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ABSTRACT
This essay explores the relationship between the collapse of negotiations between Turkey and the PKK and the rupture between the governing AKP and its former ally, the Cemaat or Gülen Movement. This schism transformed both the AKP regime and Kurdish politics. This article traces the shifting narratives of key actors in this process. It also identifies the multifaceted underpinnings of the political violence that erupted and disrupted the resolution/peace process. In the end, the peace/resolution process was a (re)entrenchment, or inadvertent re-positioning of violent means of suppression against Kurdish politics in Turkey, beyond the particular intentions, beliefs, ideas and attitudes of all parties.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Pratt Institute Faculty Development Fund for its support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Kumru F. Toktamis is Associate Professor of Political Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies of the Pratt Institute, where she is also the coordinator of the Cultural Studies Minor. She is the co-editor of the book Everywhere Taksim: Sowing the Seeds for a New Turkey at Gezi published by Amsterdam University Press in 2015. Her research focuses on social movements, state formation, ethnicity, nationalism, and gender politics in Turkey and in the Middle East.
Notes
1. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, as well as the United States and the European Union, and its fighters are routinely labelled ‘terrorists’ in Turkish media. The term ‘terrorist,’ however, is politically charged easily politicized. We prefer to use more neutral terminology.
2. Anatolian News Agency, “Buraya Gelip.”
3. As recently as 2017, scholarship on the Gülen movement regularly depicted it as an enlightened, moderate, peaceful and pluralistic version of Islam, markedly different from jihadist violent ones. See Cilingiroğlu, The Gülen Movement; Valkenberg, Renewing Islam by Service; Tittensor, The House of Service; Yavuz, Towards an Islamic Enlightenment; Ebayoh, The Gülen Movement; .and Esposito and Yilmaz, Islam and Peacebuilding; and Yavuz and Esposito Turkish Islam and the Secular State. Only a few more critical studies have questioned its staunch adherence to market economy or its candor about science and technology. These include Hendrick Gülen: Ambiguous Politics, and, Tee The Gülen Movement in Turkey.
4. In July 2016 pro-Cemaat dailies Zaman (in Turkish) and Today’s Zaman (in English – the two varied a bit), where writers with heterogeneous political positions and diverse ideological backgrounds were producing commentary on political affairs, were completely shut down and their issues since 2005 are no longer available on-line or even at the digital archives of major university libraries in the US. The only accessible materials were obtained from Fethullah Gülen’s own website (www.fgulen.com), which is, in its selectivity, ‘a presentation of self,’ as Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis would attest, a performative display and a claim-making, in the sense of Contentious Politics, of positions approved and promoted by the leadership of this network, about their years of collaboration with AKP and its dissolution. Not all writers on this website can be identified as Gülenists, yet their pieces are selected by the official Gülenist webpage to constitute the network’s narrative of the process.
5. The adopted resolutions of the Oslo negotiations were published (in Turkish) in Germany by Mesopotamien Verlag und Vertriebs GmbH. See Dicle Citation2017. The minutes of the Imrali negotiations were similarly published in Turkish by the same publisher. See Öcalan, Citation2015. The latter text also exists online. Other than some leaked information to the press, the Turkish government does not publicize its own version of events. These texts are used in the absence of any other credible narrative by those who took active role in these negotiations.
6. Other useful works Kurdish mobilization and violence include Aras, “State Sovereignty and Politics of Fear”; Bozaraslan, “Why the Armed Struggle?”; and Günay, “Towards a Critique.”
7. Prior to the semi-public İmralı talks, there were also talks in Oslo which were initiated in 2005 and included 11 meetings between Kurdish politicians and Turkish government officials which continued until these ‘backchannel communications’ were leaked to the Turkish public in 2011. See Kadıoğlu, “The Oslo Talks.”
8. Anatolian News Agency, “Buraya Gelip.”
9. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.
10. So much so that, for example mechanisms and processes that produce democracy or peace are very similar to those that produce authoritarian coercion or violent clashes.
11. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, 30.
