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In this paper, two major ethnic conflicts in the Middle East region are considered, namely, the Kurdish issue in Iraq and Syria, as well as recent conflicts in Syria. Three main theoretical perspectives on identity divides and conflicts are discussed in the context of the Middle East region. The considered conflicts are then analyzed separately, gi...
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... Many saw this initiative as a move to boost the AKP's elective support from Kurdish citizens, who had been consistent AKP voters (Grigoriadis 2016). Yet, it also raised the legitimacy of pro-Kurdish political actors to unprecedented levels and permitted their controlled inclusion into national politics (Gürbüz 2016, Tekdemir 2016, Celep 2018. A ceasefire was consequently established between the Turkish government and the PKK in March 2013 that was to last until July 2015, which included the party co-leader Demirtaş calling for the PKK to disarm. ...
While the literature on rebel-to-party transformation focused on formation of parties at the end of civil wars, in this study, we address the phenomenon of a political party that co-exists alongside a rebel group during a lengthy civil war. We define this party as a ‘pro-rebel party,’ which is constrained by the rebel group but adheres to the legal order by offering candidates in elections. Based on the case of pro-Kurdish parties in Turkey, we argue that pro-rebel parties experience ideological and organisational pluralisation in structures with increasing opportunities and reinforce a counter-hegemonic struggle against a one-sided state discourse.
... Yet, a chain of pro-Kurdish political parties with strong links to the PKK have also been a reality in Turkish politics. After each Kurdish political party was outlawed and banned by the Constitutional Court, a new one was formed in the same political tradition (Gürbüz 2016). Established in October 2012, the People's Democratic Party (HDP) was the last link in this chain; nevertheless, the party employed a new approach, strategy and discourse which go beyond a focus on the Kurdish issue. ...
... Moreover, Hüda-Par has rigorously rejected this claim. In addition, members of the movement stated that they were the victims of the 'deep state' which blames the movement for illegal acts in fact committed by undercover agents (Gürbüz 2016). Moreover, Hezbollah justifies its position against the PKK and HDP due to the secular and socialist ideological structure of these movements, which are against the moral values and religion of Kurdish people. ...
From October 6–8, 2014, following a call by the pro-Kurdish party to protest against the Turkish government’s alleged indifference to the situation in Kobani, protests and violent clashes took place in many provinces of Turkey. In order to contribute to the understanding of the long-running ethnic conflict in Turkey, this paper addresses the contesting political discourses on the Kurdish question by focusing on those events. It comparatively analyzes the selected speeches of the leaders during and immediately after the Kobani events. Applying critical discourse analysis as a conceptual and analytical framework, it concludes that the Kurdish political movement builds its discourse on the ethnic difference and reinforces it with resistance against alleged state pressure and discrimination against the Kurds, while the AK Party’s discourse prioritizes a Muslim fellowship and supports it with promises of social and economic progress.
... It was only in the late 1980s, when the PKK started becoming popular among the masses, that religion made its way into the PKK discourse. The PKK Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 28 January 2019 adopted a much more conciliatory tone toward Islam in the 1990s when the Kurdish-Islamist Hizbullah emerged as a rival organization in southeastern Anatolia (Gürbüz, 2016; see Kurt, 2016, for a detailed ethnographic account of the Kurdish Hizbullah). In 1995, to counter Hizbullah's growing impact on religious Kurds, Öcalan "declared the PKK to be the real fighter for Islam understood as a religion of justice against all kinds of oppression" (Özsoy, 2010, p. 148). ...
... Aydın & Emrence, 2015; Barkey & Fuller, 2000;Bilgin & Sarıhan, 2013;Galip, 2015;Gambetti & Jongerden, 2015;Güneş, 2012;Güneş & Zeydanlıoğlu, 2013;Gunter, 1990Gunter, , 1997Kirişçi & Winrow, 1997;Olson, 1996;Romano, 2006;Somer, 2004;Tezcür, 2015;Uluğ & Cohrs, 2017;Ünver, 2015;Yeğen, 2007) only a few focus on the role of religion in the conflict (Sarıgil & Fazlıoğlu, 2013;Gürbüz, 2016;Gürses, 2015;Gürses & Rost, 2017;Sarıgil 2018;Somer & Glüpker-Kesebir, 2016;Yavuz & Özcan, 2006). Yet increased attention to this topic could deliver important insights not only for those who conduct research on the Kurdish conflict in Turkey specifically, but also for those who explore the role of religion in conflict resolution and peacemaking more generally. ...
