Wednesday Talk

Nesrin Uçarlar

BETWEEN MAJORITY POWER AND MINORITY RESISTANCE:
KURDISH LINGUISTIC RIGHTS IN TURKEY

Nesrin Uçarlar is a Ph.D. student at Lund University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science and an instructor at Yeditepe University, Department of Political Science and International Relations. She talked about how the discussion on the Kurdish linguistic rights in Turkey is also subject to the deconstruction of the hierarchical opposition between the Kurdish minority and the Turkish majority. She analyzed the ‘Kurdish’ resistance through the post-structural understanding of power, which provides a conception of transformative resistance. She discussed the ‘transformative’ aspect of Kurdish linguistic resistance through the interviews conducted with Kurdish intellectuals in European diaspora and in Turkey. She argued that the viewpoints of Kurdish intellectuals in European diaspora are much more vocalized when it comes to stimulating a trans-national outlook.