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Abstract
Discourse and politics on intra-state conflicts that involve one or many non-state armed actors usually take their form along two philosophical polarities. The hegemonic or state-centric position focuses exclusively on national security, terrorism and territorial integrity concerns, shunning other solutions to the problem as “treason” or “naiveté”. The second philosophical position, the counter-hegemonic or “non-state” looks at conflicts from a rights and freedoms point of view, constructing disagreements as politically negotiable. This paper situates hegemonic and counter-hegemonic political philosophical strands within conflict discourse, as it relates to Turkey’s Kurdish question. By doing so, it contextualizes Turkey’s human rights debates and political discourse within the traditional mainstream in political philosophy: Hobbes–Machiavelli–Weber on the one hand and Locke–Kant–Rousseau on the other. Through this model, this paper attempts to offer a conceptual foundation for future studies of discourse on intra-state conflicts and human rights in other case studies.
Notes
1. “For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions.”
2. “The mutual transferring of right is that which men call contract.”
3. “That the condition of mere nature, that is to say, of absolute liberty, such as is theirs that neither are sovereigns nor subjects, is anarchy and the condition of war: that the precepts, by which men are guided to avoid that condition, are the laws of nature: that a Commonwealth without sovereign power is but a word without substance and cannot stand: that subjects owe to sovereigns simple obedience in all things wherein their obedience is not repugnant to the laws of God.”
4. “Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.”
5. “The other, is when men agree amongst themselves to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others.”
6. “[B]ecause every subject is by this institution author of all the actions and judgments of the sovereign instituted, it follows that whatsoever he doth, can be no injury to any of his subjects; nor ought he to be by any of them accused of injustice. For he that doth anything by authority from another doth therein no injury by him by whose authority he acteth: but by this institution of a Commonwealth every particular man is author of all the sovereign doth; and consequently he that complaineth of injury from his sovereign complaineth of that whereof he himself is author, and therefore ought not to accuse any man but himself; no, nor himself of injury, because to do injury to oneself is impossible. It is true that they that have sovereign power may commit iniquity, but not injustice or injury in the proper signification.”
7. “For the sovereign is absolute over both alike; or else there is no sovereignty at all, and so every man may lawfully protect himself, if he can, with his own sword, which is the condition of war.”
8. “It must be understood that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity and against religion.”
9. “[I]t is necessary to whoever disposes a republic and order laws in it to presuppose that all men are bad, and they always have to use the malignity of their spirit whenever they have a free opportunity for it.”
10. “[O]ne never seeks to avoid one inconvenience without running into another; hence prudence consists in picking the less bad as good.”
11. “[I]n everything [i.e. institution] some evil is concealed that makes new accidents emerge.”
12. “The command of the gospel is unconditional and unambiguous: give what you have – everything, quite simply. The politician will say: a socially senseless demand so long as it does not apply to everyone. Hence: taxation, punitive taxation, confiscation – in short, coercion and order for all.”
13. “For while it is a consequence of the ethic of unworldly love to say: ‘Do not resist evil with violence’, the politician is governed by the principle: You shall resist evil by force, otherwise you will be responsible for its spread.”
14. Foucault’s notion of “pastor-shepherd” analogy has been best interpreted in the introduction of Carrette (Citation1999, 122–123).
15. “The king binds himself by a double oath, to the observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom – tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to protect as well the people as the laws of his kingdom.”
16. This is elaborated on in depth in Locke (Citation1980, I, ʃ: 3).
17. “It is not a convention between a superior and inferior, but a convention between the body and each of its members. It is legitimate, because common to all; useful, because it can have no other object than the general good, and stable because guaranteed by the public force and the supreme power.”
18. This is dealt with extensively in Rousseau (Citation1968, Chapter IX: Real Property).
19. “[E]ach individual, in making a contract […] is bound in a double capacity; as a member of the Sovereign he is bound to the individuals, and as a member of the State to the Sovereign.”
20. “The original contract is merely an idea of reason; but it has undoubtedly a practical reality. For it ought to bind every legislator by the condition that he shall enact such laws as might have arisen from the united will of the people and it will likewise be binding upon every subject, in so far as he will be a citizen, so that he shall regard the law as if he had consented to it of his own will.”
21. “[The state] history in question has constituted the rational necessary course of the World Spirit that Spirit whose nature is always one and the same.”
22. “In essence, the theory of the divine genesis of the state justifies political authority in general as deriving from God, and lends legitimacy to the exercise of political power by particular individuals who are presented as agents of the divine will, by either direct or indirect delegation of divinely sanctioned authority.”