The Evolving Kurdish Question in Turkey

Abstract

Abstract: In a region undergoing dramatic changes, the Kurds in particular have begun to enjoy a political resurgence. Of those countries where Kurds reside, Turkey is the single most important actor for several reasons: It is a powerful state that is home to more than half of the total Kurdish population; it has been locked in a stalemate with (arguably) the most powerful Kurdish insurgent group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party [Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK]; this decades-long armed conflict progressively has acquired a trans-border disposition and fomented disagreement between Turkey and the United States in Syria; and lastly, Turkey under the Justice and Development Party [Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP] gradually is distancing itself from the Western bloc and moving away from democratic values and principles. This article examines the evolving Kurdish question in Turkey with an emphasis on how it is interacting with changing domestic, regional, and global dynamics.

Key Words:

• Armed
• Conflict
• Kurds
• Middle East
• PKK
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Hakan Yavuz for organizing and hosting a one-day workshop on Turkey on April 1, 2019 at the University of Utah at which I presented the first draft of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For a detailed account of the transformation of Ottoman Kurdistan see Veli Yadirgi (2017) The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

2 While estimates for the exact size of the Kurdish population in Turkey vary, it is projected that the Kurds constitute about a quarter of the total population. See, for instance, Wadie Jwaideh (2006) The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press), pp. 9–10.

3 Citing a report from a retired Turkish army officer, Mehmet Ali Birand lists at least 25 Kurdish uprisings since 1924. Mehmet A. Birand (2008) Bugüne kadar kaç Kürt isyanı oldu? [How Many Kurdish Rebellions Have Occurred?], Hurriyet, 3 January. Available at: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/bugune-kadar-kac-kurt-isyani-oldu-7957402, accessed July 4, 2019. Yadirgi notes 27 revolts during the first two decades of the Republic in The Political Economy of Kurds, p. 168.

4 Sener Akturk (2015) Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation-Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan, Social Science Quarterly, 96(3), p. 803.

5 M. Hakan Yavuz (2001) Five Stages of the Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 7(3), p. 1.

6 Andreas Wimmer (2013) Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press).

7 Henri J. Barkey & Graham E. Fuller (1998) Turkey’s Kurdish Question (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield); Robert W. Olson (2001) Turkey’s Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia, 1991–2000 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers); Mehmet Gurses (2018) Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press).

8 Robert Olson (ed.) (1996) The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impacts on Turkey and the Middle East (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky), p. 1.

9 Johan Galtung (1969) Violence, Peace, and Peace Research, Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), p. 185.

10 Cengiz Gunes (2012) The Kurdish National Movement: From Protest to Resistance (London: Routledge).

11 Ibid, p. 91.

12 Ibid, p. 101.

13 Patrick B. Johnston (2012) Does Decapitation Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Targeting in Counterinsurgency Campaigns, International Security 36(4), pp. 47–79.

14 Jenna Jordan (2014) Attacking the Leader, Missing the Mark: Why Terrorist Groups Survive Decapitation Strikes, International Security 38(4), pp. 7–38.

15 Ibid. p. 11.

16 David Scott Palmer (2017) Revolutionary leadership as necessary element in people’s war: Shining Path of Peru, Small Wars & Insurgencies 28(3), pp. 426–450, at p. 442.

17 Murat Haner, Michael L. Benson & Francis T. Cullen. (2019) Code of the Terrorists: The PKK and the Social Construction of Violence, Critical Criminology 27, 393–419.

18 Gurses, Anatomy of a Civil War, 51–52. Also see Meredith Tax (2016) A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State (New York: Bellevue Literary Press).

19 Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement, p. 124.

20 See ibid, pp. 136; and Gurses, Anatomy of a Civil War, pp. 7–8.

21 Simin Fadaee & Camilla Brancolini (2019) From National Liberation to Radical Democracy: Exploring the Shift in the Kurdish Liberation Movement in Turkey, Ethnicities, 19(5), p. 858.

22 John D. McCarthy & Mayer N. Zald (1977) Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory, American Journal of Sociology 82(6), p. 1219.

