Generations and Violence

This book offers a qualitative cohort analysis in a comparative case study of national identity and political violence in the Basque and Kurdish contexts. Rooted in the author's work concerning social reproduction mechanisms of political violence, it examines two non-state politico-military organizations, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, Basque Homeland and Freedom) and Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK, Kurdistan Workers' Party), the vanguard actors of two long-lasting ethnic conflicts in Spain and Turkey. It draws upon in-depth interviews conducted in the Basque Country and Kurdistan with former and active militants of both organizations who exercised violent practices to show how individuals within certain age groups share a specific range of experiences, a particular mode of thought, and historically relevant actions. This generational analysis illuminates a cause-and-effect relationship explaining the emergence and continuity of armed struggle in specific time intervals. This volume will therefore appeal to a wide range of scholars and researchers of sociology, social movement, history, political sciences, and anthropology.

Baris Tugrul holds a BA in communication sciences from Ankara University, an MA in international relations and a second MA in the sociocultural analysis of communication and knowledge from the Complutense University of Madrid. He earned a PhD in political studies from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) and a PhD in sociology from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Previously, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Communication Sciences at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Group for Research on Ethnic Relations, Migration and Equality (GERME) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Introduction 1. Emergence and Generational Evolution of Basque Nationalism 2. Emergence and Generational Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism 3. From Repression to Resistance: Political Violence and ETA in Late Francoist and Democratic Spain 4. The Road to Armed Struggle: Political Repression and Kurdish Militancy in Turkey 5. Between Strategy and Stalemate: The MLNV's Offensive Turn and the Erosion of Support in the Basque Country 6. A Decisive Decade: Low-Intensity War and Mass Mobilization in the Kurdish National Liberation Movement 7. The Deadlock of Violence in the Basque Country: The Path Towards Negotiations and Dissolution 8. The Kurdish Question Reconfigured: Violence, Support, and Strategic Shift of the PKK