 I think we're on, Dina. OK, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this exciting talk by Dr. Zeynab Kaya on Kurdish nationalism. You can see all the, in relation to her most recent book, which is here. If you want to buy it, you will find it. I think Aki would put it in the chat. So without further ado, Zeynab is a graduate in international relations from the LSE. She has been, most recently, well, she has been teaching in international development and gender at SOAS. And she's also a visiting research fellow at the LSE Middle East Institute. Her work is on transformation of Kurdish nationalism and territorial identity. And I think that would be the topic that she would be speaking about. She also has five years of experience as a postdoctoral research fellow at the LSE. And her research interests are in gender, violence, peace, development in Iraq, and particularly in relation to Kurdish nationalism. So the format of this talk, I will introduce myself at the end, the format of this talk, Zeynab will talk for about half an hour to 40 minutes. And we encourage you to put your questions in the little tag that says Q&A at the bottom of the Zoom bar. And for those people joining from Facebook, we will collect your questions as they come in. Once the talk is finished, I will pose the questions to Zeynab and she will answer them in order of appearance. So first come, first served, but also depending on the importance and the relevance of the question to the topic. So this is the series of lectures and book launches is hosted by the SOAS Middle East Institute. And it is we are, I am the chair of the Center for Palestine Studies. My name is Dina Mata. And I have my colleague, Nargis Farzad, who is the chair of the Center for Iranian Studies. And we co-chair these meetings every Tuesday and we are supported by the excellent service of Aki Elborzi from the SOAS Middle East Institute who is supporting and organizing all these events. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Zeynab and Zeynab the floor. Or the screen is yours, really. Thank you Dina for the introduction and thank you to you, Nargis and Aki for giving me the opportunity to talk about my book at this event. So as I will begin only, I will try to keep it short, not so that we don't bore the audience too much with a long talk and then so that we have time for question and answers, which I'm very interested in hearing questions and answers. So I'll try to keep it as short as possible. It's difficult to put a whole book into a 20, 30 minutes talk but I will do my best. This book is basically is based on my PhD research at the LSE in international relations. And after the PhD was over, I put the project to the side basically and I didn't touch it for a while and then I started rewriting it. So it went through a huge rewriting process. It has changed a lot from the PhD. What it basically tries to do is to tell the story of the idea of Kurdistan and its territorial imagination. And while doing this, it tries to examine and revisit the history of Kurdish nationalism. So that's kind of the main driving idea behind the book. So I'll first give you a brief overview of the case. I know most people are probably aware of the case and its backgrounds. I won't go into too much detail. I'll try to give an overview of the key arguments made in the book and then overview of the chapters. So in terms of the Kurdish history, Kurt and in relation to their territoriality and the way they promote their idea of a homeland, of idea of territory, as we all know, the Kurds have challenged the borders and national identities of the states they inhabit. And this is particularly the case since the early 20th century, but we see Kurdish nationalism and different challenges being posed in the 19th century as well. And the map of Kurdistan, the greater map of Kurdistan, which is a huge territory that encompasses the territories of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, also part of Armenia, is a very evident symbol of this idea of territory. It presents itself as a unified ideal homeland and this presentation is taking place in a region with a very complex history of ethnic cultural and political background. So it's a very heterogeneous geography. It's occupied historically and today occupied by different ethnic religious groups, such as Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Yazidis, Christians and many other groups that I won't mention here. And it's also a territory in which multiple political claims have been made over and over it, from the rivalry between the Safavids and the Ottomans in the previous centuries to the engagement of the international powers, the colonial powers in the region and their efforts to control and different claims by the populations living in the region for their own kind of ownership of the territory from the Kurds, from Armenians, from Turks, from Assyrians and so on and so forth. So it's a contested territory. The main Kurdish political actors in the contemporary world today and the Kurdish political actors in each country that Kurds are located, claim some ownership of territory or control over a part of the state's territory that they are located in. And they are usually careful to restrict their claims to within the state they reside. And all these Kurdistan, so there are multiple Kurdistan's in terms of the way they have been divided by these nation states, they have been geographically, economically, culturally marginalized in each state. And they have also historically been buffer zones between regional and colonial powers. So basically the idea of greater Kurdistan is important because rather than it presents Kurdistan, puts Kurdistan at the center rather than in the margins as it's been presented by other nationalists or by other nationalist projects in the region. The map of Kurdistan is very much embedded in the consciousness of the majority of Kurdish people. This is the case both for the region and also outside the region, especially in the diaspora. The territory it depicts have never been recognized as a state. It does not have a unified political leadership. However, the concept of Kurdistan as a cultural and a political notion survives the reality. And it exists in the minds of Kurdish nationalists, their supporters as well as those who deny it. The map of greater Kurdistan is frequently used in Kurdish political programs on political party flags, on the walls of homes and offices. It's silhouette is even has been used accessories as an accessory as key rings, brochures or necklaces. However, what's particularly in those 40s that it's not only Kurdish nationalists who use this map, but also outsiders use it to show the location of the Kurdish homeland or to show the Kurdish demographic presence in the area. And this is basically the case for some state offices or international media. They use the contours of this map as well to show the demographic presence of the Kurds. So why this project? When I started working on this project and I'm coming from an IR background, I've always been interested in political history, a bit of a historical sociology, long-dury understanding of historical continuities and how the long-term historical contact and structures shape contemporary political assertions. And I'm also very much interested in the role of geography and territory in politics. So I wanted to examine and understand the Kurdish political project and its territoriality. And I think this is because it has important implications for thinking about national self-determination the idea of international political legitimacy and how these are pursued, how these are used by non-nationalists, by non-state actors. So I try to answer several questions, for instance, one of them is why and how has the map of Kurdistan, has the map of Greater Kurdistan become such a widespread image? What bolsters this idea of Kurdistan and what is the perceived underlying relationship between nation and territory that kind of gives resonance to this idea of Kurdistan map? So when I talk about widespread use of Kurdistan map, it doesn't mean that everyone uses this map, it doesn't mean that everyone accepts this map. So there is no, it also doesn't mean that not every Kurd or those who are