Bülent Küçük
Biographic Data
| ID | 3940029 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bülent Küçük |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bülent |
| FAMILY NAME | Küçük |
| SIGNATURE | KÜÇÜK B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Sociology, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9307-7191 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Beyond rupture and integration: Decolonial recognition in the Kurdish struggle
The Kurdish movement in Turkey illustrates a complex struggle for political recognition and decolonization. The article examines this dual strategic orientation, focusing on the peace process initiated in October 2024 between the Turkish state and Kurdish representatives. Through a detailed and symptomatic reading of the two texts by Abdullah Öcalan, February Call and Perspektif , the article aims to demonstrate that the movement both interacts w…
The Forgotten Icon of ‘68 in Turkey: Hüseyin Cevahir
This essay focuses on Hüseyin Cevahir, a revolutionary with roots in the Alevite-Kurdish formation and one of the forgotten student leaders of ’68 in Turkey. The essay underscores Cevahir’s presence within the Turkish Left as not merely a matter of cultural difference. On the contrary, his silent but transformative effects on the Turkish Left stemmed from his subaltern presence, embodied in a double memory. Cevahir incorporated his knowledge of t…
My Breath Becomes a Crimson Horse”: Interviews with Nevhiz Tanyeli
This extract from two interviews that took place in 2021 and 2023 with Nevhiz Tanyeli at her home in Şişli, İstanbul centers on a dialogue over her paintings, the possible interpretations of which the interviewers had discussed beforehand, informed by Bülent Küçük’s research on remembrances of Turkey during the events of 1968. Tanyeli offered both tea and counterinterpretations in her unique and witty style, with the interviewers both taken aback…
The burden of Sisyphus: A sociological inventory of the Kurdish question in Turkey
This paper examines the contradictory transformation process the Kurdish movement has been experiencing over the last two decades and discusses its structural paradoxes and political shortcomings from a critical sociological perspective. Based on participant observation and interviews with activist researchers, the paper argues that the moral and ideological unity of the movement is challenged by ever-increasing social and mental divisions that a…
Fragments of the Emerging Regime in Turkey
This essay frames the emerging regime in Turkey as a question. Starting with a discussion of the limits of conjunctural analysis, we offer some fragmentary analysis. We highlight transgression of law and imperial fantasies as the two constitutive aspects that have conditioned the transformations of the nation-state. We present construction(-destruction) as the nodal apparatus of the AKP rule that has articulated these transformations with those o…
Revisiting Occidentalism/Orientalism
This interview with Meltem Ahıska revisits some themes and lines of thought that appeared in the SAQ special issue on Turkey in 2003. Focusing on Ahıska’s article in that issue, “Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern,” the interview questions the relevance of concepts such as Occidentalism and belatedness in today’s Turkey and probes conceptualizing some prominent shifts since 2003 in the relations with the West and modernity. The i…
Remaking the public through the square: Invention of the new national cosmology in Turkey
This paper examines the formation of authoritarian populism in Turkey by analysing mass mobilization and its repercussions in the symbolic and imaginary realms as authoritarian right-wing populisms have gained global popularity. It scrutinises the AKP government’s mobilization of the masses in the so-called ‘democracy watches’ after the coup attempt on 15 July 2016. During the demonstrations that took place in various locations in Istanbul, autho…
The Rojava Experience: Possibilities and Challenges of Building a Democratic Life
This essay engages with the political possibilities and limits of the ethico-political horizon of the resistance in Rojava, which has been advanced and put into action under the general name of democratic autonomy. Following the shift of perspective that took place within the Kurdish liberation movement in the 1990s, we interpret democratic autonomy as a new methodology that weds decolonization and national liberation with a strong critique of th…
Borders of Europe: Fantasies of identity in the enlargement debate on Turkey
The European public debate on Turkey's EU accession either emphasizes Turkey's political (in)competence for EU membership, or marks its cultural difference. Based on the discourse analysis of this debate in the German mass media, this paper questions the dominant European perspective, by placing emphasis on how and where the symbolic borders of an imagined Europe become visible. I will argue that the debate surrounding Turkey's accession to the E…
The Rojava Experience: Possibilities and Challenges of Building a Democratic Life
This essay engages with the political possibilities and limits of the ethico-political horizon of the resistance in Rojava, which has been advanced and put into action under the general name of democratic autonomy. Following the shift of perspective that took place within the Kurdish liberation movement in the 1990s, we interpret democratic autonomy as a new methodology that weds decolonization and national liberation with a strong critique of th…
Remaking the public through the square: Invention of the new national cosmology in Turkey
This paper examines the formation of authoritarian populism in Turkey by analysing mass mobilization and its repercussions in the symbolic and imaginary realms as authoritarian right-wing populisms have gained global popularity. It scrutinises the AKP government’s mobilization of the masses in the so-called ‘democracy watches’ after the coup attempt on 15 July 2016. During the demonstrations that took place in various locations in Istanbul, autho…
Fragments of the Emerging Regime in Turkey
