Author Archive

Barzoo Eliassi

Barzoo Eliassi holds a PhD in social work. His research engages with ethnic relations, social policy, social work, citizenship and multiculturalism in Middle Eastern and west European societies. He currently serves as a senior lecturer in social work at Linnaeus University. He further is a research associate at Oxford University; affiliated researcher at the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University and at Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society FORTE Center of Excellence, Linköping University.

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

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 …