Activists in Office : Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey 9780295800820, 9780295990507

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STUDIES IN MODERNITY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba, Series Editors Studies in Modernity and National Identity examine the relationships among modernity, the nation-state, and nationalism as these have evolved in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Titles in this interdisciplinary and transregional series also illuminate how the nation-state is being undermined by the forces of globalization, international migration, and electronic information flows, as well as by resurgent ethnic and religious affiliations. These books highlight historical parallels and continuities while documenting the social, cultural, and spatial expressions through which modern national identities have been constructed, contested, and reinvented. Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic by Sibel Bozdoğan Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial Indiaby Vikramaditya Prakash Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics by Jenny B. White The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman Architecture and Tourism in Italian Colonial Libya: An Ambivalent ModernismE\%ULDQ/0F/DUHQ Everyday Modernity in China, edited by Madeleine Yue Dong and Joshua L. Goldstein Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870–1940 by Afshin Marashi Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters (1830–1914) by Zeynep Çelik Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century, edited by Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees by Reşat Kasaba Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey by Nicole F. Watts

NICOLE F. WATTS

ACTIVISTS IN OFFICE KURDISH POLITICS AND PROTEST IN TURKEY

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS • SEATTLE AND LONDON

THIS PUBLICATION IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY THE DONALD R . ELLEGOOD INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS ENDOWMENT AND BY THE INSTITUTE OF TURKISH STUDIES .

© 2010 by the University of Washington Press Designed by Pamela Canell Typeset in Minion and Gotham Printed in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. University of Washington Press PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA www.washington.edu/uwpress Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Watts, Nicole F. Activists in office : Kurdish politics and protest in Turkey / Nicole F. Watts. p. cm. (Studies in modernity and national identity) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-295-99049-1 (hardback : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-295-99050-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1.  Kurds—Turkey—Politics and government. 2.  Turkey—Politics and government—1980-  I. Title. dr435.k87w38 2010 324.2561’083—dc22 2010022921 The paper used in this publication is acid-free and recycled from at least 30 percent post-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1984.

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CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xxiii

Introduction: Other Routes of Resistance 3 1 Early Routes: Conditions of Kurdish Electoral Mobilization 26 2 New Collective Challengers: The Institutional Trajectory of Turkey’s First Pro-Kurdish Party 51 3 Resources of the System 75

4 Characteristics of Coercion: Obstructing Access to Resources 94 5 Producing Competing Truths 122 6 Creating a New Kurdish Subject 142 Conclusions: Assessing a Challenger’s Impact 161

Notes 179 References 185 Index 201

Just as we must abandon the image of the state as a free-standing agent issuing orders, we need to question the traditional figure of resistance as a subject who stands outside the state and refuses its demands. Political subjects and their modes of resistance are formed as much within the organizational terrain we call the state, rather than in some wholly exterior social space. —TIMOTHY MITCHELL, “The Limits of the State,” 1991

The notion that social movements are completely separate from the state doesn’t really describe reality. —DAVID S. MEYER, VALERIE JENNESS, and HELEN INGRAM,

Routing the Opposition, 2005

To ascertain or demonstrate the impact of a challenge, researchers must ascertain what might have happened in its absence. —EDWIN AMENTA and MICHAEL P. YOUNG,

“Making an Impact,” 1999

We should not ask “what is a nation” but rather: how is nationhood as a political and cultural form institutionalized within and among states? How does nation work as a practical category, as classificatory scheme, as cognitive frame? What makes use of that category by or against states more or less effective? —ROGERS BRUBAKER, Nationalism Reframed, 1996

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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n September of 2006 I stood with a dozen visitors in front of a sand-colored building in the center of Erbil, a jumbled city of around a million people that had become the capital of the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. We took pictures, and some of the guests posed for the cameras. This was not a particularly attractive building, but adorning the front was a large sign written in Arabic, English, and Kurdish: “Kurdistan National Assembly—Iraq.” Kurdish flags were draped inside the building. They also fluttered from the top of the city’s distinctive citadel and brightened the walls of shops, museums, and homes. They had red, white, and green stripes, with a yellow sun in the middle. Kurdish was spoken throughout the city. Kurds staffed their own checkpoints to ensure security on the roads between cities, elected their own prime minister, and chose which

