'I would be sitting in the village room where people gather.’ Interview with Martin van Bruinessen

Abstract

Interview conducted by Marie Le Ray, Utrecht, 23/12/06. EJTS: Could you introduce yourself and let us know more specifically how you got interested in the Kurdish question as a scholar? [2] Martin Van Bruinessen: It is a story that I have told too many times and it has become perhaps too polished to be exactly what happened. The story that I have told seems to have shaped my memory. Anyway, I was a student of mathematics. I enjoyed travelling. I was going every summer holidays to the Middle East and I often ended up in Iran, Iraq. I remember my first encounter with Kurds was in Baghdad. People that I met there told me about their relatives who were in the mountains fighting against the government, which I found very exciting those days. That was in 1966 or 1967. I think that was the military coup d’état of 1971 in Turkey that gave me a more political interest in Turkey.