This article revolves around a puzzle: the persistence of patient dissatisfaction with the health services as a mass phenomenon in a Kurdish province, Hakkâri, through the 2000s, despite the striking ...and tangible improvements enacted by the Turkish state. This is, I argue, related to the deeply entrenched conviction on the part of Hakkârians that their lives count for little in the eyes of the Turkish state. Rooted in the history of state‐Kurds relations, this conviction manifests itself in Hakkârians' deep distrust of the very basis of health services received, like the skills and intentions of health staff, causing many Hakkârians to underestimate service improvement. Thus, it is concluded, patient satisfaction among an ethnically subordinated group with health services provided by a dominant ethnic group may be unavoidably informed and perhaps overwhelmingly determined by an awareness of the wider ethno‐power context and its history, irrespective, that is, of material improvements.
This article examines the reflection of the September Revolution in the New York Times Newspaper between June, 1961 and December, 1970 during the cold war. During the period under this study, many ...events, political and military advancements, which were related to the Kurdish issue in the Middle East, have been reported in New York Times. This newspaper endeavored to explore the Kurdish issue and the politics of the regional player specifically that of Iran, Turkey and Iraq towards the Kurds, what is more, the objective of Kurdish leaders of declaring uprisings and revolts against the regional powers to the world in general and the United States of America in particular. This study consists of a theoretical background, two sections and a conclusion. In its introduction, this article sheds light on the reflection of the September Revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan in the reports of the New York Times Newspaper and how it has introduced the Kurdish issue in the Cold war warmness from 1961 to 1962. In addition, it shows the significance, objectives and method of it.
This article contributes to the existing literature on the populist online communication of governments. We look at the role of the micro-blogging social media platform Twitter under the ...authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the wider Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) during the peace process. We carried out a rhetorical analysis of the Twitter posts of four key AKP actors – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ahmet Davutoğlu, Yalçın Akdoğan, and Efkan Ala – between July 1, 2012 and November 1, 2015. First, we show that the AKP actors persistently label the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and in Syria as a threat to the national security of Turkey, reflected in their rhetoric toward the remilitarization and resecuritization of Turkey’s Kurdish question within and across its borders. Second, we argue that the AKP used the peace process and various persuasive communicative techniques not only to consolidate Kurdish electoral support, but also to reach its aim to remove the Kemalist military–bureaucratic tutelage in Turkey that was replaced with hyper-presidentialism under the strong personality cult of Erdoğan. Third, we argue that Erdoğan’s increased one-man power has been reflected in the AKP’s branding itself as the only viable choice for the Kurdish region’s stability, which has blocked more constructive dialogue toward a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question.
This paper explores the governance of a state-led urban renewal project in a politically contested area in the aftermath of a major armed conflict. Building on the ethnocratic regime theory, we ...explore the governance of the urban renewal process in the historic district of Suriçi by focusing on the political, spatial, and governmental underpinnings of displacement and dispossession in the context of the unresolved “Kurdish Question” of Turkey. We argue that this exclusionary and state-led urban renewal project is shaped around the ethnocratic state interests with limited real estate returns that aims to sanitize and dehistoricize the historic core of Diyarbakir given its political and socioeconomic significance for the Kurdish Movement. The rhetorical formation of a “renewed” historic core epitomizes the racialized governance that intensifies the race-class realities sitting at the center of the decades-old ethnic conflict in Turkey. The central government authority's use of gentrification in practice illustrates the ethnocratic regime's spatial, political, and economic repercussions for the Kurdish population as the country's largest ethnic minority. Suriçi‘s redevelopment illustrates that ethnocratic regime practices coexist with a democratic façade and militarization activates an ethnocratic urban regime. Our findings contribute to the literature on space and power by illustrating the incompleteness and paradoxical elements of settler-colonial urbanism.
Türkiye’nin PKK ile mücadelesi ve daha genel olarak Kürt sorunu, 1980’lerden itibaren uluslararası
gelişmelerden etkilenen konular olmuştur. 2010’da Tunus’ta başlayan ve kısa zamanda
çeşitli Kuzey ...Afrika ve Orta Doğu ülkelerine yayılan Arap Baharı da son yıllarda Kürdistan
İşçi Partisi’nin (PKK) aldığı çeşitli kararları ve örgütün davranışlarını önemli ölçüde şekillendirmiştir.
Bu çalışma, Arap Baharının PKK ve Kürt sorunu ile ilgili bölgesel ve Türkiye
içi dinamikleri nasıl etkilediğini, PKK’nın karar alma süreçleri çerçevesinde incelemektedir.
