Kurdish Studies Journal: The Homeless Journal of an Orphan Field

Kurdish Studies Journal: The Homeless Journal of an Orphan Field

Kurdish Studies Journal: The Homeless Journal of an Orphan Field

By : Nilay Özok Gündoğan

A few weeks ago, a commercial London-based publisher owned by a Turkish academic of migration studies sold the only peer-reviewed academic journal of Kurdish studies to a predatory publisher.[1] Kurdish Studies was established about ten years ago, and until quite recently, it was published as a peer-reviewed journal with İbrahim Sirkeci’s Transnational Press. In a public statement, the journal editors recounted their distressing experience after Transnational Press sold the journal to an obscure, seemingly predatory press named Intellectual Edge Research Publishing (IERP). Later, a banner was inserted on the journal’s website stating that “the journal, KURDISH STUDIES has been fully acquired and transferred to a new publisher: Oxbridge Publishing House, UK.” In the statement, the editors mentioned that even though İbrahim Sirkeci assured them that nothing would change with the publication policy and the journal's content, they quickly figured this was not the case. To their dismay, they noticed that the new publisher had inserted new articles into the journal’s website without the knowledge and approval of the editorial team. These articles were not peer-reviewed. Their attempts to reach İbrahim Sirkeci bore no fruit, and the non-peer-reviewed articles appeared on the journal’s website in the latest issue of the journal.

That a Turkish academic owned and sold the only peer-reviewed academic journal of Kurdish studies in the Euro-American academia to a predatory journal is a black comedy.[2] Kurdish Studies have long remained on the margins of the institutional academic context, not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and the United States. As I mentioned in a previous Jadaliyya piece, Kurdish Studies is a field that is trying to open itself some room in Middle Eastern Studies which had long been dominated by Arab, Turkish, and Persian studies and scholars and their respective methodological nationalisms and colonial perspectives. Statelessness meant lacking governmental and private financial, institutional, and scholarly support. But against all odds, scholars of Kurdish studies always tried to maintain their presence in the world of academic journals –despite the latter’s lack of interest. There were previous experiences of scholarly publications on Kurdish studies in the United States and Europe. In the 1980s, the International Journal of Kurdish Studies was published by the Kurdish Heritage Foundation of America.[3] Later in the 1990s, the Journal of Kurdish Studies was published by prominent scholars in the field who were primarily based in Europe. The Kurdish Institute in Paris has been an important institutional milieu for academic publishing in Kurdish Studies. Two important journals, Studia Kurdica and Etudes Kurdes, were published by the Center.

However, all these publications were short-lived and, reflecting the long-lived ghettoization of Kurdish studies, they lacked widespread circulation in the Euro-American academia. In the last decade or so, Kurdish studies expanded as a field. Both in terms of the number of scholars working within the field, and the publications that came out, Kurdish studies witnessed a renaissance. From the 1980s through the 2000s, the field consisted mainly of a handful of mostly European and Europe-based scholars. Their scholarship contributed greatly to the institutionalization of Kurdish studies in academia. Yet, the thematic, epistemological, and institutional marginality of Kurdish studies continued for the most part.

This has recently been changing. Scholars from the Euro-American world have had a growing interest in Kurdish studies. At the same time, the field consists of increasing numbers of Kurdish scholars from all parts of Kurdistan, more women, and first-generation Kurdish scholars. Building on the work of the earlier scholars, the new generation works hard to push the study of Kurds and Kurdistan beyond its long-lived ghettoized position in Middle Eastern Studies and produce high-quality, interdisciplinary, and theoretically and conceptually sophisticated scholarship.

The ethics and politics of alliance—how to support an oppressed group within the academia without reproducing established power hierarchies, oppressive discourses, and positions of privilege—is a key question that Kurdish studies scholars have been keen on exploring in panels, workshops, and publications.

While the field is expanding in this way, new questions, conflicts, and fault lines have emerged. As Kurds became more visible in academia, the questions of “who speaks on behalf of the Kurds” and “from what epistemological position” have gained new urgency. Kurdish scholars became increasingly wary of the colonial discourses and subjective positions being reproduced within the field by their “allies,” i.e., scholars who think and write from a politically sympathetic place.[4] The question of how to decolonize the field of Kurdish studies appeared as an ever-urgent scholarly agenda for Kurdish scholars. The ethics and politics of alliancehow to support an oppressed group within the academia without reproducing established power hierarchies, oppressive discourses, and positions of privilegeis a key question that Kurdish studies scholars have been keen on exploring in panels, workshops, and publications.