supporting the Kurds are aiming for a unified Kurdistan in the ways in which this map is depicting. And so however it has a resonance, it has a symbolic importance and it also has a political importance. Many would claim that especially nationalists would claim that the relationship between nation and territory that this map seems to project is a straightforward relationship. So it is the Kurdish territory. So this is Kurdistan or it's the idea that it depicts a people's natural and actual homeland. And for most Kurds, it's a certain in the case. So for its supporters, the map of great Kurdistan makes the case that Kurds are a nation without a state whose homeland has been divided by four states. So this is the case, what I want to do in the book is to push beyond this question of whether Kurdistan is actual, whether it's viable. What I want to try to avoid, I'm not looking into whether this Kurdistan as a territory exists or not because clearly I believe that territorial imaginations or territory and identity, any territory and any identity, including states territories, including state identities, these are constructed. These are politically, historically, socially constructed, economy constructed notions. They are not necessarily natural or perennial ideas that have always existed and that will always exist. And this is the case for, I think, any homeland, whether it's real homeland, I mean, we thought real, I don't mean real, but whether it is a homeland that has been internationally recognized as an entity, as a nation state or not, that doesn't matter. It doesn't make it any less constructed even if it's recognized. So that's kind of, so that's why I wanted to push beyond that idea of where does this Kurdistan map come from, where does this nation and territory idea, the connection is coming from and how has that been established and how has that changed and transformed over time historically. And I wanted to forge a connection between the evolution of the idea of Kurdistan and the international political context. So the ways in which international political legitimacy, principles such as self-determination, sovereignty, have changed and transformed. Their meaning and implications have changed and transformed. And there's also international politics. The geopolitics and the politics, these transformations historically in the long term have affected the ways in which Kurdistan as an idea has changed and evolved. So I want to, in the basically, I tried to trace this connection between the international context and the Kurdish political project, the territorial project and show the links between the two. And that's basically a brief introduction to what the book is trying to do. And more specifically, I tried to do three things in the book. As I mentioned, I want to discuss the link between people and territory in the case of Kurdistan and Kurdistan and explore how this link is articulated and how it has evolved over time and why it has evolved in the way it has. And here in this context, political maps, I'll go into the little bit of the literature on political maps and political geography, how much political maps are powerful tools in presenting the idea of a homeland. They have the power to shape people's images of the world as we have seen in the world map, for instance, immediately that image starts, has some assumptions and those assumptions resonate with the way we see the world and vice versa. So they are visual expressions of apparently homogeneous national territories. And in reality, actually, political maps are not simply reflections of how the world territory is partitioned. They are the outcomes of political projects and imaginations as well. And in return, these imaginations, these visual presentations shape our perceptions of the world territory. So that's kind of, for building on that idea, what's more important, I think, is to understand the narrative these maps have been situated within. What type of lenses are we using to understand and interpret territoriality? Territoriality being the relationship between nation and territory. And how conceptions of nation, national identity, identity itself or territoriality have different meanings and different historical periods from the 19th century in the colonial period, they had different connotations and different geographies. In the World War I process, again, they obtained and started to have different uses and definitions, again, different in the Cold War period, in the decolonization, the post-Cold War period. So I trace all these major historical processes and then situate these concepts in relation to Kurdistan. And I think this map, what I found very useful in my opinion is that it's very useful, the map of great occurs and the Kurdish case, I think in general, is a very rich and useful case to explore wider questions around maps, self-determination and territory. It helps us, I think, navigate through a complex, temporal and conceptual field in which ideas of self-determination and territoriality have changed and evolved over time. So basically, that's kind of one of the key aims of the book. The second aim is to situate the Kurds within the international political and normative framework. So I try to understand the transformation of the historical, historical evolution of the norms of legitimacy in the world, rules of legitimacy in the world and particularly in the Western world because of the engagement of the Western actors in the Ottoman territories in the Kurdistan area. It looks at dominant rules of legitimacy in different historical periods and examines how Kurds position themselves within that normative framework and its politics. And Kurds not only were, they were, the analysis shows that Kurds were not just passive actors in this process. They were actually actively incorporating these ideas, interpreting them in their own way and incorporating them into their political agendas and using them both within their own national project and their mobilization efforts, but also in the ways in which they tried to seek support from the international actors in the conferences in several platforms. And indeed the map of greater Kurdistan has been developed and communicated through the use of the dominant international norms that give legitimacy to nationalist demands. And self-determination is the key concept, is the key norm which is, I'm heavily focused on throughout the book and I trace the transformation of self-determination throughout the book. And then, so I try to trace the, historically trace the meaning of self-determination and how, what it meant for the Kurds and several Kurdish political agendas in the historical periods. And thirdly, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, I'll briefly try to explain what I, how I tried to do that in my summary of the chapters. But the third thing I tried to do in this book was to move, contribute to the literature on Kurdish politics and Kurdish nationalism by focusing on them with a non-state-centric perspective. Most of the Kurds, you know, most of the studies and there is a, the Kurdish literature is getting richer and richer to be honest and it's been for the last 20 years, it's grown a lot. But most of the political analysis on the Kurds focuses on each Kurdish group within each state and very much studies it in relation to the politics of the each state they are located in. There aren't many work that looks at the Kurdish politics as a totality in the long term or how they engage with the international context. And the international analysis is usually done in the context of foreign policy analysis, how the Kurdish Kurds have an impact on each state's foreign policy and so on and so forth. So what I tried to do is to move away from a state-centric examination of Kurdish politics and try to explain Kurdish political actors directly engaging with the international context, treating Kurdish national actors as international actors. And indeed they have been international actors right from the beginning as non-state actors since the 19th century. Therefore, I think it's important to have this kind of, this kind of lens I think provides different insights on the case. And I think also it gives us the opportunity to drive ideas and lessons for the