Recent Publications

2022

Khezri, Haidar. 2022. “Kurds, Jews, and Kurdistani Jews: Historic Homelands, Perceptions of Parallels in Persecution, and Allies by Analogy.” Religions 13(3): 253.

2021

Ayhan, Tutku and Tezcür, Güneş Murat. 2021. “Overcoming ‘intimate hatreds’: Reflections on violence against Yezidis“. In Aafreedi, Navras J. and Singh, Priya (eds.), Conceptualizing Mass Violence: Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations. London: Routledge.

Khezri, Haidar. 2021. “Internal Colonialism and the Discipline of Comparative Literature in Iran.” Revista Brasileira de Literature Comparada 23(43): 94-117.

Khezri, Haidar. 2021. “Kurdish as a Stateless Language in the U.S.” Journal of National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages 30(1): 48-101.

Khezri, Haidar and Tyler Fisher. 2021. “Forever a Kurd”, “Poetic Justice,” and “Dance of Death”. In Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora, edited by Christopher Nelson, Green Linden Press, pp. 133-134, 178.

Khezri, Haidar and Tyler Fisher. 2021. “Four Ghazals”. My Moon Is the Only Moon: The Poetry of Nali, edited by David Shook, Kashkul Books, pp. 83-95.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat. ed. 2021. Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East: Shifting Identities, Borders and the Experience of Minority Communities. London: I.B. Tauris.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat and Doreen Horschig. 2021. “A Conditional Norm: Chemical Warfare from Colonialism to Contemporary Civil Wars.” Third World Quarterly 42(2): 366-384.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat, Rebecca Schiel, and Bruce Wilson. 2021. “The Effectiveness of Harnessing Human Rights: The Struggle over the Ilısu Dam in Turkey.” Development and Change 52(6): 1343-1369.

2020

Fisher, Tyler and Haidar Khezri. 2020. “Skylight” and “The Heart is Moth Aflame,” translation of Kurdish rubai and ghazal by Malaye Jaziri. Poet Lore, December.

Khezri, Haidar and Tyler Fisher. 2020. “Two Ghazals by Nali,” translation of Kurdish ghazal by Nali. The Brooklynrail, October.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat. 2020. “A Path out of Patriarchy? Political Agency and Social Identity of Women Fighters.” Perspectives on Politics 18(3): 722-739.

Zibari, Renas, Thai Lagraff, Quyen D. Chu, Anand Annamalai, Sachin “Sunny” Jha, Lou Smith, Bharat Guthikonda, Hosein Shokouh-Amiri, Gazi B. Zibari. 2020. “Medical Capacity-Building in War-Torn Nations: Kurdistan, Iraq as a Model,” Journal of the American College of Surgeons. 

2019

Tezcür, Güneş Murat  and Helin Yıldız, 2019. “Kurdish Politics in Post-2011 Syria: From Fragmentation to Hegemony,” Mediterranean Politics, Published Online.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat, 2019. “A Century of the Kurdish Question,” Ethnopolitics 18(1): 1-12. In a special issue on Kurdish politics edited by G. M. Tezcür.

2018

Fisher, Tyler and Nahro Zagros, 2018. “Yezidi Baptism and Rebaptism: Resilience, Reintegration, and Religious Adaptation,” in Routledge Handbook on the Kurds ed., Michael M. Gunter, New York: Routledge.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat and Peyman Asadzade, 2018. “Ethnic Nationalism versus Religious Loyalty: The Case of Kurds in Iran,” Nations and Nationalism. 

Tezcür, Güneş Murat and Clayton Besaw, 2018. “Jihadist Waves: Syria, the Islamic State, and the Changing Nature of Foreign Fighters,” Conflict Management and Peace Science. 

 2017

Tezcür, Güneş Murat and Mehmet Gürses, 2017. “Ethnic Exclusion and Mobilization: The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey,” Comparative Politics 49(2): 213-234.

 2016

Özoğlu, Hakan, 2016. “Politics of Memory: The Role of Collective Forgetting in Kurdish Identity Formation,” in The Kurdish Question Revisited eds., Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef, London: Hurst.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat, 2016. “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks: Joining an Ethnic Rebellion,” American Political Science Review 110(2): 247-264.

2015

Tezcür, Güneş Murat, 2015. “Catholic and Muslim Human Rights Activism in Violent Internal Conflicts,” Politics and Religion 8(1): 111-134.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat, 2015. “Electoral Behavior in Civil Wars: The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey,” Civil Wars  17(1): 70-88.

Tezcür, Güneş Murat, 2015. “Violence and Nationalist Mobilization: The Onset of the Kurdish Insurgency in Turkey,” Nationalities Papers 43(2): 248-266.

Projects

Foreign Policy Making in Turbulent Times

Photo taken in front of the UCF Knight Statue for the American Foreign Policy and Intelligence Conference on April 21, 2022. Speakers (from Left to Right) Kelsey Larsen, Emma Ashford, David Oakley, Morgan Kaplan, Stephen Coulthart, Güneş Murat Tezcür, Monica Duffy Toft, Andrew Boutton, Jonathan Powell, Sandor Fabian, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Michael Mousseau.

On Thursday, April 21, 2022, the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs (SPSIA) organized its landmark event of Spring 2022 – the American Foreign Policy and Intelligence Conference. The conference attracted a lively audience which featured 10 scholars and experts who provided unique perspectives about American foreign policy and intelligence in the wake of the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. While the U.S. foreign policy and intelligence establishment has been subject of widespread criticisms for the swift fall of Kabul to Taliban forces, they have also been praised for providing accurate predictions of Russian intentions in Ukraine. Read more

 

Strengthening Global Citizenship of Kurdistan-Iraq Youth
Model United Nations 2021

Logo of the Soran University Model United Nations 2021 Conference

Model United Nations (MUN) are educational conferences which offer its participants an opportunity to experience the parliamentary procedure and decision-making process employed by the United Nations. As simulations of the world’s largest international organization, MUNs offer a friendly way to expose young people around the world to the international community.

The recent cooperation between UCF’s Kurdish Political Studies Program and Soran University in Iraqi Kurdistan aim to introduce this experience to Iraq by organizing the country’s first National Model United Nations. The conference seeks to bring together one hundred participants from across Iraq. For three days the students will assume the role of country delegates, take part in the parliamentary proceedings, and debate issues of international importance while practicing policy research. Read more

 

After the Last ‘Firman’
Victimhood, Survival and Societal Transformation among the Yezidis   

Drawing of the exodus to Sinjar Mountains by Olgu Ergin
Exodus to Sinjar Mountains. Artist: Olgu Ergin

In 2014, the Yezidi- a religious community with historical roots in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq – had repeatedly been targeted by the Islamic State’s (IS) violence against the Yezidis: thousands of Yezidis were executed and large numbers of women and children were taken hostages and subsequently sold as slaves. While the Yezidis have historically developed a strong sense of existential threat perception as a marginalized minority, the IS assault has pushed the community to the brink of survival.

This project is a collaboration among the University of Central Florida, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the American University of Kurdistan. The project addresses a series of questions about the dimensions of Yezidi religion by empirically focusing on the lived experience of Yezidis. While IS atrocities against the Yezidis have received significant media attention, their lingering effects on Yezidis’ lives and relations between them remain unexplored.

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Theses

Doctoral Dissertations

Honors Undergraduate Theses

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