Abstract
Turkey’s complex transformation has rendered Turkish domestic and international politics increasingly intertwined and interdependent. No other issue manifests this interdependence more than the Kurdish issue. The Kurdish issue has been a central aspect of Turkey’s transformation and a critical challenge before Turkish modernization and democratization since the establishment of the Republic. It has also been a central concern for the AKP government since 2002 and a prominent question that needs an answer as the AKP launched an extensive process of transformation in several different realms in Turkey. The “costs of continuity” in the Kurdish question have been enormous. Not to mention the drastic and tragic amount of human loss that has reached up to forty thousand people, we could also talk about the serious political, economic, and physiological turmoil that the Kurdish question has created in Turkish society. This turmoil involves not only a serious economic cost, but also societal polarization, risk of social segregation, as well as illegal drug and arms trafficking, black money laundering, and extrajudicial killings. Moreover, the Kurdish question has become the main obstacle to the consolidation of democracy and the making of a new and civil constitution in Turkey. It has also limited Turkey’s foreign relations with its neighbors.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 3.
Metin Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey (Walkington: Eothen Press, 1985), p. 45.
Foucault defines governmentality as a way of subjugating differences to the domain of subjectivity. As he puts it, “In this sense, ‘to be subject’ is therefore ‘to belong to,’ in other words to behave as both an element of and an actor in a global process whose development defines the current field of possible experiences, inside of which the fact of being subject can only be situated.” For detail, see Michel Foucault, Power, Truth, Strategy (Sydney: Feral Publications, 1979).
David Campbell, Politics without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics and the Narratives of the Gulf War (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993), p. 9. We draw from this reference for this theoretical extrapolation. Campbell demonstrates such performative construction with reference to security discourse and foreign policy practice in the United States.
Andrew Mango, “Ataturk and the Kurds” in Seventy-Five Years of the Turkish Republic, ed. S. Kedourie (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 22.
Kemal Kirisci and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey (London: Frank Cass, 1997), p. 104.
Mesut Yegen, “The Turkish State Discourse and the Exclusion of Kurdish Identity,” Middle Eastern Studies, 32 (May 1996): 216.
Philip Robins, “Turkey and the Kurds: Missing Another Opportunity?,” in Turkey’s Transformation and American Policy, ed. M. Abramowitz (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2000), p. 66.
William Connolly, Identity/Difference (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
Ayse Kadioglu and E. Fuat Keyman (eds), Symbiotic Antagonisms (Utah: University of Utah Press, 2011).
Tanil Bora, “Nationalist Discourses in Turkey,” in Symbiotic Antagonisms, ed. A. Kadioglu and F. Keyman (Utah: University of Utah Press, 2011).
Ghassan Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism (UK: Pluto Press, 2003), pp. 3–4.
Umit Cizre, “Turkey’s Kurdish Problem: Borders, Identity and Hegemony,” in Right-Sizing the State, ed. B. O’leary, I. S. Lustick, and T. Callaghy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 234.
Kemal Kirisci, “Minority/Majority Discourse: The Case of The Kurds in Turkey,” in Making Majorities, ed. D. Gladney (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 227.
Cuma Cicek, “Elimination or Integration of Pro-Kurdish Politics: Limits of the AKP’s Democratic Initiative,” Turkish Studies, 12 (1) (2011): 15–26.
Engin Fahri Isin and Patricia K. Wood, Citizenship and Identity (London: Sage, 1999), p. 4.
Seyla Benhabib, “Borders, Boundaries, and Citizenship,” Political Science and Politics, 38 (October 2005): 674.
Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 14.
Martin van Bruinessen, “Shifting National and Ethnic Identities: The Kurds in Turkey and Europe,” in Redefining the Nation, State and Citizen, ed. G. G. Ozdogan and G. Tokay (Istanbul: Eren Yayınevi, 2000), p. 108.
Bahar Rumelili, E. Fuat Keyman, and Bora Isyar, “Multilayered Citizenship in Extended European Orders: Kurds Acting as European Citizens,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 49 (2011): 1295–1316.
Heinz Kramer, A Changing Turkey (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), p. 52.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 E. Fuat Keyman and Sebnem Gumuscu
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Keyman, E.F., Gumuscu, S. (2014). The AKP, Arab Uprisings, and the Kurdish Question. In: Democracy, Identity, and Foreign Policy in Turkey. Islam and Nationalism Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277121_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277121_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34632-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-27712-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)