)) or Gūreh (p. 98, 130, 131, 144) instead of Gawra.
All in all, despite the novelty of her topic, the author generally fails to deal with the proposed
subject properly. On the one hand, the epistemological issue in question has hindered her
from showing why and how living in diaspora changed the Yāresān understanding of their
religious heritage. On the other hand, when it comes to the Yāri religion itself, her secondary
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150 Kurdish Studies
knowledge, which is gained from various, and at times contradictory, sources fails to propose
a transparent image of this religion.
References
Blau, Joyce. 1989. "Le Kurde". In Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, 227-335. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig
Reichert Verlag.
Hadank, Karl and Oskar Mann. 1930. Die Mundarten der Gûrân, besonders das Kändûläî, Auramânî und
Bâdschälânî. Berlin: Verlag der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Hosseini, Seyedeh Behnaz. 2020. The Yārsān of Iran, Socio-Political Changes and Migration. Palgrave
Macmillan.
Kaufman, Gordon D. 1958. "Philosophy of Religion: Subjective or Objective". Journal of Philosophy
55 (2): 57-70.
Kreyenbroek, Philip G and Yannis Kanakis. 2020. God First and Last, Religious Traditions and Music of the
Yaresan of Guran. Volume 1: Religious Tradition.Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.

Mohammed Ihsan, Nation building in Kurdistan: Memory, Genocide and Human

Rights, New York: Routledge, 2017, 194 pp., (ISBN: 9781472466792).
Reviewed by Ugur Ümit Üngör, NIOD Institute, University of Amsterdam
The Kurds’ experience with mass violence is a long and bloody one. The nation-state system
that replaced the pre-national, Ottoman imperial order of culturally heterogeneous territories
into a system of homogeneous nation states produced nationalist population policies across
the new states. Indeed, the twentieth century was a grim period for the Kurds and Kurdistan.
It started with the devastation of world war, continued with western colonization and the
subsequent subjugation in three different nation states, and ended with civil wars and
massacres. Thus, for the Kurds, “genocide” is a chronologically extended, complex, and
intertwined story, with multiple perpetrators, but with the same victims: themselves. Kurds
experienced mass violence in culturally, politically, and sociologically different societies under
various state ideologies: communism, colonialism, and Islamism, but especially ethnic
nationalism. Some of this genocidal violence aimed to assimilate the survivors into society,
other forms of genocidal violence attempted to excise the community altogether.
In Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, Kurds became victims of these policies, which veered towards
genocide and genocidal massacres in some infamous cases. The Kemalist government
launched violent and invasive ‘Turkification’ policies after 1923, for example by suppressing
the Sheikh Said rebellion of 1924 through genocidal massacres. This was followed in 1938 by
the genocide in Dersim, which went beyond mass murder and included forced cultural
assimilation of the Kurdish tribes in the region. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979,
Ruhollah Khomeini’s apparatus of violence suppressed a Kurdish uprising by executing
thousands of combatants and non-combatants. In Iraq and Syria, Kurds suffered from
discriminatory ‘Arabization’ under the two Ba’athist regimes, ranging from genocidal to non-
violent state policies. Possibly the most violent collective experience suffered by the Kurds
was in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign of the 1980s culminated in several
chemical massacres, including infamously at Halabja of 1988.
Mohammad Ihsan has written a book that examines the Kurdish experience with genocide
under the Iraqi Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Ihsan, British-trained in International
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 Book Reviews 151
Law and Middle Eastern Studies, was Minister for Extra-Regional Affairs from 2005 to 2011,
Minister for Human Rights, President of the General Board for Disputed Areas in Iraq,
International Investigator for Genocide crimes in Iraq from 2001 to 2005, and Kurdistan
Representative to the Federal Government in Iraq from 2007-2012. As such, he is well-placed
to offer a broad overview of genocide in Iraq, and the book indeed covers a broad range of
Iraqi mass violence against Kurdish civilians: from the Arabization policies of the 1970s, to
the destruction of the Faylee Kurds from 1980 onward, to the clan massacre of the Barzanis
in 1983, through the entire Anfal campaign, and of course the chemical massacres. Each of
these episodes are treated as sub-elements of a broader Baathist genocide against Kurds. Ihsan
concludes with a discussion of Kurdish nation-building and transitional justice efforts in Iraqi
Kurdistan. The book is topped off with a long appendix with primary sources (mostly official
Iraqi state documents outlining the violence), and a series of maps.
Ihsan’s book is based on a wide range of vital primary documents and deep oral history
interviews with key actors, for example Judge Mohammed Al Uraibi, who sentenced Saddam
Hussein. The major strength of the book lays in its empirical depth: each chapter can be read
separately to acquire a quick but comprehensive understanding of that genocidal episode.
With painstaking detail and critical examination of official documents, Ihsan lays out the
harrowing fate of tens of thousands of Kurds, for example in this comment by Saddam
Hussein himself when asked about the fate of the Barzani men:
“The Barzanis spread their treachery to other families. They are involved in this crime
and became guides for the Persian Army helping them occupy Iraqi land. Some who
called themselves Barzanis co-operated with them so they have been severely
punished and have gone to hell.” (p.153)
He concludes most chapters with a discussion of how the violence was dealt with in the post-
2003 era. He intersperses his detached analytical gaze with intimate personal observations on
the ground, for example when he toured the country in expeditions searching for mass graves
in the desert, or testified against Saddam in his court case. There is even an occasional photo
of himself sifting through bones in a search for forensic evidence.
The book has some weaknesses as well, mostly regarding its conceptual engagement. First, it
does not go much beyond Stanton’s “10 stages of genocide”, a fairly static model that sees
each ‘phase’ of genocide as following on a previous in a linear, escalating process. Second,
Ihsan, being a lawyer, often uses monochromatic legal perspectives: who was guilty, who was
responsible, what did the court decide, etcetera. Third, he is often kowtowing to the
Holocaust, and ponders to what extent Arabization was like Aryanization, or whether
Ba’athist genocide was like Nazi genocide – without much further thought into what this
means. Finally, Ihsan is not very critical toward the concepts of “sectarianism” and “de-
Ba’athification”: sectarian identities were produced by violence, not the other way around,
and de-Ba’athification was abused as a tool after 2003 to settle scores and disenfranchise large
parts of Iraqi society. Whereas Saddam’s genocide against the Kurds was obviously a product
of Arab nationalism and anti-Kurdish sentiment, there is little discussion in this book of Kurds
who collaborated with Saddam, and only one reference to the “Jash” (p.82), the pro-regime
Kurdish militia. Finally, Ihsan also makes some sweeping statements, such as: “it is clear that
the old Iraq is over and that the Iraq some politicians have in mind is not feasible and certainly

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not auspicious for the Kurds” (p.138). He ends with the normative non-sequitur of Kurdish
independence as an appropriate political response to the genocide that Kurds suffered.
All in all, this is a useful, relatively short book that provides a good overview of how the Iraqi
genocide of Kurds was masterminded by Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. Saddam’s Arab-
nationalist ideology, hostile to Israel, Iran, and Turkey, also saw Iraq’s minorities as “internal
enemies” and existential threats to Iraqi-Arab unitary statehood. The consequences of this
ideology for the Kurds was fatal, and this book offers solid explanations how and why.

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