Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands (S. 15, Ep. 9)

About this episode

Fırat Bozçalı discusses his book on how Kurdish smugglers legally disrupt state sovereignty in Turkey's Kurdish borderlands.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Fırat Bozçalı of University of Toronto joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands. Taking readers from border villages, mountain passes, and road checkpoints to courtrooms, law offices, and forensic laboratories, Fırat Bozçalı examines how Kurdish smugglers, with the help of their lawyers, legally disrupt state sovereignty in criminal courts. The book holds profound relevance in today's world, where ever-expanding regimes of surveillance, oppression, and dispossession unfold in the broader contexts of the global war on terror and data-driven capitalism. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his website Music and Sound at www.ferasarrabi.com. POMEPS, directed by Marc Lynch, is based at the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University and is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York.

People in this episode

Host: Marc Lynch

Guest: Fırat Bozçalı

Topics covered

• Kurdish smugglers
• state sovereignty
• criminal courts
• surveillance
• global war on terror
• data-driven capitalism

Keywords

• smuggling
• sovereignty
• Kurdish borderlands
• criminal law
• surveillance
• oppression
• data capitalism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Toronto, Institute for Middle East Studies, Carnegie Corporation of New York

Books & works: Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands

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