The Commentaries - Volume 1, 2021

Joost Jongerden (PhD) is an Associate Professor at Rural Sociology, Wageningen University, the Netherlands and project professor at the Asian Platform for Global Sustainability and Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. Broadly, his research covers the field of ‘Do-It-Yourself Development’ or the possibilities and potentials of alternative futures grounded in daily practices and present struggles. His main geographic focus is Turkey, Kurdistan and the Middle East. A list of publications is available at https://joostjongerden.academia.edu/research

Cengiz Gunes (PhD) completed his PhD at the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK. His main research interests are in the areas of autonomy and the accommodation of minorities, peace and conflict studies, the Kurds in the Middle East, the international relations of the Middle East and Turkish politics. He is the author of The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London: Routledge, 2012), The Kurds in a New Middle East: The Changing Geopolitics of a regional Conflict (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), and The Political Representation of Kurds in Turkey: New Actors and Modes of Participation in a Changing Society (London: I.B. Tauris). He is co-editor of The Cambridge History of the Kurds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021) and The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation, and Reconciliation (London: Routledge, 2014). He has presented papers in national and international conferences and published articles in New Left Review, Ethnopolitics and Peace Review. He is currently an Associate Lecturer and an Honorary Research Associate in Politics at the Open University, UK.

Bahar Şimşek Day (PhD) graduated from the Department of Mathematics at Middle East Technical University. Shortly thereafter, she received her MA from Ankara University, based on research on ethnic encounters in Turkish films. Between the years 2009 and 2017, she worked as a research assistant in the Department of Radio, Television, and Cinema at Ankara University. She continued her research in Area Studies at Leiden University. Her PhD research explores the political histories within which Kurdish cinema has taken shape, and offers a political-theoretical framework for making sense of contemporary forms of aesthetic experimentation in Kurdish film.