From containment and rollback to escalation: Turkey’s Kurdish issue under the AKP

2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 40-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joost Jongerden
Keyword(s):  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
Kurdish Issue

This article will argue that the meetings between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party PKK between 2006-2015 were employed by the Turkish state to gain advantage in the conflict they were supposed to be aimed at resolving. This appraisal of the PKK-Turkey talks thus helps to explain the escalation in the summer of 2015 - as the result, that is, not of a failed process of negotiations but of a failed intelligence operation.

Allies and Enemies: Pro-Kurdish Parties in Turkish Politics, 1990–94

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole F. Watts
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Past ◽  
Private Realm ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party

Preventing the development of an ethnic Kurdish cultural and political movement has been a priority of the Turkish state since the Kurdish-led Shaykh Said Rebellion of 1925.' Nevertheless, beginning around 1959 this effort was steadily if slowly undermined, and events of the past ten years suggest that it has indeed failed. Not only have Kurdish activists gained some measure of international recognition for themselves and for the concept of Kurdish ethnic rights,2 but promoting the notion of specifically Kurdish cultural rights has almost become a standard litany for a wide array of Turkish civic and state actors, from Islamist political parties to business organizations, human-rights groups, prime ministers, and mainstream newspaper columnists. Although the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its insurgency against Turkey have claimed a great deal of academic and popular attention, it is these diffuse but public re-considerations of minority rights taking place within legitimate Turkish institutions have contributed the most to the sense that past policies of coping with the “Kurdish reality” are ultimately unsustainable, and that it may be difficult, if not impossible, to return to the climate of earlier years, when discussions of ethnic difference were suppressed, limited to the private realm, or confined to the fringes of radical politics.

Guerrillas could prompt Turkish state of emergency

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The Government ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
State Group

Significance They were responding to increasingly serious attacks on Turkish soldiers and police by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas in eastern Turkey. With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing fierce retribution, and conflicts between the authorities and the local population growing in the Kurdish-dominated south-east, the country is braced for full-scale war, just as it prepares for fresh parliamentary elections on November 1. Impacts Business and the economy face a sharp downturn with the lira growing steadily weaker. The conflict with the Kurds will intensify and Kurdish demands for full-scale independence will increase. The government will not seek a compromise with the Kurds and will be prepared to allocate any resources needed for a military solution. A more authoritarian style of government is likely to emerge after November. Turkey looks increasingly vulnerable to serious Islamic State group (ISG) attacks in urban centres, though probably not before the election.

scholarly journals Convince me you exist. An analysis of The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) court files

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (27) ◽  
pp. 248-256
Author(s):  
Islam Sargi
Keyword(s):  
Evidence Based ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Case Files ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
Means Of Transmission ◽  
Modern Form ◽  
Modern Sense

The end of empires and the rise of nation-states have transformed the way politics and societies operate and the modern sense of these changes, transformations, events, and situations. Language, culture, and memory are essential pillars of the nation-states’ projects of creating a new society. The modern form of government, the nation-state, use history not only as a means of transmission but also as a means of building identity and memory. This study examines the case files of three critical names in the Kurdish movement and the history-based debates in their trials. By applying discourse analysis, we have shown how the Turkish state and The Kurdish Workers’ Party used history as a tool to “prove” and “disprove” the existence of Kurds, the Kurdish language, and Kurdistan. While the judges imposed an evidence-based approach to history and denied the existence of Kurds, Kurdish and Kurdistan, the PKK members opposed the official thesis of the state and built their arguments more on the day-to-day realities of life.  The study’s main argument is that the official ideology uses history to prove and convey a message to the rest of society, whereas the defendants used it as a means of protest depending on the historical reality rather than history as a science. This study discusses that by using science to make examples of these members, the judges used history to prove the Kurds’ non-existence, whereas the defendants implied history as a way of protesting the ruling authority.

The Kurdish Movement in Turkey

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilan Okcuoglu
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
Local Levels ◽  
People’S Perceptions

The prolonged conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), spanning four decades, has resulted in 4,000 villages evacuated, and more than 3 million people displaced. Despite this profound impact on people’s everyday lives, studies on people’s perceptions of the Kurdish movement are still limited. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Kurdish participants in Turkey, this chapter explores how Kurds from different backgrounds, of different ages, and politicized to different degrees, perceive the Kurdish movement and what motivates their commitment to it. Guided by an interpretivist methodology and drawing on findings from fieldwork, the chapter proposes that everyday experiences and understandings of the Kurdish movement are embedded and salient in a political sense. It concludes that by mobilizing people’s everyday perceptions and experiences and translating them into political engagement, the Kurdish movement shifts the scale of politics from a national to transnational and local levels. This shift implies that conducting extensive qualitative research among ordinary people brings a novel understanding of political movements and ethnic conflict in terms of both people’s motivations and movements’ strategic choices.

scholarly journals Generation in debt: Family, politics, and youth subjectivities in Diyarbakır