wider theoretical conceptual issues that we discuss in politics, in international relations, and to the historical examinations because it's, as I said, it's a rich case. It's situated in a very complex geography and historical context. And therefore there is a lot to be gained from engaging with the Kurdish politics more theoretically and conceptually. So that's basically what I try to do with the book in general, conceptually. So if I want to go into what I did in each chapter more specifically, and I will try to keep this as brief as possible. In the first chapter, after introduction, the chapter looks into the Kurdish territoriality under the Ottoman rule. And it's basically offers an analysis of the conceptual and historical underpinnings of the idea of Kurdistan. And it's later geographic manifestations. This chapter tries to explain the attribution of modern meanings of territory and nations. So it basically, most of the analyzers or most of the perspectives takes the conceptions and ideas of nation and territory as we understand them today and then apply to the past territories and nations. And that retrospective look will always give us the correct kind of understanding of what territory meant back in the time or what Kurds meant with their idea of nationhood. And so I'm not claiming to say, I'm giving answers to this one, but I'm just basically trying to question these things and try to understand the underpinnings of the idea of Kurdistan in this context and look at the, how Kurdish nationalist historiography understands and have defined Kurdistan, how it has embedded the idea of Kurdistan into the historiography. It looks into territoriality of the tribal leaders, for instance, who revolted against Ottomans in the 19th century. So that's basically, and it traces the idea of the concept of Kurdistan, for instance, going back to the 12th century, its uses and then how these uses have been used in the nationalist historiography and what it means for the Kurdish nationalist agenda and historiography. So that's kind of what the first chapter does. The second chapter is on the orientalist views of national identity and colonial maps of Kurdistan. This one focuses on the maps of Kurdistan produced in the 19th century and early 20th centuries by Western travelers and colonial officers. And here I try to situate this, these within the conceptions of the Western or colonial conceptions of what nation is, what's how to termination is, who deserves to be a nation, this very civilizationist, modernist, colonialist understandings of nationalism and national identity. So certain states or certain nations are worthy of being a nation. So that's a very kind of top-down understanding of that. And I think that this course has very much shaped the way in which Kurdish politics and Kurdish groups or Kurdish project has understood today as well. This idea that Kurds don't have a unified political agenda, they are divided and they don't agree with each other. All these things you see in the writings of Western travelers and this is usually presented as something negative because when they don't have a political leadership they won't be able to establish their own state. However, these are perceptions that are coming from a particular colonial context and I think sometimes unfairly describes the Kurdish politics for instance today. When we look at the Kurds, again one of the biggest criticism is that it's divided, it's diversified, it's divided, et cetera, et cetera. And indeed this does create a lot of impediments for the Kurdish political project and causes problems but at the same time we need to kind of think about the lenses that we are using about what is national identity, what is unification. And if you look at the Kurdish case with those assumptions then we might see the situation in a negative way but if we see this diversity as a source of adaptability and survival this could be the case as well because Kurds despite being in a very difficult political historical context have managed to survive and has managed to adapt themselves to the different political climates and issues. So I underpin those ideas basically in this chapter looking into the colonialist assumptions about nationhood and then how these were used to define the Kurdishness, the idea of Kurdishness and Kurdistan. And these sources actually have become sources of mapping for by Kurdish political actors as well. This chapter that's following that is looking into the particular period, World War I period where the Sonian self-determination became an international norm. And then this is the period where the hopes for Kurdistan rose and fall. And it explains how Kurdish nationalism adopted actually to the international framing for legitimate statehood. What does legitimate statehood mean? And then they tried to frame their project within that context. And this period was the height of Kurdish hopes for Seder as I mentioned but these did not come to fruition and Kurdish political elite presented in this process their Kurdistan maps to international authorities to receive support for their project and like similar to many other groups all around the world that did that in the Versailles conference. So it looks into those processes and then connects again the project to the international political and normative context. The other chapter following that is decolonization and Kurdish nationalism during decolonization and the Cold War. This is I think a very significant period for state formation worldwide especially in the decolonization process. And in this process the Kurds did not try to tap into these decolonization self-determination notion but it didn't it wasn't in the end it wasn't useful for them. But in this process Kurdish nationalism in in all the contexts became more of a mass movement they increased their ability to mobilize and most of the Kurdish groups adapted themselves to the political ideological positioning you know aligned themselves with the more kind of Marxist-Leninist ideologies and they diversified in that sense. So I tried to understand the transformation of Kurdish nationalism in this very long process where the international political context was very much ideologized it was ideologically divisive politically divisive and Kurds navigated this context really actually effectively and their interactions across the borders between like Turkey and around Syria and Turkey their connections increased they always had connections they always cross-border ethnic connection was always there and political affiliations were there but this increased over time and this is also the period when you know communication tools started to be used more and more like radio transmissions and that type of technology also had a huge impact and this is also a period when most of the Kurdish political dissidents saw asylum in Europe and elsewhere and this also added another momentum to the transformation of Kurdish nationalism so I look into those processes both in the region and internationally and then the fifth chapter looks at Kurds and international society after the Cold War here obviously self-determination state formation or state legitimacy changed again with the end of the Cold War issues around human rights, state legitimacy fragile states you know states responsibilities around protection and so on and so forth democracy and we see again Kurdish political actors very effectively transitioning in this process as well tapping to this international normative context with this new emerging context and adapting themselves accordingly and this basically these nearly transformed international norms that became embedded over time were used to frame and shape the goals of each Kurdish nationalist group and I feel like I'm running out of time so I'm just going to try to conclude that so I dedicated a separate chapter to the Kurdish diaspora obviously this chapter covers a long historical period this looks at how Kurdistan map went global how the role of Kurdish activists in the diaspora were influential in making the map of great Kurdistan a widely used symbol of Kurdish territoriality and the Kurdish diaspora managed to combine the prevalent normative and political discourses of human rights and justice and democracy with