II. First definition of statelessness: de jure

Since the establishment of nation-states and the introduction of citizenship, passports and legal documents, statelessness has been recognised to be a major legal and political problem for many people around the world. Currently, stateless groups include denationalised Kurds in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries; many Palestinians; the Roma in central and south-east Europe; Tamils in Sri Lanka; the Bidun in Kuwait and around the Middle East; Biharis in Bangladesh; Haitians in the Dominican Republic; and several ethnic and social groups from the former Soviet bloc, including the Russian minority in the Baltic states (Lynch, Reference Lynch2005; Southwick and Lynch, Reference Southwick and lynch2009; Molnar, Reference Molnar and Gortázar2012).Footnote ⁰⁹ In Europe today, there are estimated to be around 640,000 stateless people, without any formal citizenship (Hammarberg, Reference Hammarberg2008). All of these stateless people suffer from discrimination. In practice, if not in theory, they live in legal limbo because of state laws which not only regulate marriage and birth registration, but can expel people from their own territory following political changes.

The concept of statelessness has been part of both political and academic debate in recent years. Within the context of the global North, for instance, members of some stateless groups who moved to live in Western countries have been mobilising to lobby for their rights, trying to raise awareness for their situation, both at home and abroad. For example, they have highlighted the extent to which they have been culturally, legally and politically oppressed by the dominant ideology of the nation-states which exclude them from the body politic.

Today, more than ten million people around the world are described as stateless according to the legal definition of statelessness.Footnote ¹⁰ However, this number includes only those who are described as de jure Footnote ¹¹ ‘stateless persons’ under international agreements.Footnote ¹² There are no Europe-wide regulations or agreed definitions for statelessness within the European Union (EU); rather, different EU Member States have different regulations on this matter.Footnote ¹³ For example, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Hungary and Latvia have all developed separate national legislation regarding statelessness. The definition of statelessness is therefore unclear: it is described differently by international and national legislation, and also by academics and practitioners. In practice, there are two conceptual approaches to statelessness.

The first applies to those who do not have any legal documents to prove their citizenship, including those who at one point did have these documents but lost them for political or other reasons. According to Article 1 of the 1954 United Nations Convention relating to the status of stateless persons, ‘a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’ is described as a stateless person. These people can be considered as de jure stateless persons, although the term de jure is not used in the Convention itself, but was later used in the UN Guidelines on Statelessness.Footnote ¹⁴

Some Kurds are ‘legally’ considered to be stateless persons under the 1954 UN Convention's definition. More than 300,000 Kurds living in Syria today were stripped of their citizenship following Law No. 93, which was issued in August 1962 and which ordered an exceptional census to be carried out in the Hasakeh governorate, north-eastern Syria. The official government rationale for this census was to establish how many people had crossed the border illegally from Turkish Kurdistan after 1945 and to identify ‘alien infiltrators’.Footnote ¹⁵ In reality, this law affected people whose families had lived on the spot for hundreds of years, if they could not provide formal proof of residence (Human Rights Watch, 1996). Following the census, all of these denationalised people were designated as ‘foreigners’ under Syrian law and this situation continued under subsequent Syrian governments. The affected people were not only labelled as foreigners, but became undocumented and ‘invisible’.

Officially, 120,000 Kurds – or 20 per cent of the Syrian Kurdish population – lost their citizenship as part of this regional programme, which was deeply implicated with the state-sponsored process of Arabisation. This aimed to exclude non-Arab minorities from the nation-state. In reality, more than double this number were affected. Natural population growth has meant that this number has in fact increased, so that in 2011 it was estimated that around 750,000 Syrian Kurds were without citizenship (Altug, Reference Altug2011). Ironically, the initial withdrawal of Syrian citizenship occurred just one year after the 1954 UN Convention came into force in 1961. Without any documents, these stateless Kurds are unable to move anywhere and are locked into a ‘prison-like existence’.Footnote ¹⁶ They did not benefit from the most basic rights of freedom of travel, education, political participation, legal marriage or property ownership. They lived without official existence and, as their children grow up, the next generations have to face similar issues. While children typically inherit their parents’ and grandparents' statelessness, many families were divided, with some family members – often with the help of bribes to Syrian government officials – managing to gain citizenship, while others did not (Lynch and Ali, Reference Lynch and Ali2006). Some Syrian-born Kurdish children were accorded Syrian nationality; while other members of their family and other relatives continued to be stateless aliens, suffering without any nationality and with their rights forever challenged.Footnote ¹⁷ Human Rights Watch (1996, p. 3) states that ‘[b]rothers from the same family, born in the same Syrian village, were classified differently. Fathers became foreigners while their sons remained citizens. The number of stateless Kurds grew with time as descendants of those who lost citizenship in 1962 multiplied.’

