An overview of the largest ‘nation’ in the world still without its own independent state.
Michael M. Gunter is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Kurdish history and politics.
He has authored nine books on the subject, and one in particular offers a clear and accessible overview of the Kurds’place in the Middle East today and in the past.
The Kurds: A Modern History(Markus Wiener Publishers, 2015) combines history and political analysis.The book is the fruit of numerous trips that the seventy-five-year-old Gunter has made to the region and his meetings with some of the most influential Kurdish leaders, from Abdullah Öcalan (PKK) to Mustafa Hijri (KDPI).
The book’s introduction is followed by seven chapters. The first examines the events that marked Kurdish history up to the Ottoman era. The next four chapters analyse the details of respective Kurdish nationalist movements in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The sixth chapter is dedicated to an analysis of the changing relationship with the United States. Finally, the seventh focuses on the Kurds at the time of Islamic State.
The Kurds: A Modern Historytells the story of the evolution of the nationalist movements that represent the Kurdish population and analyses their relationships with the main regional actors. The book also extendsits gaze to include the role of the West and its original sin: the Sykes Picot Agreement that redrew the national boundaries of the Middle East in 1916. As Gunter explains, this still lies at the heart of the age-old Kurdish question.
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An overview of the largest ‘nation’ in the world still without its own independent state.