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contractors they wanted to build on their land. After nearly a century of conflict, Kurdish inhabitants of this region of northern Iraq had turned desperate desire into something that felt very much like a concrete manifestation of a dream they called Kurdistan. The complications, fears, and hopes fueled by the partial realization of a Kurdish national project in the Middle East have ensured that scholars and others who write about Kurdish politics find it relatively easy to convince readers of the importance of their topic. It is common now to find audiences who will agree that, by most assessments, Kurdish conflicts in Iraq and Turkey are some of the longest-running conflicts in the Middle East, that they have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and that “the question of Kurdistan” is deeply destabilizing not only for Iraq but for Turkey, Iran, and the rest of the region. In January of 2007 the topic of “Kurdish History” even made the American television game show Jeopardy. Such an acknowledgment of the relevance of Kurdish affairs by this icon of American popular culture offers a vivid illustration of how dramatically the profile of Kurds has changed since the mid-twentieth century, when they were sometimes referred to as a “forgotten people” of the Middle East. Despite geographic, political, and social fragmentation, Kurdish national movements in Iraq, Turkey, and elsewhere have made their concerns matter for states vastly more powerful than themselves, and to people far from historic Kurdistan. This book is about how Kurdish activists have made themselves matter and how they have impressed their ideas and agendas on reluctant and often repressive states. In Iraq, as well as in Turkey and Iran, they have done this in part by waging war. But some activists have also sought to use nonviolent means of protest and persuasion. My focus is on Kurdish activists in and from Turkey who have sought to use electoral politics and the institutions of the state to change the basic rules of the game (Migdal 2001, 63–64) in a rough political terrain where the formal rules of conventional political engagement are not always agreed upon and are, in fact, often broken. In the city of Diyarbakır, one of the largest cities in the mostly Kurdish southeastern region of Turkey, flying a Kurdish flag of any design and size is seen by authorities as a sign of separatist terrorism. Displaying one in a government building—as did Kurdish compatriots across the border in Erbil—would be to invite immediate and coercive repercussions. Nonetheless, as this book documents, such offi-

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cial proscriptions on Kurdish national expression have not prevented the most central and formal political spaces from becoming sites of Kurdish activism and open struggle. This study explores how and why this has occurred, as well as the opportunities and constraints of trying to use state-constructed and legitimated frameworks for what have constituted radical and even revolutionary demands.

KU RDS , KU RDISHNESS , AND THE KU RDISH CONFLIC T IN TU RKE Y

This book is not intended as a general text on the Kurds in Turkey, but a few introductory remarks may be useful. After ethnic Turks, Kurds are the largest ethnic group in Turkey, making up anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of the population, or around 11 to 14 million people out of a total population of 72 million (in 2008; see, e.g., Mutlu 1996; Barkey and Fuller 1998, 62; Bozarslan 2008). Turkish officials stopped publishing information on ethnicity and language after the 1965 census, so exact estimates of the total Kurdish population range considerably depending on methods of calculation and political persuasion. As of the late 1990s, about half of Turkey’s Kurdish population lived in the southeastern part of the country, an area that borders strategic frontiers with Iraq, Iran, and Syria and that contains valuable water resources. In thirteen southeastern provinces (Ağrı, Batman, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Iğdır, Mardin, Muş, Şırnak, Siirt, Tunceli, and Van), Kurds constitute a majority of the population (55 to 90 percent). In another eight provinces or so they comprise a sizable minority (15 to 50 percent of the population) (Mutlu 1996, 526–27). Half of the Middle East’s Kurdish population lives in Turkey. There are about four to five million Kurds living in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq (also known as Iraqi Kurdistan); about eight million in Iran; about two million in Syria; and almost two million in Asia and Europe. For many centuries the areas in which Kurds lived were referred to by outside officials, writers, and observers as part of a flexibly bordered geographic region known as Kurdistan. As used today, this includes current-day southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, and the northernmost tip of Syria. However, this was not an area that had ever constituted an independent Kurdish state, and only in the last century did people from this

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region regularly begin to use the term and to refer to themselves as Kurdish (see, e.g., Özoğlu 2004). Even today it can mean different things to different people. Most often, Kurds and non-Kurds alike use ascriptive characteristics (characteristics that are largely beyond people’s ability to choose) to define Kurdishness, especially mother-tongue language. One prominent study on ethnicity in Turkey listed language, a difference in mezhep (Muslim religious denomination; most Sunni Kurds follow the Shafi’i tradition, whereas most Sunni Turks are Hanefi), and, to a lesser extent, marriage, music, epic song, and dance as characteristics that Sunni Kurds use to distinguish themselves from Turks (Andrews 1989, 112–13). Although such markers help describe how Kurds in Turkey have differentiated themselves—and been differentiated—from Turks and other groups, they do not shed much light on what Fredrick Barth (1969, 15) calls the “cultural stuff” within, and they suggest a monolithic portrait of Kurdishness that misses or sidesteps the complexities of Kurdish identity as actually lived in Turkey today. Kurds in Turkey have never acted as a unified group or a coherent political entity. Many people who identify themselves as Kurdish do not speak Kurdish and live outside territorial “Kurdistan,” however flexibly defined. Kurds are also culturally diverse. Linguistically, there is no single Kurdish language, but two main language groups (Kurmanji and Sorani) and two other dialects (Zazaki and Gurani). Most Kurds in Turkey speak Kurmanji, but a small and politically influential portion from the Dersim/ Tunceli region speak Zazaki, as do some from Bingöl and Elazığ. Speakers of one Kurdish dialect do not easily understand other dialects. Many Kurds are Sunni Muslim (as are most Turks), but possibly as many as 30 percent are members of the Alevi faith (Andrews 1989, 116), a heterodox Muslim minority. In some places and moments, such religious distinctions may take on more import than ethnic identity (see, e.g., Massicard 2005b). Religious identifications have been further diversified through Kurdish participation in Sufi brotherhoods, or tarikat, which practice various forms of Islamic mysticism. Finally, some Kurds’ affiliations with different tribes and clans have given rise to different outlooks and perceptions of self-interest and collective interest.1 Such geographic, religious, linguistic, tribal, and class differences have meant that it was impossible at any one moment to point to a “Kurdish” perspective or peculiarly Kurdish type of politics.

