Books

International Colony Kurdistan

International Colony Kurdistan

Ismail Besikci

London: Gomidas Institute, 2015, with a new foreword by Ismail Besikci (2005)
164 pp, map,
ISBN
978-1-909382-20-6, paperback,
UK£12.00 / US$18.00
To order please contact books@gomidas.org




Ismail Besikci is a renown Turkish sociologist and human rights' activist who specialises on Kurds in south-eastern Turkey. He has several important works on Kurdish social organisation and the continuing plight of Kurds today. He has been imprisoned in Turkey most of his adult life because he has spoken out on the Kurdish issue. Besikci argues that the Turkish state has been practicing a policy of genocide against Kurds over the past 80 years.

International Colony Kurdistan is probably Besikci's most open critique of the present division of Kurdistan, en ethnically contiguous
area (mainly) between Turkey, Iran and Iraq with a Kurdish population of over 20 million people. Besikci argues that, for all their political differences, there is a longstanding understanding between these regional states to deny Kurds the right to self-determination.

International Colony Kurdistan was originally published in 1991 and led to the imprisonment of the author in Turkey. The book remains a road map to our understanding of Kurdistan today.  [2004]
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