Kurds as a homo sacer (agamben) paper for Bergen Middle East conf.

Paper Title: Minority in the Middle East: the KurdsAbstract:As a consequence of the Western shaping of the Post-Ottoman territorial states in the Middle East the Kurds became a minority in every part of their own homeland. They are a minority in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Regardless of their religion, for a Kurd being Kurd has always been an essential part of his or her own identity. Their semi-independence during the Ottoman Empire and their struggle for self-determination afterwards are signs for their desire to be self-ruled. This aspiration particularly matured after the arrival of the western modernity (colonial).After the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) the colonial power established the Westphalian form of the State in the region (nation state). This State failed to be modern; nevertheless it borrowed many aspects of the occidental modernity, i.e. a strong centralized authority and the creation of a nation or a national identity. The emerged system of nation-making was an official policy to eliminate every form of the Other. This, consequently, changed the status of the Kurdish people into a form of non-people; ‘bare’ or without ‘political existence’, which resembles the figure of Homo Sacer: the one ‘who may be killed and yet not sacrificed’. This was made possible through the exceptionality of the emerged state.By applying Giorgio Agamben’s concepts this paper regards the territorial states in the Middle East as ‘exceptional states’ and the Kurdish people - among other minorities - as ‘Homo Sacer’. Through this exercise this paper also shows that the Islamic views and concepts of minority (Ahl Al-Dhimmah) is at best, in this regard, obsolete and fails to denote the complexity of the situation.