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CONTE X T OF CHALLENGE

Like most “ethnic” conflicts, the struggle between Turkish authorities and Kurdish challengers is not really about ethnicity. Turks and Kurds do not have a history of animosity or communal conflict, and even at the height of the war between the state and Kurdish rebels in the early 1990s, civilian attacks between Turks and Kurds were relatively rare (although not unheard of). Rather than being grounded in ethnic bias per se, Turkish authorities’ efforts to suppress collective expressions of Kurdish identity have largely stemmed from fears that concessions to Kurdish activism could ultimately result in Kurdish regional autonomy, the loss of valuable resources (especially water), and, eventually, territorial dismemberment. Accompanying such pragmatic and strategic concerns have been a series of Turkish nationalist frames that have treated Kurdish society, taken collectively, as an obstruction to modernization, secularization, and the consolidation of the centralized state. Kemalism, the set of reformist principles and foundational myths of the Turkish Republic developed in the 1920s and 1930s, had little or no tolerance for Kurdish cultural and political expressions. Although many early perceptions of the nature of the Kurdish challenge had faded by the 1950s and 1960s, authorities continued to view Kurds not as individuals but as a potential collective that posed serious security risks and threatened the territorial integrity of the country. This was because of both the predominance of security-oriented policymaking within the state and the increasing influence of Kurdish ethnopolitics outside the country and within. Popular and official fears were further aggravated by growing Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq after 1991, as well as by civil wars and political breakups in such countries as the former Yugoslavia. Turkish authorities used a variety of strategies to try to ensure that Kurds did not mobilize collectively and would remain loyal to the state. These strategies have varied depending on the period, but some rough generalizations can be made. Strategies of “opportunity” sought to integrate ethnic Kurds by providing them with equality of opportunity for personal advancement. Turkish authorities have not legally discriminated against Kurdish citizens of the country simply on the basis of being Kurdish; like all Muslim citizens of the country, Kurds have equal rights to vote, run for office, serve in high-ranking positions, and participate fully

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in economic and social life. Such opportunities, regardless of ethnicity, were an important precondition for pro-Kurdish political contention in Turkey and were crucial for integrating many Kurds into the political system and into many different political parties. At the same time, authorities have applied strategies of “social reconstruction” to downplay or eradicate a sense of distinct Kurdish identity. Full Kurdish participation in Turkish political and intellectual life has until very recently been contingent on the adoption of Turkish cultural and political norms and the outward acceptance of an ethnified version of Turkish nationalism (see, e.g., Yeğen 2004, 2007). Despite legal reforms and a growing public discourse of ethnic diversity, as late as 2008 Kurdish-language instruction was still not permitted in universities or public schools. Only in early 2009 were a few select universities told they could begin for the first time to teach Kurdish literature or history. Official and semi-official narratives of the identity of the country’s inhabitants still emphasize the “Turkic” origins of the country’s population and describe Turkey’s citizenry as uniformly Turkish. In addition, there have over the years been many efforts to reconstruct physical space and historical memory as purely Turkish, with little or no recognition of ethnic and religious minorities such as Armenians, Greek Christians, Alevi Muslims, and Kurds (see, e.g., Öktem 2004, 2008). After the 1960 military coup, for instance, thousands of Kurdish place names were changed to Turkish ones, and a flood of research used pseudo-science to attempt to “prove” that Kurds were really Turks and that Kurdish did not exist as a distinct language. As late as 2005 the Turkish government announced it would change the proper names of a number of animals whose names referenced Kurds and Armenians. Where these techniques failed, Turkish authorities used strategies of coercion to suppress those who challenged these norms and tried to advocate reforms or mobilize against the state. These coercive mechanisms are discussed in more detail in many of the following pages. Suffice it to say here that state policies became substantially more coercive with the transformation of the regime after 1980, when much of the southeast, and Kurdish communities there, came under an ongoing “state of exception” (Agamben 2000). State security courts, first used from 1973 to 1976 and then reinstated after 1982, tried and convicted Kurdish dissenters, including many for crimes of speech, in conditions routinely understood

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to be without due process. Thousands of people were imprisoned in the 1980s and 1990s for “crimes of thought.” Between 1980 and 2002 most of the southeastern provinces were under some form of martial law, and approximately one third of the entire armed forces of Turkey were permanently deployed there. In the war against the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party), nearly 3,000 villages were destroyed and more than a million people forced from their homes. Torture of political prisoners, especially Kurdish activists, became systemic after 1980 (see, e.g., Dorronsoro 2008; Human Rights Foundation of Turkey 2002).

