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Abstract
Previous research has identified a variety of general mechanisms to explain how insurgents build legitimacy. Yet, there is often a gap between these mechanisms and the interactional dynamics of insurgencies. This article attempts to bridge this gap through a theoretically informed analysis of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) insurgency in Turkey. I show how the PKK’s efforts to cultivate legitimacy, Turkey’s counterinsurgency strategies, and civilian perceptions of the PKK, all mutually influenced one another. Based on this analysis, I argue that the mechanisms that produce popular legitimacy coevolve with insurgents’ behaviors, states’ interventions, and civilians’ perceptions.
Notes
1. See Bakker, Raab, and Milward, “Preliminary Theory of Dark Network Resilience”; Cohen et al., “Principles, Imperatives, and Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency”; McFate and Jackson, “The Object Beyond War”; and Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
2. For example, Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up; Paul, Clarke, and Grill, Victory has a Thousand Fathers; Roy, “Development and Political Legitimacy”; and Svente, “The Interaction of Narcotics”.
3. For example, Bakker, Raab, and Milward, “Preliminary Theory of Dark Network Resilience”; Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up; and Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
4. Walker and McCarthy, “Legitimacy, Strategy, and Resources”; and Schoon, “Rethinking Legitimacy and Illegitimacy”.
5. Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution; and Chou, “Seen Like a State”.
6. Dixon, “‘Hearts and Minds’?”; and Duyvesteyn, “Hearts and Minds”.
7. Berman, Shapiro, and Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought”.
8. Egnell, “Winning ‘Hearts and minds’”; and Paul, Clarke, and Grill, Victory has a Thousand Fathers.
9. This definition of legitimacy was introduced by Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy” and has been applied widely in research on political violence and insurgency. For example, Call, Why Peace Fails; Chou, “Seen Like a State”; and Schoon, “The Asymmetry of Legitimacy”.
10. See Przeworksi, “Material Bases of Consent”.
11. Stryker, “Rules, Resources, and Legitimacy,” 856.
12. U.S. Government, Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative, 4.
13. For example, Bakker, Raab, and Milward, “Preliminary Theory of Dark Network Resilience”; Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up; Flanigan, “Nonprofit Service Provision”; Grynkewich, “Welfare as Warfare”; Lyall, Blair, and Imai, “Explaining Support for Combatants”; Paul, Clarke, and Grill, Victory has a Thousand Fathers; Roy, “Development and Political Legitimacy”; Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”; and Svente, “The Interaction of Narcotics”.
14. Flanigan, “Nonprofit Service Provision”.
15. Grynkewich, “Welfare as Warfare”.
16. Roy, “Development and Political Legitimacy”.
17. Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up.
18. This path diagram is a reduction of a similar diagram provided by Felbab-Brown (Shooting Up, 14). Felbab-Brown summarizes the effects of illicit economy participation on overall insurgent strength, whereas Figure only presents the causal relationship in terms of the effects of illicit economy participation on legitimacy, as presented by Felbab-Brown.
19. For example, Hough, “Guerilla Insurgency”.
20. See Walker and McCarthy, “Legitimacy, Strategy, and Resources”.
21. Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
22. See Paul, Clarke, and Grill, Victory has a Thousand Fathers.
23. Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution, 135–6.
24. For a critique of the static-actor model, see McAdam, Tarrow, and Till, Dynamics of Contention, 18.
25. Marcus, Blood and Belief; Özcan, “PKK Recruitment”.
26. Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”; and Watts, “Allies and Enemies”.
27. Marcus, Blood and Belief; and Zehni, “Turkey and PKK Terrorism”.
28. Bacik and Coskun, “The PKK Problem”.
29. Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism; and Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
30. National Foreign Assessment Center (NFAC), Kurdish Problem in Perspective.
31. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 24.
32. See Öcalan, Kürdistan Devriminin Yolu (The Kurdish Revolutionary Path).
33. See Marcus, Blood and Belief; and Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
34. Bacik and Coskun, “The PKK Problem”.
35. Marcus, Blood and Belief.
36. I.e. Felbab-Brown, Shooting Up.
37. See Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy”, for a discussion of this distinction.
38. Gunter, “Kurdish Problem in Turkey”.
39. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 37.
