I have always had in mind to write a book on numerous performable chords on the long-neck Tembûr which is known by various names in different parts of Kurdistan; it is known as Tembûr in the northern and western Kurdistan, it is known as Diwan in the eastern Kurdistan, and in the southern part of Kurdistan it is called Saz. However, the Turkish people use the word Baghlama to refer to the above mentioned instrument. Some years ago, I strove to do something i n this field which culminated in writing a book and, due to some reasons, I refused to publish it. During the last two months, I aimed at editing and adding some supplementary parts to it. Moreover, ten Kurdish songs along with displaying their chords have been pieced together. It should be noted that the book does not include the entire Diwan chords because I have attempted to write those chords that are more used in this instrument. I hope this book will be used by art lovers and Diwan players to enable them to improve their playing techniques. I wish you enjoy playing them. – Yade Shakeri

Today’s youth are challenging the older political class around the world and are forming new political generations. Examples from South Africa and elsewhere where peace processes were deemed to be successful show signs of youth disapproval of the current post-conflict conditions. Moreover, the Arab Spring witnessed numerous youth movements emerge in authoritarian and illiberal contexts. This book was prepared in light of these discussions and aims to contribute to these ongoing debates on youth politics by presenting the situation of youth in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) as a case study. It will be the first book that specifically focuses on the Iraqi Kurdish youth and their political, social, and economic participation in Kurdistan. The contemporary history of the KRI is marked by conflict, war, and ethnic cleansing under Saddam Hussein and the tyranny of the Ba’ath regime, significantly affecting the political situation of the Kurds in the Middle East. Most of the recent academic literature has focused on the broader picture or, in other words, the macro politics of the Kurdish conundrum within Iraq and beyond. There is little scholarship about the Kurdish population and their socio-economic conditions after 2003, and almost none about the younger generation of Kurds who came of age during autonomous Kurdish rule. This is a generation that, unlike their forebears, has no direct memory of the decades-long campaigns of repression. Studying and examining the rise of this generation of Kurdish young millennials—“Generation 2000”—who came of age in the aftermath of the United States invasion of Iraq offers a unique approach to understand the dynamics in a region that underwent a substantial socio-political transformation after 2003 as well as the impact of these developments on the youth population. Pursuing different themes and lines of inquiry the contributors of the book analyze the challenges and opportunities for young men and women to fulfil their needs and desires, and contribute to the ongoing quest for nationhood and nation-building. "In this book, our aim is to bring together a variety of perspectives from local and foreign academics who have been working on pressing issues in Kurdistan and beyond. The chapters focus on an array of themes, particularly including political participation, political situation and change, religiosity, and extremism. ... Taken together, the chapters provide us with an introduction to youth politics in Kurdistan. This book is just the first attempt to open academic and nonacademic debate on this subject at a time when protests around youth-related issues are becoming a more prevalent method of political engagement in the region. Our hope is that more research follows and supplements what has not been addressed in this book, especially through the introduction of first-hand youth perspectives to the core of this analysis and giving them a voice in nonviolent platforms." CONTENTS Foreword: Youth in the Kurdistan Region and Their Past and Present Roles - Karwan Jamal Tahir Kurdish Youth as Agents of Change: Political Participation, Looming Challenges, and Future Predictions - Shivan Fazil and Bahar Baser CHAPTER 1. Youth Political Participation and Prospects for Democratic Reform in Iraqi Kurdistan - Munir H. Mohammad CHAPTER 2. Social Media, Youth Organization, and Public Order in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Megan Connelly CHAPTER 3. Constructing Their Own Liberation: Youth’s Reimagining of Gender and Queer Sexuality in Iraqi Kurdistan - Hawzhin Azeez CHAPTER 4. Kurdish Youth and Civic Culture: Support for Democracy Among Kurdish and non-Kurdish Youth in Iraq - Dastan Jasim CHAPTER 5. Youth and Nationalism in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Sofia Barbarani CHAPTER 6. An Elitist Interpretation of KRG Governance: How Self-Serving Kurdish Elites Govern Under the Guise of Democracy and the Subsequent Implications for Representation and Change - Bamo Nouri CHAPTER 7. Educational Policy in the Kurdistan Region: A Critical Democratic Response - Abdurrahman Ahmad Wahab CHAPTER 8. Making Heaven in a Shithole: Changing Political Engagement in the Aftermath of the Islamic State - Lana Askari CHAPTER 9. Kurdish Youth and Religious Identity: Between Religious and National Tensions - Ibrahim Sadiq CHAPTER 10. Youth Radicalization in Kurdistan: The Government Response - Kamaran Palani