The UN and other international organisations did not press the Syrian state to resolve this issue until very recently. They maintained political and economic relations with successive Syrian governments, even though these governments refused to follow international agreements. This is an example of how international legislation, such as the 1954 UN Convention, has not been applied in practice. Consequently, as other countries realise how ineffective international laws are in practice, they have often followed suit with similar procedures to deny citizenship rights to specific ethnic minority communities. For instance, approximately 100,000 Kurds residing in Lebanon do not have Lebanese citizenship today (Southwick and Lynch, Reference Southwick and lynch2009). Thousands of Feili Kurds,Footnote ¹⁸ who were denationalised and expelled from Saddam Hussein's Iraq during the 1970s and now live in Iran, are without any nationality or legal protection (Tan, Reference Tan2008).Footnote ¹⁹ Furthermore, the 1980s Kurdish uprisings in Turkey, Iraq and Iran meant that many more Kurds have lost their citizenship due to the changing political environment and local conflicts.

With this long history of denaturalisation and marginalisation in mind, it is notable that at the beginning of the 2011 Syrian civil war, the Bashar Al-Assad regime granted a form of limited citizenship to many – but not all – of the Kurds who had been stateless in Syria for decades. This was not because the Syrian state had fundamentally changed its view of the Kurds. Rather, Al-Assad urgently needed support for his regime and wanted help from secular Kurds for his war against various religious groups, including the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’, ISIS, Al-Nusra and al-Qa'ida. However, the ‘new’ Kurdish citizens of Syria have still not been granted even minimal minority rights, such as cultural or language rights. According to individuals interviewed for this project and who had formerly lived in Syria before arriving in the UK or Germany, Kurds – whether they have technically become a Syrian ‘citizen’ or not – find it especially difficult to start a business, to buy or rent a property or a car, and to inherit or transfer their wealth to their children. Even those Syrian Kurds who have now obtained official papers still find it difficult to travel abroad: many countries are unwilling to issue the necessary visas usually required by Syrian passport holders. Since Syria currently verges on becoming a failed state, Kurds and some other minorities living in that country do not have access to effective health care, education or employment.

The ongoing discrimination and lack of political, social or economic rights provide at least a partial explanation of why Kurds do not trust any of the factions in Syria, Turkey or elsewhere in the region, and want to create their own independent, or at least autonomous, region.Footnote ²⁰

Although Kurdish political parties have until recently stayed at arm's length from those parties participating in the Syrian civil war, since 2011 Kurds in the Rojava region of northern Syria have taken advantage of their new de facto autonomous status, however limited it may be. They have aimed to create a pluralistic, canton-based ‘autonomous’ region where they can exert their own cultural, linguistic and legal rights, much like their Kurdish brethren in northern Iraq. The city of Kobane, which changed international attitudes about Kurds after the local struggle received so much media coverage for so many months, is in one of the cantons of the Rojava region.

Syrian Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims. However, they are generally recognised to be moderate and secular – and they have built their autonomous region on the basis of legal and political pluralism (Tas, Reference Tas2014; Romano, Reference Romano2014). However, this new development by Kurds in Syria is considered by the Turkish government and religious groups such as ISIS to be a dangerous development which challenges their own existence.

