Hawar Khalil Taher Nerwiy
Leiden University
2012-03-13

This demand for autonomy by various Kurdish movements, which was a hot topic in the past century, was a collective response to rapid social transformation. In order to explainthe concept of political autonomy, Ruth Lapidoth categorized it into five main types: federal system, decentralization, self-government, associate statehood and self-administration.31 Out of all of these varieties of autonomy, self-government autonomy is the term that most applies or could be adapted to the demands of the Kurdish movements. In this study, self-government autonomy is defined as a territorial community that manages its own internal affairs, without external intervention.