Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey

Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires

Mehmet Orhan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317420439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Kurdish conflict is an acknowledged long-standing issue in the Middle East, and the emergence of radical Kurdish nationalist movements in the 20th century played a decisive role in the evolution of political violence.

Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey examines how this political violence impacts Kurds in contemporary Turkey, and explores the circumstances that move human beings to violent acts. It looks at the forms political violence takes and in which times and spaces it occurs, as well as the roles played by micro and macro factors. It takes a theoretical approach to violence, as both producer and product of interrelations between many actors, and contextualises this with studies of violence in Kurdish villages and towns. The book evaluates the three levels at which political violence operates; between the state and Kurdish movements, among Kurdish groups and between Kurdish political organizations and Kurdish society, and divides it into its different aspects and processes; fragmentation-segmentation (signifying intra-ethnic struggles between Kurdish actors), mobilization (the course leading the Kurdish movement to armed conflict), participation (the use of violence by individuals) and repertoires (the forms taken by political violence).

Offering an in-depth analysis of the dynamics behind political violence and its use amongst Kurds in Turkey, this book will be a key resource for students and scholars of Middle Eastern, Kurdish Studies and Conflict Studies, and offers new understanding and approaches to the study of political violence.

1 Emergence of the Kurdish political field and internal violence (1960–1980)

Emergence and autonomization of the Kurdish political field (1960–1980)

Introduction

The Republic of Turkey has gone through several Kurdish conflicts since its foundation in 1923. The Sheikh Said rebellion was the first popular movement against the state. Various local Nakşibendi sheikhs, some of whom were motivated by ethnic aspirations, were frustrated with the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 and revolted, particularly in Palu, Bingöl and Muş regions in 1925. The newborn Turkish government crushed the movement by using severe tactics. Following the Sheikh Said rebellion, the Kurdish space still remained a place of conflict with the central authority. According to estimates based on observations in different regions, at least 150 conflict groups emerged due to psychological, religious and ethnic tensions with the state authority between 1925 and 1940 in Eastern Anatolia. The Dersim massacres were no doubt the bloodiest conflict between Kurds and the state. The Turkish government, unable to construct its authority and legitimacy over the Kurdish Alevi region, used massive coercion, which resulted in the killing of thousands of people in the 1930s.

However, Kurdish contestation continued in different dimensions. Between 1930 and 1980, apolitical social banditry (eşkiyâcılık) and cross-border smuggling (kaçakçılık) were significant means of Kurdish opposition to the state authority. These meant that, after the crush of the Kurdish rebellions and conflict groups during the late period of the Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republican period, Kurdish contestation persisted in different social dimensions. But unlike Iran, with the proclamation of the Kurdish Mahabad Republic in 1946 (destroyed some months later), and Iraq, with the return of Molla Mustafa Barzani in 1958, the Kurdish space in Turkey did not produce genuine political movements. In Turkey, from the 1940s to the 1960s, Kurdish political activities were particularly influenced by the movement of Barzani in Iraq. Even if some cultural and political organizations arose in the 1960s, it is only from the 1970s onwards that radical political movements appeared in Turkey. The emergence of these parties opened a new cycle of violence which is different from the 1920s and 1930s.

This chapter hence deals with the emergence of Kurdish political movements and violence in the contemporary period. The chapter is divided in two sections. I will first look into the emergence and autonomization of the Kurdish political field in the 1960s and 1970s. And, second, I will analyze the split of this field through internal violence.

It is relevant to explain the notion of the Kurdish political field. Because the notion of the field is vague, one must make some clarifications regarding its application in the Kurdish case, and this will also delimit the subject matter. The notion of the political field is used in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu. A field is, on the whole, a place of power relations between different agents and institutions which have habitus linked with the exercise of domination positions.¹ I must however underline that this chapter does not aim to analyze the entirety of the Kurdish political field and its functioning. It will especially focus on the formation and relative autonomization of this field more specifically with respect to the space of the Turkish left.² It shall be seen that the constitution of the field comprises a long process which involves three phases: Eastism (doğuculuk), emergence of the Kurdish organizations and construction of new realities.