12. Tilly, “Mechanisms in Political Processes,” 24.
13. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, and Tilly and Tarrow Contentious Politics.
14. Tilly, 19.
15. Ibid., 29.
16. Ibid., 45.
17. Ibid., 28.
18. According to Gramsci, political strategy is always a complex relationship between war and politics and military metaphors ‘as stimuli to thought’ play a central role as tools for analysis in his work. In explaining political strategies, he developed the concept of a war of positions (as opposed to insurrection, i.e. war of maneuvering) to delineate acts of political change. See Gramsci, Selections. I am grateful to J.K. for inspiring this point.
19. Gramsci, Selections, 238.
20. For international media coverage of the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, see “Timeline: Turkey’s ‘Ergenekon’ Trial,” Al-Jazeera, August 5, 2013, accessed June 5, 2018 at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/08/20138512358195978.html; Dexter Filkins, “Show Trials on the Bosphorous,” The New Yorker, August 13, 2013, accessed June 5, 2018 at https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/show-trials-on-the-bosphorus; and “Justice or revenge?” The Economist, August 10, 2013, accessed June 5, 2018, at https://www.economistcom/news/europe/21583312-harsh-verdicts-are-handed-down-ergenekon-trial-justice-or-revenge. Eventually Erdoğan disowned these trials against the military. See report in The New York Times, February 26, 2014, at https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/world/europe/turkish-leader-disowns-trials-that-helped-him-tame-military.html.
21. We have identified 41 articles from 2008 to 2014 (by searching the terms Kurds, Öcalan and PKK, and by closely surveying the posted articles) by various authors, some of whom are not necessarily adherents of the Gulen movement. Before 2008, only six articles posted on the fgulen.com website refer to Kurds: one on the arrest of Ocalan in 1999; two on regional politics especially about Iraq; one on the Cemaat schools in ‘northern Iraq’; and one article discussing the role of religion and secularism among Kurdish population.
22. Çiçek, Kurds of Turkey.
23. Özpek, The Peace Process.
24. After 2016, In post-putsch Turkey, it is close to impossible to gather information about the Cemaat’s position on the peace process, I use the term specter to indicate the narrative presence of the former ally throughout the negotiations. As a powerful ally of the AKP, the Cemaat’s shadow was overwhelmingly present during the peace/reconciliation process and its power haunted the process. This article cannot pinpoint the power of that presence, but lays out the omnipresence of this former ally.
25. Tank, Between Turkeýs AKP and the Gülen movement.
26. Başaran, Frontline Turkey, location 1320 (Kindle edition).
27. For a discussion on this topic see report in Al-Monitor http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/turkey-erdogan-new-kurdish-allies.html and one in the Catalan publication Nationalia from November 2015 at. http://www.nationalia.info/new/10639/hdp-lost-votes-following-a-campaign-of-fear-against-kurdish-voters, both accessed January 20, 2018.
28. 2010, 2/17 law # 5952. The law was later fortified with law # 6551: “law to end terror and fortify national unity;” amendments to the Criminal Procedures and Penal Code in 2014, and finally legislation amending the law # 6638 “Security Package: Legal Package to Protect Freedoms” in 2015. While the underlying intention of law #5952 was clearly establishing a civilian oversight, the later legislations aimed to criminalize all forms of opposition including the ones based on ethnic strife.
29. The PKK has declared a series of truces in 1993, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2011. In addition, Öcalan called PKK fighters outside the borders of Turkey, effectively positioning them in Kandil, Iraq and later in Rojava, Syria.
30. Çakır and Sakallı, 100 Soruda Erdoğan-Gülen Savaşı, 48.
31. ‘One cannot deny that Hizmet in its infancy had some Turkish nationalist sentiments. Yet, Hizmet has always understood this as an inclusive, constructive and civic nationalism. Hizmet called this “positive nationalism” and considered it helpful as long as it was in the service of God, Islam and humanity. Since it is a faith-based movement rooted in Islam, it has to embrace all nations, races, colors, etc.’ See I. Yilmaz “Hizmet and the Kurdish Question” Today’s Zaman, June 21, 2012, accessed on April 2, 2018 https://fgulen.com/en/press/columns/32588-ihsan-yilmaz-todays-zaman-hizmet-and-the-kurdish-question.
