Int. J. Middle East Stud. 45 (2013), 775–790 doi:10.1017/S0020743813000901 Haydar Darıcı “ADULTS SEE POLITICS AS A GAME”: POLITICS OF KURDISH CHILDREN IN URBAN TURKEY Abstract This article explores the political subjectivity of Kurdish children in urban Turkey. Often referred to as “stone-throwing children,” since the early 2000s Kurdish children have entered Turkish public discourse as central political actors of the urban Kurdish movement. I suggest that the politicization of children can be understood in the context of transformations in age and kinship systems within the Kurdish community that were shaped by the forced migration of Kurds in the early 1990s. Focusing on the experiences of Kurdish children in the city of Adana, I argue that memories of violence transmitted by displaced parents, combined with the children’s experiences of urban life, including exclusion, discrimination, poverty, and state violence, necessitate a reevaluation of how childhood is conceived and experienced within the Kurdish community. In a context where Kurdish adults often have trouble integrating into the urban context, their children frequently challenge conventional power relations within their families as well as within the Kurdish movement. In contrast to a dominant Turkish public discourse positing that these children are being abused by politicized adults, I contend that Kurdish children are active agents who subvert the agendas and norms of not only Turkish but also Kurdish politics. The article analyzes the ways Kurdish children are represented in the public discourse, how they narrate and make sense of their own politicization, and the relationship between the memory and the postmemory of violence in the context of their mobilization. Philosophy does not concern itself with children. It leaves them to pedagogy, where they are not in very good hands. Philosophy has forgotten about children. —Bernard Schlink In March 2006, Kurdish children took over Diyarbakir, the largest city in the Kurdish region of Turkey, for two days. With news circulating that Turkish security forces had killed Kurdish guerrillas using chemical weapons, tens of thousands of children started a street revolt against the Turkish armed forces. The press reported the uncanny moment when the Kurdish mayor of the city, Osman Baydemir, tried to negotiate with the leaders of the revolt. A thirteen-year-old boy declared himself the leader and refused to bargain: “We will fight,” he said, “to our death.” Some did indeed fight to their death; over the next two days, the Turkish army killed seven children. This revolt, which would be followed by many others, launched a new era for the Kurdish movement in Turkey, as Haydar Darıcı is a PhD student in anthropology and history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.; e-mail: haydardarici@gmail.com © Cambridge University Press 2013 0020-7438/13 $15.00