The political field as it is defined here is not a total adoption of the notion by Bourdieu. The political field is an empirical and theoretical construction and the concept is deconstructed in the Kurdish context. Indeed, the Kurdish political field is not an institutionalized field. The mechanism of interaction between agents obeys in part a logic of fluidity. This is why I do not propose herein the political field as a structure of objective relations enabling exploration of institutionalized forms of interactions as Bourdieu takes it in his works. Relationships between agents are fluid and permanently shifting in the Kurdish field.

Furthermore, the boundaries of the Kurdish political field remain vague. There is a structural and functional homology between the Kurdish political field and the Turkish political field; and the Kurdish political field in Turkey and the Iraqi Kurdish political field (this one is less evident than the first one). Ultimately, the Kurdish political field is neither unitary nor homogeneous. It is divided, which is what makes a significant feature of the Kurdish political space.

The second section of this chapter addresses internal violence in the 1970s. As already defined, intra-ethnic violence corresponds to two processes: fragmentation and segmentation. Far from being a priori concepts, the use of these terms are justified by the fieldwork undertaken for about three years. As already explained in the Introduction, fragmentation relates to intra-ethnic violence which takes place especially between Kurdish groups; I will hence study on the basis of Kurdish movements. Segmentation, on the other hand, corresponds to intra-ethnic violence in communitarian level, namely the interactions between political movements and the Kurdish society. I here do not distinguish between violence as “event” and violence as “process”. It empirically signifies radical forms such as massacres, pogroms, armed clashes, attacks, murder and the like. I will in some sections focus on symbolic processes which are an integral part of physical violence. Furthermore, in the two cases, namely fragmentation and segmentation, it shall be seen that political violence is associated with other forms of communitarian, interpersonal and psychological conflicts.

In this chapter, I intend to elaborate the following hypotheses. The Kurdish political field is characterized by the presence of hegemony of radical organizations endowed with logic of violence. The field is split by violence which is explained by fragmentation and segmentation. The process of fragmentation results in and from four dynamics: generational gap, interpersonal tensions and ideological differences, struggle over the monopoly of political violence and spatial dynamics. Segmentation is associated with pre-existing conflicts in the local community, multiplication of radical organizations and local political mobilization, and emergence of new lines of conflict. It must be pointed out that both fragmentation and segmentation are concepts, processes or configurations of political violence. They are empirically merged, and not isolated from each other in reality. They are required to be distinguished for scientific constructions.

Emergence of “Eastism”

Introduction: historical context in Turkey and the Middle East (1940–1970)

If the violent contestation was absent from the 1940s until the 1960s (in the Kurdish East of Turkey), new Kurdish movements appeared along with the transformation which occurred both in Turkey and the Middle East, in particular in the political, economic and constitutional fields. In 1947, the suppression of Mecburi İskân Kanunu (the law on forced settlement established following the Kurdish rebellions and conflict groups) enabled some families and tribes, exiled in Western Turkey, to return to the Kurdish region. The return of Kurdish families was promoted particularly by the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti)³ which came to power in 1950 (and remained until 1960). The multi-party system was established in 1945. According to David McDowall, Kurdish religious and political solidarities were reconstructed under the rule of the DP.⁴ For the author, it is through legislative and municipal elections that Kurdish aghas (tribal chief) and sheikhs were co-opted into the Turkish political system.⁵

During that period, the Kurdish community found some availability of freedom of expression and political action. The new system promoted the participation of the Kurds to the legal political field within Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP, Republican People’s Party)⁶ and the DP;⁷ and the semi-authoritarian and semi-liberal regime relatively improved the freedom of expression. These two parties also built the kind of client relations in the Kurdish region. On the other hand, and paradoxically, the repression remained together with the forced assimilation which went to the extent of changing the names of towns and villages to Turkish names in the region. Regional boarding primary schools (Bölge Yatılı İlkokulları) were established in the Kurdish region and favored Turkish education in the rural milieus.⁸

