The Feminist Turn in the Kurdish Political Movement

This seminar forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Network.

Speakers: Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS; Latif Tas, SOAS

Horizontal organising within social movements is not necessarily sensitive to gender-based and other intersectional forms of inequalities and hierarchies. Nadje Al-Ali and Latif Tas present their paper on 'the Feminist Turn in the Kurdish Political Movement', inwhich they critically explore the attempts by political activists and elected representatives of the Kurdish political movement in south-eastern Turkey (northern Kurdistan) to challenge patriarchal and masculinist ideology and practises.

Based on 2 years of multi-sited fieldwork in Diyarbakir, Istanbul, Berlin and London, their paper sheds lights on the dialectic processes through which the Kurdish political movement is engaging in the translation of its political principles of democratic confederalism and gender equality. Many of their respondents, especially many female and male Kurdish political leaders, have been victims of the recent government’s crack down on both the leftist and Kurdish opposition, a context in which a pursuit of gender-based equality might be particularly challenging.

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This is a registration only event. Registration will open on Tuesday 21st February.

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