‘People without a State Also Must Live’ inclusion. Through considering Kurds’ status as a stateless people, intersectional experiences of oppression, as well as the exclusion of other minority groups alongside the Kurds, the narratives of the participants will form the basis for an understanding of how Kurds envision inclusion. Importantly, in order to begin to conceptualise the idea of self-determination of any group, a distinction is required between who is included within this conceptual ‘self’ and who is not. The majority of participants supported the idea of a sovereign Kurdish state, with one 28-year-old man from KRI expressing that, ‘[it] is the hope of every Kurd to have a Kurdish state. Then you have self-determination and you can make decisions by yourself, not other people with other interests and [other] ideas that make the decisions for you’. However, participants differed in who they imagined belonged within this state and how this state would differentiate itself from the nation-states from which autonomy was being sought. As individuals’ conceptualisations of Kurdish identity, nationhood and statehood are partly shaped by the particular nation-state context of their own or their family’s upbringing, a large number of research participants differentiate between Kurds from different regions. In turn, the way in which differences between Kurdish groups are conceptualised shapes how Kurdish inclusion is envisioned. Whereas a 23-yearold participant from Kurdistan-Syria explains that ‘I never really knew that I was a Syrian Kurd — all I knew was that I was a Kurd, and that’s it’, another participant suggests that the division between the Kurdish regions is too great for a unified state to be successful, or even desirable. Although all participants distinguished between Kurds through regions to some extent — even if it was with the intention to denounce this differentiation — many also emphasise the inherent value and importance of recognising and appreciating diversity. As is beautifully expressed by a 54-year-old participant: In a garden with only roses, roses are beautiful, but the garden will be a little bit boring. If you have more flowers, it becomes more beautiful. It is like this in Kurdistan — we have lots of flowers and we have to cherish them. 104 Kurdistan is here conceptualised as an entity that is strengthened, rather than threatened, by its diversity, in contrast to the concept of predatory identities, which can be applied to the majority ethnic groups in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.105 Many participants support the idea of a pluralist society, built on the tolerance of multiple values, beliefs and ethnicities, over the idea of creating additional boundaries between Kurdish regions. A participant from Kurdistan-Syria explains that ‘I’m really pro the idea [of a pluralist society] because we Kurds suffered from that idea — to have one mono-culture, one mono-race in one geographical place and denying the rights of other people’. The participant thereby highlights that the root cause of the exclusion and oppression of Kurds does not lie in the fact that Kurds live within states also inhabited by people from other ethnic groups but rather in the prevalence of predatory identities fostering fertile ground for oppression. The whole idea of a nation state … I’m always afraid not to make the same mistake as our enemies, like impose one identity … If we lived freely in Syria or Iraq, I 104 Interview with 54-year-old man (Kurdistan-Turkey). 105 See Appadurai (n 36) 51. 301