2017-2021
An Archaeology of Today: Tracing the Genealogies of Yezidi Victimhood
This project is a longue durée study of Yezidi victimization and their narratives, tracing their manifold manifestations from the 1700s until the 2014 genocide. It is essentially a critique of ahistorical and uniform characterizations of Yezidis as an ever-persecuted people. Informed by Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, which enforces an inquiry of multi-dimensional, multi-linear processes formed by discontinuities, contingencies and the choices of actors, thus opening up the possibility of dissonant discourses, this project brings into light the complexities of Yezidi agency and actorship. Drawing on extensive archival research and recently published oral testimonies of survivors, this project moves away from the portrayal of Yezidis as meek, passive, converted and persecuted peoples, and study them as local rulers and powerbrokers between empires; armed and resilient, fighting back on their Sunni neighbors’ intrusions, sometimes initiating attacks, and always resisting state attempts to infiltrate in matters relating to their identity as well their socio-economic well-being, conscription, and taxation. The focus is on their demands and responses to the introduction of citizenship as well as the redefinition of communal coexistence in their local settings at the remote, high-altitude corners of these political entities. In so doing, Zeynep Türkyilmaz hopes to illustrate how Yezidi subjecthood has been reshaped at the intersection of modernizing empires and nation-states.
2010/ 2011
Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire
As a EUME Fellow 2010/ 2011, she will expand her research and focus on revising her dissertation into a book manuscript.