This series of events will gather scholars, artists and writers from Turkey, Europe and North America. Together, they will ask how political life is made and sustained across borders, in the Kurdish regions of the Middle East and in the European diaspora, under state violence, in exile, and in the present moment of political transition.
Roundtables will be open to the public and thematic panels will focus on the discussion of papers.
Opening roundtable: Kurdish political horizons across history, sovereignty, and contentious politics
Thursday 26 November, 10:00–11:45.
Moderated by Davide Rodogno, Co-Director of the Geneva Graduate Institute. How is political life made and sustained when sovereignty is absent, contested or refused? Kurdish Worlds Across Borders opens with a roundtable on how the present was made: a century of Kurdish political life, from the late Ottoman Empire through the nation-state, state violence and exile to today’s negotiations. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of social movements speak from different vantage points, in Turkey, Europe and the diaspora, and then take questions from the audience. With Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Zurich, emeritus), Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore, online), Hamit Bozarslan (EHESS, online), Mesut Yeğen (professor of sociology, formerly of Middle East Technical University and Şehir University, Istanbul), Hişyar Özsoy (cultural anthropologist and former member of the Turkish Parliament) and Rosa Burç (DeZIM Institute, Berlin).
Public evening: Cultural production and the political imagination
Thursday 26 November, 17:30–19:30.
Moderated by Delal Aydin, with a welcome by Hişyar Özsoy. An evening of film, literature, visual art and music. Four artists whose work travels across the borders of Kurdistan and the diaspora present their work and speak about it: filmmaker Ahu Öztürk (Istanbul), writer and publisher Deniz Gündüz (Diyarbakır, Vate Publishing), visual artist Remzi Sever (Diyarbakır, Merkezkaç Art Collective) and singer and researcher Hêja Netirk (Hamburg). Where political speech is censored, criminalised or exhausted, images, stories and songs have carried Kurdish political imagination from one generation to the next. The evening asks what art holds that institutions cannot, and what it makes possible. Remzi Sever’s video installation and an installation by Helin Karabil are on view in The Fab throughout the day. Hêja Netirk closes the evening with a performance.
Roundtable: Collective futures and pathways forward
Friday 27 November, 15:15–17:00.
Moderated by Mesut Yeğen. Where is Kurdish political life going? After two days of closed discussion, the workshop opens its doors again to think about futures: in Turkey, where negotiation and criminalisation continue side by side; in Rojava, under mounting pressure; in Iran, after the Jina uprising; and in a European diaspora with a long history of transnational political organisation. After a short introduction, the floor opens to all workshop participants and the audience.
Thematic Panels
Four panels bring together around twenty-five scholars from Turkey, Europe and North America: historical trajectories of state violence, memory and the making of Turkishness; gendered and queer reconfigurations of political life; movements, emotions and sustained struggle; and Kurdish worldmaking, internationalism, decolonial thought and collective futures. Panels work from pre-circulated papers and short statements and are discussions rather than presentations. They follow the Chatham House Rule and are not recorded. A limited number of places are available for students, faculty and registered guests who wish to audit a panel and attend the full session; places are subject to approval.
To request a place, write to democracy.conferences@graduateinstitute.ch.