Les politiques ottomane et républicaine au Kurdistan à partir de la comparaison des milices Hamidiye et korucu : modèles institutionnels, retribalisation et dynamique des conflits
The parallel drawn between the militia established by the late Ottoman regime in the 1890’s, the Hamidiye, and the one established in the 1980’s, the korucu, is a commonplace of works on the Kurdish issue since the 1990s. The author aims to develop a more systematic comparison between both institutions. Addressing successively the issues of the internal organisation, the tribalisation of the resources, and the relationship with Kurdish nationalism, the author points out that both militia are fundamentally different. In particular, the Hamidiye is a military corps accumulating resources by predation, as opposed to the korucu, which are much more local units under state control, drawing resources from the state and contraband more than from predation.
Experiencing Justice and Imagining State: Engaging the Law to Challenge the Rule of Exception in Tunceli
This article explores the uses of law in a restrictive and changing political environment. It focuses on the specific case of Dersim/Tunceli – a theatre of the PKK/Turkish army warfare in the 1990s – following the arrest of the PKK leader in 1999 and the lifting of emergency rule in July 2002. The paper analyzes how cause-lawyers resort to law in a period in which the state’s local ruling and control devices are transforming and in which the ‘rule of law’ has to be reinstated. While acknowledging the crucial role of the courts in shaping people’s perception of ‘the state’ as all-encompassing, the article underlines how people also come to learn ‘the state’ as multi-layered and incoherent by facing obstacles to legal action and circumventing them in this changing and uncertain period. It then discusses justice as a site of contention and argues that increasing levels of legal activism is directly contributing to the redefinition of the rule of law and, beyond that, of the conceptual borders of ‘the state’ itself.
The Ottoman empire in the mid‐nineteenth century: a review
Roderick H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, xiv + 479 pp., bibliography, index; Princeton University Press, London: Oxford University Press, £5 5s.