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Abstract
This paper proposes an alternative form of conflict resolution to analyze ethnic conflict and Kurdish dissent in the polarized and divided society of Turkey. It does so by employing Mouffe’s concept of agonism and radical democracy, in conjunction with Laclau’s model of populism. Through an analysis of the role of the Kurdish-led, left-leaning populist party, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), and its approach to Turkish-Kurdish reconciliation, the paper makes the case for the political and theoretical effectiveness of an agonistic approach, illustrating the possibility of dispute resolution by taking conflict into the centre of the peace building process.
Notes
1. The origin of word comes from the Greek agon, meaning contest and struggle. Agonism emphasizes the positive aspects of political conflict by neutralizing violence. It suggests that conflict cannot be eliminated or transcended, which would mean the end of politics, because conflict is part of human nature and politics. The agonistic approach problematizes the assumption of liberal democracy that it is desirable and possible to reach a rational consensus; a view which dominates conflict resolution studies.
2. Radical democracy in the sense used here basically means the transformation of liberal democracy along socialist principles rather than its annihilation through a direct act of revolution. This perspective accepts the existing liberal values, particularly equality and liberty to all, but wants to expand their scope. According to this radical approach, it is impossible to transcend antagonism and thus eradicate conflict totally from the political arena. As a result, radical democracy offers an extensive pluralism and celebrates wide diversity within the democratic ground that goes beyond the liberal approach in terms of a ‘conflictual consensus’. This tradition is also referred to as agonistic pluralism.
3. Mouffe (Citation2000, 101) argues for ‘the distinction between “politics” and “the political”. By “the political”, I refer to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in human relations, antagonism that can take many forms and emerge in different types of social relations. “Politics”, on the other side, indicates the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions which seek to establish a certain order and organize human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially conflictual because they are affected by the dimension of “the political”. I consider that it is only when we acknowledge the dimension of “the political” and understand that “politics” consists in domesticating hostility and in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human relations, that we can pose what I take to be the central question for democratic politics’.
4. The political aim of radical democracy is not to directly overthrow existing power structures. In this sense it is different from the direct revolution of orthodox Marxism. Instead it seeks to transform the existing system and its institutions gradually to render it more compatible with the principle of democratic equality and liberty for all. It expands this principle by attempting to construct a collective identity that replaces the liberal idea of the individual as an equal and rational self-determining agent. At the same time the economic aim of radical democracy, as Smith (Citation1998, 11) argues ‘would necessitate a radical transformation of capitalism. Such a transformation would have to address the unlimited accumulation of wealth and power and the private ownership of the means of production that prevail in every capitalist formation, as well as the exploitation of labor that follows from these conditions’.
5. Mouffe ‘advocates a “conflictual consensus” by which she means that the legitimacy of political frameworks is not fixed and is instead subject to change and renewal (Little Citation2003, 388). Moreover, Mouffe states ‘consensus is needed on the institutions which are constitutive of democracy. But there will be disagreement concerning the way social justice should be implemented in these institutions […] We can agree on the importance of “liberty and democracy for all” while disagreeing sharply about their meaning and the way they should be implemented, with different configurations of power relations that this implies’ (Machin Citation2013, 93). Consequently, any attempt to supress conflict is inimicable to the politics of peace. This is not to suggest a violent us/them relation; rather the key task of the agonistic approach is to create the conditions that would make negotiation possible where antagonism is not eliminated but sublimated and recognized.
6. This refers to the impossibility of a politics without antagonism but the need to recognize that it is possible under conditions of conflict to maintain an agonistic peace. It requires transforming the enemy into an adversary who as an opponent is not to be considered as an enemy who needs to be destroyed but whose existence is legitimate and tolerated. These actors may fight against each other’s ideas and define differently the notion of peace, but they will not question the other’s right to defend them as long as they are compatible with democracy. We can see parallels here with the situation in Northern Ireland where after years of conflict Sinn Fein and the Unionist parties work together in the government of Northern Ireland although neither side has given up the aim of, on the one hand, a united Ireland and, on the other, that the province should remain an integral part of the United Kingdom.
7. Laclau (with Mouffe, Citation1985) offers populism as a political recipe and strategy for left-wing parties to challenge the existing neoliberal order and move towards radical democracy.
8. I claim that the HDP is a Kurdish-led party rather than a pro-Kurdish one. The HDP’s approach to democratic struggle promotes many different identities through political inclusion by creating a bloc rather than essentializing a single identity, such as Kurdishness. This is different from the legacy of pro-Kurdish parties and the PKK. The HDP’s horizontal politics formed in radical plurality and ‘inclusive populism’ is different from a class-based orthodox leftist perspective and that is why I call it left-leaning rather than left-wing.
9. According to Ranciere ‘consensus does not mean simply the erasure of conflicts for the benefit of common interests. Consensus means erasing the contestatory, conflictual nature of the very givens of common life. It reduces political difference to police-like homogeneity’ (Machin Citation2013, 96).
10. It is clear that the escalating violence after the 7 June 2015 election makes it difficult to have an agonistic debate. Since that election, the AKP government’s concept of national security and the PKK’s strategy of a new urban war have come to dominate politics, gradually precluding the opportunity for a democratic struggle. The moralizing politics of these actors, based on the notions of sacred religious and national identities respectively (as reflected in the discourse of martyrdom) leave little space for democratic political negotiation as they block, terrorize and demonize peace demands. At the time of writing this paper in early autumn 2016, politics in Turkey had become even more volatile than usual after the attempted coup in July 2016 and the subsequent state of emergency declared by the Ankara government.
11. Mouffe uses the term ‘public space’ in order to distinguish her approach from Habermas’s public sphere. She recognizes the vital role of communication but points out how the Habermasian perspective ignores the necessity of conflict, antagonism and hegemonic struggle which is inevitable in democratic politics and aims instead to eliminate conflict within an absolute solution. For Mouffe, the ending of conflict is the ending of democracy. What is left is a populist authoritarianism or totalitarianism that merely strikes a democratic pose.
12. The idea of an ‘absolute consenus’ refers to how liberal democracy aims to have a ‘fixed’ identity around liberal values. Thus groups cannot be within this consensus if they do not fulfil this significant requirement. This can lead to the exclusion of groups such as the LGBT community, pious Muslims, foreigners, depending upon how the ‘fixed’ identity is defined. On the other hand, radical democratic politics expands the political borders of liberal democracy by including more identities within its scope in order to negotiate a collective identity (e.g. citizenship) within democratic principles (i.e. equality and liberty) and agonistic respect (not destroying the enemy, but working with it). In other words, radical democracy is not a refutation of liberal democracy but its transformation by insisting on inclusive pluralism.
13. The term ‘political passions’ does not simply mean ‘emotions’, which are generally attached to individuals, and therefore do not adequately convey the collective sentiment in the political domain. Instead, the term emphasizes this collective dimension based on the conflictual dimension of politics and the antagonism between collective political identities. Passion denotes ‘common affects’, which are mobilized in the political space.
14. Social plurality refers to the societal acceptance of different identities in the public sphere.
15. Populism is here discourse-oriented. It is the discursive and antagonistic struggle of two camps: the people and the elitist power bloc.
16. It poses radical democracy as a new regime which challenges the AKP’s ‘new Turkey’ rhetoric and hegemony by creating new alliances and a counterhegemonic culture.
17. For more details, see Ocalan’s works, the election manifestos of the HDP and Demirtas Citation2015.
18. See the HDP’s website: https://hdpenglish.wordpress.com/call-for-a-new-life/.
19. The reason for using the term ‘space’ instead of ‘sphere’ is to differentiate between the Habermassian public sphere, which is a communicative model of rationality, and space that refers to the vital role of passion in politics.
20. For example, before the June 2015 election the European Federation of Alevi Associations asked the CHP to reserve a certain number of seats for Alevis so that Alevis could support the party, but the CHP refused as it did not fit with its political identity shaped in terms of Kemalist principles. In contrast, the HDP accepted this demand and offered an ‘alliance’ rather than incorporation which meant that the Alevis represented themselves as Alevi in the parliament: https://www.evrensel.net/haber/108646/avrupa-alevileri-hdpyi-destekleme-karari-aldi.
21. The HDP’s election manifesto illustrates how the party prioritizes democratic demands over Kurdish national needs. In this way the HDP differs from other pro-Kurdish parties in not taking Kurdish identity as an essential element in the party’s policies. In this respect, the HDP’s concept of ‘Turkeyfication’ targets the whole country rather than only the predominantly Kurdish regions and many non-Kurds and non-Muslims play a role in the senior management of the party. Co-chair Figen Yuksekdağ is a Turkish woman, whose family are supporters of the ultra-nationalist MHP party. Besides, the HDP put forward diverse MP candidates for the 2015 general election; for instance, Caucasian Metin Kılıç (in Bursa), Laz Sinan Odabaş (in Kocaeli), Armenian Garo Payan (in Istanbul), Assyrian Erol Dora (in Mardin), Alevi Mustafa Sarısülük (in Ankara): https://www.evrensel.net/haber/110313/esit-gelecek-icin-ortak-adres-hdp.
22. For a detailed debate, see Hardt and Negri (Citation2001).
23. Demirtas called on the PKK to adopt non-violent methods of struggle by reference to Mahatma Gandhi’s speech: ‘demolish the injustice regime with justice. Present yourself without bloody hands in front of people’: http://www.amerikaninsesi.com/content/demirtas-pkk-ya-gandi-mesajiyla-seslendi/2989387.html.
24. See: http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/siyaset/394053/Selahattin_Demirtas_tan_PKK_ye_cagri.html and http://www.haberler.com/hdp-es-genel-baskani-selahattin-demirtas-8445337-haberi/.
25. The Turkish Industry and Business Association (TÜSİAD) and the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MÜSİAD) (also known as the Muslim Business Men). They have come to play a dominant role in the economy of the country through the favour of the AKP government.
26. For instance, in 2010, then Prime Minister Erdoğan told a conference of women’s organizations he did not believe in gender equality as ‘women’s destiny was divinely foreordained’. Likewise, AKP MP Ayşe Doğan claimed at the TBMM Commission on Equal Opportunity for Women and Men that homosexuality is the biggest threat to society. In April 2016, the AKP speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM), İsmail Kahraman, suggested that the new constitution should drop references to laicism and called for a pious/religious constitution.
29. See, ‘Gezi is the Democratic Future of Turkey’ https://hdpenglish.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/gezi-is-the-democratic-future-of-turkey/.
30. For example, the People’s Labor Party (HEP), Freedom and Equality Party (ÖZEP), Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP), Democracy Party (DEP), People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), Democratic People Party (DEHAP), Democratic Society Party (DTP) and Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). All of these pro-Kurdish political parties have been closed, except the last of these, by the Constitutional Courts under anti-terror legislation.
31. Demirtas: https://hdpenglish.wordpress.com/call-for-a-new-life/.
32. ‘Denial, extermination, assimilation, marginalization, “other’ization” etc. – these are all the state’s ideological tools that have been systematically organized for decades’ (Demirtas Citation2015, 29).
33. It was established ‘to serve in the seven official regions of the country. The committees, composed of 63 members mostly from the media, academia, and civil society, were the first of their kind in the history of the Republic to initiate a public discussion around the Kurdish issue and listen to the needs, beliefs, and fears of the people’ (Celik, Citation2015).
34. Constituted by a significant number of NGOs, unions, political parties, and women’s organizations. The Peace bloc organizes rallies for peace: for instance the rally in Istanbul in August 2015 witnessed participation by members of 90 organizations, including trade unions, labour organizations, political parties and groups, various platforms, associations, collectives as well as many others: http://anfenglish.com/news/demirtas-peace-comes-by-practice-not-solely-demands.
35. ‘We should not encourage the war, but the peace’: http://www.diken.com.tr/demirtas-pkkyi-da-hukumeti-de-elestirdi-barisi-buyutmeye-haziriz/.
37. Who we are: https://hdpenglish.wordpress.com/about/.
38. Translated by author: http://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/demirtas-akp-artik-isid-in-siyasi-uzantisidir-104312.html.
39. The Suruc, Ankara, and Diyarbekir suicide bombers who killed more than 150 civilians.
40. During the election campaign, the HDP was under very heavy attack particularly from ultra-nationalists and radical Islamist mobs.
41. The violence in the Kurdish dominated cities, – Sur, Cizre and Nusaybin, which were heavily damaged among others – started again after the clashes between the state and the PKK in 2015. It was sparked by the PKK accusation that the government was colluding with the Islamic State’s (IS/ISIS) suicide bomb attacks against Kurdish organizations (including the HDP) and their allies, Turkish leftists, in Sur, Diyarbakir and Ankara which resulted in the death of more than two hundred people. The PKK shot dead two Turkish police officers in response in Ceylanpinar (Urfa), although a week later the PKK refused to accept responsibility for this attack. However, these two main incidents reignited the more than 30-years armed struggle between the state and PKK. The security forces responded harshly. Many Kurdish dominated towns were put under curfew for months and more than a thousand people were killed (including civilians babies, children, the elderly and women) and left people in need of basic humanitarian aids (clean water, food, health support etc.): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34280461.
43. It addresses the freedom from violence and from the fear of violence: http://www.un.org/humansecurity/sites/www.un.org.humansecurity/files/human_security_in_theory_and_practice_english.pdf.