the PKK: Coming Down from the Mountains

This book by Paul White was another that played a huge role in informing key historical developments relevant to my dissertation - particularly, as the title suggests, the context for the origins and militant escalation of the PKK, and the impacts this had on the Turkish state and Kurdish region. White also tracks the attempts from the PKK to seek peaceful constructive options, and the failure of these efforts in light of a movement corrupted by ethnonationalist warlordism and widespread repression; alongside the ceasefires, the PKK's efforts to develop democratic, essentially feminist and inarguably post-nationalist strings to its bow for a more legitimate (and hopefully more winnable) struggle are given scrutiny as what started out as a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla cell seems to have undergone a deep and incontrovertible paradigm shift. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the modern history of the Kurdish struggle, or more generally in the nature of terrorism and violent 'freedom' movements and how they constitute themselves.