The Commentaries

Municipal Politics and the PKK in the late 1970s: A citizenship perspective

Joost Jongerden — 2024-09-11

This paper examines the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) municipal politics in the late 1970s through the lens of citizenship politics. The article introduces two concepts—activist citizenship and fugitive citizenship to analyse the PKK’s mobilisation in this period, before the 1980 military coup in Turkey. Activist citizenship challenges the restrictive boundaries of state-sanctioned citizenship, while fugitive citizenship creates alternative political spaces for marginalized groups. Both concepts highlight how individuals and groups, such as the PKK, can assert their political agency in contexts where they are denied formal citizenship. The research questions linear understandings of the PKK’s emergence as a political movement inevitably destined to become an insurgent movement.

The Politics of Gravelessness and Necropolitical Violence in Turkey: “The souls of deceased searching for a grave”

Güneş Daşlı — 2024-05-20

After the collapse of the peace process between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government in July 2015, Turkey rapidly returned to armed violence with the intensified deployment of military troops and heavy artillery in the urban centers. The curfews then declared by the Turkish authorities entrenched various forms of necropolitical violence. As a result, the right to mourn became a dominant demand in civil society’s justice agenda, alongside legal accountability, truth-seeking, and exhumation. This paper argues that to better understand the struggle of families and civil society actors and their demands for justice, it is essential to discuss the recent “politics of gravelessness” and necropolitical violence in Turkey. It examines the systematic erasure and dehumanization of Kurds through the destruction of bodies, graves, and cemeteries and restrictions to the public mourning process. The article highlights the Turkish state’s role in perpetuating a hierarchy of grief and discusses the erasure of selected stories from public mourning.

Turkey’s Kurdish Insurgency Reappraised (Part II)

Michael M. Gunter — 2024-03-14

This reappraisal of Turkey’s Kurdish insurgency picks up from where the earlier Part I left off, by revisiting from the perspective of a decade the involved rise and fall of the Kurdish Opening (2009-2015), Erdogan’s continuing “train to authoritarianism,” the failed Gulenist coup on 15 July 2016, and the surprising presidential elections held in May 2023 that reelected Erdogan yet again despite the polls seemingly showing that Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader whom the pro-Kurdish HDP supported, might win.

Turkey's Kurdish Insurgency Reappraised (Part I)

Michael M. Gunter — 2024-02-06

As the modern Republic of Turkey—officially established on 29 October 1923—enters its second century and crucial national elections for president and parliament were held on 14 and 28 May 2023 in which the Kurds played a crucial role, this is a particularly important time to reappraise the county’s long-continuing Kurdish insurgency and related events. Over the years, two over-arching, seemingly contradictory themes involving change and continuity have characterised Turkey’s policy toward the Kurds. During Ottoman times (1261-1923) and even into the early Republican days (1923- ), the Kurds were granted a type of separate status befitting their unique ethnic identity. However, probably largely because of the Sheikh Said Rebellion in 1925, Kemalist Turkey abruptly cancelled this policy and instead initiated one of denial, assimilation, and force. The fear was that the Kurds would potentially challenge Turkey’s territorial integrity and divide the state. Only gradually beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, when this position of, denial, assimilation, and the fist had clearly failed, did Turkey cautiously and incrementally begin again reversing its policy and granting the Kurds some type of recognition. Thus this article also will cover the PKK insurgency, as well as Abdullah (Apo) Ocalan’s capture and its consequences. Subsequently, Part II of this reappraisal will bring events up to the present in 2024.