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Prior to the takeover of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in June 2014, political pundits, the media, and some Kurds were predicting imminent Kurdish statehood. They argued tha...

This paper examines the changing nature of the Kirkuk problem in Iraq and the implications for its long-term resolution. It is argued that different state-building policies have transformed the Kirkuk problem from an ethno-territorial conflict between Kurdish elites and Baghdad to power struggles between representatives of local governing bodies, political parties and regional actors. The more complex space that defines the contemporary Kirkuk problem in post-Saddam Iraq has also encouraged shifts in identity politics. The notion of being ‘Kirkuki first’ has become salient alongside Kurdish nationalism. These transformations demand a more nuanced policy that addresses the diverse socio-economic and political components of the Kirkuk problem, alongside the ethnicized nature of political identities in which the dispute is centered. Before any referendum can be implemented, certain requisites and confidence-building measures must be established to assure stability and create a minimal level of trust between ...

This paper examines transition patterns in post-Gulf war Iraqi Kurdistan as a function of external aid, and the impact of these developments on relations between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad. It argues that, despite ethnic traditions and structural legacies, the asymmetrical and changing nature of aid has created new incentives for conflict and co-operation. Since 1991 aid has strengthened the Kurdistan region's power in relation to the state and increased leverage on the central government to accommodate Kurdish demands for autonomy. Yet it has also created an increasingly complex political – economic order and new interdependencies between the regions. The shift from relief aid to reconstruction within a neoliberal framework has helped open the Iraqi and Kurdish political economies by encouraging trade between the Kurdistan region, regional states and foreign governments. The creation of a federal Iraqi state has also led to financial and political linkages between the Kurdistan region and ...

Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries, by Hakan Ozoglu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 192 pages. This book ex...

(2002). Kurdayeti in the Late Ottoman and Qajar Empires. Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 177-199.

The following briefs are edited versions of papers presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in Anchorage, Alaska, November 8, 2003. The editors were Hakan Yavuz and Michael Gunter, whose papers are included below. Why Kurdish Statehood is Unlikely, Michael M. Gunter, professor of political science, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, Tennessee Transnational Networks: New Opportunities and Constraints for Kurdish Statehood, Denise Natali, visiting research fellow, Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI); director of WKI's transnational project Turkey and Kurdistan-Iraq, 2003, Robert Olson, professor of Middle East and Islamic history, University of Kentucky Could a Kurdish State Be Set Up in Iraq?, Nihat Ali Ozcan, author of PKK (Kurdistan ýpci Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yonetimi (Ankara: Asam, 1999) Kurdish Reality in an Emerging Iraq, Khaled Salih, University of Southern Denmark Provincial Not Ethnic Federalism in Iraq, M. Hakan Yavuz, associate professor of political science, University of Utah

Denise Natali analyses 20 years of state‐reshaping projects in Iraq as an attempt by the Iraqi elite to draw Kurds into the state and to recognize the existence of a Kurdish ethnicity and region, while maintaining the idea of Kurds as ‘Iraqis first’ and of ‘Kurdistan’ as an internal part of sovereign Iraq. The author traces Iraq's transition from a colonized country to a modern welfare state to a military dictatorship, and shows how centre–periphery relations swung as a result of elite politics in Baghdad. The author unearths the complexity behind the national identity formation process, particularly under the uncertainty of economic transition and the centre's asymmetric relations with different ethnic groups at the periphery.