32. Kalyoncu, A Civilian Response.
33. Franks, Tim. “Fethullah Gulen: Powerful but Reclusive Cleric”, BBC, January 27, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25885817, accessed on June 20, 2018.
34. Gulen, Fethullah. “The Turkey I no longer know,” Washington Post, May 15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-turkey-i-no-longer-know/2017/05/15, accessed on June 20, 2018.
35. “What Went Wrong with Turkey.”
36. The Abant platform was a dialogue initiative organized by the Journalists and Writers Foundation of Turkey which is known as close to the networks of the Gülen movement. It started has brought together academics, intellectuals and writers of diverse backgrounds since 1998. The 34rd and last Abant Forum was on January 30–31, 2016. For more, see http://hizmetnews.com/17388/democracys-challenge-with-turkey-debated-in-abant-platform/#.Wzg6HKdKiUk, accessed on June 20, 2018.
37. Mahmut Övür, “Abant Platform Discusses Kurdish Issue,” Sabah, February 19, 2008, accessed March 26, 2018. https://fgulen.com/en/press/columns/26215-abant-platform-discusses-kurdish-issue.
38. Mümtaz’er Türköne, “‘Searching for Peace and a Future Together’ in Arbil,” Today’s Zaman, February 16 2009. This article, along with all Today’s Zaman articles cited in this piece, come from the fgulen.com web-site, which archives numerous columns from this paper. It was accessed on March 26, 2018. For sake of brevity, I am referencing only the original publication date for all such articles.
39. Bejan Matur, “Democratic Rights and Ornamental Plants of Turkey,” Today’s Zaman, July 19, 2008.
40. Levent Köker, “Rethinking the Kurdish Problem,” Today’s Zaman, March 1, 2009.
41. Fatma Disli, “Abant Platform Suggests New Language to Settle Kurdish Problem,” Today’s Zaman, July 7, 2008.
42. Mümtaz’er Türköne, “Abant Platform’s Arbil Meeting: Future of Peace,” Today’s Zaman, February 20, 2009.
43. Beril Dedeoğlu, “Iraqi Kurdistan and the Pains of Labor,” Today’s Zaman, February 20, 2009.
44. Andrew Finkel, “The Kurdish Moon Landing,” Today’s Zaman, February 18, 2009.
45. Mustafa Akyol, “Welcome to Kurdistan (Not North Iraq),” Hürriyet Daily News, February 20, 2009.
46. İbrahim Kalin, “Turkish Military and the Kurdish Question,” Today’s Zaman, April 16, 2009.
47. Mustafa Gurbuz, “Recognition of Kurdish Identity and the Hizmet Movement,” Gülen Movement, March 2015, accessed March 26, 2018. http://www.gulenmovement.com/recognition-of-kurdish-identity-and-the-hizmet-movement.html.
48. Mümtaz’er Türköne, “Abant Platform’s Arbil Meeting: Future of Peace,” Today’s Zaman, February 20, 2009.
49. Bülent Korucu, “A Feb. 28 tactic from the PKK,” Today’s Zaman, November 16, 2011, and Ihsan Yilmaz “Hizmet and the Kurdish Question” Today’s Zaman, June 21, 2012.
