The Kurds of Central Anatolia

From the 16th century up to the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, dozens of Kurdish tribes migrated west and settled in the Central Anatolian plains.

Geographically isolated, these Kurds sustained a largely peaceful relationship with their Turkish neighbours and maintained their tribal traditions and distinct ethnolinguistic identity. But more recently they have been exposed to forces of modernization and increasingly confrontational Turkish-Kurdish relations. This book is the first study in the English language on the Kurds of Central Anatolia. Based on extensive fieldwork, the majority of the chapters are written by scholars from within the Central Anatolian community and include perspectives from across history, anthropology, sociology and political science. The book analyses how these Kurds came to be in the plains of Central Anatolia, how they maintained their distinct identity and their evolving relationship with Turkey. It also examines the diaspora communities following their large-scale migration toward major urban centres in Turkey and Western countries. At a time when the Kurds of Central Anatolia are undergoing wide-scale transformations and contact with Kurds from the east, this book is an increasingly urgent examination into their past, their Kurdish identity and their future.

Author Biography

Mehmet Gurses is the Najmaldin Karim & Jalal Talabani Chair of Kurdish Studies in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida, USA. He is the author of Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey (2018) and co-editor of Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics (2020).

Haci Cevik is a postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM), Humboldt University, Germany. He is the author of Are There Kurds in Konya? (2021).