Being a Religious Minority in the Middle East. Identity, Rights and Political Representation: the KRI Experience

Zagro and Coppola are aware that depicting the situation of minorities in the Middle East is challenging. They wonder what is the Middle East and why the term “minority” itself, when used in a Middle Eastern Muslim majority context, is contested, making it difficult to create an accepted and relevant discourse about minorities. Moving from the studies of Gelvin (2017), Coffey (2016), Longva (2015) and Castellino and Cavanaugh (2013), the article seeks to offer a definition of religious minorities in the contemporary, post-colonial Middle East, depicting the challenges religious minorities are facing and the role they are playing in the social and political context. Zagros and Coppola intends to point out the relationship between religion, identity and socio-political rights in the framework of the minority issue, building up their analysis on the studies of Del Re (2016), Kymlicka and Pfostl (2014) and Ma’oz and Sheffer (2002). They claim that the system of power sharing in the Middle East is central in dealing with minorities and it is directly connected with the most relevant issues regarding minority groups. The two uthors try to understand whether measures to guarantee political representation in Parliament achieve any minority protection and to what extent it provides safeguards for minority rights. The case of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is addressed, focusing on the advantages and the weakness of the reserved seat system in the Federal Republic of Iraq.