their identity based territoriality and they promoted more so than the Kurdish political actors in the region a pan Kurdish idea not all the diaspora actors but this pan ideas became more prominent in the Kurdish in the diaspora context so I there are and then you know the map became a more visual tool and more much more widespread use tool among the Kurds also outsiders began to use this map this political map to depict the demographic location of the Kurds in this context and the final chapter basically offers a recap of these issues and you know make some assessment of the post Syrian war context and the impact on the direction of the political project and that's basically I hope not very long summary of the ideas in the book and thank you very much for listening and I look forward to the questions okay thank you very much and that was really very concise and you didn't go over time you actually were within the time limit but thanks a lot may I may I begin like I've got a lot of questions around maps and you know mapping and people asking why you know about even connections to the cover of the book and the idea of maps and so on but I want to think maybe if I may in relation to your last chapter which is on the diasporas do you engage with questions of solidarity you know politics with the Kurdish populations or is that a question that you did not approach at all Absolutely I look into the ways in which the idea of co-ethnic presence in different host states and galvanizing support for the homeland and promotion of the ideal homeland but also the account of the violations of human rights and political rights in the region and what the states are doing and informing the international audiences about what's going on in these countries so that has been a huge component of the diaspora not all the diaspora obviously the politically active Kurdish diasporas work so there has definitely been strong signs of solidarity in historically but especially we saw it particularly in the post-Syrian war after the Syrian war and when ISIS was attacking for instance Kobani and what was going on in Rojava there a huge international solidarity effort was developed in support of the Kurds on the ground that were fighting against ISIS but also those who were affected by violence and conflict I'm going to ask questions from the audience obviously the first question was about whether we could see some maps I'll prepare them actually I'm happy to show them now or if you want to ask other questions while I'm preparing them The next question would it be easier for the Kurds if they leave the PKK line I mean the communist phrase is very controversial in Europe especially Eastern Europe so perhaps you could comment on this particular point if they leave the PKK line yes it's a difficult question because obviously the PKK it's a big organization it's been around for decades and it has become a key actor in the Kurdish political in the Kurdish political movement and many Kurds would argue that those who are explicitly supporting PKK or not that many achievements have been done thanks to the sacrifices that PKK has made over time so the Kurdish political actors again even though they don't want to support PKK directly or they don't explicitly open the support but they don't really deny it either or say we have no relationship with them or we don't recognize them as a representative because the transformation and formation of the Kurdish political movement is a connection with the PKK's movement as well as other political actors in Iran, in Syria, in Turkey and in Iraq therefore because I have a historical lens and approach in general I would say it's very difficult to this is a political question I guess and as an academic I may not be able to answer that but I also understand the reasoning behind this question the communist line or the PKK line or the kind of Marxist line has been a disadvantage for the Kurdish movement especially during the Cold War period and after the Cold War although with the USSR they had strong connections and links and today this agenda does not necessarily fit in with the western kind of normative framework and then this limits their ability to forge relationships alliances with the western actors not that this is desirable they may not I'm not saying this is a desirable relationship but in a very volatile region those kinds of connections sometimes end up being useful as well so I think that's all I will say about this question I'm sorry it's not a clear answer but that's kind of my thinking thank you that's fair enough and then there's another question asking about we hear more about Kurds from Iraq but would you have any comments about Iranian Kurdistan or discourses from them did you provide in the book any information on Kurds in Iran? yes absolutely so I talked extensively about the Mahabad Republic that was established in 1946 right after the Second World War when the zones were created under the control of the USSR and the western allied forces and Iran in that context the Kurdish political actors saw an opportunity to create a republic which lasted 11 months so I talked quite a bit about that which is a really milestone in the Kurdish national historiography it's the only statehood that they formed they attained and it was a republic that was quite ahead of its time, quite progressive so I talked about that and then I also talked about the Kurdish movements in the Cold War period where they were code in the Islamic Revolution and all that internal Iranian political context that ended up and also this perceived relationship close relationship between Iranian identity and Kurdish identity and how much this has shaped the Kurdish nationalist movement or Kurdish national identity in Iran slightly different than in Turkey I mean I think in every state the Kurdish national identity has transformed in the last 100 years differently so I talk about that particular context of Iran and then the current position of the Kurdish movements how much they have become quite marginalised and they are quite active or more active in the border areas whereas in other air in the other states I guess the Kurdish political movements are a bit more visible and more influential and more central but the Kurdish Iranians have always had very strong connections with the other Kurdish groups especially the Iranian and Turkish groups and PKK also has been organising in Iran for a long time so there is a lot of alliances and co-Curdish connections going on across the border in that context it is a context that I know the least about the Iranian context which is my fault but also I guess not much research has been done it's coming up now but when I was doing my PhD in the 2000s it was mainly discussed in the context of Iranian state and historical processes but that literature is developing which is great so a question around the language, the role of language and another question which is whether you could say something about Kurdish nationalism, whether it's based on the concept of a sovereign nation state or whether it is envisaged to include degrees of autonomy within a larger quality like for example Wales or Scotland within the United Kingdom so how is it talked about in terms of the nationalistic discourse and the language question? I wouldn't be able to say that there is one Kurdish nationalist discourse there are different Kurdish nationalist movements even within Turkey for instance Kurdish desires around statehood, autonomy or non autonomy, they all exist but if we talk about the biggest political Kurdish actors in the Middle East one of them is the Iraqi political parties KDP and PUNK and other being the PKK historically initially was demanding independent separation but they gave up that goal and they said they want a solution within the borders of Turkey and they talk about autonomy a lot but their political leader Öcalan has developed this idea of democratic capitalism which is emphasizing local democracy, it has elements of anarchy in it a very localised democracy where the power is dispersed and the possibility of connection between different so it's horizontally connected another vertical kind of system but a horizontally connected system and autonomous regions or local democracy that's kind