Ayhan Aktar has been working on anti-minority policies in modern Turkey since 1991. In the Ottoman Empire’s final decade (in 1906), non-Muslims constituted 20% of the population; by 1927, they were reduced to 2.5% and, nowadays, they make up less than 0.02% of the population of Modern Turkey. Armenians were subjected to deportations (1915), Greeks were ‘exchanged’ (1922–1924) and Jews were forced to migrate abroad (after 1945). Like many other nation-states in the Near East, Turkey has been able to homogenize its population on religious grounds. This book is a collection of Aktar's articles about this transformation. Aktar criticises nationalist historiographies and argues "For instance, a scholar conducting research on the Jewish community during the republican period could easily come to the conclusion that only Jews were discriminated against by the Turkish state. However, this is only partially true! All non-Muslim minorities were discriminated against and their stories cannot be understood unless the Turkish state and its policies are placed at centre stage. Utilizing diplomatic correspondence in the British and US National Archives has enabled me to understand anti-minority policies as a whole and to treat the subject within a totality." This book will interest scholars and students of nationalism, minority studies and Turkish history and politics. CONTENTS Foreword Chapter 1. Debating the Armenian Massacres in the Last Ottoman Parliament, November – December 1918 Chapter 2. Organizing The Deportations and Massacres: Ottoman Bureaucracy and the Cup, 1915 – 1918 Chapter 3. Homogenizing the Nation, Turkifying the Economy: The Turkish Experience of Population Exchange Reconsidered Chapter 4. Conversion of a ‘Country’ into a ‘Fatherland’: The Case of Turkification Examined, 1923–1934 Chapter 5. “Turkification” Policies in the Early Republican Era Chapter 6. “Tax Me to the End of My Life!” Anatomy of Anti-Minority Tax Legislation, (1942 - 3) Chapter 7. Turkish Attitudes vis à vis The Zionist Project by Ayhan Aktar and Soli Özel Chapter 8. Economic Nationalism in Turkey: The Formative Years, 1912 – 1925

Against the backdrop of war and violence, social-political as well as lingual repressions, and the challenges presented by a patriarchal society, Kurdish poetesses have been creating meaningful work throughout the centuries. This collection of translated poems brings to light some of these underrepresented female writers, whose work has been essential to the development of Kurdish poetry. Representing various Kurdish regions and dialects, this volume of selected poems touches upon themes such as sexuality, violence, gender domination, intimacy, fantasy, and romantic love. While this collection offers illuminating insights into the work of Kurdish poetesses, it is the hope of its creators, the Exeter Kurdish Translation Initiative, that it inspires further translations and publication of Kurdish literature. This beautiful and groundbreaking collection of English translations from Gorani, Sorani, Kurmanji, and Arabic was achieved through an innovative collaborative translation project in the Centre for Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter. From the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, it expresses women’s voices on politics, nationalism, gender, love, science, education, and everyday Kurdishness in memory, elegy, dream, and discourse. See such haunting lines from Gulîzer as “May those who have stayed not say the leaving is easy./ May those who have left not say the staying is simple.” Or “When two rivers separate/ How do they part their water?” Anyone interested in women’s poetry, diaspora, translation, and transnation will want to hear these poems. – Regenia Gagnier FBA, author of Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century and editor, The Global Circulation Project The vivid image of love, lost, hope, beauty, desire, violence, pain, and suffering that are sketched in this book enchant and attract readers to enter into a more intimate lives of Kurdish women. In this exquisite collection of poems written by Kurdish women and translated into English for the first time, we are exposed to a more imaginative way of hearing Kurdish women’s voices. It is in the interstices of lived words and the lifeworld that Kurdish women poets candidly dream freedom and suggest ways to move beyond all forms of oppression and violence. – Shahrzad Mojab, Professor, University of Toronto and the editor of Women of Non-State Nation: The Kurds. CONTENTS Translating Kurdish Poetry as a Collective Endeavour – Farangis Ghaderi and Clémence Scalbert Yücel Unsung Poets of Kurdistan: A Reflection on Women’s Voices in Kurdish Poetry – Farangis Ghaderi and Clémence Scalbert-Yücel Mestûre Erdelan Hêmin Fayeq Bêkes Jîla Huseynî Diya Ciwan Tîroj Trîfa Doskî Viyan M. Tahir Gulîzer

The Yezidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority, neither Muslim, Christian nor Jewish. At a time when studies of Kurdish nation-building are developing, this book is the first to consider Kurdish oral traditions within their social context and explain their relevance for a large Kurdish community.

This book charts the growth of the Indonesian nationalistic musical genre of lagu seriosa in relation to the archipelago's history in the 1950s and 1960s, examining how folk songs were implemented as a valuable tool for promoting government propaganda. The author reveals how the genre was shaped to fit state ideologies and agendas in the Sukarno and Soeharto eras. It also reveals the very significant role played by Radio Republik Indonesia in the genre’s development and dissemination. Little research has been done to investigate how Indonesian music contributed to nation-building during Indonesia’s immediate post-colonial period. Emulating the European art song, the genre was adapted to compose songs with the purpose of promoting a strengthened collective Indonesian identity, fostered by a group of musicians who functioned as gatekeepers, monitoring and devising various mechanisms for songs to conform to the propagandistic needs of the Indonesian government at the time. The result was the development of classical style of singing and the cultivation of a patriotic collection of music during the Guided Democracy period (1959–1965), which peaked at the height of the Konfrontasi (1963–1966). Lagu seriosa lost popularity as popular music infiltrated Indonesia in the 1970s, but it remains an iconic yet understudied aspect of the nationalistic agenda in Indonesia. The case studies of selected songs reflected continuity and change in musical style and over time. This book is of interest to scholars studying the intersection between history, politics, identity, arts and cultural studies in Indonesia. It is also of interest to researchers investigating the role of music in identity formation and nation-building more widely.