METHODOLOGY

The Kurdish issue in Turkey was long referred to as a taboo topic, and there are significant gaps in our empirical knowledge of some matters relevant to the study of Kurdish national activism. Statistical and survey data is incomplete; as I indicated above, there is still no concrete data available, for instance, on the exact numbers of people in Turkey who are Kurdish, or classify themselves as such. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of published and unpublished information on Kurds and proKurdish activism, and most of it is readily available. Although my early research was conditioned by legal and practical restrictions that made it almost impossible for me to do any serious work in the Kurdish areas of the southeast, after 1999 I was mostly free to travel there and to conduct my research as I pleased. I sought to incorporate a wide variety of types of primary and secondary sources into my research. These were collected during a twelve-year period from multiple sites around Turkey as well as in the United States and Europe. Written primary sources include minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s parliamentary debates; court documents from Turkey and the European Court of Human Rights; Turkish- and Englishlanguage newspapers and periodicals; political party programs; newsletters published by different political and student organizations; Turkish state surveys, reports, and censuses; speeches and statements; election data, budgetary reports, and judicial statistics; human rights reports; municipal reports and activity statements; and personal memoirs. These were gathered from the Milli Kütüphane (National Library), the Meclis

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Kütüphanesi (Parliamentary Library), and the library of the Turkish Statistical Association (TÜİK, formerly the Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü, or DİE) in Ankara; from offices of the İnsan Hakları Derneği (İHD, or the Human Rights Association) in Ankara and Diyarbakır; from the Kurdish Human Rights Project in London; from the Kurdish Institute of Paris; from municipalities and party offices; through interlibrary loans; from Internet web sites; and from individuals. Directors and staff at these institutions and organizations were very helpful, and I am grateful to them. Throughout the work I supplemented these written sources with indepth interviews conducted with past and present pro-Kurdish mayors, members of Parliament, party leaders, and activists; Turkish politicians involved in the events under analysis; various members and leaders of human rights organizations; and members and directors of Europeanand U.S.-based Kurdish organizations. Most interviews were done directly by me in Turkish. All my interviews were conducted face-to-face with the interviewee (usually at a home or office); they usually lasted between two and three hours. They were done primarily to clarify points that I felt I could not answer with existing written documentation, to learn how those involved in these events perceived them and their role in them, to gain biographical information on the people I was writing about, and to gain access to written documents unavailable elsewhere. I also attended fairs and festivals, party conventions and meetings, and visited offices to observe events and talk to people about daily goings on. In addition, my analysis benefited greatly from my friendships and informal conversations with key participants and observers of the movement. The project was carried out in two main stages. The first, from 1994 to 1999, occurred just prior to and during my post-graduate studies at the University of Washington. For several periods during this time I was able to stay in Turkey for two to six months at a time, mostly in Ankara, and I also made several shorter trips to Washington, DC, Paris, and London. The work that I did during this stage formed the basis of my study and provided some of the initial background research for this book. The second phase of this project began in 2002, when I began making short but regular trips to Turkey and began rethinking and re-researching topics I had begun before. Most of my trips during this time were to the city of Diyarbakır and to other parts of the southeast, although I also spent some time in Ankara, Istanbul, and other cities.

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LIMITS OF THE WORK

My on-again, off-again method of conducting research is both a weakness and a strength of this work. This book is not the result of in-depth participant observation or years of intimate involvement with the movement and its participants (I have friends whom I hope will write such a work). It is, rather, the result of a protracted investigation into a particular set of questions by someone who has engaged in fairly consistent bouts of what is still rather oddly called “fieldwork.” This method has clear limitations deriving both from my lack of full access to the movement and from my own “subject position” as an American academic. I am well aware that the work does not deal in any substantial way with what is happening “behind the scenes” of the movement, with the gender or socioeconomic dynamics within it, or with the relationships between different pro-Kurdish organizations or individuals. All I can say is that this is not due to lack of interest. On the other hand, my relative distance from the movement and my regular comings and goings over a sustained period of time did offer me the space to recuperate from the trauma of a movement under siege and give me a perspective of comparison that comes with distance and time. It forced me to focus on what was actually being said and done in public spaces rather than what was intended; to examine activism across a relatively broad temporal and geographic space; to exploit written documents (especially newspapers and memoirs) to the best of my ability; to develop and maintain a broad network of friends and sources in Turkey (and beyond) whose ideas and insights permeate this book; and, finally, to write a book that would be both useful for specialists and accessible to those who were more generally interested in social movements, ethnopolitical activism, Turkey, and the Kurds. I hope the endeavor is, in the end, worthwhile. The pro-Kurdish movement in Turkey consists of many different actors and organizations. This book’s focus is on one subset of these actors: proKurdish political parties. I spend very little time here on nongovernmental organizations, media, and other important groups that were also trying to promote Kurdish cultural and political rights within Turkey in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, and often did so in interaction with pro-Kurdish parties. This book is not about ethnic Kurdish

