Introduction: The Transformations in Kurdish Politics and Society in Turkey Since 2000

ABSTRACT

This special issue focuses on the main actualities taking place in Kurdish politics in Turkey during the 2000s and 2010s and critically evaluates their various dimensions and features. In more concrete terms, it investigates and sets out the following themes: the ideological transformation of the PKK; the rise of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP) since 2012 and the success it had in the general elections in 2015; the transformation of the Kurdish Islamist Hizbullah movement; 2009 and 2015; and the political economy of Turkey's Kurdish question.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For a more detailed discussion of the management of the conflict during the 2000s see: C. Gunes and W. Zeydanlıoğlu (eds.), The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation, Routledge, London and New York, 2014.

2. V. Yadirgi, The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017, p.4. The quoted text within the quote is derived from E. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, I. B. Tauris, London, p.53.

3. Yadirgi, The Political Economy of the Kurds of Turkey, op-cit., p.4.

4. C. Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance, Routledge, London and New York, 2012, p.3.

5. Ibid., p.2. The republican Turkish nationalist ideology is often described as Kemalism following the founder and the first President of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal, who was given the surname ‘Atatürk’ – ‘Father of the Turks’ – on 21 June 1934 (S. J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume II: Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977, p.386.

6. Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, op-cit., p.2.

7. D. Bayır, Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law, Routledge, London and New York, 2013, pp.145-54.

8. I. N. Grigoriadis, ‘Türk or Türkiyeli? The Reform of Turkey’s Minority Legislation and the Rediscovery of Ottomanism’, Middle Eastern Studies, 43:3 (2007), p.423.

9. M. Yeğen, ‘The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: Denial to Recognition’ in M. Casier and J. Jongerden (eds.) Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism, and the Kurdish Issue, Routledge, London and New York, 2011, p.69.

10. I. Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi, Belge Yayınları, Istanbul, 1990, pp.82-3.

11. Yeğen, ‘The Kurdish Issue in Turkey’, op-cit., p.72.

12. M. Rışvanoğlu, Doğu Aşiretleri ve Emperyalizm, Türk Kültür Yayınlar, Istanbul, 1975.

13. Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, op.cit., p.49.

14. M.E. Bozarslan, Doğu’nun Sorunları, Safak Kitapevi, Diyarbakır, 1966.

15. A. Öcalan, Kürdistan Devriminin Yolu (Manifesto), 6^th edition, Weşanen Serxwebûn, Cologne, p.63-4.

16. Ibid., p.91.

17. K. Burkay, Seçme Yazılar-1. DENG Yayınları, Istanbul, 1999, p.5.

18. For a detailed discussion of the political texts and programmes of the groups and political parties that emerged in the 1970s, see Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, op-cit., pp.65–100.

19. C. Gunes, ‘Explaining the PKK’s Mobilization of Kurds in Turkey: Hegemony, Myth and Violence’, Ethnopolitics 12 (3) (2013), p.258.

20. C. Gunes, ‘Unblocking the Impasse in Turkey’s Kurdish Question’, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 24 (4), 2012, p.464.

21. For an overview of the PKK’s ideological transformation see: Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, op.cit., pp. 124-151; A. H. Akkaya and J. Jongerden, ‘Confederalism and Autonomy in Turkey: The Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Reinvention of Democracy’, in C. Gunes and W. Zeydanlıoğlu (eds.) The Kurdish Question in Turkey: New Perspectives on Violence, Representation and Reconciliation, Routledge, London, 2014, pp.186-204.

22. Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey, op.cit., pp.161-7.

23. C. Gunes, ‘Turkey’s New Left’, New Left Review, 107, 2017, p.9.

24. HAK-PAR, ‘İl Örgütleri’, March 2018, https://www.hakpar.org.tr/root/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=66&lang=tr (accessed 2 August 2018).

25. For further discussion see: K. F. Toktamış, ‘(Im)possibility of negotiating peace: 2005‒2015 peace/reconciliation talks between the Turkish government and Kurdish politicians’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 21 (3), 2019, pp.286-303; E. Aktoprak, ‘The Kurdish Opening and Constitutional Reform: is There Any Progress’, European Yearbook on Minority Issues 9, 2010, pp.243-267.

26. Toktamış, ‘(Im)possibility of negotiating peace’, op.cit., p.90.

27. N. Christofis, ‘The state of the Kurds in Erdoğan’s “new” Turkey’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 21 (3), 2019, p.254.

28. H. Hacaloğlu, ‘Erdoğan: Dolmabahçe Mutabakatı Doğru Değil’, Voice of America, March 2015, https://www.amerikaninsesi.com/a/erdogan-dolmabahce-mutabakini-dogru-bulmuyorum/2690354.html (accessed 15 August 2019).

29. For a more detailed discussion of the recent transformations experienced in the conflict see: C. Gunes, The Kurds in a New Middle East: The Changing Geopolitics of a Regional Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cengiz Gunes

Cengiz Gunes received his PhD from the University of Essex. Since 2010, he has been teaching politics and international relations courses at the Open University. He has published widely on different aspects of Kurdish politics and is the author ofThe Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (Routledge, 2012).

Veli Yadirgi

Veli Yadirgi is the author of the double award-winning book The Political Economy of Kurdish Question: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Currently, he is a member of staff in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. He is a member of the London Middle East Institute, Neoliberalism, Globalisation and States, and the Centre for Ottoman Studies.