III. De facto statelessness

In the light of the ongoing discrimination and persecution experienced by Kurds whose citizenship was recently reinstated by Al-Assad, it could be argued that these Kurds remain de facto stateless. The notion of de facto statelessness refers to individuals who, formally, hold citizenship of a given country but feel they cannot rely on that country to meaningfully guarantee and protect their rights.Footnote ²¹ In 2010, the UNHCR, at an Expert Meeting for the Concept of Stateless Persons under International Law, stated:

However, this definition is not recognised by any international agreements and de facto stateless persons are not protected in the same way as those who are de jure stateless. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention,Footnote ²³ some people who are either de facto or de jure stateless may be eligible for international protection as refugees.Footnote ²⁴ However, the Convention does not address the concept or practical situation of de facto statelessness and does not cover all situations where there is a lack of national protection.Footnote ²⁵

Indeed, when the status of stateless persons was discussed in the 1954 UN Statelessness Convention, instead of expanding the definition of statelessness to include those who are de facto stateless, law-makers limited the rule to de jure stateless persons and left the decision to nation-states as to whether to extend its benefits to de facto stateless persons in the Final Act.Footnote ²⁶ This stated that:

Many academics and legal practitioners agree that, in practice, it may be difficult to include de facto stateless persons under the 1954 UN Convention.Footnote ²⁸ For that reason, ‘de facto stateless persons … may fail to receive any protection guaranteed under the 1954 Convention’.Footnote ²⁹

During my research with Kurds in the UK, I interviewed several members of the community who officially have Turkish, Iranian or Syrian nationality, but who are unable to return to these countries because of their political views. Some, but not all, of these people may be considered to be refugees under the Refugee Convention, and yet none of them are eligible to benefit from their stateless status because they still hold Turkish, Iranian or Syrian nationality. Although these Kurdish people are still citizens of these states, they can be considered to be de facto stateless persons given that they are unable to use their legal right to return to their homeland; their citizenship rights are ineffective and unequal to those of other citizens of the same state. They cannot rely upon formal connections for any of the usual protections afforded by nationality. Perhaps most fundamentally, they do not regard themselves as Turkish, Iranian or Syrian citizens. For all of these reasons, they are the victims of multiple violations of their basic human rights. As de facto stateless people, they are, however, not protected under the Convention's definition of statelessness. This is not a problem just for Kurds, but affects millions of people around the world,Footnote ³⁰ including Tamils, Palestinians, Roma, Bidun, Chechens and many more. In recent years, the UNHCR has also recognised this lack of legal protection, stating that a ‘recommendation was included on behalf of de facto stateless persons who, technically, still hold a nationality but do not receive any of the benefits generally associated with nationality, notably national protection’.Footnote ³¹ However, de facto statelessness, as Van Waas (Reference Van Waas2008, p. 27) states, ‘may be counterproductive since it has no legal significance. Moreover, ongoing disagreement on the scope of the term “statelessness” can have a highly disruptive impact on the implementation of the relevant international standards.’

De facto stateless persons do not have to leave their country of birth or lose their nationality to ‘become’ de facto stateless. Kurdish people living in the almost failed states of Syria and Iraq are a good example of this. When Kurds were attacked by ISIS in both countries in 2014, they were not defended by either state. Their nationality rights are certainly limited, unprotected and weak – as they all too clearly know. Paul Weis, speaking at a United Nations Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness more than fifty years ago concluded: ‘The borderline between what is commonly called de jure statelessness and de facto statelessness is sometimes difficult to draw.”Footnote ³²

IV. Diaspora and a third definition of statelessness: social statelessness

Especially in the last half of the twentieth century, ‘the movement of people – both individuals and larger communities – has become more frequent … than at any other time in history’ (Tas, Reference Tas2014, p. 18). Most of this movement is the result of individuals experiencing social and economic difficulties, particularly following conflict and war. Some of these people may feel able to return to their original homes when peace returns, bringing with it security, as well as improved social and economic opportunities. However, people from ethnic groups who consider themselves to be stateless, who have been de-territorialised from their original land, and who continue to face conflict with their state of origin, feel that they are living in a diaspora regardless of where they now reside. Not having a state of their own may be one of the main reasons why many people move to different parts of the world and create a transnational identity. Experiences of alienation, depression and being regarded as the ‘other’ are very similar wherever they live.