23 The HDP was a contrivance of the imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan as a new platform with the goal of bringing together pro-democracy forces in Turkey to promote his new paradigm of ‘democratic unity’. Ocalan predicted in 2013 from his prison cell that such a new party could win about 15 percent of total votes, five percent of which could come from the Turks. See Abdullah Ocalan (2015), Demokratik Kurtuluş ve Özgür Yaşamı İnşa: İmralı Notları [Democratic Liberation and the Construction of Free Life: Notes from Imrali] (Neuss, Germany: Mezopotamya Press). p. 80. Surprisingly, the HDP won 13.1 percent of total votes in the June 7, 2015 elections. According to a detailed report by KONDA, an Istanbul-based public opinion company, although a vast majority of HDP votes (about 87 percent) came from the Kurds, about nine percent of HDP electors identified as ‘Turk’. KONDA (2015) 7 Haziran Sandık ve Seçmen Analizi [An Analysis of the June 7^th Elections], June 18, 2015, https://konda.com.tr/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/KONDA_7HaziranSandıkveSeçmenAnaliziRaporu.pdf, accessed July 19, 2019, p. 67. For a lengthy discussion, see Cengiz Gunes (2017) Turkey’s New Left, New Left Review, Sep-Oct, pp. 9–30.

24 Francis O’Connor & Bahar Baser (2018) Communal Violence and Ethnic Polarization before and after the 2015 Elections in Turkey: Attacks against the HDP and the Kurdish Population, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 18(1), pp. 53–72.

25 James Jeffrey, US Special Representative for Syria, described the PYD/Kurdish-led-Syrian Democratic Forces as a militia ‘led essentially by an offshoot of the PKK’. While the US considers the PKK as a terrorist organization, Jeffrey continued that the US does not see the PYD as a terrorist group. See Ahvalnews (2019), July 20. Available at: https://ahvalnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ahvalnews.com/us-turkey/turkey-provides-diverse-support-syrian-opposition-us-syria-envoy-jeffrey?amp&fbclid=IwAR0R6p_3zATWzSgl13KuhPFTLp0ROaFHhzvW5B2dQ_-TCl8-3XC5Avc4MkA, accessed July 21, 2019.

26 See, for instance, Bahar Baser (2015) Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts: A Comparative Perspective (Surrey, England: Ashgate); Vera Eccarius-Kelly (2011) The Militant Kurds: A Dual Strategy for Freedom (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger).

27 See Cuma Cicek (2017) The Kurds of Turkey: National, Religious and Economic Identities (London: I. B. Tauris).

28 Nick Robins-Early (2015) Meet the HDP, the pro-gay, pro-women Kurdish Party shaking up Turkish politics, Huffington Post, June 11. Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/turkey-hdp-party_n_7537648, accessed July 8, 2019.

29 Bernard-Henri Levy (2014) Stop calling our closest allies against ISIS “Terrorists,” The New Republic, October 22. Available at: https://newrepublic.com/article/119939/pkk-not-terrorist-organization-theyre-fighting-isis-terrorists, accessed July 8, 2019.

30 Mari Toivanen & Bahar Baser (2016) Gender in the Representations of an Armed Conflict: Female Kurdish Combatants in French and British Media, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 9(3), pp. 294–314.

31 See Gurses, Anatomy of a Civil War.

32 For a detailed account of the PYD-PKK links, see Zeynep Kaya & Robert Lowe (2017) The Curious Question of the PYD-PKK Relationship, in Gareth Stanfield & Mohammed Shareef (eds) (2017) The Kurdish Question Revisited, pp. 275–287 (London, UK: C. Hurst & Co.).

33 Gurses, Anatomy of a Civil War, p. 129.

34 Unlike several unilateral ceasefires declared by the PKK in previous years, the 2013 ceasefire was the first, and to date, the only bilateral ceasefire that was largely observed by both the PKK and the state for about two years.

35 Gurses, Anatomy of a Civil War, p. 85.

36 See http://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html, accessed July 10, 2019.

37 Turkey’s polity score went down from ‘9’ in 1979 to ‘-5’ in 1980 as a result of the military’s takeover of the government.

38 Soner Cagaptay (2019) The Turkish rupture could cause a fissure in NATO, The Hill, April 16, available online at: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/438868-the-turkish-rupture-could-cause-a-fissure-in-nato, accessed July 10, 2019.

39 Steven A. Cook (2018) The case for reshaping US-Turkey relations, Council on Foreign Relations, November 15. Available at: https://www.cfr.org/blog/case-reshaping-us-turkey-relations, accessed July 14, 2019.

40 Adam Schiff (2019) America must stand as a bulwark against autocracy, The Atlantic, February 16. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/adam-schiff-authoritarianism-threat-democracy/583609/?utm_source=facebook&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_term=2019-02-26T10%3A00%3A11&utm_campaign=the-atlantic, accessed July 10, 2019.