The situation that the journal Kurdish Studies faced in the hands of a commercial press needs to be considered against this background. Selling the one and only peer-reviewed journal in this marginalized field to a predatory press has grave implications beyond the usual problems associated with commercializing academic publications in the hands of non-academic publishers. As a scholarly field of a stateless group, Kurdish studies have long been an orphan in western academia. It has thrived only because of the genuine efforts and labor of scholars who felt sympathetic toward the Kurdish cause. The problem of lack of institutional and financial support looms large in the field. Letting a profit-driven press keep the only academic journal carrying the name “Kurdish Studies” in its title is a gross injustice to the field, to the editorial board, to the readers, and to the Kurdish scholars, current and future. The flagship journal of a field which has long been dominated by nation-state nationalisms has to be based within a university press.



[1] Predatory publishers are those that publish articles by charging authors fees and without following a peer-review process. These are “entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” Grudniewicz, Agnes, David Moher, Kelly D. Cobey, Gregory L. Bryson, Samantha Cukier, Kristiann Allen, Clare Ardern et al. "Predatory journals: no definition, no defence." Nature 576, no. 7786 (2019): 211. 


[2] Here Turkishness is not an empty signifier of ethnic identity. That would be essentialism. Rather it is used to highlight the historically constructed hierarchical categories of Turkishness and Kurdishness in a relational manner. To wit: an academic journal of a dominated group became the subject of such a commercial exchange without due respect to the academic and political implications and significance of the journal to this group. This case should be situated in the context of historically constructed ethno-national structures of privilege and exclusion. The essential thing about privileges is that they are rendered invisible at best and appear as entitlement, rightfulness, and deservedness to the privileged when challenged. To the oppressed, they are pain, injustice, missed opportunities, and resentment. Regardless, it is all asymmetrical positionalities in a matrix of domination and privilege. The relationality of Kurdishness and Turkishness in this case manifests in the claimed entitlement for a singlehanded decision to sell the journal.


[4] Members of the dominated group might also reproduce colonial discourses, relations, and practices in academia. In the recent discussions on how to decolonize Kurdish studies, the question of the Kurdish scholars’ role in reproducing the colonial positionalities is fiercely debated. For example, discussions at the three workshops convened within the scope of the Decolonizing Kurdish Studies Initiative.

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      Amidst these discussions within and reactions coming from different political circles, MAU opened a Kurdish Language and Literature Department in June 2011.[1] It was the first institution in Turkey to offer undergraduate degrees in the Kurdish language. The department expressed its mission as “contributing to the much-neglected field of Kurdish Language and Literature and meeting the public need for Kurdish specialists,” and it would offer courses on different dialects of Kurdish.[2] Along with fulfilling the demands of the university administration, the opening of an undergraduate program in the Kurdish language also reflected the government’s frequent references to Kurdish language education within the context of the peace process. By 2010, government representatives were indicating that there were no legal barriers to offering Kurdish as an elective course in secondary education.[3]

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      The Kurdish language and culture in Turkey’s institutions of higher education have occupied the spotlight in the non-pro-government media earlier this fall. According to recent news, Dicle University in the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir banned students from writing their theses in Kurdish.[1] What appeared as a new ruling in the news media, in reality, had long been in effect at Dicle, where students were not allowed to use Kurdish in their theses. Later, in a press release, the university administration refuted the recent news and stated that there was not any new ruling concerning the Kurdish Language and Culture program. Additionally, it said, from its establishment to this day, “language of instruction [in this program] has been Turkish… Likewise, in all of the philology departments such as English, Arabic, and Persian, the language of instruction is Turkish.”[2] Yet, a quick glance at the thesis and dissertation database of the Higher Education Council (Yüksek Öğretim Kurulu or YÖK) indicates that there are theses written in Arabic, and even one in Kurdish but back in 2017.[3] More recent theses submitted to the Kurdish Language program were written in Turkish. Not allowing Kurdish in a Kurdish Language and Literature Department obviously defies the raison d’être of the program itself, leaving one to question the use and function of a Kurdish language program in which students are not allowed to use the language in their written work. Despite its belated press release to the media, the frenzy of coverage about Dicle University’s ruling brought to fore fault lines and anxieties surrounding the Kurdology programs in Turkish universities.

