Güneş Murat Tezcür

Güneş Murat Tezcür (English: Gunes Murat Tezcur) is a political scientist and the chair of Kurdish Political Studies Program[1] at the University of Central Florida, the first and only academic unit in North America dedicated to the study of Kurdish issues. His research revolves around Middle East politics with a specific focus on political violence,[2] Islamic politics, and democratization[3] in Iran and Turkey.[4] He has also extensively published on the Kurdish question. Furthermore, Tezcür is the editor of Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics.

His best-known work is on the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey in which he explains why ordinary individuals take risk and join the insurgency. The work is based on an original dataset involving biographies of thousands of militants. He argues that the ethnic cleavages do not matter by themselves but they become politically salient when individuals from a particular ethnic minority face state repression and see their ethnicity and identity under threat.[5] Women have their distinctive motivates to take arms. the intersection of class and gender shapes distinctive patterns of mobilization among women. In particular, uneducated women with lower class backgrounds join the movement because it provides them with the most viable way out of patriarchal relations.[6]