Non-Catholic Syrian Thomas Christian communities survived but continued to struggle for autonomy.
Kurds have been struggling for freedom and autonomy in Turkey for decades — often in the face of violent state repression.
"Kurds have been struggling for freedom and autonomy in Turkey for decades, often in the face of violent state repression," Sebahat Tuncel, a Kurdish member of Turkey's Parliament, wrote in an Op-Ed page article in The New York Times on June 18 after Mr. Erdogan's re-election.
The tribes on the periphery of these nations have long struggled for more autonomy from the central government, first under colonial rule and later against the modern state.
Along with struggling for democracy and with it, personal autonomy, two centuries later we now talk about (borrowing from Harvey Cox) the "secular city".
Paradoxically the struggle for autonomy is one you can't win on your own.
The Kurdish group's armed struggle for autonomy in southeastern Turkey has claimed more than 30,000 lives since the early 1980s.
The group, known as the P.K.K., has been conducting an armed struggle for autonomy in the southeast that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.
It mixed reality and fantasy so closely, and the characters' struggle for autonomy is similar to being a child in an adult world.
This in turn points to the enduring power of the Kurdistan Workers Partyy (PKK), which has been engaged in an armed struggle for autonomy for the past 26 years and with which the BDP is closely allied.
