Relying on a survey conducted in 2014 in 12 provinces in eastern Turkey, this article analyses the extent to which (a) ethnicity and religiosity shape Kurds’ electoral choices and (b) the Kurds in ...the East support the demand for education in Kurdish and the demand for self-rule for Kurds. The findings demonstrate that ethnicity is an important factor in shaping Kurds’ electoral choices and that the demands for education in Kurdish language and self-rule are backed not only by the vast majority of those Kurds who support the pro-Kurdish party but also by a significant number of those Kurds who support the AK Party.
This essay explores representations of the Kurdish question in the new popular films of Turkey including Eşkıya/The Bandit, Vizontele, Deli Yürek: Bumerang Cehennemi/Wildheart: Hell of Boomerang, ...Kurtlar Vadisi: Iraq/Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, Güneşi Gördüm/I Saw the Sun,
Nefes/The Breath and Mucize/The Miracle. I use the notion of ideological fantasy to explain how filmic reality is constructed within these films. I argue that popular films of new Turkish cinema addressing the Kurdish question are national fantasies reconstituting the social, historical and political realities of the problem in accordance with the changing state discourse.
Human Rights Watch is one of the international human rights pressure groups. The annual reports address the development of countries' human rights. The pressure groups aim at influencing the policies ...that governments follow. The reports published by the Human Rights Watch, are to make the states revise their internal and external policies. This study examines the reflection of human rights in the reports, especially during the periods of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), 2002-2017. The main reason why we deal with the reports published between 2002 and 2017 is to reflect on the policies pursued by a party that defends democracy and emancipates and attaches importance to human rights. The reports were analyzed by Nvivo11 qualitative analysis. The reports being exposed to content analysis, it became clear that freedom of expression, Kurdish rights and torture were given more importance. Human Rights Watch has not been objective in Turkey’s fight against terrorism. However, according to the reports, during the JDP government period, there is a decline in the promotion of human rights.
Despite never obtaining their own nation-state, the Kurdish people have struggled for their social, cultural and political rights for a century since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. While they ...have much in common with other ethnic groups in the region, the Kurdish people have their own distinct cultural, historical and political identity. Stateless yet with a strong sense of national identity, the Kurds have constituted a source of both stability and instability in the Middle East. This paper presents a brief historical overview of the Kurds and their social, political and strategic positions in the region, especially in the four main countries in which they are situated, and considers current and future regional developments relating to the Kurdish question.
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 pro
Introduction. The article deals with the U.S. Middle East Policy of the Eisenhower Administration in 1958–1960 and determines the part the Kurdish Question played in it. Methods and materials. The ...study is based on the latest U.S. declassified documents, interviews, memoirs, etc. The author does the problem-chronological analysis to describe the stages of the U.S. Policy toward Iraqi Kurds during the period specified. Analysis. The article is focused on the U.S. diplomatic and intelligence activities aimed at developing approaches to the “communist crisis” and disagreements that arose in the expert community regarding policy decisions. The author considers the U.S. relations with their regional partners (Turkey, Israel, Iran, etc.) on the issues of the “Iraqi crisis” and the Kurdish liberation movement. The paper describes Washington’s attitude to Mullah Mustafa Barzani – the Kurdish movement leader – and the KDP activities during Iraq’s post-Revolution instability. The author analyzes and summarizes the reasons why the U.S. was reluctant to involve in the domestic conflict between Qasim’s followers, Nationalists, Nasserites, Communists and Kurds. Results. The article shows that the CIA and the State Department often misjudged Qasim’s relationship with the Iraqi Communist Party and the national Kurdish movement and, as a result, did not have enough time to respond to the rapidly changing political situation, thus adopting the policy of benevolent neutrality.
Given its duration and intensity, the decades-old civil war in Turkey between the Turkish state and the PKK has resulted in relatively low levels of lethal inter-communal conflict between Kurdish and ...Turkish populations. However, around the June 2015 elections an unprecedented wave of systematic anti-Kurdish violence swept across western Turkey. The paper will assess these events in relation to literature on communal riots and electoral violence. It will consider the impact of state led anti-Kurdish discourse and the growth of the HDP, as potential factors that aggravated the dormant tensions and laid the groundwork for widespread inter-communal violence.
Disappearance of the established security paradigm of Kemalist state has not helped to create strong institutions and legal-bureaucratic structures that are supposed to prevent a certain political ...elite to dominate the political system and criminalize its adversaries by security reasons. Instead, survival concerns and political will of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has become replacement of the established paradigm. This has created a systemic crisis. On the one hand, the AKP has played the role of a regular political party, which is supposed to have equal rights and privileges with other players in the game. On the other hand, the AKP has been the tutelary actor that determines what national security is and who threatens national security. As a result of this picture, the AKP has exploited its monopoly over securitization to eliminate the criticisms of the opposition groups. Therefore, any political party or political group has not been viewed as a national security threat only if it has not threatened the political survival of the AKP. Such a crisis has also affected the AKP’s approach toward the Kurdish question. Unlike the established paradigm’s allergy toward the political demands of Kurds due to its commitment to nation-state principle, the AKP’s fluctuated policy toward the Kurds resembles to a political party’s survival strategy rather than a policy stemming from a consistent national security paradigm.
This study discusses the dynamics of de-Europeanisation and the changing impact of Europe on the politically mobilised civil society involved in the public debates concerning Turkey's Kurdish ...question. The article first critically assesses how and in what ways the legal and constitutional reforms on the freedom of assembly required by the European Union (EU) changed the political structure in which civil society organisations (CSOs) operate in Turkey. It then examines the views of CSOs on the potential roles and limitations of the EU in the Kurdish question and the peace process which lasted between March 2013 and July 2015. It also delineates the reasons why the political context of Europeanisation is not seen as instrumental by these CSOs to framing and justifying their arguments.
For at least the past 30 years, the Kurdish question has been the most urgent agenda concern for Turkey. Denial of the Kurdish question is a state narrative and an administrative strategy in Turkey ...that was produced by the founders of the Republic and disseminated by its leadership using the state apparatus. However, we know very little about how denial operates within lay person accounts of the Kurdish question. Learning about the narrative forms that lay people produce in their accounts on the Kurdish question is necessary to understand the micro-level appearance of the question. Denial appears to be a foundational strategy employed by lay Kurds and Turks in different forms, through numerous arguments, and from different motivations, as evidenced in their personal accounts. This study investigates the arguments, forms, and functions of this denial in the personal accounts of lay Turks and Kurds in Turkey.
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