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participation in politics in general, but about a relatively small group of activist-politicians who tried to use their access to the system to mount a collective public challenge to official policies concerning Kurds and governance in the southeast. My focus on one particular set of political parties is not intended as a statement about these other actors’ relative significance, but simply reflects my choice of topics. Finally, this book does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of pro-Kurdish political parties in Turkey; see Ölmez (1995) and Demir (2005) for journalistic, Turkishlanguage examples of such histories. A narrative of Kurdish challenge to Turkish state policies runs the risk of romanticizing both the act (“resistance”) and the outcome (“they matter”). Yet Kurdish political organizations for the most part differed little from their Turkish counterparts in terms of their levels of democratic organization, inclusiveness, and transparency (of which there was less than might be considered desirable), and corruption, nepotism, hierarchical leadership structures and patriarchy (all endemic problems). These were, of course, hardly exceptional to Kurdish associations but are common problems throughout Turkey and elsewhere. Like political communities around the world, Kurdish activists worked within the preconstructed model of the nation-state; for the most part their acts of resistance were not intended to move beyond nationalism but to modify or replace its character. To succeed, then, is not to create a novel political order but to carve a Kurdish national space into the Turkish body politic, or to create a Kurdish polity alongside or outside this body.

This book was written after a long and rather convoluted evolution that began with an independent research grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Peace and International Cooperation. The Foundation awarded me this while I was still a journalist, and I will always be grateful to its grant committee members for their willingness to take a leap of faith on an untried news reporter and, in effect, giving me the resources to start a new career. They had to wait many years for the results. Although I wanted to write a book from the outset, my adventures with friends, family, the remainder of a journalism career, a Ph.D., and other less salubrious exploits meant many delays in the drafting of the book. This long durée meant I also accumulated an XVIII

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extensive list of debts to the institutions and people who ultimately made the work possible. As always, they should take credit for what they like in the book, and blame the rest on me. Any errors of fact or interpretation are of course mine alone. Many thanks are due to the various foundations and universities that gave me grants and fellowships over the years to pursue various projects that ultimately informed this study. Along with the MacArthur Foundation, they include the U.S. Department of State Fulbright Program for students; the United States Institute of Peace; the U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies program; the University of Washington; and San Francisco State University’s College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and presidential grant program. I am also indebted to the Institute of Turkish Studies for its publication subvention grant. The work I have written here does not necessarily reflect the opinions and policies of these institutions. In Bay Area newsrooms, editors Mark Able, Doug Wilks, and Terry Winckler encouraged me so many years ago (and rightly warned me that academia would ruin my ability to write sensible English). In Ankara, many thanks to those who gave me hospitality, friendship, Turkish-language lessons, and valuable introductions: they include Aytül, Adnan, Ümit, and, especially Selin Cankat. In Diyarbakır, Osman Baydemir, Mihdi Perinçek, Ercan Ayboğa, Hışyar Özsoy, Serdar Şengül and his family, Çağlayan Ayhan-Day, and Reyhan Yalçındağ-Baydemir opened their homes to me and gave me countless hours of assistance. I owe a special debt in particular to Serdar and Hışyar, both for their assistance with information and sources and for helping me see my research and their work in a new light. Thanks also to Marie Le Ray, Cuma, Ercan, Gürkan, and Meral for their help at the municipality in Tunceli, and to Burak Kara for the generous use of his photo on the cover of this book. For those mayors, party administrators, members of Parliament, human rights activists, and others whom I interviewed over the years, I will always appreciate your willingness to ignore my faulty Turkish and to share your thoughts and so much of your time. Many of the ideas that fueled the early ideas of this work were developed in close conversation with former graduate students and with faculty at the University of Washington. They include Lauren Basson, Ceren Belge, Ali İğmen, Işık Özel, Tamir Moustafa, Niall Ó’ Murchú, Ben Smith, and Patricia Woods. I thank, in particular, Kathryn Libal and PR EFAC E AN D AC K N OWLED G M ENTS