This essay frames the emerging regime in Turkey as a question. Starting with a discussion of the limits of conjunctural analysis, we offer some fragmentary analysis. We highlight transgression of law and imperial fantasies as the two constitutive aspects that have conditioned the transformations of the nation-state. We present construction(-destruction) as the nodal apparatus of the AKP rule that has articulated these transformations with those o…
The burden of Sisyphus: A sociological inventory of the Kurdish question in Turkey
This paper examines the contradictory transformation process the Kurdish movement has been experiencing over the last two decades and discusses its structural paradoxes and political shortcomings from a critical sociological perspective. Based on participant observation and interviews with activist researchers, the paper argues that the moral and ideological unity of the movement is challenged by ever-increasing social and mental divisions that a…
Borders of Europe: Fantasies of identity in the enlargement debate on Turkey
The European public debate on Turkey's EU accession either emphasizes Turkey's political (in)competence for EU membership, or marks its cultural difference. Based on the discourse analysis of this debate in the German mass media, this paper questions the dominant European perspective, by placing emphasis on how and where the symbolic borders of an imagined Europe become visible. I will argue that the debate surrounding Turkey's accession to the E…
Borders of Europe: Fantasies of identity in the enlargement debate on Turkey
The European public debate on Turkey's EU accession either emphasizes Turkey's political (in)competence for EU membership, or marks its cultural difference. Based on the discourse analysis of this debate in the German mass media, this paper questions the dominant European perspective, by placing emphasis on how and where the symbolic borders of an imagined Europe become visible. I will argue that the debate surrounding Turkey's accession to the E…
The Rojava Experience: Possibilities and Challenges of Building a Democratic Life
This essay engages with the political possibilities and limits of the ethico-political horizon of the resistance in Rojava, which has been advanced and put into action under the general name of democratic autonomy. Following the shift of perspective that took place within the Kurdish liberation movement in the 1990s, we interpret democratic autonomy as a new methodology that weds decolonization and national liberation with a strong critique of th…
Remaking the public through the square: Invention of the new national cosmology in Turkey
This paper examines the formation of authoritarian populism in Turkey by analysing mass mobilization and its repercussions in the symbolic and imaginary realms as authoritarian right-wing populisms have gained global popularity. It scrutinises the AKP government’s mobilization of the masses in the so-called ‘democracy watches’ after the coup attempt on 15 July 2016. During the demonstrations that took place in various locations in Istanbul, autho…
The burden of Sisyphus: A sociological inventory of the Kurdish question in Turkey
This paper examines the contradictory transformation process the Kurdish movement has been experiencing over the last two decades and discusses its structural paradoxes and political shortcomings from a critical sociological perspective. Based on participant observation and interviews with activist researchers, the paper argues that the moral and ideological unity of the movement is challenged by ever-increasing social and mental divisions that a…
Fragments of the Emerging Regime in Turkey
This essay frames the emerging regime in Turkey as a question. Starting with a discussion of the limits of conjunctural analysis, we offer some fragmentary analysis. We highlight transgression of law and imperial fantasies as the two constitutive aspects that have conditioned the transformations of the nation-state. We present construction(-destruction) as the nodal apparatus of the AKP rule that has articulated these transformations with those o…
Revisiting Occidentalism/Orientalism
This interview with Meltem Ahıska revisits some themes and lines of thought that appeared in the SAQ special issue on Turkey in 2003. Focusing on Ahıska’s article in that issue, “Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern,” the interview questions the relevance of concepts such as Occidentalism and belatedness in today’s Turkey and probes conceptualizing some prominent shifts since 2003 in the relations with the West and modernity. The i…
The Forgotten Icon of ‘68 in Turkey: Hüseyin Cevahir
This essay focuses on Hüseyin Cevahir, a revolutionary with roots in the Alevite-Kurdish formation and one of the forgotten student leaders of ’68 in Turkey. The essay underscores Cevahir’s presence within the Turkish Left as not merely a matter of cultural difference. On the contrary, his silent but transformative effects on the Turkish Left stemmed from his subaltern presence, embodied in a double memory. Cevahir incorporated his knowledge of t…
My Breath Becomes a Crimson Horse”: Interviews with Nevhiz Tanyeli
This extract from two interviews that took place in 2021 and 2023 with Nevhiz Tanyeli at her home in Şişli, İstanbul centers on a dialogue over her paintings, the possible interpretations of which the interviewers had discussed beforehand, informed by Bülent Küçük’s research on remembrances of Turkey during the events of 1968. Tanyeli offered both tea and counterinterpretations in her unique and witty style, with the interviewers both taken aback…
Beyond rupture and integration: Decolonial recognition in the Kurdish struggle
The Kurdish movement in Turkey illustrates a complex struggle for political recognition and decolonization. The article examines this dual strategic orientation, focusing on the peace process initiated in October 2024 between the Turkish state and Kurdish representatives. Through a detailed and symptomatic reading of the two texts by Abdullah Öcalan, February Call and Perspektif , the article aims to demonstrate that the movement both interacts w…
Political science (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Turkey's Politics and Society (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (5 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Art (3 works)