From Progress to Order: the “Kurdish Openings” and the Limits to Contentious Politics in Turkey

Abstract

Since the first electoral victory of the party in 2002, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) has set out to radically alter the nature of political structures and power relations in Turkey. Bolstered by successive electoral victories in 2007 and 2011, the AKP has altogether eliminated the influence of the military over the government and reformulated the mechanisms of the judiciary through a referendum—clearly challenging the political hegemony of the old Kemalist elite. Furthermore, the party has also initiated a series of dialogues and programs aimed to resolve the “Kurdish question” that has claimed the lives of thousands of citizens due to the ongoing low-intensity military conflict since the 1980s. All these initiatives have led some observers in Turkey and abroad to brand the AKP as a “party of progress,” a highly unconventional description for a social conservative and center-right party¹ It is as if the exclusive official ideology of the Turkish state based on Turkish nationalism was changing. However, over the years, the AKP administration has not followed a consistent strategy toward the Kurdish minority but resorted to a variety of contradictory methods, from organizing private meetings with Kurdish politicians and representatives of civil society organizations to imprisoning hundreds of Kurdish activists and academics on charges of terrorism. Since the last electoral victory of the AKP in 2011, public speeches of Prime Minister (elected president in 2014) Recep Tayyip Erdo an and the party rhetoric has radically shifted to a conservative-nationalist ideology, as demonstrated in the recent transfer of Numan Kurtulmu to the AKP, the former chairman of the Islamist HAS (People’s Voice) Party, which was known for its opposition to the peace talks with the Kurdish social movement. As the AKP has consolidated its hold over the politics of Turkey, it has come under heavy criticism of its once-ardent supporters—liberal intellectuals such as the columnists of the Taraf newspaper—due to its alleged move toward the right of the political spectrum, leading some to question whether the AKP has become a “party of the order.”