| This dissertation studies the Kurdish identity movement in Turkey which has transformed from a secessionist armed struggle to a transnational culture movement since the late nineties. Kurdish activists now utilize media and performance events as platforms for imagining, solidifying, and contesting Kurdish national identity and creating transnational publics that attend the Kurdish issue in Turkey. I explore, particularly, the production aspect of media and performance events, such as documentary films, from the initial phases of brainstorming and fundraising to circulation and exhibition as a lens on the dynamics of culture-making within a context of larger national and transnational structures, such as the Turkish state's new policies about the Kurds and Turkey's European Union accession. I pose two major research questions: How is a historically sub-national identity movement that operated, in part, through violence reconstituting itself as a transnational culture movement? And how are media and performance events emerging as critical vehicles for the reconstitution of Kurdishness in this new context?... |