50. Bülent Korucu, “A Feb. 28 tactic from the PKK,” Today’s Zaman, November 16, 2011.
51. Orhan Miroğlu, “Who Wants Peace?” Today’s Zaman, January 11, 2013.
52. Emre Uslu, “Why Does Öcalan Need to Approach the Gülen Movement?” Today’s Zaman, December 21, 2010.
53. Bülent Keneş, “PKK’s war for survival and power,” Today’s Zaman, October 21, 2011.
54. Bülent Keneş, “But which PKK?” Today’s Zaman, January 9, 2013.
55. Ali Halit Aslan, “Does the Gülen movement securitize the Kurdish question?” Today’s Zaman, March 3, 2012.
56. Ekrem Dumanlı, “Was this what you called the language of peace?” Today’s Zaman, March 4, 2013.
57. Bülent Keneş, “Öcalan invests in the post-İmralı era,” Today’s Zaman, March 6, 2013.
58. KCK (Koma Civaken Kurdistan in Kurdish; Union of Communities in Kurdistan) was created as umbrella organization for all peaceful activism and civilian local politics in 2005. Turkey’s security forces and judicial system often treated them as urban infiltration by the PKK itself. KCK operations are the occasional rounding up and arrests of thousands of civilian Kurdish officials as PKK collaborators since 2009. The Kurds (and Öcalan) claim that these operations were carried out by Gülenist police and judiciary, whereas Gülenists claim that these operations were carried out by law-abiding forces who were following the explicit orders of the AKP government.
59. Ahl-I Sunnah is a complicated Islamic term, which can be loosely translated as people of the tradition, habit, or crudely understood as the ways of Sunni, as clearly indicated in The Encyclopedia of Islam published by the Directorate of Religious Affairs in Turkey. See http://www.islamansiklopedisi.info/dia/ayrmetin.php?idno=100525&idno2=c100447#4. The author of this piece may be implying the widespread Sunni conviction among the Kurds or just proposing a traditional path of resolving a problem. Such innuendos have been omnipresent in Gülen’s speeches in particular and in many of the Cemaat’s writers’ narratives.
60. Adem Palabıyık, “The PKK, piety and the Gülen Movement,” Today’s Zaman, March 30, 2012.
61. İhsan Yılmaz, “The US, Israel, Iran, Kurds, AKP and Hizmet,” Today’s Zaman, December 12, 2013.
62. Emre Uslu, “Time for urban battle in Kurdish cities,” Today’s Zaman, May 9, 2013.
63. İhsan Yılmaz, “The İmralı peace process and defaming Hizmet,” Today’s Zaman, March 16, 2013.
64. Ihsan Yilmaz “Hizmet and the Kurdish Question,” Today’s Zaman, June 21, 2012.
65. Ali Halit Aslan, “Does the Gülen movement securitize the Kurdish question?” Today’s Zaman, March 3, 2012.
66. İhsan Yilmaz, “Where is the other half in the Kurdish question?” Today’s Zaman, November 17, 2011.
67. See Günay Yıldız, “Analysis: The Power of Turkey’s Fethullah Gulen,” BBC Turkish, January 27, 2014, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25910079, accessed June 2, 2018.
68. Adem Palabıyık, “The PKK, piety and the Gülen Movement,” Today’s Zaman, March 30, 2012.
69. Mustafa Demir, “Diverging points between AKP and Hizmet movement: Kurdish question,” Today’s Zaman, February 2, 2014.
70. Ibid.
71. For the demise of Oslo negotiations see Kutschera, “The Secret Talks,” and Hess, “Turkey’s PKK Talks.” For a chronology see report in Hürriyet Daily News, September 28, 2012, accessed June 5, 2018, available at http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/chronology-of-oslo-dialogues-with-pkk.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31190&NewsCatID=338.
72. Dicle, Citation2005–2015 Turkiye-PKK gorusmeleri, 26. Following three years of international groundwork, these negotiations, which were kept secret from Turkish public and parliament at the time, started in July 2008 in Geneva with the participation of Kurdish politicians in exile, leading officers of the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey, and the representatives of PKK forces stationed in the Qandil region of Iraq. The ensuing negotiations took place in Oslo on May 22–24, July 1–3, September 13–14 of 2009; May 2–3, August 19–20 and again towards the end of August of 2010; and January, May 12–13 and July 5 of 2011. During these negotiations six memoranda of understanding were produced and signed by the parties.
73. Kadıoğlu, “The Oslo Talks.” Also see Bezci, ‘Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Process.’
74. “Turkey admits 35 Civilian Deaths Near Kurdish Village,” BBC News, 29 December 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16352388, accessed February 2, 2017.
