Conflict resolution, Peace process

Michael Gunter book “out of Nowhere” to be released April 2014

EUTCC secretary general Michael M Gunter’s latest book, Out of Nowhere,  is due to be released in April 2014 from Hurst Publishers. More details below:

“In mid 2012 the previously almost forgotten Syrian Kurds suddenly emerged as a potential game-changer in the country’s civil war when in an attempt to consolidate its increasingly desperate position the Assad government abruptly withdrew its troops from the major Kurdish areas in Syria. The Kurds in Syria had suddenly won autonomy, a situation that has huge implications for neighboring Turkey and the near independent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Indeed, their precipitous rise may prove a tipping-point that alters the boundaries imposed on the Middle East by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.

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Conflict resolution

“Why the US should not bomb Syria”, by Michael M. Gunter

New piece by EUTCC secretary general Michael M Gunter [updated on 3 September with revisions from earlier piece, To Bomb or Not to Bomb]:

WHY THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT BOMB SYRIA

On August 21, 2013 the Syrian regime apparently used chemical weapons against the opposition in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of Damascus, killing anywhere from 500-1,300 people, the numbers vary according to U.S. intelligence reports made public. While the Assad regime has long had a great deal of innocent blood on its hand and now may be guilty of using chemical weapons, this is not a sufficient reason for the United States and its Western allies to bomb Syria. Indeed, the United States has neither an intelligent entry or exit plan. In the first place, however, we are not yet even certain the Syrian regime actually used these weapons. U.S. intelligence on these matters has erred and lied to the world before.

For example, in 1998 the United States bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan claiming that Sudan had supplied al-Qaeda with chemical weapons that had been used in its attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Later we learned that the intelligence supposedly implicating Sudan was incorrect. Similarly in the run up to the war that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 and whose murders and repercussions are still being felt a decade later, the United States falsely claimed that it had incontrovertible intelligence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which justified attacking. It turned out that U.S. intelligence was wrong again or simply lied to justify going to war.

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Conflict resolution, Freedom of expression, Political prisoners

“The Kurdish Spring”: New book published

A new book entitled The Kurdish Spring: Geopolitical Changes and the Kurds, published by Mazda, is the latest publication by Professor of Political Science and secretary-general of the EU Turkey Civic Commission, Michael M Gunter, and his colleague Mohammed M.A. Ahmed, Executive Director and founder of the Ahmed Foundation for Kurdish Studies. The book features contributions from scholarly experts such as Michael B. Bishku, Ofra Bengio and Joost Jongerden, who analyse the ‘Kurdish Spring’ as a long-running and growing movement for democracy, cultural, social and political rights and self-determination across Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

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Conflict resolution, Peace process

New book on Kurdish Spring about to be published

A new book co-edited by Michael M. Gunter, Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee and specialist on the Kurdish Question, will soon be published.  The Kurdish Spring: Geopolitical Changes and the Kurds features contributions scholarly experts such as Michael B. Bishku, Ofra Bengio and Joost Jongerden, who analyse the ‘Kurdish Spring’ as a long-running and growing movement for democracy, cultural, social and political rights and self-determination across Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

The summary reads:

In the midst of all the changes the Arab Spring has brought in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, among others, the intelligent lay, media, and policy worlds have paid much less attention to what might be called the Kurdish Spring: Demands for meaningful democracy along with cultural, social, and political rights and their immediate implementation. Or as Ofra Bengio recently described it: “The Kurdish movement is now crystallized in almost all parts of Kurdistan. The weakening of the relevant states, alongside the tectonic sociopolitical changes taking place in the region as a whole, may end up changing the strategic map of the Middle East. Forged by the Great Powers after World War I, the borders separating the Kurds of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran no longer appear as sacred or secure as they once did.”

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Conflict resolution, Peace process

The Closing of Turkey’s Kurdish Opening

Professor Michael M. Gunter has published a new article in the Columbia Journal of International Affairs, entitled The Closing of Turkey’s Kurdish Opening:

“During the summer and fall of 2009, the continuing and often violent Kurdish problem in Turkey seemed on the verge of a solution when the ruling Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi [Justice and Development Party] or AK Party (AKP) government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul announced a Kurdish Opening or Initiative (aka as the Democratic Opening/Initiative). Gul declared, “the biggest problem of Turkey is the Kurdish question” and that “there is an opportunity [to solve it] and it should not be missed.” Erdogan asked, “If Turkey had not spent its energy, budget, peace and young people on [combating] terrorism, if Turkey had not spent the last 25 years in conflict, where would we be today?” Even the insurgent Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK) or Kurdistan Workers Party, still led ultimately by its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan, itself briefly took Turkey’s Kurdish Opening seriously. For a fleeting moment, optimism ran rampant. What happened?”

Read on at the Columbia Journal of International Affairs website.

Conflict resolution, Peace process

The Closing of Turkey’s Kurdish Opening

We are pleased to bring you this paper written by Professor Michael M. Gunter, professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. He is the author of numerous critically praised scholarly books on the Kurdish question, the most recent being Kurdish Historical Dictionary, 2nd ed., 2011; The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey,2nd ed., 2011; The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis, 1999; and The Kurds and the Future of Turkey, 1997.

Professor Gunter also recently spoke at a public conference organised by the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C., which is available to watch online at the MEI Youtube channel (Professor Gunter’s contribution begins at 6.00 minutes).

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Conflict resolution, Peace process

Reviews of Ocalan’s new book published

Stan Newens speaks at our recent event

Following our successful event two weeks ago, ‘Open Discussion onThe Road Map to Negotiations’, Peace in Kurdistan Campaign is working hard to ensure Abdullah Ocalan’s proposals for peace are read and heard by as many people as possible. We hope to bring you photos and videos of the event for those of you who missed it – we’ll keep you updated. Two of our panellists from that day, Stan Newens and Prof Michael M. Gunter, have written reviews of book that are now available for you to read.

International Initiative  published the third volume in Ocalan’s Prison Writings series, called The Road Map to Negotiations, in February this year. It is this proposal that Ocalan had been discussing with the Turkish government between 2009 and June 2011, and that, it was revealed earlier this year, was being discussed in secret negotiations in Oslo between the Turkish intelligence agencies and senior leaders of the PKK. Right after talks between the Turkish government and Ocalan broke down, Ocalan was put into renewed isolation on the prison island of Imrali, without visits from friends, family or lawyers. Continue reading “Reviews of Ocalan’s new book published” →

Conflict resolution, KCK trials, Political prisoners

Book Review: Activists in Office, by Nicole F. Watts


Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey
Originally published in Insight Turkey, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2012, p.206

Reviewed by
Michael M. Gunter, Tennessee Technological University and Megatrend International University of Vienna

Most of the recently published books on the Kurdish problem in Turkey focus on the armed struggle and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Watts, however, offers a much-appreciated alternative approach. “Pro-Kurdish political parties” (p. xvii), or what she also calls “challenger parties” (p. 16), “have made themselves matter and… have impressed their ideas and agendas on reluctant and often repressive states” (p. x). Continue reading “Book Review: Activists in Office, by Nicole F. Watts” →

Conflict resolution, Kurdish language rights

Middle East Policy publishes new article by Michael M. Gunter

Middle East Policy has published Michael M. Gunter’s new article, Turkey: The Politics of a New Democratic Constitution. Dr. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University and secretary-general of the EU Turkey Civic Commission, which advocates Turkish accession to the EU as a way to help further democratize Turkey. Continue reading “Middle East Policy publishes new article by Michael M. Gunter” →