Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2019 1(2) solution to statelessness, 44 it is essential that these notions be questioned. Primarily, the idea of citizenship as a blanket solution is problematised when considering citizenship as a broad sociological concept whereby formal legal status alone does not guarantee effective protection. Furthermore, the need to question the notion of the state as an emancipatory actor is particularly important when considering the situation of stateless people. Although members of different minority groups within a state may all be oppressed and excluded, it is crucial to recognise that the ways in which they wish for this exclusion to be addressed may differ. 45 This is not to suggest that stateless people necessarily seek the formation of a sovereign state, but instead to argue that a desire for inclusion within the preexisting state cannot be assumed. When considering the context of struggles for self-determination, not only is independence from the pre-existing state explicitly sought, but the assumption of the state as an emancipatory actor could paradoxically serve to legitimise ongoing oppression. By recognising the political context in which statelessness takes place, coupled with the understanding of citizenship as a broad sociological concept, it becomes clear that the inclusion sought by stateless individuals or groups cannot necessarily be achieved through citizenship of the state in question. Thus, exploring the role of citizenship in addressing the Kurds’ situation requires that the analysis does not start from the presumption of the pre-existing state as an emancipatory actor through granting formal inclusion in state citizenship regimes. The aim here is by no means to suggest that de jure stateless persons cannot be oppressed by states. Rather, it is to recognise that both statelessness and citizenship can be used as political tools, including as tools of oppression. Citizenship regimes provide states with the power to (threaten to) deny citizenship or to denationalise certain individuals or groups as well as to use its legitimacy to govern in order to exploit citizens’ subjugation and dependency on the state. The state’s power is further exacerbated through the tendency to prioritise the norm of state sovereignty and thereby undermine efforts to protect human rights. 46 Within contexts of human rights violations, citizenship acquisition ought therefore to be understood as subjugation to a citizenship regime under the sovereign control of the state and thereby as creating a basis by which the international community can overlook human rights abuses. Thus, citizenship acquisition cannot be presumed to create inclusion, as it can also enable different forms of exclusion of persons and groups who are conceptualised as existing outside the boundaries of the national community in question. B Citizenship in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran The notion of citizenship as deeply interrelated with dominant conceptualisations of the nation is integral to considering the ways in which citizenship regimes in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran shape the processes of inclusion and exclusion of Kurds. Although each nation state’s citizenship regime must be situated within its appropriate historical context, Barzoo Eliassi argues that citizenship is, in each of 44 45 46 Bloom, Tonkiss and Cole, ‘Providing a Framework for Understanding Statelessness’ (n 8) 2; Lindsey Kingston, ‘Statelessness as a Lack of Functioning Citizenship’ (2014) 19(1–2) Tilburg Law Review 132–23. See also Bloom, ‘Members of Colonised Groups, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights’ (n 12) 154. See Bloom, ‘Members of Colonised Groups, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights’ (n 12) 153–54. Kahler (n 15). 290