Biz Olamayan Ben(lik): Türkiyedeki Kürt Göçmenlerin Aidiyet Deneyimleri

Abstract

owadays, identity is a concept that contains many facts such as ethnicity, language, similarity-diversity, religion, otherness and belonging. When it comes to migration, the meanings of these concepts vary in the process and according to the conjuncture. Considering a multinational geography as Turkey, it becomes more complicated to make sense of identity for societies that are considered as minorities after the establishment of the nation-state. This thesis study includes the migration that the Kurdish ethnic identity, which is not constitutionally accepted as a minority after the establishment of the nation state, had to do with economic reasons. It focuses on the division of indefinite line between concepts of "we" a signification of identity which comes from being similar and ‘I’ an emphasis on individuality in this migration experiences. It conveys the belonging in daily life and identity experiences of the interviewees through their own narratives with the framework of an ethnographic fieldwork. In the study, there are working immigrant Kurdish subjects who maintain their own ethnic identity together with the officially accepted identity and lived in two different regions of Turkey, namely east and west. The study, which was carried out through in-depth interviews, was limited to 5 people. Main questions of the thesis text are Where does the belonging of 'we' occur and Where does it need the 'I' which is individual? What role do belonging and in-betweenness play in identity acquisition? Keywords: Ethnic Identity, Belonging, In-betweenness, We, Migration, East/West