Makalede öncelikle Arap Baharı’nın Kürt sorununu kavramsal olarak nasıl etkilediği üzerinde
durulmakta, daha sonra Suriye’de yaşanan iç çatışmaların, PKK’da ve daha genel olarak
Kürt sorunu üzerinde neden olduğu değişiklikler tartışılmaktadır. Son olarak, Türkiye’de Kürt
sorununun çözüm süreci ile ilgili hız kazanan gelişmeler, Arap Baharı çerçevesinde değerlendirilmektedir.
This article examines the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK), which has become one of the prominent actors in Kurdistan and the Middle East since its inception in the ...mid-1970s. My basic aim is to explain how the PKK became a significant agent, a maker in the Middle East, contributing to the dissolution of the decades-long status quo in Kurdistan. My overall argument is that, while the PKK successfully has changed its 'environment' since its formation, there also have been significant changes in its people, spaces, promises/propositions and instruments.
The Southeastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP) was initiated in the 1970s to produce energy and irrigate arid lands through constructing dams and hydroelectric power plants on the ...Euphrates and Tigris rivers and extensive irrigation networks in southeastern Turkey. Over time, the project was expanded to achieve a wider range of goals in different fields and radically transform Southeastern Anatolia Region. It is also widely claimed that GAP was initiated to address the root causes of the Kurdish question in Turkey and that security considerations and political calculations were actually the raison d'être of GAP. However, this supposed link between GAP and the Kurdish question was often established in a simplistic manner and the question how these two have been related - or not - remained largely untangled. This article aims to fill this research gap and examine the complex and multi-dimensional nature of the interrelationship between GAP and the Kurdish question based on diverse primary and secondary data sources. Accordingly, the article identifies and discusses major narratives in which GAP was conceived as a political and strategic 'anti-Kurdish' plot; remedy for the conflict; and totally technical non-political project and presents an alternative and more accurate perspective on how to interpret this relationship.
This article aims to unravel some common aspects of the recently intensifying antipathy towards migrants from Eastern Anatolia in certain Turkish cities. Based on the fact that every manifestation of ...this antipathy in everyday life involves a logic that recognizes and excludes these migrants as 'Kurdish', the article conceptualizes these sentiments as 'exclusive recognition'. This concept helps us see the fact that the rising anti-migrant discourse is not an ideology that is imposed by the state or any other political organization in Turkey but a historically specific ethnicization process that takes place in the everyday life of cities. As one of the new dimensions of the question of ethnicity and nationalism in Turkey, 'exclusive recognition' shows the insufficiency of reducing the Kurdish question to a problem of democratization of the Turkish political system, and encourages us to turn our attention to the transformation of urban life.
The advance of ISIL amid the horrors of the Syrian civil war has given impetus to the forging of political solidarity among Kurds across international borders. This article examines
Kurdayetî
, ...pan-Kurdish identification, and the way in which it is shaped by ongoing crises in the Middle East. Amid chaotic events, previously divided Kurdish populations have increased cross-border interaction and co-operation. In northern Syria, Kobani became a bellwether of pan-Kurdish hopes and fears, and a rallying point, with peshmerga from Iraqi Kurdistan passing through Turkey to help relieve the ISIL siege of the city. Meanwhile, Kurdish political groups, particularly the PYD in Syria and the Kurdistan Regional Government, have made strategic gains, raising prospects, in some quarters, of Kurdish independence. Kurdish military forces also have won international recognition (and some logistical support) for the significant role they have played in fighting ISIL. This, in turn, has heightened concerns among regional states, chiefly Turkey, which is traditionally wary of political advances for the Kurds. This article incorporates ethnographic data gathered in 2014 and 2015 in Diyarbakır and Istanbul, to analyze the surge in pan-Kurdish solidarity, confidence and political assertiveness, and the implications these have for the Kurds and the states that surround them.
This article aims to reveal the origins and development of the Turkish emergency during the years it was implemented. Turkey's State of Emergency originated following the military coup on September ...12, 1980, and lasted until the end of November 2002. Initially, the emergency state created a different set of administrative and legal rules in the areas where it mainly was implemented, the Kurdish-populated regions in the southeast of the country. However, the suspension of the norm under the emergency state that lasted for over two decades caused a perpetuating shift in the civil and military administrations in Turkey. Moreover, it caused the emergency state to be not solely a legal and administrative implementation but a continuous reflection of the Turkish raison d'état when the country faces a crisis.
PDF