75. Z. Abu-Rish, ‘Turkish Politics, Kurdish Rights, and the KCK Operations’, Jadalliya 3 November, 2011, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3047/turkish-politics-kurdish-rights-and-the-kck-operat, accessed February 2, 2017. KCK operations are the occasional yet targeted rounding up and arrests of thousands of civilian Kurdish officials as PKK collaborators since 2009. Turkey’s security forces and judicial system often treated them as urban infiltration of the PKK itself.
76. Dicle, Citation2005–2015 Türkiye-PKK görüşmeleri, 85.
77. Ibid., 81, and 87. Who those factions might be were not clarified in the documents of first Oslo meetings.
78. Ibid., 112. Following July 2016 coup attempt, all the indictments prepared by Gülenist prosecutors were dismissed as they themselves were arrested and imprisoned. However, the same prosecutors’ cases against Kurdish civilians in these ‘KCK operations’ were not closed as they are still going on as open cases. It is Dicle’s contention that, based on Erdoğan’s speeches around that time, AKP and Gülenist prosecutors were working in concert.
79. Democratic Society Party (DTP) became the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which eventually became the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the course of series of party closing cases against Kurdish political parties.
80. See the 2011 report by the European Commission: https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/pdf/key_documents/2011/package/tr_rapport_2011_en.pdf (accessed 2 February 2017).
81. When the prosecutors of the Ergenekon trials summoned Hakan Fidan, the head of the MIT, for an interrogation in early 2012, this investigation was understood as a Cemaat attack, but not much debated publicly.
82. The corruption revelations were a response to the AKP’s attempt to close down private tutoring schools mostly run by the Cemaat. The AKP was most likely trying to curb the revenues of the Cemaat, which was at that time challenging its policy directions, especially with respect to Kurdish politics. See https://www.ft.com/content/12733aa0-5328-11e1-8aa1-00144feabdc0?mhq5j=e1.
83. These were twenty-two mostly monthly meetings that took place in Imrali Prison between February 23 2013 and March 14, 2015. See Öcalan, Demokratik Kurtulus.
84. BDP was a Kurdish-interests centered party which had effective municipal representations in Kurdish towns and cities. It gave birth to the HDP with the goal of reaching out larger Turkish population with a demand of peace enhanced with progressive rights and freedoms for all. Now jailed co-leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, was originally the leader of the BDP.
85. A. Öcalan “Hakikat komisyonu marta kadar kurulmali” [“The truth commission has to be created by March”], Bianet, December 6, 2010.
86. Öcalan, Demokratik Kurtulus, 145.
87. Ibid., 17.
88. Ibid., 160. Urfa is identified as one.
89. Ibid., 154. He singles out Taraf (a left-liberal) and Zaman (pro-Cemaat), both of which were banned after July 15, 2016. It is still not possible to reach their digital archives.
90. Specifically, Diyarbakır and Siirt and many drug operations carried out by local security forces.
91. Öcalan, Demokratik Kurtulus, 445.
92. Ibid., 123.
93. Noted on some occasion in Ibid., 125–130.
94. Ibid., 127.
95. Ibid., 20.
96. Ibid., 41.
97. Ibid., 123.
98. Ibid., 110.
99. Ibid., 90.
100. Ibid., 107. However, it should be noted that each time Öcalan refers to the “parallel state,” he does not necessarily mean Cemaat. Often, he uses the same term to identify NATO, global imperial forces or some other historical dynamics. Since July 15, 2016, the AKP regime only refers to Cemaat, as the Parallel.
101. Ibid., 108.
102. Ibid., 123.
103. Ibid., 126.
104. Ibid., 127.
105. Ibid., 145.
106. Ibid., 155. In statements like this Öcalan occasionally implied that, as part of the negotiations, he is in close contacts with the head of the MIT who is his negotiating partner in the process.
107. Ibid., 153.
108. Ibid., 231.
109. Ibid., 233.
110. Ibid., 156.
111. Ibid., 177–180.
112. Ibid., 198.
113. Ibid., 264–265.
114. Ibid., 274.
115. Ibid., 443.