The PKK-Kurdistan Workers Party s Regional Politics

This book presents a theoretical framework to study dissident ethnic movements' imagination of world politics, with a special focus on the PKK as a case study. Dissident ethnic movements are not only a challenge to the existing hegemonic power, but they also produce an alternative closed society based on different ethnic imagination. Instead of taking the armed PKK movement as a pure resistant, this book approaches contemporary Kurdish nationalism led by the PKK as a counter-hegemonic with a narrative that entails the emergence of a new kind of identity and sense of belonging, through which the PKK has been able to exercise its power. This book is an attempt to go beyond resistance-oriented approach, unveiling the two faces of the PKK's representation of world politics: its transformative effect on the Kurds, and its exclusionary function towards traditional and alternative Kurdish subjects/institutions.

Fills a gap in IR literature by presenting a post-structural study of a dissident ethnic movement and its foreign policy Examines the often overlooked ways in which the PKK rose to hegemonic position representing the Kurds and their interests Approaches the contemporary Kurdish nationalism led by the PKK as a counter-hegemonic narrative that entails the emergence of a new kind of identity and sense of belonging, through which the PKK has been able to exercise its power

Auteur
Ali Balc is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations in Sakarya University, Turkey. He specializes in poststructuralism in International Relations, Turkish foreign policy, and postcolonialism in the Middle East.

Contenu
Introduction.- Identity, Hegemony and Imagining World Politics.- Imagining the Kurdish Nation.- Writing the US as Imperial Power.- Writing the Soviet Union as Comrade.- Re-writing the US after The Cold War.- Conclusion.