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Rethinking the Violence of Pacification: State Formation and Bandits in Turkey, 1914–1937

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2012

Uğur Ümit Üngör
Uğur Ümit Üngör*
Affiliation:
History, Utrecht University
*
u.ungor@uu.nl
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Abstract

This article discusses the changing relationship between Kurdish bandits and the Ottoman and Turkish states. Considerable research has been conducted on the impact of state formation on the establishment and maintenance of a monopoly of violence. But little is known about the state's use of outlaws for various security tasks. I address this hiatus and focus on the ebb and flow of Kurdish chieftains' relations to the state. Although these states followed consistent policies of disarmament and pacification, in periods of crisis, such as war, this changed as they tried to use the outlaws for their own purposes. I draw on previously untapped Ottoman and Western sources to portray the experience of one group of Kurdish tribal outlaws who found themselves at times diametrically opposed to the state, but in other times in accord with it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 746 - 769
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2012

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