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leyla Neyzi ◽  
Haydar Darıcı
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Young People ◽  
Public Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
Family Politics ◽  
The Family ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
Kurdish Issue ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis paper investigates the political subjectivities of Kurdish youth in Diyarbakır through the interplay of kinship and politics. We argue that it is through a framework of kinship that young people make sense of the Kurdish issue. We show that the war between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) and the Turkish military has reshaped the Kurdish family, leading to a crisis in the life cycle. We suggest that the young feel indebted to the Kurdish movement, which they express using the term bedel (“debt”). Debt is related to the family, as the individual becomes indebted as part of a kinship group. We argue that the expansion of public space in Diyarbakır has created alternative ways of paying debt and doing politics.

scholarly journals Why Religious People Support Ethnic Insurgency? Kurds, Religion and Support for the PKK

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekrem Karakoç ◽  
Zeki Sarıgil
Keyword(s):  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Ethnic Inequality ◽  
State Discrimination ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
The Social ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
Kurdish Conflict

AbstractThis study challenges a dominant view that religion constrains the support for an ethnic insurgency. It argues that observing the discrepancy between religious brotherhood discourses of ethnic majority state and discrimination and inter-ethnic inequality in the social, political, and economic sphere as a result of the long-standing securitization of minority rights increase skepticism toward government among religious minorities. This long-term perception makes them receptive to the messages of an insurgent group that claims to fight for cultural and political rights of an ethnic minority. Utilizing two original public opinion surveys conducted in Turkey in 2011 and 2013, before and right after the peace talks between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers' Party—The Partîya Karkêren Kurdistan (PKK), this study tests its hypotheses by taking the Kurdish conflict as a case study. The findings challenge the dominant paradigm that expects a negative relationship between religiosity and rebel support. Religious Kurds do not differ from non-religious ones in support for the formerly Marxist–Leninist PKK. Second, political and economic grievances matter; the perception among Kurds, of state discrimination and inter-ethnic economic inequality generates positive attitudes toward the PKK. Finally, the perception of inter-ethnic socioeconomic inequality amplifies support for the PKK among religious Kurds.

scholarly journals The Conflictual (Trans)formation of the Public Sphere in Urban Space: The Case of Diyarbakır

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 43-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeynep Gambetti
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party ◽  
A Site

“In the East, understanding is a surreptitious shroud.”Kemal Varol“Men come into existence through their struggles”This study aims to contribute to efforts to understand how redress occurs in local contexts impaired by armed conflict. Its particular focus is on events, dynamics and forms of relationality that (re)create public spheres on a local level. It takes the city of Diyarbakır, the largest in Southeastern Turkey, as the vantage point from which to explore the transformation of a site of violent conflict into a space for the expression of differences that were either nonexistent or suppressed. Since the beginning of the armed uprising of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in 1984, the majority of political actors in Diyarbakır have in effect been polarized into two antagonistic camps (the Turkish state vs. the PKK). With the end of armed conflict five years ago, Diyarbakır has been astoundingly transformed into a paradise for civil society activists. The dynamics through which new urban spaces of existence and of expression have been created have not ceased being conflictual. In exploring the formative function of micro and macro struggles on publicness, the theoretical intent of this study is to argue against the Habermasian conceptualization of the public sphere.

Waltzing with Ocalan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon A. Waldman ◽  
Emre Caliskan
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdish Issue ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Way

This chapter analyzes the transition and evolution of Turkey’s Kurdish problem. Under military tutelage, the way in which the Turkish state dealt with the Kurdish issue was through military means; in the post-military period, there have been attempts to engage in a non-military solution. Nevertheless, despite the optimism and furore surrounding the political process of negotiating with Ocalan and the PKK, the AKP has yet to recognize that there is no military solution to the conflict—and, although more attuned to Kurdish desires than the military, still views the issue as a cultural, rather than a national, problem. Turkey has a long way to go before a meaningful agreed solution is found to a problem that has plagued Turkey for many years.

Failure of Peace Talks between Turkey and the PKK: Victim of Traditional Turkish Policy or of Geopolitical Shifts in the Middle East?

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cemal Ozkahraman
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Third ◽  
Peace Negotiations ◽  
Historical Responsibility ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Kurdish Question ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party

When the third set of peace negotiations between Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerén Kurdistan, PKK) and the Turkish state were announced on March 21, 2013, there was a hope that they would lead to lasting peace in the Kurdish region of Turkey. However, these peace talks, like previous ones, failed. This article investigates whether traditional Turkish policy toward the Kurdish question impacted the peace process, and to what extent Kurdish autonomy in Syria and its increasing role in Middle East geopolitics contributed to the Turkish state’s unwillingness to pursue resolution for a lasting peace with the PKK. The article suggests that, in order to realize a lasting peace, skepticism must be diminished, and Turkey must consider its historical responsibility toward the Kurds.

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