For that reason, this paper suggests a third category of statelessness: social statelessness. De jure and de facto statelessness are both focused on the legal connections between individuals and the state. However, statelessness is not just an individual problem. For members of some ethnic minority groups, especially those who consider themselves stateless, even legal connections with a state and formal citizenship may not be enough to feel part of that state, with secure nationality. For these people, statelessness is a social fact, and a collective or community problem. That is why the terms de jure and de facto are not enough to explain the loose citizenship relations that some communities or minority groups have with a state. When individuals or families have insecure relations with the state of their birth, this may be a key reason to move abroad to live in the diaspora. They then often also have a weak connection with their new host country, even when they have legal documents or citizenship. There are many examples of states removing an individual's citizenship when they do not like their behaviour or if they have different political views or criticise a government.Footnote ³³ Since there is no strong international protection which would ensure that the citizenship of a nation-state is secure, increasing numbers of people feel unsafe and as though they are living in diaspora conditions.

For stateless people, though, the diaspora is not just a new home away from an old home. For them, their ‘old home’, the place they or their family come from, was not comfortable, let alone ‘homely’. We are not talking simply about voluntary emigration to a diaspora. Many stateless people have been subjected to forced migrations, displacement, and social and political marginalisation in the many places they have lived. According to several of my Kurdish interviewees, because of their statelessness, they do not feel fully in control of their lives, wherever they are. Sometimes, London or Berlin can actually feel more comfortable for Kurds than Istanbul, Antalya or even Diyarbakir. At least in the West, Kurds may often act more freely.

People who are in the condition of being socially stateless live in double or even multiple diasporas. Some of these socially stateless people feel that they need to mobilise against the dominant, majoritarian regime so that their stateless condition can be addressed. They do not feel safe or have a sense of belonging. This is not simply a personal choice, but a response to how they see themselves being regarded as ‘other’ by both the majoritarian public and by governments. This may affect social, economic and legal connections between these individuals and communities and the state where they live. As my previous research showed, individuals and communities in these circumstances create alternative organisations, which fulfil some of the functions of states, to satisfy their own needs (Tas, Reference Tas2014).Footnote ³⁴

Statelessness and life in the diaspora link with and feed into each other. Kurds living in the diaspora in Europe, including those in the UK and Germany, are there not only because of legal, political and economic reasons, but also – and perhaps primarily – because of their and their families' stateless condition in their country of origin, including Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Of course, some people with secure citizenship also move to live in a diaspora. However, for those individuals and families, such movements are often voluntary in nature, and individuals can usually use their passports to return to their original nation-state whenever they choose. For socially stateless people, however, the situation is different. Even if they want to, they usually cannot return because of their lack of official documents, or legal and political disconnections with their homeland state. To formally have citizenship may not change the feelings of people who consider themselves to be stateless.

During my fieldwork with Kurds in the UK and Germany, the majority of my interviewees described themselves as being stateless, despite holding one or more citizenships. They find it difficult to see these legal connections as a guarantee for continuity in their day-to-day lives. Rather, they describe themselves as not having any nation-state that they can feel is their own. They either do not have any legal and political connections with any state; or those who do have connections cannot return to their homeland. One of my interviews from south (Iraqi) Kurdistan described this situation as follows:

Conflicts over the past thirty years in the Middle East have increased the feelings of alienation and a sense of living in limbo for many Kurds. This ‘stateless condition’ is clearly associated with the absence of a state, and not merely the absence of citizenship (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Reference Fiddian-Qasmiyeh2014). According to Salih Muslim, the leader of the Kurds in Syria, not having a state of their own creates ‘inhuman’ conditions and little chance for Kurds to oppose their attackers.Footnote ³⁶

‘Where are you from?’ or ‘Where is home?’ are therefore two of the most difficult and disturbing questions for stateless people to answer. If asked by someone from the same ethnic group as themselves, they may name the city where they originally came from. If someone of another nationality, for example a British person, asks similar questions, a Kurd from Turkey may say that they are from Istanbul even if this is not the case. People from Iraqi Kurdistan usually say that they are from Kurdistan. People from Syria now name their homeland as Rojova (the northern region of Syria where many Kurds live). The aim of using all these different descriptions or imagined names is to avoid mentioning the state's name, even though they may still have a legal connection with it. This distinctive local name is purposely not the same as that of the state. One of my Kurdish interviewees from Turkey explained that he does not have any positive memories of the Turkish state where he was born and so never wants to hear its name. He continues:

Struggling with these issues, stateless people create and reinvent collective memories and myths about their homeland (Safran, Reference Safran1991). These memories migrate with individuals and families,Footnote ³⁸ and, as noted by my interviewees, they are passed between generations. Even when migrants live in Western countries, and even if they hold citizenship of a Western state, they often still feel stateless. They do not feel secure, let alone comfortable. They may have exaggerated or otherwise inaccurate memories of their original homeland and politics, which are further transformed with each retelling of the stories into new myths and mystical atmospheres. These continue to reshape and multiply representations of the past. Zerubavel (Reference Zerubavel1995, p. 214) describes how there are ‘multiple representations of the past over time or by different groups … [W]hile some aspects of the past are uncovered or shift from the margins to the center of our historical consciousness, other aspects of the past are marginalized or fade into oblivion.’ Novel hybrid or selective homeland ‘memories’ or myths are extremely important for political activity and other acts of mobilisation. Said (Reference Said2000, p. 185) suggested that ‘collective memory is not an inert and passive thing, but a field of activity in which past events are selected, reconstructed, maintained, modified, and endowed with political meaning’.Footnote ³⁹ One of my interviewees explained that:

Beliefs like this show that statelessness is not simply a legal issue. It represents a social and emotional disconnection with the state where individuals and families live or used to live. There may be strong ‘travelling’ memories (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Reference Fiddian-Qasmiyeh2012). However, the official lack of a homeland or state, and the weak connections with any real place, shape daily life, culture and identity for many stateless people. When even holding official British papers does not make a stateless person feel comfortable, this represents a strong barrier to integration. Even if they want to assimilate, research with Kurds and Palestinians alike indicates that stateless people often do not feel as though they are fully accepted into a new identity.Footnote ⁴¹ This underlines how assimilation or integration has to work both ways: the incomer has to be ready to accept the culture of their new home – and those living in the host state have to be ready to positively accept, rather than merely tolerate, the migrant. Both processes have to happen if assimilation or integration is to be successful. Otherwise the migrant will stay on the edge of life in their new country, while remaining emotionally connected to a mythical version of their homeland.

V. The politics of diasporic identity: conflict and peace

When I asked a Kurdish woman in London how being stateless and living in the diaspora has affected her daily life, she answered me with another question: ‘Which diaspora do you mean?’ When I changed my question to ask: ‘What does diaspora mean to you?’ she answered:

Another interviewee, a Kurdish political activist from Turkey, explained to me: ‘stateless people are the orphans of the world. They do not have a real home. They do not belong anywhere. They are born in a diaspora and they will die in a diaspora. Everywhere is diaspora for them. It doesn't make any difference where they are.’Footnote ⁴³

These two respondents' comments show that many Kurds are adding a new dimension to the way the word ‘diaspora’ is usually understood, and thereby stretching the concept. Another Kurdish man from Turkey asked: ‘Is there any diaspora for British, German, American, Canadian or Russian people who, like us stateless people [Kurds] are full of sadness, loneliness and betrayal?’ He then answered his own question: ‘No, I have not heard of any Americans living in the diaspora of Turkey or England who are sad and lonely, and who queue on state borders to save their own lives.’ He continued:

Gurbet is the Kurdish and Turkish term for the diaspora, the place where someone is living for a short or long time that is not their original homeland. As explained eloquently by this interviewee, the word implies sadness, loneliness and emotions related to the alienation and foreignness felt in a ‘temporary’ host location, especially when it is not known how long the exile may last. Many of my interviewees talked about their experiences of gurbet instead of diaspora, since the former refers more specifically to the community to which one belongs abroad (Tas, Reference Tas2013a, Reference Tas2013b, Reference Tas2014). Indeed, ‘diaspora’ does not mean the same for Kurds or other stateless groups as it does for Turkish, Irish or Chinese individuals and families who live outside their states of origin. Rather than referring to the Kurdish diaspora, it might therefore be more appropriate to refer to a gurbet for Kurds who are away from home, especially since, as Werbner (Reference Werbner2002) argues, each diaspora is unique. It might therefore be better to describe this uniqueness with a culture-specific concept. I have argued elsewhere that ‘as for other diaspora communities, many Kurds – even those born in the UK and Germany or who have lived here for decades – feel that their real home is not in the gurbet and imagine returning to their homeland “when conditions are right” as they simultaneously develop new identities within their new place of settlement’ (Tas, Reference Tas2014, p. 70).

Furthermore, it can be argued that people do not have to physically cross a border to be in a diaspora. They can feel as if they are living in exile conditions, and can experience trauma and nostalgia, even while living in their homeland, if they are forced to follow the rules and culture of others and do not feel safe about their nationality. In a situation like this – a situation of dispossession, marginalisation and oppression – it can be hard to establish where diaspora or exile begins or ends. There is an active process in people's lives and memory which is akin to the feeling of statelessness. As individuals and families move to new places, they inhabit double, or multiple diasporas.

VI. Statelessness, diaspora and nationalism

In such contexts of dispossession and oppression, it can be argued that statelessness, diaspora and nationalism are strongly connected insofar as statelessness and diaspora can be seen to feed nationalism. The ‘weak’ nationalism of stateless people, including Kurds, has been part of academic debate in recent years. Many Kurds believe that Kurdish people, both as individuals and as a community, have not been ‘strong’ enough nationalists, because they have not been successful at establishing their own state. A common perception amongst Kurds is that, since they don't have a strong religious identity, they need to strengthen their nationalism. Ismail Beşikçi, a well-known Turkish academic who has researched Kurdish issues for decades, has asserted that: ‘Kurds are not good enough nationalists. They should not be as democratic as they are today. It's too much. It is not Kurds' business to make Turkey a more democratic country. They need their own state first. So for that reason Kurds should be more nationalist if they want to end their statelessness.’Footnote ⁴⁵ In contrast, some other Kurds argue against stronger nationalism, worrying that it may easily become narcissistic nationalism and that this could be worse than so-called fundamental religion. Instead, they believe that Kurds need to become more democratic than they are currently. For example, when Abbas Vali, another well-known Kurdish academic, commented on my presentation at SOAS, University of London, (24 April 2015) of Beşikçi's statement, he said that: ‘I have to fundamentally disagree with Beşikçi. Kurds are not democratic enough.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Kurds who want to promote a more advanced form of democracy are especially concerned about the rights of women and other powerless groups. Kurds like Abbas Vali even want to champion the right to be heard for those people who hold political views in direct opposition to their own.

Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who has been imprisoned by Turkey since 1999, has called on all Kurdish people around the world to unite, to show resistance and to increase their national solidarity against their enemies. He said: ‘Not only the people of Rojova [western or Syrian Kurdistan], but also everyone in the north [Turkey] and other parts of Kurdistan should act accordingly’ (Letsch, Reference Letsch2014). Kurds who have left the various imagined homelands of Kurdistan, often take such a call for national solidarity especially seriously. They may act very quickly and emotionally. The ISIS attack on Kobane, which has cost thousands of lives and caused suffering to hundreds of thousands of people, is the first time in history that Kurds from different parts of the world have joined together to fight for the same cause. As part of this, and in spite of its internal heterogeneity, the Kurdish nation has declared a joint day of national remembrance for the timeless suffering they continue to endure. Kurds have declared 1 November to be ‘World Kobane Day’. These efforts demonstrate a shift in Kurdish nationalism, from localised and weak nationalism to a collective, stronger form of nationalism.

