In 2011 Turkey’s President Erdogan promised to make a deal with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), but the talks marked a descent into assassinations, suicide bombings and the killing of civilians on both sides. The Kurdish peace process finally collapsed in 2015 with the spillover of the Syrian civil war. With ISIS moving through northern Iraq, Turkey has declared war on Western allies such as the Kurdish YPG (People s Protection Unit) the military who rescued the Yezidis and fought with US backing in Kobane.

This event will also feature a roundtable of experts on this topic.

*Summary:* 100 years on from the October Revolution, monumental propaganda in the form of statues, monuments, architectural ensembles, and decorative detail retains the memory of Soviet rule in former republics of the USSR and the Eastern bloc states. The treatment accorded to them is expressive of the post-socialist states' relationship to this common past. Russia, where the capital still has the revolutionary leader’s mortal remains on display, and Belarus have left communist symbols largely untouched, and many monuments have retained their prominent positions in urban and rural centres.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23801883.2017.1332287