‘People without a State Also Must Live’ these nation states, understood as a heavily ethno-nationalist concept. 47 He suggests that the national identities are closely associated with being Turkish, Arab or Persian, respectively, and that these identities have been constructed partly through the suppression of Kurds. 48 Building on this idea, Denise Natali suggests that ‘[w]hat it means to be a Kurd … must be considered in relation to what it means to be a citizen of Iraq, Turkey, [Syria,] and Iran’. 49 Although the aim of this paper is not to compare experiences of citizenship between individuals from Kurdish regions in different nation states, exploring the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, respectively, allows for expressions of Kurdish ethnic identity and nationalism to be situated within the contexts in which they have developed. Since the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, a distinction has continuously been made, whether explicitly or implicitly, between ‘Turkishness as citizenship’, where citizenship is defined as formal legal status, and ‘Turkishness as such’, despite claims to universality. 50 Through state-driven processes of cultural assimilation, citizens were expected to assimilate to an idea of Turkishness that ‘embodies, defends, and represents the particularity of ethnic Turkish identity’. 51 Paradoxically, through showcasing Turkishness as unrelated to ethnicity, Kurds were not recognised as an ethnic group until 1991 and consequently denied, and continue to be denied, many cultural rights on the basis their ethnicity. 52 Yegen suggests that the status of Kurds in Turkey has always been ambiguous, from predominantly being conceived of as ‘prospective-Turks’ to increasingly being seen as ‘pseudo-citizens’. 53 Whereas ‘prospective-Turks’ suggests that Kurds could be considered included within the Turkish national community when sufficiently culturally and linguistically assimilated, the idea of Kurds as ‘pseudo-citizens’ implies that ‘some are more citizens than others’ and that Kurds cannot achieve an equal level of Turkishness to others. 54 Furthermore, Kurds have also been perceived as the Turkish nation’s ‘primary Other’, or a minority group against which the majority can identify itself, rendering inclusion near impossible. 55 Syria offers perhaps the most explicit illustration of citizenship reflecting the dominant concept of the nation, as Syria’s official name — Syrian Arab Republic — denotes the ethnicisation of its citizenship and conflates Arab ethnic identity with Syrian citizenship, whereby non-Arabs are considered less Syrian. 56 Motivated by the idea that Kurdish presence was threatening the Arabic character of parts of the country, Syria implemented a census in 1962, resulting in 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Eliassi, ‘Statelessness in a World of Nation-States’ (n 5) 1405. ibid. Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Syracuse University Press 2005) xviii. Mesut Yegen, ‘“Prospective-Turks” or “Pseudo-Citizens”: Kurds in Turkey’ (2009) 63(4) Middle East Journal 597. Eliassi, ‘Conceiving Citizenship and Statelessness in the Middle East and Sweden’ (n 5) 95. Ingmar Karlsson, Inga vänner utom bergen: Kurdernas historia (Historiska Media 2017) 115. Yegen (n 50), 610. ibid 610–11. Mesut Yeğen, Müstakbel Türk’ten Sözde Vatandaşa (İletişm 2006) 74–143, cited in Cenk Saracoglu, ‘“Exclusive Recognition”: The New Dimensions of the Question of Ethnicity and Nationalism in Turkey’ (2009) 32(4) Ethnic and Racial Studies 640, 641. McGee (n 18) 179; Eliassi, ‘Conceiving Citizenship and Statelessness in the Middle East and Sweden’ (n 5) 97. 291