Out of the 111 armed conflicts that took place worldwide between 1989 and 2000, only seven were interstate conflicts. The others were intrastate in nature. As a result, the last decade and a half witnessed a boom in the publication of works on civil wars. While the percentage of civil wars involving religion increased from 21% to 43% between the 1960s and 1990s, scholars have been rather slow to integrate the study of religion into the overall framework of conflict in general, and of civil wars in particular. Operating under the impact of the secularization thesis and treating religion as an aspect of ethnicity, the literature on civil wars has long embraced ethnonationalism as its subject matter. Yet, since the early 2000s there has been a rapid increase in the number of works focusing on religion and civil wars. While one branch treats religion as a trigger for and an exacerbating factor in conflict, another focuses on religion as a conflict resolution tool.
Turkey is an apt case to ponder the latter as several governments have deployed religion (namely, Sunni Islam) as a tool to suppress ethnic divisions for years. During the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, religion has gained even more visibility as a conflict resolution tool in the 33-year-long armed ethnic conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Yet, the role of religion in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict still remains understudied. Increased attention to this topic could deliver important insights not only for those who conduct research on the Kurdish conflict in Turkey specifically, but also for those who explore the role of religion in civil wars more generally.
This chapter provides the background context of the formation of the Islamist-successor AKP and the Kurdish-successor HDP from a comparative perspective. It shows that both parties were formed as the consequence of contexts that made their predecessors publicly more visible, legitimate actors that were able to build ties with different social groups. The Turkish-Islam Synthesis (TIS) promoted by the state in the 1980s and a desecuritized environment for Kurdish identity during the Europeanization of Turkey in the 2000s provided a favorable setting for the Islamist and Kurdish parties—respectively to incorporate into the broader society. It was thanks to their predecessors’ socialization with other groups within these favorable settings that AKP and the HDP could receive the organized support of different social groups under certain discursive opportunity structures. This chapter also introduces the importance of policy-seeking and office-seeking goals of political parties in transition periods and discusses the initial party goals (policy-seeking, office-seeking or vote-seeking) for the AKP and the HDP upon their formation.
This contribution examines how political considerations influence the creation of religious discourses and interpretations among rival religious actors. It analyses how the religio-political discourses of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gülen movement in Turkey shifted once they became political rivals in the 2010s. Building on the sectarianisation thesis, I show how the leaders in both movements employed religio-political rhetoric to delegitimise one another. The AKP leadership portrayed the Gülen movement as a heretical religious group used by foreigners. The leaders in the Gülen movement represented the AKP as a corrupt and authoritarian organisation, which deviated from religion and suppressed sincere Muslims. The sectarianisation thesis has frequently been used to explain the relationship between theologically distinct religious traditions. I use it to address the rivalry between theologically similar groups. In this case, the leaders need to engage in massive propaganda that simultaneously combines political and theological messaging. Through sectarianisation, leaders in the AKP and the Gülen movement consolidated the support among their ardent supporters. However, the sectarianisation in Turkey not only deepened the conflict between the AKP and the Gülen movement but also divided the opposition against the authoritarian state.
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 pro-Kurdish nationalist mobilization in Turkey was mostly built on the right to self-determination aligned with the Marxist-Leninist ideology for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the early 1980s and ethnic minority rights for the secular-leftist pro-Kurdish legal parties in the 1990s. The Turkish state mostly framed the legal and illegal pro-Kurdish mobilization as ‘the enemy of the state’ and ‘the enemy of Islam’ in its counter-insurgency efforts. However, in the 2000s, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish legal parties became more tolerant and inclusive toward Islamic Kurdish identity by mobilizing their sympathizers in events such as ‘Civic Friday Prayers’ and a ‘Democratic Islamic Congress’. This move aimed to function as an antidote to the rising popularity of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurdish Hizbullah in the early 2000s. In other words, Islam and pious Muslim identity has increasingly become contested among Turkish Islamists, Kurdish Islamists, and the secular Kurdish nationalists. This article seeks to unpack why, how, and under what conditions such competing actors and mechanisms shape the discursive and power relationships in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere.
The growing literature on diasporas’ involvement in homeland conflicts shows that diasporas have the power to influence political, social and economic developments in their country of origin and residence. Although this is an emerging field of research, there is still much to discover about the roles that diasporas play in conflict resolution and transitional justice. This article intends to fill this gap by scrutinising the Kurdish Diaspora as a case study. It explores the intricacies of integrating diasporas into conflict resolution by analysing approaches of homeland actors and fragments within diaspora throughout the different stages of the peace processes.
Although conflict remains a major obstacle to development in many areas of the world, its impact on education has been rarely studied. This article investigates the relationship between conflict and gender equality, focusing on the schooling of the girls in the conflict-ridden regions of Turkey. Patriarchy is the most important determinant of low educational levels among girls in Southeastern Turkey. However, ethnic conflict exacerbates male-dominant traditions and blocks economic development, reinforcing patriarchal norms and limiting girls’ school attendance. Yet, by provoking political mobilization around a Kurdish identity, ethnic conflict may undermine patriarchy and unintentionally promote girls’ education.