41 See, for instance, Ahmet E. Ozturk (2019) An Alternative Reading of Religion and Authoritarianism: The New Logic between Religion and State in the AKP’s New Turkey, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 19(1), pp. 79–98.

42 Joseph S. Nye (2018) How sharp power threatens soft power: The right and wrong ways to respond to authoritarian influence, Foreign Affairs, January 24. Available at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-01-24/how-sharp-power-threatens-soft-power, accessed July 10, 2019.

43 Yusuf Kaplan (2019) Toplumun ruhunu yok olmaktan Kurtarabilecek miyiz? [Can we save the soul of people?], Yeni Safak, April 7. Available at: https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/yusufkaplan/toplumun-ruhunu-yok-olmaktan-kurtarabilecek-miyiz-2049928, accessed July 10, 2019.

44 Hayrettin Karaman (2019) Imam Hatip Okullari dert midir? [Are Imam Hatip Schools a Problem?], Yeni Safak, July 21. Available at: https://www.yenisafak.com/yazarlar/hayrettinkaraman/imam-hatip-okullari-dert-midir-2052119, accessed July 21, 2019.

45 Henri J. Barkey & Graham E. Fuller (1997) Turkey’s Kurdish Question: Critical Turning Points and Missed Opportunities, Middle East Journal, 51(1), p. 60.

46 Aram Nigogosian (1996) Turkey’s Kurdish Problem: Recent Trends, in Robert Olson (ed) The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impacts on Turkey and the Middle East, pp. 38–49, at p. 44. (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky).

47 ‘Do you know how much a bullet costs?’ Erdoğan says in response to high food prices, Turkish Minute, February 8, 2019. Available at: https://www.turkishminute.com/2019/02/08/do-you-know-how-much-a-bullet-costs-erdogan-says-in-response-to-high-food-prices/, accessed July 10, 2019.

48 As one study argues, even ‘the secular liberal educated Turks’ seem to have a tendency of what can be described as a willful ignorance toward the Kurdish issue; in Beja Protner (2018) “The Limits of an ‘Open Mind’: State Violence, Turkification, and Complicity in the Turkish–Kurdish Conflict,” Turkish Studies 19(5), p. 688.

49 Gurses, Anatomy of a Civil War, p. 128.

50 Bahar Rumelili & Ayse Betul Çelik (2017) Ontological Insecurity in Asymmetric Conflicts: Reflections on Agonistic Peace in Turkey's Kurdish Issue, Security Dialogue, 48(4), pp. 279–296; see also Umut Can Adisonmez & Recep Onursal, ‘Governing Anxiety, Trauma and Crisis: The Political Discourse of Ontological (In) Security after the July 15 Coup Attempt in Turkey,’ in this special issue.

51 Chaim Kaufmann (1996) Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars, International Security, 20(4), pp. 136–175.

52 Mehmet Gurses & Nicolas Rost (2013) Sustaining the Peace after Ethnic Civil Wars, Conflict Management and Peace Science, 30(5), pp. 469–491.

53 Abdullah Ocalan (2015) Demokratik Kurtuluş ve Özgür Yaşamı İnşa: İmralı Notları [Democratic Liberation and the Construction of Free Life: Notes from Imrali] (Neuss, Germany: Mezopotamya Press], p. 80.

54 Serhun Al (2015) Elite Discourses, Nationalism, and Moderation: A Dialectical Analysis of Turkish and Kurdish Nationalisms, Ethnopolitics, 14(1), pp. 94–112.

55 Cemil Bayik (2019) Now is the moment for peace between Kurds and the Turkish state. Let’s not waste it, Washington Post, July 3. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/03/now-is-moment-peace-between-kurds-turkish-state-lets-not-waste-it/?fbclid=IwAR1BqfBEEr5hkFS56l05ynTBZMUKB jln6CtTiftGBtGwXcuTB6RWtMiaTIU&utm_term=.9383f515dcf3, accessed July 8, 2019.

56 This is similar to Huntington’s classification of transplacement as a form of democratization where the elites in both government and opposition prefer negotiations and dialogue to confrontation after testing each other’s power. Samuel P. Huntington (2009) How Countries Democratize, Political Science Quarterly, 124(1), pp. 31–69.

57 Henri Barkey (1996) Under the Gun: Turkish Foreign Policy and the Kurdish Question, in Robert Olson (ed) The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impacts on Turkey and the Middle East, pp. 65–83, at p. 81 (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky).

58 Ibid.

59 Olson, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s, p. 1.