CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Suinaly kyzy, Asel |
|---|---|
| Title | Kyrgyzstan's Tragedy in the South: Political Provocation or Ethnic Confrontation |
| Summary | The interrelationship between the socio-political weakening of the state and the rise of politicized ethnicity in post-Soviet Central Asia, particularly in the tensely emerging parliamentary democracy of Kyrgyzstan, provides the context for this analysis of the armed, ethnicized conflict in June 2010 in and around Kyrgyzstan’s southern capital, Osh. The initial triggers of the violence remain highly contested and the discourses, academically, journalistically, and politically, are pervaded with divergent interpretations. The interpretations of international organizations, state parties, ethnic Kyrgyz, ethnic Uzbek, and other stakeholders are explored in this analysis of how and why the clashes became suddenly ethnicized. Fundamentally, this paper argues that ethnic difference was used by ethnic entrepreneurs as a means to mobilize people, thus highlighting the conceptual distinction between ethnic conflict and ethnicized conflict. The concepts are theoretically framed in social cleavages, constructivist approaches to identity, and instrumentalist accounts of violence. By employing these frameworks to explore Soviet nationalities policy, dichotomous identity narratives of the nationalizing state, various regime rhetorics, and omissions and flaws of existing interpretations, the process of ethnicization is explained. Although there are differences between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, the June violence in southern Kyrgyzstan is largely contextual and cannot be causally linked to ethnic difference or assumed to be a primordially predestined occurrence. |
| Supervisor | Pelinka, Anton |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/suinaly-kyzy_asel.pdf |
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