National Colonialism: Nation‐State, Colonialism and Colonisation of Kurdistan

ABSTRACT This article develops the concept of ‘national colonialism’ to capture colonial relations in the nation‐state form. It does so through a critical appraisal of the concept of ‘internal colonialism’, which largely fails to explain the links between nationalism and colonial relations. It defines national colonialism as the racialising forms of political subjugation and economic exploitation of the periphery by the core in nation states. It is argued that as a form of social and political relations of domination based on cultural difference, the tendency to national colonialism is in fact intrinsic to the nation‐state form. This is so due to uneven development of capitalism, homogenising thrust of nationalist ideologies and the structural ways in which nation‐state formation and maintenance involve coercive minoritisation of non‐sovereign peoples. The argument is empirically substantiated through a case study of all four parts of Kurdistan whose colonisation problematises simplistic explanations of the causes of colonialism.