During your time in Geneva, you are working on a publication project called “Friendship in Revolution: Kurdish Youth Mobilization in the Shadow of the State.” Can you tell us about this project?

My book project, Friendship in Revolution, examines the unexpected role of friendship in shaping the Kurdish youth movement during the 1990s — a decade marked by mass mobilisation and intense state violence in Turkey. Situated at the intersection of historical sociology and political anthropology, the book explores how political subjectivities are formed and reshaped through everyday practices in contexts of extreme repression.

Drawing on 12 months of fieldwork in Diyarbakır, the political and symbolic centre of the Kurdish movement, I show how friendship became the foundation for collective political identity and belonging among young revolutionaries. These relationships enabled them to recognise one another’s worth and uniqueness, while building a shared space in which their political subjectivities could take shape. Through friendship, they came to see themselves not only as survivors of violence, but as agents capable of transforming the world around them.

Friendship in Revolution offers a new perspective on Kurdish resistance in Turkey and proposes friendship as a critical political concept, one that plays a central role in the collective formation of alternative subjectivities.

Can you tell us about your past work and how it has evolved over the years?

In my PhD dissertation, friendship emerged as a central theme, but my focus was on a specific form of subjectivity among Kurdish youth in the 1990s, shaped in opposition to extensive state violence. Later, during my time at the Scuola Normale Superiore and now at the Graduate Institute, I began looking at friendship more explicitly as an anthropological concept; as a way of understanding how political communities are formed and sustained.

My years in Germany added another dimension to this work. There, I connected with a large community of Kurdish exiles and activists, which allowed me to study the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, one of the most politically active diasporas in the world. I began to see how hevaltî (a Kurdish term for friendship/comradeship) had evolved into webs of solidarity and political connection that operate across borders, linking people through shared histories, commitments, and struggles. This broader perspective now informs my research on how political subjectivities travel, adapt, and endure in transnational contexts.

You are part of the Anthropology and Sociology department at the Institute after having spent time at the Institute for Turkey Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, at the  Center of Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy, and at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where you did your PhD in sociology. What have you found to be the advantages of being at the Institute and in Geneva for advancing your research?

My research brings together historical sociology and political anthropology, and the Institute’s Department of Anthropology and Sociology offers a rare combination of strong theoretical grounding and ethnographic depth that aligns well with this approach. Being part of this department has made me feel integrated into a vibrant and engaged academic community. I am not only encouraged to pursue my work but also recognised as a colleague in my discipline. This has been especially meaningful given my previous experience as a scholar from a politically repressive context, where researchers are sometimes treated more as “cases” — acknowledged for their background or personal story, rather than for their academic contributions.

Working with Professor Umut Yıldırım has been a central part of my time at the Institute. Her work in political and environmental anthropology is closely connected to my project, offering valuable insights grounded in long-term field research in Diyarbakır, which is also the main site of my study.

I have also received strong institutional support. The ANSO Department has warmly welcomed me and supported my stay; the Research Office has provided me with generous and consistent guidance with fellowship applications and future planning; and the MINT programme has offered me the opportunity to teach a master’s-level course, Borders of Justice: Migration, Labour, and the Struggle for Rights, in the fall semester. From research to teaching to career planning, the Institute provides the space and resources to sustain and develop my work.

You were exiled from Turkey while working on your PhD, for having signed a petition calling for an end to the violence and human rights violations against the Kurdish people. As a scholar at risk yourself and in light of a global climate that seems to be turning on free speech, would you like to comment on the importance of free speech and academic freedom and how they tie together?

For me, academic freedom and free speech are inseparable from the ability to think, to question, and to belong in an academic community. After signing the Academics for Peace petition, I was forced into exile. Like many colleagues in Turkey, I faced criminal charges and was no longer able to work freely or find an academic position. Since then, I have continued my research in Italy, Germany, and now Switzerland, witnessing how academic freedom is understood and practiced differently across contexts.

One of the challenges for scholars at risk is often being seen through a humanitarian lens rather than one of solidarity. This way of framing things can reinforce hierarchies, positioning us as recipients of help rather than as equal participants in the production of knowledge. Often, people focus more on our political situation than on the knowledge and insights our research brings. As a result, our work is not always recognised as a scholarly contribution to broader academic debates. This form of epistemic marginalisation does not only affect individual scholars, but also constrains the space for critical thought and restricts the potential of academic inquiry.

The growing pressure on universities reminds us that academic freedom is tied to a larger fight to protect critical and collective spaces. Defending it requires more than issuing statements. It calls for concrete structures of support, genuinely inclusive forms of participation, and academic spaces where research can challenge power rather than adapt to it.