of the idea and it's very different from the western typical nation state idea they don't like the idea of nation state they think it's at the root of the loss of problems that the people are experiencing not only the Kurds but also others whereas the KRG model for instance mainly I guess promoted by KDP is more nation state focus and I think it's a good idea more although officially the leadership talks about they want to be part within a federal Iraq they want to maintain their regional autonomy but once in a while this idea of independence comes up and I guess they might be perceiving in the long term a possibility of a statehood in the long term and that's definitely I think their aspiration and they want to do this through being close the allied with the western states especially the US and UK but then when we talk about there are multiple so many Kurdish political actors in many contexts there are so many Kurdish Syrian you know there are multiple political agendas and they all have different ideas and conceptions about this so what I describe now what I provide here doesn't necessarily correspond to all the existing positions in the region that the Kurdish political actors adopt or the ordinary Kurdish people to Kurdish populations perceive. Okay thank you this kind of comes to you know the fact that the Kurdish people's view of nationalism or the nation state there's a related question which is quite interesting which is you know the question of maps and the map you know so one attendee said that I saw the map on the advert for the meeting and would like to hear a bit more about the significance of maps to Kurdish people in relation to this another question when did the first attempt to map the greater Kurdistan start and why I think you've touched on that but maybe you could answer that let me actually open the figures I'm not sure if I'm a host whether I can share my screen I think you can yes I'm a co-host now so I'm just going to share images so the map is really so this is let me share my screen so this is the map produced by Sherif Pashin who was representative to the Versailles conference Kurdish delegation leader of the Kurdish delegation that was only very small he was the only person that was in the delegation so he prepared this map of Kurdistan and he presented this map he wrote a memorandum that accompanied this map and but then he wasn't recognized as the representative of the Kurds by other Kurdish political actors in the region so some of the Kurdish political actors sent telegrams to the conference saying Pasha doesn't represent us so this is one of the I think the first official example of a map that was produced by a Kurdish political actor might you be able to make it a bit larger I don't know if you can double click I have this from an archive I might have a redraw version of this I have a redraw version of this in the book in the book thank you and then this is for instance another map this is by a modern scholar this is a more demographic map but as you can see the contours of the map very much corresponds to the map of Kurdistan this is a more modern produced in the 1990s another image that I used this is more like internet based mapping attempts by the Kurds about where are the Kurds this is a map by the CIA in the 1980s I think it's going back to 1960s map of Kurdistan it's very unclear but you can see this very light colour here that kind of is depicting the map this is a map produced by David McDowell in his book showing distribution of Kurds but again the map very much corresponds to the shape of the Kurdistan map what's interesting about the Kurdistan maps is that over time they just get bigger and bigger geographically they have connections to the Mediterranean Sea this is a map for instance used by the Washington Post and there are several examples of such maps being used they are called Kurdish populated area or Kurdish inhabited area but you come across this map in the economies in Washington Post in other international sources let me see if I have any other historical maps I can't find other maps where are they so the question of it is very important I think the main thing is that the Kurdish nationalism there are discussion different opinions about when Kurdish nationalism began when did it become a nationalist political movement and different scholars but there is no doubt that the World War I period was a really key process in the culmination of this idea of Kurdish nationalism as an ideal for a statehood and this became more explicitly expressed by Kurdish nationalists and Kurdish political groups and this period also corresponds with massive international mapping effort in the world so if you just look at World War I and post World War I period so in that context I think there is an interesting connection between how much mapping even more so than before I think was used as a tool by international, by local by any actor in the world in the transformation of the world transitioning from monarchical regimes and empires into nation states and then I think the emergence of Kurdish political movement as a more kind of nationalistic and more visible movement there is a coincidence temporal coincidence there and I think in that process mapping became a really key tool as well for the Kurds because it corresponded with the historical context as well thank you so we've got a few more questions coming in very quickly I'm not giving too long answers maybe I should keep my answers short so there is a question I'm just going to try and get the two together so there is a question about whether you could talk a bit about overlapping of territories with high Kurdish and Armenian populations in Anatolia treaty of Sabras 1920 how did this treaty affect the issue of Kurdistan and so on and then in the case of Kurdistan maps how important have they been for Kurdish nationalism within Turkey and yeah I think if you could answer these and then there was a question about western travelers map if they were a lot and how did they affect the way Kurdistan is imagined today to territorial territory and maps and then I'll put together other questions as we go on the Armenian question it said I can go on and on about that but there was a rivalry between the Armenian and Kurdish political projects in the World War I period so the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and but the Armenian delegation in the Versailles conference was much more effective and was much better organized and very much supported by Armenian diaspora so they were more effective in communicating their goals and their relationships with the great powers of the time was stronger so there was definitely the Kurds didn't have influence if that's the right word and then there were debates around you know that the Sherif Pasha drew the map but took the one lake region which is considered as a key part of the Armenian homeland out he kept that part out of his map and then it was argued that they made a deal with the Armenian leader basically that was the delegation and that was one of the key things that he was criticized by the other Kurds saying this area is also Kurdistan you can't exclude that so there was that going on and in that process basically the eastern Turkey became it was an area that was up for grabs Turks, Kurds, Armenians would it become a mandate under the British rule and Russians were very influential as well at least until 1917 until the Revolution so it was an arena of huge international political rivalry so in that context basically after the agreement basically gave the Kurdish open the possibility of the Kurdish state food and with lots of really strict conditions actually it didn't actually propose the Kurdish when you look at the article 6465 it's not openly saying permitting a Kurdish state food but it's just publishing some procedures and possible certain rules around that and you can see it's quite conditional and quite unlikely and then with the Ottoman Empire basically the agreement was never ratified and the needy emerging Turkish political movement, Turkish movement basically rejected it and then a new treaty was signed and the treaty was basically the end of the idea of Kurdistan in that sense however the provisions of the sale was partly implemented