In recent years, diaspora have been one of the most important engines of Kurdish nationalism, driving Kurds onwards to create a Kurdish state and end their statelessness. Living in different diasporas and not having formal or strong nationality links with any one country has meant that many Kurds have put their energy into working towards a future Kurdish ‘virtual’ state, and have remained focused on the politics of this goal. This is one of the reasons underpinning the re-shaping and re-sharpening collective against the rules and governments in the dominant states they have migrated from. The diaspora is seen as a safe environment within which to organise – creating ‘long-distance nationalists’ (Anderson, Reference Anderson1998; Sheffer, Reference Sheffer2002; Schiller and Georges, Reference Schiller and Georges2001; Schiller, Reference Schiller, Ember, Ember and Skoggard2005) influenced by homeland conflict and policies, and the prospect of peace – as they carry on with their everyday lives.

As noted above, this research was conducted during the period when Kurds were under attack by ISIS in Iraq and Syria,Footnote ⁴⁷ and therefore at a time when emotions were running particularly high. While they were talking with me, most of my interviewees and focus group members were simultaneously, and very frequently, checking their smartphones, following the news on Twitter and Facebook, and either re-tweeting or sharing Facebook messages, pictures and YouTube videos that they considered important. A spokesman for Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union, Nawaf Khalil, described the ISIS attempts as an extraordinarily violent action against the Kurdish people (Aljazeera, Reference Aljazeera2014). This was not even the first ‘inhuman’ or genocide attempt on the Kurds: a Yazidi community leader in Europe has listed seventy-three earlier genocides.Footnote ⁴⁸ According to Yazidi law-maker Vian Dakhil, between August and October 2014 more than 25,000 Yazidi Kurdish girls were abducted by ISIS to be raped and sold.Footnote ⁴⁹ The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) representative in the UK, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, also noted that in the last thirty years, especially since the 1980s, there have been several genocide attempts against Kurds, for example at Halabja, Iraq.Footnote ⁵⁰ According to Sami Abdul Rahman, in August 2014 alone, more than 500,000 Kurds were displaced in Iraq and Syria.Footnote ⁵¹ Tears flowed from the eyes of another of my interviewees when she answered my question about the experiences of Kurds in the contemporary Middle East:

Sad emotions, anger and victim psychology does not only refer to the current situation. Stateless people like the Kurds are only too aware of their long history of oppression: this is part of the ‘travelling memories’ already discussed as being continually re-imagined. One of my interviewees indicated:

Kurdish political and protest movements in Europe, especially in the UK, are one of the most significant transnational movements attempting to end the misery in the homeland. They have made the world aware of the effects of ISIS attacks against Kurds in Shengal in Iraq, as well as in Kobane, Syria. In part of my ethnographic research with Kurds, I was told that several hundred young Kurdish men and women have travelled to Turkey and Syria from London and Berlin to fight, to help the Kurds. Many of these people are well-educated or work in well-paid professions.

People from the diaspora who cannot go to fight instead organise fundraising events, and take part in lobbying activities and demonstrations with the aim of persuading British and European politicians to help the Kurdish movements in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. To demonstrate their solidarity with Kurds, around 160 scholars working on Kurdish issues, many living in the diasporas, sent a joint statement to the world media in October 2014.Footnote ⁵⁴ In September and October 2014, some London-based Kurds even began a hunger strike for the Kurdish cause. Benedict Anderson (Reference Anderson1998, p. 74) is wrong when he claims that members of diaspora communities try to influence what is going on in their homeland without being physically involved in destructive conflicts.Footnote ⁵⁵ Members of Kurdish diasporas have left comfortable middle-class lives in London and Berlin to fight alongside other Kurds in Kobane (in Rojova, Syria), the Kandil Mountains (in Iraqi Kurdistan) or the Cudi Mountains (Kurdish regions in Turkey). Some of these men and women have already sacrificed their lives. The families left behind often do not even get the chance to bury the bodies – when these are destroyed in explosions. Instead, holding only photos of their loved ones, bereaved families remain active supporters of the Kurdish cause. Some bereaved individuals even go to join the physical fight. Statelessness is one of the factors reinforcing this cycle of violence.

