Toward Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics

The 1977 Local Elections in Di̇yarbakir

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8967595
AutoresGilles Dorronsoro (0009-0007-9882-8736, autor de correspondencia), Nicole F Watts
Año2009
Volumen41
Número3
Páginas457-478
Fecha de publicación2009-07-14
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743809091156
OpenAlexW2157954838
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias citadas14

In December 1977 an independent candidate named Mehdi Zana was elected mayor of Diyarbakır, one of the biggest cities in Turkey's southeastern region. His election was a striking event, upsetting the troika of class, party, and state that had maintained a tight hold over the local political apparatus in Diyarbakır since the 1940s. Unlike most prior mayors of Diyarbakır, Zana did not come from a prominent family of local notables but was a working-class tailor with a middle-school education. He was one of only two independent candidates who won electoral contests in Turkey's sixty-seven big-city races; his election therefore flew in the face of a national trend that favored candidates from the country's two main political parties. Zana was well known for his left-wing, Kurdist politics, and at the time of his election he already had spent several years in jail for his activism. In a system that suppressed collective expressions of Kurdish identity, he was thus a clear ideological interloper

Class (philosophy · Face (sociological concept · Ideology · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology · Turkey's Politics and Society