in Iraqi Kurdistan so an autonomous region of Kurdistan around slave money was created and this lasted for a while but then its leader declared independence and this was under the British mandate and then there was back and forth and basically the British ended this autonomous region but that was kind of an implication of the sale treaty's provision and there were questions around the inter-Kurdish conflicts and kind of conflicts between different views amongst us in different territories and how does that relate to the idea of a Kurdish nationalism or whether you are talking about Kurdish nationalisms in the plural so the questions kind of relate to each other so if you could comment on whether you kind of looked at inter-Kurdish conflicts particularly for example in terms of conflicts in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraqi Kurds that damage cooperation and unity between the Kurds and so on would you have any comments? So when I was tracing the historical evolution of Kurdish political movement I was also looking into the regional context and how it's changing and transforming so while there were when you look at the Kurdish history inter-Kurdish conflict was there and still is there and inter-Kurdish collaboration is also there but some of these but some of these inter-Kurdish divisions have been quite harmful particularly for instance the divisions within Iraqi Kurdistan between PUK and KDP basically it's like a two state system in the Iraqi Kurdistan region or the the rivalry, the regional rivalry between PKK and KRG and if there are kind of armed conflict between them they might have stayed quite a small scale but in the past in the 1990s and 1980s there has been more kind of a slightly larger scale military kind of engagements between these groups and there has also been collaborations for instance in the rescue of the Yazidi population in 2014 different Kurdish groups together and collaborated and coordinated together too and in the case of Kobani as well so it's there I think in any political movement you have internal divisions and connections but it's such a huge geography and I guess there are multiple factors that shape them but anyway I'll try to stop There's an interesting question about the right to self-determination it could be argued that the right to self-determination of people is evolving again and focused on decolonization of self and community de-territorialization away from and more towards mobility away from identity how is Kurdish framing of the project shifting into such a future understanding because another question related to this which is is there something that we could call pan-Kurdism more possible than pan-Arabism which is a huge question but then if you could comment on the first one then we could see what other questions we have in relation to current politics there is definitely self-determination as an idea cultural self-determination non-territorial self-determination self-determination as mobility or ability to choose more kind of individual right-based definitions and uses of self-determination are increasing and the kind of nation-state self-determination has definitely less resonance in general so Kurds especially I would say Iraqi Kurdish political movement is not tapping to those new conceptions of self-determination necessarily the PKK model is not necessarily explicitly tapping to those conceptions but in their ideology in the way they define democracy self-determination defined in that way self-determination and I have to add it's a very complex principle it has a very complex history and it has different meanings as an ideology as a political tool as a principle as a norm and it means different things in different contexts so I think I'll leave it there but it's a really good question I'm sorry Pan-Curdism Pan-Curdism and Pan-Arabism the person who asked this question do they think that Pan-Arabism is possible they probably need to put that answer can I put in here a question that I was thinking about they're asking A about the terminology that you use your book obviously someone who's not read your book first that they're interested in how you use you know Turkish Kurds or Iranian Kurds or Syrian Kurds or so and they wanted to know what terminology did you use in your book did you use for example northern, southern, eastern and western and it's and they're wondering you know scholars, academics or whoever and they refer to these Kurds as part of the larger countries that surround them does that not reinforce the current borders of the larger towns and I think it related to that there is someone else question that again says that when you talking about the different levels of autonomy parts again Turkish, Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian parts of Kurdistan would that not gradually lead to the fragmentation of a Kurdish culture and therefore will make the idea of a concept of a Kurdish state disappear further and oil so a couple of people are wondering whether you can just touch upon oil in this region and then you know the question of the autonomy or independence I'll go quiet again I was just I couldn't resist those questions because I was also thinking about the concept of Kurds under the four states that surround them Yeah I'll take the terminology concept I guess it's very loaded any terminology you using this context you know they use Bakur or they use Kurdistan, Kurdistan or not I try to avoid those terminologies and say you know talk about Kurds in Turkey or talk about Kurdish political actors using their names or organizations rather than relating them to a particular state territory but you know trying to but you know and when I talk about the Iraqi Kurdistan or Iraqi Kurdistan is more accepted because it's a region in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government and the Kurdistan region of Iraq but others are mainly Kurds in Turkey, Kurds in Syria or Kurdish political actors in Syria in Turkey so that's what I tried to do I hope I did it consistently because when you're writing sometimes you know you just like write things without realizing but that was kind of what I was trying to do In terms of the different absolutely these you know they have been Kurds have been living in these four different countries with different political cultures with different ideological doctor nations and national doctor nations and historical socio-economic contexts in about a hundred years and a hundred years obviously has a significant role in the way in which it shapes the way Kurdish people position themselves in terms of identity in terms of political affiliation and so on and so forth and this has led to you know as you can see the Kurdish political actors in each region they have very different characteristics and goals and types of activities that they carry out so that's one thing so that's definitely the case however I think even a nation state whenever you know if the geography is very mixed it's a big geography and I think in any context even in the UK or in another country you see different cultural identities or different cultural characteristics emerging you know there is not that's in me that you know states don't or a nation doesn't have to have a unified identity to be a nation and because I define nation in more kind of constructive terms it's about what people choose to be and how they want to define themselves and how their socio-economic background is shaping them rather than you're born with it and you have to kind of maintain a unified stick to the same kind of identity to be able to continue to exist and survive so I think being in different states is not necessarily it's an impediment maybe in many ways but at the same time you know the Kurdish diaspora has done a lot of work to maintain that kind of identity you know working on the vernaculars Kurdish Kunmanshi and surrounding vernaculars to create a shared kind of language but also the communication tools and being able to travel you know that has definitely connected so even though different Kurdish groups in different states might have different characteristics or goals but the sense of Kurdish identity or shared identity is there there's no denying that I think and that sense of shared identity is