KURDISH SEPARATISM IN GERMANY

["Johannes Schneider" <Johannes.Schneider@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is the abstract of a paper on Kurdish nationalism in Germany. The
paper is written from the point of view of a bourgeois-liberal Turkish
position.

I am posting the abstract and the link here because it contains a good
amount of information on the Kurdish community in Germany and it explains to
some extent, why the Kurdish question is not of an academic interest here
but a matter of everyday presence.

While the paper contains a lot of empiric information, its conclusions are
sort of misleading. The alarmist tone about the alleged 'Kurdish terrorism'
mirrors certain sections of the German press, but is nevertheless totally
overdrawn. In other posts I have said why the German state opposes Kurdish
self-determination and thus banned the PKK. But the ban of the PKK served
internal purposes of the than conservative government as well.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union a communist menace was no longer
justifiable to legitimize the security apparatus. In this situation the evil
'Kurdish terrorist' came handy. It fitted conveniantly within the general
racist campaign, portraiying any immigrant as a possible threat to the
German way of life. This conjuncture culminated in a media campaign against
the PKK and anything Kurdish a few years ago. It seems the authors of the
paper have taken that campaign at face value.

When reading the paper one could come to the conclusion Kurdish nationalism
is mainly a product of political circumstances within Germany. But it
remains unclear whether this is due to alleged tolerance of German
immigration laws or due to harsh repression of Kurdish organisations.

Johannes

Alynna J. Lyon
Department of Government and International Studies
University of South Carolina
Emek M. Uçarer
Department of Government and International Studies
University of South Carolina
THE TRANSNATIONAL MOBILIZATION OF ETHNIC CONFLICT:
KURDISH SEPARATISM IN GERMANY
Abstract:
Ethnic nationalism can and often does have consequences for countries other
than traditional homelands. A prime example of this is the Kurdish
separatist movement which continues to be one of the most intriguing and
potentially volatile cases of transnational ethnic nationalism. Kurdish
people not only reside in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria as citizens but also
in western Europe where they live as resident aliens. Kurds arrived in
Western Europe as guest workers in the 1960s and early 1970s and then as
asylum seekers in the 1980s and 1990s.

 Recently, hunger strikes, protest marches and terrorist bombings have been
much publicized manifestations of the increasingly mobilized separatist
movements within Germany. These protests are being staged outside the
traditional Kurdish homelands. Germany is now faced with considerable
dilemmas concerning internal policy towards their Kurdish residents as well
as tenuous external relations with the country from which they originated.

This project explores Kurds migration into Germany and how this recipient
country has enabled their entry and responded to their presence. In
addition, the paper explores the internationalization of these separatist
movements as Germany and Turkey have become entangled in the political web
of Kurdish nationalism. The mobilization of Kurdish ethnic nationalism in
host societies, and the factors that make such mobilization possible in
western liberal democracies are given specific focus.

Full text at:

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/kurds.htm