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Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds
This is a work of excavation of the modern history of Turkey, with the Kurdish question at its center, unearthed and exposed in Çandar’s captivating narrative.
The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. The author weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow.
Turkey’s Mission War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.
The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. The author weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow.
Turkey’s Mission War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.
348 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 2021
About the author
Cengiz Çandar
12 books6 followersCengiz Çandar (born 1948) is a Turkish journalist and a former war correspondent.
He finished the secondary school at Talas American College in Talas, Kayseri and the high school at Tarsus American College in Tarsus, Mersin. Çandar graduated from Ankara University in 1970 with a Bachelor's degree in political science and international relations.
Career
He began his career as journalist in 1976 in the newspaper Vatan after living some years in the Middle East and Europe due to his opposition to the regime in Turkey following the military intervention in 1971.An expert for the Middle East (Lebanon and Palestine) and the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Çandar worked for the Turkish News Agency and for the leading Turkish newspapers Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, Referans[3] and Güneş as a war correspondent. Currently, he is a columnist for Radikal.
Çandar served as special adviser to Turkish president Turgut Özal between 1991 and 1993. His interest was drawn to the events during the ethnic unrest in the Balkans between 1993 and 1995. From 1997, Çandar lectured for two years on "History and Politics in the Middle East" at Bilgi University in İstanbul. Between 1999 and 2000, he did research work on "Turkey of the 21st century" as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. His description of the 1998 events in Turkey as a "post-modern coup" gained notice internationally, though Radikal columnist Türker Alkan had used the term two weeks earlier.[8]
In 2007, he condemned the authorities for depriving Aghtamar of its Armenian past by renaming it to "Akdamar".
Bibliography
Direnen Filistin (The Palestine that Resists) (1976)
Dünden Yarına İran (Iran: From Yesterday to Tomorrow) (1981)
Ortadoğu Çıkmazı (The Middle East Impassé) (1983)
Tarihle Randevu (Rendezvous with History) (1983)
Güneşin Yedi Rengi (The Seven Colours of the Sun) (1987)
(English title translations not official)
He finished the secondary school at Talas American College in Talas, Kayseri and the high school at Tarsus American College in Tarsus, Mersin. Çandar graduated from Ankara University in 1970 with a Bachelor's degree in political science and international relations.
Career
He began his career as journalist in 1976 in the newspaper Vatan after living some years in the Middle East and Europe due to his opposition to the regime in Turkey following the military intervention in 1971.An expert for the Middle East (Lebanon and Palestine) and the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Çandar worked for the Turkish News Agency and for the leading Turkish newspapers Cumhuriyet, Hürriyet, Referans[3] and Güneş as a war correspondent. Currently, he is a columnist for Radikal.
Çandar served as special adviser to Turkish president Turgut Özal between 1991 and 1993. His interest was drawn to the events during the ethnic unrest in the Balkans between 1993 and 1995. From 1997, Çandar lectured for two years on "History and Politics in the Middle East" at Bilgi University in İstanbul. Between 1999 and 2000, he did research work on "Turkey of the 21st century" as a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. His description of the 1998 events in Turkey as a "post-modern coup" gained notice internationally, though Radikal columnist Türker Alkan had used the term two weeks earlier.[8]
In 2007, he condemned the authorities for depriving Aghtamar of its Armenian past by renaming it to "Akdamar".
Bibliography
Direnen Filistin (The Palestine that Resists) (1976)
Dünden Yarına İran (Iran: From Yesterday to Tomorrow) (1981)
Ortadoğu Çıkmazı (The Middle East Impassé) (1983)
Tarihle Randevu (Rendezvous with History) (1983)
Güneşin Yedi Rengi (The Seven Colours of the Sun) (1987)
(English title translations not official)
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 29, 2021
I might have approached this with unduly high expectations, but this was a very disappointing book. Not only does it fail to answer so many of the bigger questions: who was Sheikh Said, for example; what was the state of Turkish-Kurdish relations from 1925-1980; and why, deep down, does a war that no one proclaims to want grind on decade after decade?
Moreover, far too much of the book consists of name-dropping and personal reminisces of how politically and socially important the author himself is. These are interesting, of course, but tedious, repetitive, and frankly, a little embarrassing. It reads like one long job application, or a proto-LinkedIn post for an old-washed-up-revolutionary. At one point, the author brags about how Ocalan, head of the PKK, had been *HIS* follower whilst the two were at university in Ankara. For the many thousands that have perished since the early 1980s, what a dispiriting circle jerk.
The above being said, therein might lie the single greatest explanation for why "peace is impossible". As in Lebanon, there are simply too many enormous egos in the room. Showing us this—rather than telling it—through his own failure to write a simple introduction to the issue without praising himself on every page, we may actually have come to understand why peace is impossible. The egos won't allow it.
Moreover, far too much of the book consists of name-dropping and personal reminisces of how politically and socially important the author himself is. These are interesting, of course, but tedious, repetitive, and frankly, a little embarrassing. It reads like one long job application, or a proto-LinkedIn post for an old-washed-up-revolutionary. At one point, the author brags about how Ocalan, head of the PKK, had been *HIS* follower whilst the two were at university in Ankara. For the many thousands that have perished since the early 1980s, what a dispiriting circle jerk.
The above being said, therein might lie the single greatest explanation for why "peace is impossible". As in Lebanon, there are simply too many enormous egos in the room. Showing us this—rather than telling it—through his own failure to write a simple introduction to the issue without praising himself on every page, we may actually have come to understand why peace is impossible. The egos won't allow it.
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April 20, 2021Interesting. Some editing recommended for a next edition.
March 6, 2025
Extreem slecht geschreven, een schrijfcursus was op z'n plek geweest voor deze man, een cursus Engels nog meer, maar wel interessant
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews