Shedding an ethnic identity in diaspora: de-Turkification and the transnational discursive struggles of the Kurdish diaspora

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how Kurdish diaspora (from Turkey) engage in de-Turkification, that is correcting, interrupting and shedding the intense Turkification and assimilation which Kurds have been recipients of in Turkey. As ‘everyday critical discourse analysts’ Kurdish mobilized actors identify, challenge and ideologically unpack the Turkishness manifest in their (Kurdish) interlocutors’ discourses via three means: inclusion, exclusion and repositioning. The article also identifies that self-definition amongst Kurds in London is shifting as previously self-identified ‘Turkish economic migrants’ over time become ‘Kurdish diaspora’. Rather than examining the often-discussed belonging ties of diasporas, it traces the critical interruptions and corrections Kurdish actors undertake in order to de-Turkify. The focus is on how an identity is being shed, rather than gained. In so doing, the article contributes to an understanding of the process of removal of asymmetric discourses rather than attempting to demonstrate their production or reproduction which have tended to dominate the critical discourse analysis literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Diaspora
• ethno-political
• Kurds
• Turkey
• Turkification

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the Kurdish community in London for their generosity and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ipek Demir (Ph.D., University of Sussex) is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Leicester. She previously taught social sciences at the Universities of Sussex and Cambridge, and the Open University and was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She held an AHRC Fellowship, examining how ethno-political identity is represented and translated by Kurds (of Turkey) in London. Demir has given many invited talks and has numerous peer-reviewed international publications. She is the founder and co-coordinator of BSA’s Diaspora, Migration and Transnationalism (DMT) Study Group and the former Vice-Chair of ESA’s Sociology of Migration Research Network. http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/sociology/people/idemir. School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.

Notes

1. In this article when I refer to ‘Kurds’, I mean Kurds from Turkey.

2. See for example, Bayir (2013); Çiçek (2011) and Zeydanlıoğlu (2012) for a discussion of the inadequacies of the reforms.

3. The ban on uttering the word ‘Kurd’ and ‘Kurdish’ has been removed and the prohibition on speaking Kurdish in daily life was abolished in 1991. However, many other restrictions, including the right to receive education in the mother tongue (Kurdish) in mainstream schooling, still remain. See Kurban (2013) for an overview.

4. Moreover, between 1987 and 2002 Kurdish populated areas were governed under the Regional State of Emergency Government (OHAL in Turkish). Serious human rights abuses, disappearances and extrajudicial killings took place during this period. For various reports of this conflict and its consequences see Human Rights Watch Reports at https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkey.

5. See Gunes (2012) for a discussion and analysis of the discourse of Kurdish mobilization in Turkey.

6. Support for the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in London is impressive, as exemplified in elections. Whilst this pro-Kurdish party struggled hard not to fall below the 10% overall threshold in Turkey, securing 13% (in June 2015) and 11% (in November 2015), HDP won 60% (in June 2015) and 55% (in November 2015) of the votes of citizens of Turkey in London. The support for HDP in London is significant.

7. Leggewie (1996) argued that in Germany many self-identified ‘Turks’ became self-identified ‘Kurds’, not self-identified ‘Germans’.

8. It is important to note that in the 1960s and 1970s ‘doğulu’ was used by the Kurdish mobilization itself, for example, The Revolutionary Eastern Culture Hearths (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocaklari) and the concept later came to be rejected. I would like to thank the anonymous referee for pointing this out.

9. Such ‘habits of expression’ are different to slips of the tongue (ağızdan kaçırmak) which are accidental and are at times auto-corrected.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellowship Programme [grant number AH/J001015/1].