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Senem Aslan for their friendship and insights. I am also indebted many times over to professors Reşat Kasaba and Joel S. Migdal, whose ideas and humanity have inspired and encouraged so many. I am very grateful to Reşat as well for taking time out of his busy schedule to read an early draft of the manuscript and to provide me with suggestions that, as always, pushed me to think beyond the box. At San Francisco State University, Lucia Volk, Carel Bertram, Fred Astren, Maziar Behrooz, Chris Chekuri, Angelika Von Wahl, Francis Neely, James Martel, Corey Cook, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, and others in the faculty group for Middle East and Islamic Studies and in the Department of Political Science encouraged me to keep writing and managed to find time for coffee and dinners despite their own hectic schedules. Several classes of undergraduate and graduate students at SFSU also read chapters of the book and provided valuable feedback. At the University of Washington Press, editors Michael Duckworth, Beth Fuget, and Mary Ribesky were unfailingly patient and supportive; thank you. Five people played particularly important roles in shaping the manuscript, and I am extremely grateful to all of them for their thoughts and support. In some cases I heeded their advice; in others I failed to do so for various and not necessarily good reasons. Hootan Shambayati read an early version and offered many useful suggestions. He also gave me a home away from home in Ankara. Hamit Bozarslan read a copy of the text in record time, providing his usual incisive and inspiring comments. Two anonymous reviewers read at least two versions of the manuscript and pushed me to improve it in many different ways. In particular, I wish to thank Gilles Dorronsoro for his encouragement, for the many shared hours photographing newspapers in the archives, his patient readings of several drafts of the text, and for his assistance with the organization and conceptualization of the manuscript. His insights and intellectual generosity transformed the book in many ways. In addition, sections of chapter 1 were researched and written as part of various collaborative projects we undertook. Finding the time and resources for research and writing, and freeing me of the responsibilities of everyday life, happened only with the effort and great patience of many good friends and family members. Many thanks to Eileen, Don, and Simone Watts; Robert Alvarez; Silvia Foresti; the late Renée Atkinson and Sue Carow; Steve Shirrell, Aimée Shirrell, and Oscar Gray; Ellen and Rachel Squillace; Gina Larson and her pack; Blynn Baker; Kelly, Hervé, Caroline, and Charlotte Couturier; Faith ChilXX

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dress; Joreth Toropov; and, especially, Alessandra Nicole Squillace. Her enthusiasm for this project and unfailing good grace in the face of my work and travels meant more than I can say. She also deserves credit for helping me edit the first sentence of the book. Finally, I wish to thank Ralph Squillace for his unswerving commitment to the completion of this project and for the monumental juggling act he undertook to make it happen. I will always appreciate his willingness to talk about the text at a moment’s notice; his many constructive comments and ideas; his unstinting friendship; and much more.

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ABBREVIATIONS AKP ANAP AP CHP DDKD DDKO DEHAP DEP DKP DP DTP DYP FMCU-UTO

Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) Justice Party (Adalet Partisi) Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Dernekleri) Revolutionary Eastern Cultural “Hearths” (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları) Democratic People Party (Demokratik Halk Partisi) Democracy Party (Demokrasi Partisi) Democratic Mass Party (Demokratik Kitle Partisi) Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti) Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi) True Path Party (Doğru Yol Partisi) World Federation of United Cities XXIII

GABB HADEP HAK-PAR HEP İHD

JİTEM

KADEP KDP

KDP-Turkey KHRP KRG KUK MİT OHAL ÖZDEP ÖZEP PKK PUK SHP TİP TKSP YTP XXIV

Union of Southeast Anatolia Region Municipalities (Güneydoğu Anadolu Bölgesi Belediyeler Birliği) People’s Democracy Party (Halkın Demokrasi Partisi) Rights and Freedoms Party (Hak ve Özgürlükler Partisi) People’s Labor Party (Halkın Emek Partisi) Human Rights Association of Turkey (İnsan Hakları Derneği) Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism Center (Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele Teşkilatı) Participatory Democracy Party (Katılımcı Demokrasi Partisi) Kurdistan Democratic Party (Partîya Demokrat Kurdistan) Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (Türkiye Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi) Kurdish Human Rights Project Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan National Liberators (Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşçuları) National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı) Emergency Rule Law (Olağanüstü Hal) Freedom and Democracy Party (Özgürlük ve Demokrasi Partisi) Freedom and Equality Party (Özgürlük ve Eşitlik Partisi) Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Yekyetí Níshtimaníy Kurdistan) Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti) Workers Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi) Kurdistan Socialist Party of Turkey (Türkiye Kürdistanı Sosyalist Partisi) New Turkey Party (Yeni Türkiye Partisi)

A B B R E VIATI O N S

ACTIVISTS IN OFFICE

Russia

Black

Bulgaria

Sea Georgia ia

Sea of Marmara

Kars

Ankara

Bingöl Tunceli

Izmir

Muș

Elaziğ Diyarbakir

Bitlis

Adiyaman

Me

Hat ay

Adana Mersin

Șanliurfa Kilis

North Cyprus

dite

rran

Sea

Mardin

Siirt Șirnak

Van

Hakkari

Erbil

Batman

Iraq

Gaziantep

Syria

Cyprus

ean

Iğdir

Ağri

TU R KEY

Iran

Greece

Istanbul Ar m en

TURKEY

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Lebanon

Turkey with southeast provinces and environs

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100 mi 100 km

Map by Barry Levely and M.D. Watts

INTRODUCTION Other Routes of Resistance

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rom the early twentieth to twenty-first centuries, Kurdish activists used many means to try to achieve territorial authority, Kurdish cultural recognition, and democratic reform in Turkey. Official resistance to such efforts resulted in a series of conflicts between the Kurdish national movement and the Turkish state that would ultimately cost tens of thousands of lives, disrupt millions more, undermine the foundational principles of the Turkish national state, and deeply complicate Turkey’s democratization. Many of these moments of conflict were articulated in the 1980s and 1990s as clashes between young Turkish conscripts and Kurdish rebels in the mountains of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. But by the end of the twentieth century, such struggles had also moved into the more mundane settings of local government offices, national parliaments, and intergovernmental courtrooms in cit3

ies across several continents. Men and women who openly advocated greater freedom for Kurdish cultural and political rights led political parties, took seats in the Turkish parliament, and became city mayors. This book is about Kurdish activists’ use of such political institutions between 1990 and 2008 and about the impact of their work. More generally, it is about the possibilities and constraints of resistance within what Timothy Mitchell has referred to (1991, 93) as “the organizational terrain we call the state” and its associated venues. Kurdish challengers’ attempts to commandeer institutions of governance were not particularly unusual; contrary to common perceptions, most repertoires of ethnopolitical contention take the form of conventional political action and nonviolent protest (Gurr 2000, 27; Marshall and Gurr 2005, 21–22). What makes the Kurdish activists’ case so striking is the level of repression and persecution they encountered at the hands of state institutions and the pressure they faced from armed contenders within their own movement. In the 1990s and early 2000s, state authorities detained and tortured pro-Kurdish activists, raided their offices, confiscated their computers and documents, and restricted their freedom to publish, travel, and organize meetings. At least 112 Kurdish party members were murdered in the 1990s. Thousands more were imprisoned, and many were prohibited from any further participation in political life. Simply moving into conventional institutions, in other words, did not ensure “conventional” treatment or routine political outcomes. Given these decidedly difficult circumstances and the less-than-obvious rewards of working within the system, why did Kurdish activists use formal politics to promote their cause? What opportunities did they find, and what constraints? What impact did their incorporation into the mainstream political framework have on the movement, its supporters, the furthering of its goals, and its relations with the Turkish state?

BE YOND BULLETS: AT TENDING TO OTHER ROUTES OF RESISTANCE

Surprisingly, existing scholarship is not well equipped to help us answer these questions. This is due to at least two deficiencies in the otherwise extensive literature on ethnopolitical and social movements. First, and

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quite simply, popular and academic studies of ethnic and nationalist conflict tend to ignore activists’ efforts to work within the formal political system. As Cynthia Irvin notes (1999, 7) in her examination of Irish Republican and Basque nationalist use of electoral strategies, our concern with why movements adopt violence has discouraged us from exploring why, when, and under what conditions they—or at least some of their protagonists—choose not to use it. Indeed, it often suits both armed challengers and states to dismiss “conventional” ethnopolitical activists. Militants may label them as ineffective “window dressing” and/or pawns of the regime, and state officials may label them as militant “fronts” with no autonomy. This tendency to downplay the relevance of activists using formal political channels is particularly acute in cases of noncompetitive or restrictive regimes, where even sympathetic movement observers often view efforts to use formal political channels as a waste of time and resources.1 Studies on Kurdish ethnopolitics reflect this general emphasis on armed contention, with both analysts and movement participants inclined to ignore or dismiss pro-Kurdish politicians and activists. Of the English-language books on the Kurdish conflict in Turkey published since the early 1990s, very few devote more than a few pages to the proKurdish political parties, focusing instead on the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or PKK) and its guerrilla challenge to the Turkish state (see, e.g., Romano 2006; White 2000; Gunter 1997).2 Although there is some promising new work being done, there are still only a handful of scholarly articles published on the topic (Barkey 1998; Watts 1999, 2006; Yavuz 2001; Güney 2002). More general analyses of the Kurdish movement that incorporate discussion of Kurdish politics and history in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey similarly give the parties and their representatives only passing attention (e.g., Natali 2005; McDowall 1997). In many of these texts there is a tendency to assume that because the parties were subject to heavy state repression, it was not possible for them to have much of an impact. The most notable exceptions to this are two Turkishlanguage, journalistic accounts of the parties (Demir 2005; Ölmez 1995). Armed challengers often are the dominant actors within a movement, and may maintain considerable influence long after their initial strength has waned. But obscured in the drama of blood and bullets is the fact that other forms of dissent are also occurring, sometimes in unexpected places, and that they may also be important for movements. Juxtaposed

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against the apparent futility of their endeavors, pro-Kurdish activists working within electoral frameworks have maintained a steady if hotly contested presence in the Turkish polity since 1990. Between 2003 and 2008 the Turkish Constitutional Court closed four major pro-Kurdish parties in succession; activists founded new ones. There has been no shortage of people willing to volunteer time within pro-Kurdish parties, serve on their administrative boards, and run for office. Clearly, for them, these were means worth attempting, even if these same activists often spoke pessimistically about the outcome of their work and the possibility of reform. Although this analysis takes institutions and not individuals as the level of analysis, I nonetheless work from the assumption that decisions to participate in such political projects were made meaningfully; the vast majority of those who worked inside the system did not do so simply to make a symbolic self-sacrifice. I focus in this book on some of these other types of challenges—and the actors who employed them—because they matter. Ignoring them, dismissing them, or downplaying them is to miss crucial parts of the story.