40. Karaca, Disrupting Terrorist Networks.
41. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question.
42. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 45.
43. National Foreign Assessment Center, Kurdish Problem in Perspective, 20.
44. Ibid.
45. Gunter, “Kurdish Problem in Turkey,” 395.
46. Gunter, “Kurdish Problem in Turkey”; and NFAC, “Kurdish Problem in Perspective”.
47. Analyses of the PKK’s activities during the 1980s identified attacks against Turkish soldiers prior to the 1984 attack (see Gunter, “Kurdish Problem in Turkey”). However, at that time it appears that the PKK was working in part with other militant groups, including the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and it is not clear whether these attacks were coordinated by the PKK or the extent of their involvement if the attacks were not. Most contemporary analyses of the PKK identify the conflict with the Turkish state as having begun in the summer of 1984 (i.e. Bacik and Coskun, “The PKK Problem”; Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Problem; Marcus, Blood and Belief; Pusane, “Turkey’s Military Victory”; Roth and Sever, “The Kurdish Workers” Party’; Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”; and Zehni, “Turkey and PKK Terrorism”).
48. Akkaya, “The Palestinian Dream”.
49. Human Rights Watch, Forced Displacement of Ethnic Kurds.
50. Kocher, “The Decline of PKK”.
51. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Problem.
52. Bacik and Coskun, “The PKK Problem”; and Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Problem, 147.
53. See Human Rights Watch, Still Critical.
54. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 98.
55. Ibid., 117.
56. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Problem, 148.
57. Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
58. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 119.
59. Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
60. 18,000 is the estimated maximum number. Marcus (Blood and Belief) notes, the PKK succeeded in reducing participation in the village guards by about two thirds, to approximately 6000.
61. Human Rights Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity, 7.
62. Estimates of the number of people displaced as a part of the Turkey’s efforts to eliminate the PKK range from just under 400,000 according to official estimates published by the Turkish government (Insan Haklarini Inceleme Komisionu) to 1 million according to estimates by non-governmental organizations (see Norwegian Refugee Council/Global IDP Project 2003).
63. Human Rights Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity.
64. van Etten et al., “Environmental Destruction as a Counterinsurgency”.
65. Helsinki Watch, The Kurds of Turkey, 13.
66. Watts, “Allies and Enemies”.
67. Helsinki Watch, The Kurds of Turkey.
68. Özcan (‘PKK Recruitment of Female Operatives’) estimates the PKK’s membership to have been closer to 17,000, whereas Marcus (Blood and Belief, 179) places their membership at 10,000.
69. Schoon, “The Paradox of Legitimacy”.
70. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 232.
71. Pusane, “Turkey’s Military Victory”.
72. Marcus, Blood and Belief, 189.
73. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question.
74. See Marcus, Blood and Belief, 190.
75. Marcus, Blood and Belief.
76. In addition to mobilizing activists in the diaspora community and helping to foster a greater degree of Kurdish nationalism through the publication of media, the PKK appears to have diversified its activities through involvement in illicit economic activity (see Roth and Sever). While clear information on the scope and nature of the PKK’s activities in the economy or how this activity affected local perceptions of the PKK is limited, existing resources suggest that the group was involved in taxation of traffickers and refinement of narcotics. Both of these activities – coupled with repressive security forces and a lack of economic development in Anatolia – are consistent with the conditions identified by Felbab-Brown (Shooting Up) through which participation in illicit economies can provide valued local resources and contribute to the cultivation of political capital. However, I was unable to find sufficient evidence to directly investigate these effects of the illicit economy for the PKK.
77. Hassanpour and Mojab, “Kurdish Diaspora”; and Pusane, “Turkey’s Military Victory”.
78. Quoted in Kutschera, “Mad Dreams of Independence,” 14.
79. Flanigan, “Nonprofit Service Provision”; see also Lilja, “Trapping Constituents”.
80. Bakker, Raab, and Milward, “Preliminary Theory of Dark Network Resilience”.
81. Weber, Economy and Society; see also Zelditch and Walker, “The Legitimacy of Regimes”.
82. I.e. Schoon, “Rethinking Legitimacy and Illegitimacy”.