actually quite you know increasing so there's these opposite things happening as always you know social processes and politics are quite complex and you have unifying forces but at the same time divide diversifying forces and they just work together to create this complex situation so that's all I will say on that oil I guess you know the Kirkuk issue is the main reference here that's been talked about and I think you know for the Iraqi Kurdistan's liability oil is a key and the dispute territories and the oil issue has been a key issue I guess in Iraqi Kurdistan in shaping their relationship with the Baghdad government and also in creating the marketing the counters of the Kurdish goal and the viability of the future Kurdish state so it's kind of I think they are very much embedded the idea of oil territory and Kirkuk is very much embedded in the idea of a you know state building in the long term for Kurdistan and I think that's all I will say about that Yeah before I give the floor back to Dina to come with question there is a question several questions from Lady Belinda I'll just use her first possibly with an affinity with the region and understanding she says I have I'm looking at a map on my wall which is 1740 and she was obviously referring that obviously the mapping of Kurdistan perhaps is not a very recent event it's the region has been preoccupying the cartographers you know yeah so there are several maps produced by mappers, geographers, colonial officers and also entrepreneurs and you know those who want to invest in the region and you know so there are lots of maps produced in the 18th century Italians for instance and the French and the English Germans, Russians they all have maps produced in that period and I was going to mention it earlier for example Zeki Pasha he was originally from Iraq, the Iraq section but then it was Ottoman Empire he produced a map in 1934 that was very much relying on the colonial maps of the of the old period and before the physical maps were produced Kurdistan it was also defined in terms of you know boundaries so to the south there's river and you know that kind of definition for instance by Sherefan Bikdisi in the 16th century and before that as well so it has not only been mapped but also visually verbally mapped as well Thank you Nages for bringing these points really important ones but also there's a question about the diaspora you know since we're talking about Kurds in different parts of kind of the vicinity of the region so what about the Kurds in diaspora and you know the question wanted to have more you know more engagement with that and the question said since you used the ideological territoriality have you stepped upon or came to the assumption of certain territorial enclaves of Kurds within continental Europe so to clarify is it fair to say that engagement of Kurdish diaspora in Europe is somehow beyond conventional territorialities and then again you know sort of how can is it fair to make assumptions that specific cities, towns within Europe have a stronger influence by such a diaspora in all aspects so have you looked into that and yeah I think if you could answer that can we move on to some others? Yeah diaspora organizations talk about the unified Kurdistan or a greater Kurdistan that idea more they use the map, the symbolic map more often than the regional actors as well and especially among the younger generation that's particularly visible and the in the 1960s, 70s, 80s that the Kurds in Paris were very effective and the first Kurdish institute was established in Paris by Syrian Kurds after the French mandate and they came to France and they established and then Stockholm is another city, London, Brussels so these are the Kurdish political actors and diaspora political actors are present in all cities in Europe also in the US in Australia but I would say these cities have been the most influential, they have organizations they have formed in established libraries they carry out activities, awareness raising activities they also carry out lobbying activities particularly in Brussels for instance and then in terms of yeah so I hope that answers the question briefly and there's a question about the Lausanne Treaty whether that has been you know the one to reorganize the Turkish borders and do you believe that this moment could be given as it could be seen as a turning point about on Kurdish nationalism and then in terms of on Kurdish? Yeah could this be seen the question says do you believe this moment could be given as a turning point about Kurdish nationalism struggling for a greater Kurdish state and another question is around whether the frame using the frame of indigenous people to describe Kurds would be pertinent in the current in the current you know world contemporary conditions and then yeah okay I think if you could answer those two questions and then there's an interesting question about the methodologies of your work there's a difference between historical elements and contemporary cartography and discuses but for example talking about the usage and popularity of particular Kurdistan maps contemporarily what is the basis for your work here in terms of graphic research, media research or something else so about the Lausanne Treaty until the Lausanne Treaty there were still possible discussions especially held between the British and Kurdish, some of the Kurdish leaders around a formation of the Kurdistan north of Mesopotamia over time especially after the World War one ended the British became more and more interested in the southern Mesopotamia and kind of didn't want to deal with the Turks in a way or they didn't want to there was an idea of having a buffer zone a Kurdish buffer zone between the Turks and the British controlled Mesopotamia so those discussions all of them ended in the end with the Lausanne the possibility of the viability of forming a Kurdistan autonomous or as an independent state ended with the establishment of the Lausanne Treaty and basically it's a sign it's important because it's basically a proof that the British totally gave up on the idea of supporting the formation of the Kurdistan and not only within the Mesopotamia Iraq but also outside it indigenous, well I have looked at this literature very briefly and I wouldn't consider myself as an expert about indigenous self-determination so my answer would not be necessarily very much well founded so in terms of still having lands possessions political influence and political power when you look at eastern Turkey for instance or northern Iraq or the Kurdish populations and political actors on the ground are powerful in some ways I'm not talking about all the populations but there are kind of elite Kurdish political elite in those areas so in a way they haven't been deprived entirely of their possessions or rights but of course I'm not saying that their rights have been violated or they have been displaced they have been expelled from their villages and they have been forcefully moved from one part of the country to another those things also happen maybe we need to look into those indigenous arguments and I guess look into empirical cases and see rather than generalizing through all the Kurds maybe certain Kurdish groups might have experienced processes that might account for that kind of description but as I said this is an uninformed answer but in terms of suffering and in terms of dispossession and processes that look like colonization those processes have taken place in the region but is it the same way or was it the same exact same processes that are in Australia I don't know I haven't studied those contexts in terms of mapping and methodology yes my methodology so I'm not making the claim that these maps have been accepted by everyone and it's just that based on I looked at the political programs or political actors in the diaspora in the region and how they use this map whether they have used this map or not and then also through some of the international publications particularly the Washington Post and Economist and some of the state offices US State Departments and I have examples but my empirical research on this is not generalizable at all however the arguments behind these uses is what I'm interested in and how these are framed