Sunday, January 28, 2007

Lovering's Love

John Lovering from Cardiff University doesn't like nationalism, or basically, its imposition from above, by an elite.

So here's part of his letter to the London Review of Books:-

When Sabah Salih insists that the liberation of Turkey’s Kurds can only come through nationalism, which Kurds does he mean: Alevis or Sunnis? Secularists or fundamentalists? Agas or peasants? Workers or business-owners? Men or women (Letters, 14 December 2006)?... Kurdish nationalism, like all others, involves the imposition by an elite of an ideology in which only particular interpretations, interests and people prevail.

...This patronising neo-Orientalism seems to owe much to the long media campaign by groups in Europe and the US associated with the PKK which has captured the imagination of much of the diaspora and many romantic well-wishers. It has benefited, too, from a lot of dewy-eyed Western journalism from the left and noisy anti-Turkish and anti-Iranian propaganda from the right. What poorer Kurds need, like everyone else, is more multiculturalism, more democracy, real
economic development, and above all, a radical improvement in the position of women.

I wonder, would he write the same about something called "Palestinian nationalism"?

No comments: