The ghost of Kurdish separatism is a central and recurring instance of the rifts in post-Ottoman Turkish society, yet all remedies intended to quell it seem worse.
The fierce speech delivered by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on January 28 could be viewed as a further acceleration along the country’s path towards an authoritarian state, particularly as criminal investigations are now being launched against the two Peoples’ Democratic Party HDP cochairpersons and several mayors calling for greater independence for municipalities in the south-eastern regions of the country.
Once again the unresolved Kurdish question and the resurgence of armed insurrection go hand in hand with the further curtailment of freedom of expression throughout the country, as has happened so often in Turkish history. Scores of academics are facing charges for signing the petition that accused the country’s military of using disproportionate force in operations against Kurdish militants. Dozens of journalists have been arrested, refused accreditation or are currently awaiting trial. These developments are a far cry from the climate of hope generated by the start of the so-called solution process at the end of 2012, stemming from Abdullah Öcalan’s call for an end to armed struggle in his Newroz holiday statement in 2013, and the ensuing withdrawal of PKK fighters into Iraqi Kurdistan.
The government’s point of view on the ongoing conflict in Turkey’s southeast puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Kurdish movement. The latter is accused of working to undermine the country’s integrity following the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) unilateral breach of the ceasefire and the HDP’s promotion of the concept of municipal autonomy that largely mirrors Öcalan’s doctrine of democratic confederalism, a form of self-government that transcends the nation-state framework. Opposition sources, on the other hand, often describe Erdogan’s rule as increasingly tyrannical and paranoid. Conspiracy theories and mutually exclusive arguments have also lead to a further entrenchment of the opposing political camps.
Amid these loud juxtapositions the liberal appeals of the likes ofMustafa Akyol are bound to be lost.Although not ideologically sided with IsIamic politics, these more moderate thinkers had initially welcomed the ascendancy of the AKP as a historic opportunity for national reconciliation between the powerful secular elites who have traditionally ruled the country and the religious elements of societythat despite representing a majority have been sidelined from policy-making for decades. These liberal voices viewedthe rise of the AKP as a promise of pluralism that was supposed tosoften the inflexibility of orthodox Kemalism, yet they now struggle to make sense of what they describe asa string of intimidations and a lusting for poweramid the AKP ranks over the past three years.
Is there a tipping point in Erdoğan’s political trajectory, where a slow, reversible process of concentration of power becomes dramatically irreversible? This begs the question whether the current president’s ambitions were sincerely reformist at the outset, or if the deconstruction of the secularist central state was instrumental in securing more room for his own political manoeuvring.
The issue of intentionality (which raises the question of how intentional political processare ) is well known to historians as a major bone of contention. Future historians will probablyengage in passionate dbeates overErdoğan’s intentions and achievements. For the time being, it might be a good idea to remember that the most salient phases of Turkey’s contemporary history are imbued with ambiguity and contradictions that defy binary logic. While the Tanzimat era is often portrayed as a period of Westernization and reforms stymied by the ascension to the throne of the autocratic sultan Abdülhamid II, Frederick Anscombe argues that the whole reform package was expedient toensuring European powers were not allowed to exploit the issue of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire as a pretext to meddle inthe country’s domestic affairs to their own ends. Anscombe also explores the persistence of ideological and religious references in the structure of Ottoman politics, and argues that continuity was held in much greater consideration thanchange. By the same token, Erik Jan Zürcher describes the end of the one-party system after WWII as a way of overcoming residual opposition to Turkey’s accession to NATO, rather than a sincere embracing of liberal values. It is worth noting that the adoption of a multi-party system eventually prompted the formation of a class of religious conservatives and small entrepreneurs that was to became the backbone of Adnan Menderes’s Democratic Party (DP) in the ‘50s, SüleymanDemirel’s Justice Party (AP) in the ‘60s, and the True Path Party (DYP) in the ‘90s. The very same combination of social players forms the unwavering and solid core behind the AKP, which regroupedwhen Erdoğanpicked up the pieces ofNecmettin Erbakan’s Refah Party and made them appealing once more to a wider public.
Much has been written about Erdoğan’s ambitions to introduce a presidential system in Turkey through constitutional reform. Viewing this process exclusively through the prism of Erdoğan’s real or supposed personal psyche seems a tad simplistic. There is also a clear criticism of the parliamentary system, which is deemed inefficient, leader worship, and the personalization of politics with a tendencytowards a form of charismatic legitimization.It seems plausible to wonder if these reasons (shared by many other established democracies) are heightened by the perception of a structural weakness within Turkish elected institutions. The Ergenekon case and the charges brought against supporters of the FethullahGülen movement, guilty of having engaged insubversive activities,would seem to point towards the existence of a state within the state that must be rooted out through the strengthening of the decision-making chain. While most of these allegations are still to be proven in court, the perception of a “deep state” (which refers to a loose alignment of actors plotting behind the scenes to hold on to their positions of power) has serious repercussions in country with an extensive history of coups, plots, and shady relations between security agencies, the judiciary, and local criminal networks. This insecurity complex is exasperated by what FatmaMügeGöçekrefers to as the “Sèvres Syndrome” (referring to the humiliating 1920 Treaty of Sèvres), implying the perception that external forces are constantly conspiring to undermine and carve up the country. According to TanerAkçam, this prompts a reaction whereby the state must be defended at all costs against the risk of collapse.According to several scholars, this siege mentalityhas a significant impact in shaping Turkey’s foreign policy, as do all debates revolving aroundthe fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Kurdish question.
Many analyses linkErdoğan’s tough recent stance on the Kurdish question to his hope of introducing a constitutional reform that might strengthen his prerogatives and leverage as president of the republic. To achieve this, so the story goes, hemust secure a supermajority in parliament, and must therefore undermine the far-right Nationalist Movement Party and the pro-Kurdish, leftist HDP. While this analysis could be said to hold water, one might also wonder if the reaction among AKP circles also stems from the failure to broker Muslim identity as a possible shared element of inclusion to counteract ethnic nationalism whichhad led toa profound rift. Is a shared faith enough to smooth over the differences between Turks, Kurds, and other ethnic minorities in the country? This question highlights the ambiguous overlapping of national identity, ethnicity, and religious markers in the history of republican Turkey. ŞenerAktürk explains that the concept of national identityin the initialdiscussions by the Young Turks and the early years of Mustafa Kemal was a concoction of different elements, and that the term millî (“national”) was linked to millet, which referred to a confessional community within the Ottoman system. In more recent times, the doctrine knows as Turkish-Islamic Synthesis was promoted after the 1980 coup d’état as a blend of national, ethnic, and religious identity markers. Although the condition of ethnic and religious minorities has significantly improved under the AKP administration, the adoption of a trulypluralist approach has been hard to assimilate. On the other hand, Neo-Ottomanism, or similar forms of nostalgia for Ottoman imperial grandeur, should be viewed as self-serving promoters of prestige, legitimacy, and ways of redefining Turkish identity rather than an actual attempt to reinstatean Ottoman Empire.
RecepTayyipErdoğan is a polarizing figure, and actually thrives off this attribute.His legacy and achievements are and will trigger fierce debate. It would be misleading, however, to focus exclusively on his personality traits and idiosyncrasies. His shifts in political trajectory revealfault lines and contradictions that have appeared throughout Turkey’s contemporary history, and are unlikely to be fixed overnight.
The ghost of Kurdish separatism is a central and recurring instance of the rifts in post-Ottoman Turkish society, yet all remedies intended to quell it seem worse.