Education in the Time of Virality

Widespread access to the internet has facilitated means of acquiring news and information at rates unseen in earlier eras. As individuals, we have the ability to post and spread political information, social commentary, and other thoughts at will. This has caused an information overload for users of social networking sites. In a fight for views, reposts, and clicks, creators, both corporate and not, have been forced to develop new tactics to inform their audiences. This response to a new mode of information consumption also forces a reconsideration of how we understand knowledge production. Much of the information put forth into the world is absorbed passively, such as through characters’ storylines in books, films, and television - and this information accumulates over a lifetime. What, then, happens when knowledge is actively consumed (as is done when reading, watching, or listening to news stories), but the manner through which the information is presented still conforms to the brevity generally associated with more passive knowledge intake?

Pew Research estimates that over 70% of Americans use their phone to read the news. This is nearly a 25% increase since 2013. The constant barrage of advertisements in online articles does not make consuming news easy to do on a phone, thereby forcing media outlets and their competitors to change and adopt new tactics. Applications such as Flipboard have tried to mitigate these frustrations by simply providing the full article without the ads on their own platform, but many people still turn to sources like The Skimm. In attempting to distill a day’s worth of news coverage on domestic affairs, foreign affairs, pop culture, and sports into a few quips, undeniably both texture and nuance are lost. To compete with these services, CNN, the New York Times, and other mainstream news sources are doing the same and producing articles that give the, “Top 5 News Moments to Start Your Day,” or a, “Daily Brief.” Of course, looking at the language differences between the New York Times daily summary versus The Skimm’s, one can tell which is a more comprehensive news source. Even so, slashing the word count still takes a toll on clearly informing the public. The question then becomes, after quickly skimming through these summaries, are people doing more readings to cover what was lost? Or has “the brief” become the new standard for knowledge production and awareness?

It is more than likely that a significant portion of The Skimm’s subscribers do go on to read the full article linked in the email, but the growing popularity of similarly quick and fast news sources has had an impact on how much information viewers and readers actually understand. Between 2011 and 2014, The Skimm was founded, along with AJ+, Now This, Upworthy, and BuzzFeed News’ more serious journalism section. Undeniably, all of these sources produce and publish very important information, and make this information accessible to a larger audience. However, their production and marketing strategies hinge upon condensing very nuanced topics into videos that are, on average, only seven minutes long, as well as optimizing their materials for social media audiences. Now, it is ridiculous to expect highly textured and complicated issues to be thoroughly represented in these videos or posts. Even research based texts do not touch upon all of the complexities of a topic. The problems arise when looking at how viewers perceive themselves and their level of knowledge after actively searching out the products of, for example, AJ+ and Buzzfeed, for information. Carefully refining their materials to fit the shortened attention span of people scrolling through Facebook, social media news organizations have found their niche audience. Their products provide a simple way to deliver information to those who want gather knowledge on the “hot topics of today,” but do not what to do the leg work to be truly informed. These videos are spread throughout Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in a manner that says, “Watch this, and you will know what is going on in the world.”

Understanding how information is being pushed out into the world is almost as important as the content of the information. None of these outlets claim to provide comprehensive knowledge, but in being popular sites for information, the question becomes: do they have a responsibility to encourage their viewers to continue to inform themselves about these issues? Having a well-informed society is phenomenal, but if in informing society we are also forever altering how we consume knowledge to favor brevity over nuance, what consequences could come with this change? We must ensure that the consumption of these videos does not become a license for people to see themselves as truly informed and thus appropriate for them to take the microphones at protests and speak over those who have a solid and textured understanding of the issues. Information content is incredibly important, as is spreading knowledge, and AJ+, Now This, and the like have become important role models in showing how issues should be accessible to everyone and not clouted in jargon. But we must simultaneously consider the unintended side effects that these styles of videos have on knowledge production. Ultimately, it is a mutual effort. Just as producers must be watchful of their content and method of dissemination, we as consumers must be mindful of how we digest and understand the news we take in.


[This article was published originally Tadween`s Al-Diwan blog by Diwan`s editor, Mekarem Eljamal.]