On 27 May 1960, the military overthrew the government of the DP.⁹ A new political phase was begun with the military coup d’état and this transformed the structure of the partisan system of the Turkish political field.¹⁰ A relatively more democratic constitution was put in place in 1961, and afterwards legislative elections were organized in October 1961. The CHP won the elections and came to power after eleven years’ opposition while the heirs to the DP regrouped in a new formation: Adalet Partisi (AP or the Justice Party).¹¹ The constitution of 1961 led furthermore to the foundation of student trade unions and youth organizations during that decade: Turkish nationalism, Islamism and republicanism found the means to organize. It also enabled for the first time the foundation of a legal Turkish communist party, entitled the TİP (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, Turkish Workers’ Party).

On the economic and social level, it is observed that some change impacted on Kurdish immigration to the West of Turkey. This movement may have resulted from three factors. First, in the 1940s, members of some Kurdish notable families settled in the big Turkish cities, particularly in Ankara and Istanbul, for educative and professional reasons. Second, the Kurdish population’s growth and economic problems led to immigration of a part of the rural population into the Turkish and Kurdish urban centers. Finally, mechanization (makinalaşma) in agricultural milieu, while reducing the need of labor force in the countryside, favored immigration. This migration movement was not less important than simultaneous political evolutions because it contributed to the formation of a community of the Kurdish youth sensitive to the Kurdish nationalist cause in the villages (kasaba) and towns.

On the other hand, Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan went through important evolutions from the 1940s to the 1960s. As already remarked, Kurdish rebellions occurred in Turkey, Iraq and Iran between 1919 and 1949. The non-rebellious time lasted only fifteen years, namely from the end of 1946 (with the fall of the Kurdish autonomous republic which lasted some months) to the insurgency launched by Mustafa Barzani in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1961.¹² This revolt ended, fourteen years later, in 1975. It particularly promoted the foundation of an illegal but non-violent party, Partiya Demokrata Kurdistana Tirkiyê (Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan), which gathered some intellectuals, artisans and medrese graduates in 1965 (I will subsequently discuss this organization).

That is the historical and political context between the 1940s and the 1960s in Turkey and the Middle East. A new political generation is perceptible in the Kurdish space immediately after the decade 1950; it is the generation of Eastism.

“Eastism”

It seems that “Eastism” (Doğuculuk)¹³ is the first dynamic of emergence of the Kurdish political field in that period. This movement appeared particularly among Kurdish intellectuals and students and seems to include three historical processes. The first one relates to the Forty-Niners (49’lar) in 1959. The term “Forty-Niners” refers to the affair of the 49 nationalist and intellectual Kurds who were arrested in 1959. The second process represents the “meetings of the East” (Doğu Mitingleri) which took place between 1967 and 1969. These meetings were manifestations organized in the Kurdish villages and provinces for protesting against the underdevelopment of South-Eastern and Eastern Turkey. The third process is associated with Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları (Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths) between 1969 and 1971, one of the first Kurdish legal organizations in Republican Turkey.

These three historical cases will be explored in detail. But, it is first relevant to explain what is meant by “Eastism”. The concept of “East” was used by the actors themselves in that period and signifies the Kurdish region of Turkey. Eastism refers to common dispositions to act in the name of the “East” and to elaborate a political, cultural vision and program. It is hence considered to be one of the first processes of the emergence of the Kurdish field which would become relatively autonomous. Eastism includes the elements of ethnicism; this movement among the Kurdish students would shift later into Kurdism or nationalism. It is also important to note that this is a political mechanism combining different forms of traditional solidarity (hemşehrilik, friendship ties, ethnic links), modes of cultural and social orga...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Emergence of the Kurdish political field and internal violence (1960–1980)
• 2 Mobilization for political violence
• 3 Participation of individuals in violence
• 4 Repertoires of political violence
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: chronology
• Appendix 2: abbreviations and acronyms used in the book
• Sources
• Bibliography
• Index