Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Add to GoodReads

Turkey’s Mission Impossible

War and Peace with the Kurds

Cengiz Çandar - Foreword by Eugene Rogan

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 Impossible: 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.

Lexington Books

Pages: 348 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8750-1 • Hardback • June 2020 • $140.00 • (£108.00)

978-1-4985-8752-5 • Paperback • December 2021 • $48.99 • (£38.00)

978-1-4985-8751-8 • eBook • June 2020 • $40.50 • (£30.00)

Series: Kurdish Societies, Politics, and International Relations

Subjects: Political Science / International Relations / General, Political Science / World / Middle Eastern, Political Science / International Relations / Diplomacy

Turkey’s Mission Impossible

War and Peace with the Kurds

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

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 Impossible: 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.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 348 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8750-1 • Hardback • June 2020 • $140.00 • (£108.00)

978-1-4985-8752-5 • Paperback • December 2021 • $48.99 • (£38.00)

978-1-4985-8751-8 • eBook • June 2020 • $40.50 • (£30.00)

Series: Kurdish Societies, Politics, and International Relations

Subjects: Political Science / International Relations / General, Political Science / World / Middle Eastern, Political Science / International Relations / Diplomacy

Author

Cengiz Çandar is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies.He is a scholar and journalist, is the leading expert in Turkey on the Middle East, the main architect of the Turkish-Kurdish rapprochement as President Turgut Özal’s advisor in the 1990s.

Table of Contents

Chapter1: Historical and Ideological Background

Chapter 2. Kurdish Uprisings

Chapter 3. The Longest Kurdish Insurgency

Chapter 4. Öcalan and the Birth and Evolution of the PKK

Chapter 5. Özal, Talabani, Öcalan

Chapter 6. New Century, New Prospects, New Initiatives

Chapter 7. Road to Oslo, Contacts, and Back Channels

Chapter 8. Oslo, Talking on Secrecy

Chapter 9. Erdoğan’s Dance with Öcalan: Peace Process in Public

Chapter 10. Elusive Peace, Not Talking Turkey

Chapter 11. Battlefield Syria

Chapter 12. Neighboring Quagmire

Chapter 13. A Coup for a New Turkey

Chapter 14. Deep State

Chapter 15. The Pedigree of Turkish Autocracy

Chapter 16. New Turkey: A Reincarnation

Turkey’s Mission Impossible

War and Peace with the Kurds

Cengiz Çandar - Foreword by Eugene Rogan

Turkey’s Mission Impossible

War and Peace with the Kurds

ALSO AVAILABLE