Repression and resistance – fragments of Kurdish politics in Turkey under the AKP regime

ABSTRACT

Kurdish politics in the Middle East and within the boundaries of states where Kurdish speaking populations live, is a highly complicated, multi-layered and multi-faceted issue. In this special issue, our focus is mainly on Kurdish politics in Turkey, especially in the past fifteen years under the AKP regime, which can be considered as a dynamic episode of state-formation and (de-) democratization onto itself. This introductory piece briefly reviews some aspects of Kurdish politics in Turkey and previews the articles in this special issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Kurdish politics
• Turkey
• peace process
• democratization
• conflict

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note on contributors

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.

Isabel David is a political scientist and Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences, Universidade de Lisboa (University of Lisbon), Portugal. She has published in the following journals and publishers: Lexington, Rowman & Littlefield, Palgrave Macmillan, Lit Verlag, Routledge, Amsterdam University Press, Journal of Civil Society, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, and Mediterranean Quarterly. Her research interests include collective action, Turkish society and politics and comparative democratisation.

ORCID

Isabel David http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1734-6457

Notes

1. We chose the term Kurdish Politics as opposed to Kurdish Problem or Kurdish Question because both of these terminologies indicate an episteme grounding the knowledge centered around the troubles Kurds are causing on the unquestioned status quo or particular issues that need to be remedies such as the national question. Such episteme hardly discovers Kurdishness as an agency amidst other generalizable questions such as state-formation, democratization, regional or global cross-boundaries issues. Kurdish politics designates an attempt to discover Kurdish actors and institutions as parties to multi-layered processes of social, political and cultural conflicts where state actors are always a factor to reckon within contentious power dynamics.

2. We are here following the terminology of Contentious Politics identifying ‘consolidated state’ as ‘territorially continuous, centralized, differentiated and coercion-monopolizing’ entity, instead of ‘nation-state’, which ‘refers to a conflation of identity and territory that was an integral, but seldom achieved, element of many nationalist programs.’ Rather than making claims, and often (re)producing homogenous national identity with ‘nation-state,’ consolidated state refers to well documented, sociologically evidenced processes such as ‘the introduction of direct taxation, more centralized administration, and general conscription.’ Hanagan, “Introduction,” 2–3.

3. Oktem and Akkoyunlu, Exit from Democracy.

4. Tejel, “New Perspectives on Writing.”

5. The term laicism better describes the French-type authoritarian state policy models that establish full control over religious expressions and institutions in Turkey, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon secularism, which separates state affairs from religion. See Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State?.” The direction of this new model under the authoritarian AKP regime after June 2018 is yet to be seen.

6. Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement. See also Toktamis, “From Ethnicity to Nationalism.”

7. Aras, “State Sovereignty,” and Bozarslan, “Why the Armed Struggle?.”

8. Gunes and Zeydanlioğlu, “Introduction,” 5–6, and Muller, “Nationalism and the Rule of Law.”

9. Olson, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement, and Hirschler, “Defining the Nation.”

10. Ozden, Akça, and Bekmen, Turkey Reframed, and David, “Strategic Democratisation?.”

11. Guney, “Europeanization of Civil-Military Relations,” and Soyler, The Turkish Deep State. This institution, which was previously supervised by the Prime Minister since 2010, has now been transferred to the Ministry of Interior Affairs by a presidential decree during the administrative and political overhaul of the regime in July 2018.

12. According to the numbers provided by the google cached T24 webpage on May 18, 2015. Since July 5, 2018, the T24 website is no longer accessible. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://t24.com.tr/haber/iste-7-haziran-secimi-oncesinde-turkiye-capinda-hdpye-yapilan-saldirilarin-kronolojisi,297012.

13. HDP, “4 Kasim Raporu.”

14. OHCRC, “Report.”

15. OHCRC, “UN Report.”

16. The Guardian, “Turkish Parliament Votes.”

17. HDP, “24 Haziran Seçim.”

18. Gurses, “From War to Democracy, and Bengio, “Ankara, Erbil, Baghdad.”

19. Jongerden, “The Kurdistan Workers’ Party,” and Kaya and Lowe, “The Curious Question.”

20. Fondation Institut Kurde de Paris, “The Kurdish Diaspora.”

21. Romano and Gurses, “Introduction.”