“Nothing But a Fighter”: An Exiled Kurdish Academic’s Journey Towards Human Rights Activism

Clarisse Halpern

doi:10.29333/ejecs/1766

Authors

Clarisse Halpern Florida Gulf Coast University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-8601

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/1766

Keywords:

Kurdish, ethnic identity, academic purge, Turkish-Kurdish conflict, human rights, academic freedom

Abstract

This article presents an oral history of a Kurdish academic, examining how they narrate Kurdish identity under repression and how those meanings shaped their decision to escape Turkey to live in exile. The narrator was one of the participants of a dissertation on the erosion of academic freedom in Turkey and the experiences of academics in exile following the 2016 attempted coup. This article focuses on the oral history conducted as part of that project. This study can inform understandings of other stories, rather than claiming to represent all Kurds in Turkey. Therefore, I used an oral history approach to center the narrator’s testimony and analyze how they construct meaning about Kurdish identity under conditions of surveillance and risk, understanding that identity is socially constructed, interactional, performative, and situated within webs of significance. The findings offer insight into the personal dimensions of post-2016 repression in Turkey, the narrator’s account of seeking recognition of cultural and linguistic rights, and everyday mechanisms and policy dynamics that contributed to the academic purge and to academics’ decisions to live in exile.

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Author Biography

Clarisse Halpern, Florida Gulf Coast University

Clarisse Halpern is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Social Sciences and an adjunct faculty member in the Honors College and College of Education at Florida Gulf Coast University. During her doctoral studies, she specialized in Higher Educational Leadership, Multicultural and Multilingual Education, and Curriculum and Instruction. Over the past eight years, she has published more than 30 articles in top-tier academic journals and delivered over 60 presentations at national and international conferences. Her research examines the erosion of academic freedom in Turkey, political repression, and the experiences of scholars in exile. In addition, her scholarship includes international students’ experiences within receiving countries’ higher education systems and multicultural teacher preparation for working with multilingual learners. In her current role, she mentors undergraduate, honors, international, and first-generation students through competitive scholarship pathways and collaborative research projects.

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