AbstractThe politics of identity and recognition regarding the Kurds in Turkey has gained momentum since 2002 but has never been implemented fully. The rightful critics emphasising the continuity of the State's authoritarian character, however, have not so far analysed if their own normative suggestions are theoretically consistent and sociologically grounded. Based on the Author's fieldwork and contemporary social surveys, this article shows that there are conflicting views within the Kurdish community about the forms that the politics of recognition could take. By exploring the conflicts of interest within the Kurdish community from a bottom‐up approach, the article concludes that the recognition of an authentic Kurdish identity is problematic sociologically. It is also more likely to harm than help the Kurds in the country from a normative perspective. The article explains how the quest for an authentic Kurdish political identity and attempts to generate it actually limit the individual autonomy and exacerbate the disparity between the Turks and the Kurds in the country.
AbstractMany modern European nations can trace their heritage back to one of the large multinational empires that once encompassed much of the European landscape, and nationalising elites often refer back to their place in these empires for the materials upon which their nation was purportedly built. In this article we examine some Belarusian nationalising elites and their references to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in order to demonstrate a recent trend in East European small‐state national identity construction, which we refer to as 'small state imperialism.' Small state imperialism exhibits realist characteristics and paints the small nation's place in empires of the past as privileged and aggressive, and in this way deviates from the oppressed but morally superior image one typically expects of a small nation. This interpretation is not limited to Belarus; in a number of East European states a similar imperialist turn has taken root in nationalist discourses.