How Can the Troubled Relation Between Turks and Kurds Be Explained?

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Interests are shaped differently for Turks and Kurds. Since the Atatürk era, Turkey has shaped its interests based on the idea of belonging to the west. Its first attempt to achieve this goal was a successful one. A member of NATO since 1952, Turkey prosecuted this goal in its effort to modernize itself. According to Schimmelfennig: “membership in NATO is a symbol for having successfully transformed themselves in to modern European countries and for being recognized as one of us by their western role models.” (217). This is an important assumption regarding interests and identity. Turkey has driven almost all of its modern political life to this particular interest, to belong to the west. The NATO membership was not enough. The last few decades Turkey has push the idea of membership to the European Union (EU). This goal, for the moment, is a frustrated one. For many years, Turkey has tried to meet a series of Western criteria to get accepted by the EU. The Turkish government has overhauled its judicial system, expanded the rights of minorities, the rights of women, the rights of Kurds, etc., all for its main interest. Talking about the EU rejection, Erdoğan once said: “we have already met the EU criteria. Why haven’t we become a member? You ask. They know very well why we haven’t been accepted, and we also know . . . It doesn’t matter anyway.” He was probably talking about Turkey’s Muslim majority as an impediment of membership, in other words, a problem between interests and identity interaction (Filkins 2).

What Turks did not expect from their measures to obtain the NATO membership and their strong interest in modernization, was that they were shaping a new identity and interest in the Kurdish population. As Michael Gunter says: “Kurdish nationalism largely developed in the 20th century as a stateless ethnic reaction against the repressive ‘official state nationalisms’ of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria” (Gunter 15). It looks like the interaction between Turkey and the Kurds modified the ideas of a big portion of the Kurdish population. As Gunes Tezcur mentioned: “The Turkish state’s coercive and assimilationist practices such as compulsory Turkish-language education and military service together with experiences of discrimination as workers in Turkish cities have contributed to the formation of a radicalized Kurdish nationalist identity” (Tezcur 3). A new Kurdish nationalist identity was born from the interaction (and abuse) of the Turkish government. Kurdish interests also would suffer a transformation. Autonomy, secession, better treatment, equality, respect to human rights, etc., were the ideas that fueled the Kurdish interests. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was also born by the abuse encountered in the interactions between the Turkish government and the Kurds.

There was a time when things seemed to change for the better. During the first seven years of Erdogan’s rule, many Kurdish rights where reinstated. Kurdish-language centers were opened, many security structures that led to their persecution were dismantled, and the prohibition on Kurdish names for children was partially lifted (Filkins 9). It is not clear if those measures were part of Erdoğan’s good will, or part of his plans to obtain his primary interest, the EU membership. What is clear is that these positive years ended quickly and a new set of “interactions” came to effect.

A wave of arrests to Kurdish scholars, journalists, politicians, etc., invaded Turkish politics. It looks like a new interest is taking shape in the heads of Turkey’s politicians. After all the years of strong Kurdish nationalism, it seems like Erdoğan is planning another strategy, to politicide Kurds. Politicide can be understand as “the attempt to destroy and to eliminate a specific . . . way of comprehending, giving meaning to, and doing politics.” (Pelek and Benlisoy 2). This is a dangerous assumption. The idea of eliminating the political identity of Kurds would have serious consequences. According to constructivism, the world is built by the way actors relate to each other. A set of ideas is necessary for things to exist. As Caleb Gallemore, an Ohio State University professor, said in an instructional video: “If everybody woke up tomorrow morning and decided that the United States just doesn’t exists, it really doesn’t exists anymore. Because what makes the United States isn’t the buildings, the bombs and the votes. It’s everybody thinking that those things make up the United States.” Thus, if the Kurdish set of believes, ideas, agreements, identity, etc. disappears, and people inside Turkey begin to think that there are no Kurds, then, in fact, the idea of Kurds ceases to exist. In other words, Kurds would not exist unless there is a set of ideas that represents them. Erdoğan summarized this saying: “if you do not think about it, there is no Kurdish problem.” That is indeed a very constructivist quote.

The constructivist approach to the troubled relationship between Turks and Kurds help deconstruct the identities, interests and values of both groups in a context of social relations. Constructivism is not the only theory that considers identities and interests as key in conversations, but it gives another dimension to the analysis when it includes the relations between them. Turkish and Kurdish identities and interests are important to understand their social problems, but it is the relationship and interaction between them that has shaped the problems between them. The Turkish government, in its pursuit of modernizing its identity with European values, has tried to assimilate the Kurdish identity for decades. This gave birth to the nationalist identity of Kurds. The clash of both identities is the basis of the troubled relationship between these groups. To solve this “Kurdish issue,” as Turks call it, the Erdoğan government is trying to erase the set of ideas that outline the political identity of Kurds using the label of “terrorists” to every discourse in relation to Kurds. Now that the troubled relation between Turks and Kurds has been explained and deconstructed, it would be the job of a critical theory approach to look for a solution.

Works cited

- Filkins, Dexter. "The Deep State." New Yorker 88 (2012): 4.

- Gunter Michael. The Modern Origins of Kurdish Nationalism. Mazda Publishers, 2007.

- Natali, Denise. The Kurds and the state: Evolving national identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Syracuse University Press, 2005.

- Öktem, Kerem. Turkey since 1989: angry nation. Fernwood Pub., 2011.

- Pelek, Selin, and Foti Benlisoy. "AKP's