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Over the last decade the art of dengbeji [Kurdish minstrelsy] has come to be understood as the paradigmatic form of Kurdish heritage and dengbejs concomitantly as the authentic carriers of Kurdish “culture.” This article seeks to outline some of the complexities and paradoxes of this ongoing process of Kurdish heritage production as it occurs at the intersection of growing liberal multiculturalist and continuing repressive forms of governance in Turkish Kurdistan. I argue that the production of Kurdish cultural heritage as it unfolds on a highly politicized terrain relies on an understanding of heritage as a marker of collective primordial identity, which goes hand in hand with an idealization of culture as a sphere of prepolitical pristine authenticity. Moreover, this article also seeks to shed light on some of the specifically gendered dynamics involved in contemporary Kurdish heritage making by asking what promises the evocation of dengbeji as explicitly distinct from politics may hold for a number of female dengbejs.

Being sick of politics: The production of dengbêjî as Kurdish cultural heritage in contemporary Turkey