In a diverse range of ways, individuals therefore try to establish a common movement influencing homeland politics. As they work together, they at least work within an imagined, virtual Kurdish state, even if this does not materialise in other concrete ways. However, it may be difficult to claim that all Kurds in the diaspora are similarly aware of what is going on in their homeland. As Menski (Reference Menski2011) says, there is a ‘plurality of pluralities (POP)’ within small groups such as Kurds. Age, gender and class are of course important, but even within one subgroup of migrants, there can be a variation in understanding of global issues, and a range of ‘factors and diverse motivations, prompting people to become involved in similar activities’ (Al-Ali and Koser, Reference Al-Ali and Koser2002). Different assimilation policies in different countries will increase this diversity.

Referring to the close links within extended families, Kurds have been described as living in a ‘tribal’ community. Most diaspora Kurds, especially the early arrivals, came from small villages or towns without any strong educational or intellectual background. This plays an important role in the continuation of kinship and a tribal type of social life, including marriage and business relations in the diaspora (Tas, 2013b, Reference Tas2014). As Craig Calhoun agrees, when people know each other well within a local community, they can create strong traditions and customs. This makes for a strong bond between local people and the locality they live in (Eliassi, Reference Eliassi2013, p. 62). Individuals and families who have these sorts of bonds may be able to continue a pluralistic society – with local traditions, customs and languages – for a long time. However, it may also mean they have strong barriers against creating the sort of strong national identity and community which would have helped them to create their own state, and to end their statelessness. Without ‘an imagined political community’ (Anderson, Reference Anderson2006), including strong solidarity ‘in the name of nation’ (Brubaker, Reference Brubaker2004), it is difficult to create a meaningful modern nation-state. A Kurdish man in London, originally from the Turkish part of the Kurdish regions, said:

Since Kurds have no unitary religious or linguistic identity, then many Kurds have claimed that the only way forward is to become much more nationalistic, and that unity through nationalism can be the only way to end their statelessness.Footnote ⁵⁷ As part of one of my focus group discussions in Berlin, one female participant claimed that:

As we have seen from individual interviews and focus group discussions, many Kurds do not consider their nationalism ‘good’ enough to end their statelessness. The social experience of statelessness is now driving some diaspora groups to become more nationalistic, to create stronger and sharper views. Although the ‘travelling memories’ of forced migration, suffering and victimisation, and the feelings associated with these are affected and sometimes amplified by those experiences, those memories do energise today's ethnopolitical nationalism. Nationalism is therefore an important connecting and mobilising ideology for stateless diaspora communities like the Kurds.

The diaspora populations can easily become the driving engine for politics, a nationalist movement, and conflict in the original homeland. They can also become an agent of change towards peace. This has been the case with the ‘peace process’ between the PKK and Turkish state representatives, especially the Turkish National Intelligence Service. Initial negotiations were brokered during 2009 with the help of diaspora representatives in Oslo. This example demonstrates that the Kurdish stateless diaspora has already been an active, influential actor in policies affecting its homeland (Tas, Reference Tas2015). As one of my interviewees said: ‘If there is going to be peace, it will be down to the diaspora. And that's true for conflict too. We are becoming as strong as the Armenian and Jewish diaspora. Assimilated Kurds in Turkey cannot make peace – or war – without us. We have suffered. And we will decide.’Footnote ⁵⁹

The imprisoned Kurdish leader, Öcalan, understands this. He has repeatedly asked the diaspora both to organise events to discuss the peace process and to contribute to its development, and also to involve European institutions and governments. With this in mind, two conferences were organised in Brussels by the Kurdish National Congress in the Diaspora (KNK) during December 2013 and December 2014. The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has also pointed out in many speeches how different Kurdish power-holders, and especially diasporas, play a crucial role in the ongoing conflict and its resolution. The Kurdish diaspora is therefore recognised as an important influencing factor by both sides of the conflict (Tas, Reference Tas2015). Members of the diaspora can easily be ‘peace-makers or peace-wreckers’ (Al-Ali, Reference Al-Ali2007). As we have discussed above, the Kurdish diaspora has followed a ‘strong’ nationalism in recent years and they have actively contributed to the ongoing conflict. This may be an important barrier for Kurdish leaders to overcome if they are going to make peace. Even thinking that there might be a solution is perhaps an even more formidable barrier.