to promote this idea of Kurdistan is what I'm interested in and in order to understand that my methodology was historical sociology and long-duration analysis of the transformation of ideas and in relation to politics and embedding this the Kurdish political agenda within that long-duration transformation so that's what I try to do and when I was writing the book that kind of methodology is quite vague and because I looked at such a large geography including the diaspora and very long historical process but I have an IR background and I'm kind of interested in this big picture and generalizable things so empirically I wouldn't say my work is very empirically driven it's more kind of big picture explanation and a bit more conceptual and theoretically driven by using the story of Kurdistan to understand the historical transformation of the international context in relation to that and vice versa how they interacted with each other and going beyond the state analysis and making a connection between the international context and the non-state context or sub-state or transnational because Kurdish nationalism also has a very transnational and I mentioned as we talked about pan-Kurdishness, does it exist in the minds of PKK leaders, pan-Kurdism definitely exists for instance so it's also a transnational movement for the activities of diaspora so that's what I try to do methodologically so obviously I have this weakness of as an IR historical sociology it's quite general in that sense that's interesting so there is a book to be made in terms of looking how do they see how do they imagine the maps and so on because I think I might have missed a few one question is about Kurdish imagination of what a capital of the territory of Greater Kurdistan has changed historically based on political and military dynamics in the region and the specific developments in each of the four states of Turkey Iran, Iraq and Syria by capital I mean the political and nationalist imagination of a metropolitan centre for Kurdish struggle and unity how did shifting the territory of the capital impacted the various manifestation of the map of Greater Kurdistan so I think the question is not very clear but what I understand it as is how you know basically is there an imagination of a capital, is there a centre that kind of brings together this map if I understood the question correctly I think it depends on the historical context you are talking about so in the Ottoman Empire for instance during that period in the early 1800s a Kurdistan province was formed and it's capital was the Ardokar Ahmet in the south east of Turkey and the Ardokar is still considered as a capital by many Kurdish people I suppose you know and I like Kurdish political actors as well there's a strong political activism in that context so the Ardokar I would say Ahmet is a key one still is very central Erbil has also become quite prominently because especially after the 1991 with the formation of the no-fly zone and the formation establishment of universities the Arbil has become a kind of a window to open up to the global world in some ways so those scholars who are interested in the Kurds in Turkey for instance were able to travel to Erbil, make connections so it's becoming like a hub for inter-connections between the Kurdish groups in the region but also enabling a connection between the Kurds and Kurdish political actors and outsiders so I think Arbil has a different kind of dynamic I would say it's one of the keys but as a capital I don't know it depends on who you ask and when you ask them that's interesting. Nakis do you want to come in? I would just, there is one couple questions like this which slightly moving away from maps but it's about internal migrations that do you see now especially with what we call the Iraqi Kurdistan are you aware of or is there a monitoring of assessing of the movement of other Kurdish societies, communities, people trying to move there and if so what is the reception I suppose there is another question that perhaps alluded to the internal conflicts that how would they, how welcoming would Iraqi Kurdistan which has much more of an almost autonomous authority be towards accepting other Kurds and is there much desire of other communities to move there or are they rooted to where they reside whether it's Iran, Turkey, Syria again my answer will be based on my very narrow observations so I won't be able to make generalizations and my answer will be anecdotal but in the context of for instance I looked into displacement, internal displacement and refugees for the last couple of years and I visited the region a couple of times a year for five years or so and when I talked with Kurds from Syria coming from Rojava at their integration and the reception that they received from authorities and from the Kurds in Iraq were different whereas the Arabs coming from Syria received differently so there is definitely a sense of kinship there but also for instance in Dovuk they were also able to speak the language so they were able to find jobs and integrate easier and so on and so forth whereas for Arabs they had the language barrier in the displacement context so I think that would be the only reasonable empirical basis that I could rely on but in general I don't know for instance in the context of Iranian Kurds coming to Turkey or other places there is a sense of shared kinship I suppose and the Arabic language and Dovuk has received other Kurds from other parts of the region a lot and they are coming to study they are coming to visit and they open businesses and carry out work and live and so on and so forth so it's something that's kind of from what I understand from what I observe is a normal thing so even though I'm not entirely Kurdish I have a Kurdish background but I'm not from one and when I go to Erbil or Dovuk and I say I'm from one they're just like oh it's a much warmer kind of reception which is kind of when you're doing research it's not always useful it's just kind of a position that complicates the situation but yes I think there is definitely people are commenting that I mean I have to say we have a record number near record number of questions 75 and someone says that Zeynab you'll just have to come back because we've only touched upon some of the questions so anyway I'll pass it on back to Dina who may want to wrap up I was going to wrap up with the same comment saying that there are so many questions we need to understand because we had a lot of questions on politics and referendum and so on but I think the talk was kind of more wide ranging and kind of historically grounded and theoretically grounded so very many thanks to you for your elegance and eloquence and also for writing this book which we are all looking forward to and I think as a Palestinian so how do you mapping Palestine kind of thinking about the idea of mapping but it's so original as research and an idea that brings people together thank you very much thank you for leading thank you Zeynab thank you to our amazing audience we had more time and I tried to keep my answers short but I'm really delighted that I was able to talk about the book and hear all these very interesting questions thank you so much for inviting me and it was a pleasure to talk and engage with you and for giving me the opportunity to talk about my books that I really appreciated thank you and thank you for everyone who asked questions I wish we could go through all of them to make the court the questions absolutely, copy and paste them talking like I didn't get a chance to look at them definitely, I think there are some very interesting because some have referred to books or sources that they are aware of that they think might be of interest to you so we can certainly copy and paste them to send them to you yes, thank you the book is coming out as a paper copy so it's right now it's in hard copy very expensive you could hold it up to camera, we could perhaps like to see it or that would be very nice, and with a lovely map there it's coming out as a paper copy much cheaper later so hopefully it would be perfect, it's ridiculously expensive thank you for giving me the opportunity and thank you for all the questions okay, thanks all and thanks everyone thank you very much