Author Archive

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Lecturer in Human Geography at University College London. Her research focuses on the intersections between gender, generation and religion in experiences of and responses to conflict-induced displacement and statelessness, with a particular regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. She has conducted extensive research in refugee camps and urban areas including in Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, France, Lebanon, South Africa, Syria, Sweden, and the UK. Dr Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is the coordinator of the Refuge in a Moving World research network across UCL.

"Massive influx of Syrian Kurdish refugees into Turkey" (Photo credit: European Commission DG ECHO, Creative Commons)

/ / 0
Is Turkey on the brink of civil war, given the recent violence against the country’s Kurdish population?  How is this violence in Turkey related to broader events both in the Middle East and Europe? A major reason behind the recent violence in Turkey is that the Kurds experienced a recent political success in Turkey’s election in 2015: the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) prevented President Erdogan from realising his dream to create an executive presidential system in Turkey, which would have implied taking more power from the parliament. At the same time, although Kurds have been immediate victims of the rise of ISIL in the region, they have also emerged as ISIL’s most potent military adversaries in the Kurdistan Region …