Understanding Insurgency

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-108-83850-4
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 340 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 585 g

No insurgent movement can survive without some degree of popular support, but what does it mean to support an armed group? Focusing on the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which has come to global attention in recent years for its efforts in resisting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but has been present and active in the region for much longer, Francis O'Connor explores the first three decades of the PKK's insurgency in Turkey. Looking at how the relationship between armed groups and their supporters should be conceptually understood, how this relationship varies spatially and what role violence has in their relationship, he draws on Civil War, Social Movements and Rebel Governance literatures to outline how the PKK survived a military coup in 1980 and slowly won popular support through incipient forms of rebel governance, the targeted use of violence and a nuanced projection of its ideology and objectives. In doing so, it provides an historical narrative to an organisation which has managed to successfully resist NATO's second largest army with limited weapons for decades and has become a key player of Kurdish rights in the wider region.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Connor, Francis

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Revolutionäre Gruppen und Bewegungen, Bewaffnete Konflikte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; 1. Kurdistan in twentieth-century Turkey; 2. Theories of insurgent support; 3. PKK pre-conflict mobilisation (1974–1984); 4. PKK and rural insurgency; 5. PKK insurgency and the city; 6. The PKK in western Turkey; 7. Conclusion.

Über Autor(innen)

O'Connor, Francis
Francis O'Connor is a Research Associate at the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS), at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, where he focuses on contentious politics and civil wars, covering subjects including anti-austerity protests, Nationalism and referendums, and armed conflicts in Colombia and Turkey. He is the co-author of books including Social Movements and Referendums from Below (2017), and Late Neoliberalism and Its Discontents in the Economic Crisis: Comparing Social Movements in the European Periphery (2016).