CONTENTION OR CONVENTION? MOVEMENT INCLUSION IN SEMI- DEMOCR ATIC CONTE X TS

A second gap in the literature stems from theorists’ tendency to generalize about the form and function of movement incorporation from case studies drawn from advanced industrial democracies. Although the field of social movement studies has considerably expanded its geographic range (see, e.g., Wiktorowicz 2003), little attention is given to how challengers’ participation in formal political institutions works in “semi-democratic” and authoritarian regimes in which the risks commonly associated with extrasystemic protest do not evaporate when activists don suits and ties and are elected to office. What does it mean for activists to form political parties and participate in the electoral process under conditions of contested legality, in which parties are regularly closed and their members prosecuted? How do activists working in parties negotiate their relationships with guerrilla forces? What is the point of sitting in Parliament when real decision making often seems to be done by unelected officials working behind closed doors?

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These are questions that challenge our thinking on the process and consequences of what is generally known as movement institutionalization: a development that occurs as activists move from marching on the streets or fighting in the mountains to running for office, writing legislation, and sitting on policy committees. Although there are debates about its exact effects, institutionalization is now recognized as such a common phenomenon that some scholars have wondered if social movements as we once understood them are ceasing to exist (Meyer and Tarrow 1998). Reflecting this, most social movement analysts no longer draw the clear distinctions they once did between extrasystemic protest and what was rather dismissively referred to as conventional politics (see, e.g., Meyer, Jenness, and Ingram 2005; Tilly 1999; Meyer and Tarrow 1998). Nonetheless, institutionalization is still usually seen as marking a definitive shift in the nature of activists’ relations with authorities, the style and form of their protest, and the articulation of their goals. Incorporation into formal political processes is expected to routinize collective action and minimize disruption, encourage challengers and authorities to “adhere to a common script” (Meyer and Tarrow 1998, 21), and force movement organizations to moderate their claims and tactics. Institutionalization brings new patterns, new symbols, and reproducible political syntax. In return, challengers can usually expect more access to decision making, reduced levels of personal and professional risk, and more reliable material resources from which to maintain movement organizations (see, e.g., Meyer 2007, 130; Meyer and Tarrow 1998). Cases of movement inclusion in semi-democratic or authoritarian power structures differ from this model in a number of critical respects. First, incorporation into the formal political system may not necessarily moderate demands because neither the conflict-bearers nor the conflict are legitimized by the “system.” Instead, the conflict leads either to the criminalization of activists or to their marginalization. Especially in cases in which popular protest is banned or discouraged, restrictions may channel activism into the political system. Despite potential risks, pressure “from below” (popular protest and the ballot box) and “outside” (armed contention) can encourage activists who gain office to maintain attitudes and actions that are perceived by authorities as radical. If the support of core constituents rides in good part on the perception that the party is supportive—at least in spirit—of the armed organization and its

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goals, party leaders will go to great lengths to avoid being perceived as co-opted. On a more individual basis, some newly elected challengers view themselves not as politicians but as activists working to carry the cause into the centers of state power. The additional resources provided by working within the system may also expand the movement’s theater of operations and encourage activists to more aggressively promote contested identities. A second difference is that although some activists gain a certain amount of legal protection because of their status in office, neither they nor non-elected activists working within the system can necessarily expect the reduction in risk that their compatriots in more liberal systems enjoy. In fact, the personal and professional risks may sometimes go up. The high profile of contentious public figures increases the potential payoff for career-minded state representatives to criticize, prosecute, and otherwise marginalize or exclude activist-politicians from debate and decision making. Many a public prosecutor in Turkey has made a name for himself by opening investigations against pro-Kurdish politicians. Third, movement fragmentation after incorporation may be less likely in semi-democratic systems than in democratic ones. Restrictions on party formation and heavy levels of repression can increase the costs of party formation to the point that no other serious contenders appear on the scene. Especially in cases in which legal (or quasi-legal) contenders are also circumscribed by militant organizations jealously guarding their status within a movement, it may be very difficult for ethnopolitical parties other than those sanctioned or at least tolerated by the armed group to mobilize. Fragmentation is also less likely if inclusion in the system has not produced an obvious moderation of demands that might encourage more radical factions within the parties to break away. Fourth, whereas shifts from extrasystemic armed or unarmed contention to electoral politics are usually expected to reduce the level of conflict between challengers and authorities, in noncompetitive or semi-democratic regimes the creation of movement-linked political parties and working within formal political structures may signal a heightened cycle of contention and an expansion of the field of conflict. Incorporation under such conditions does not signal either an ideological or practical routinization of collective action or a reduction in its disruptiveness. In Turkey, for example, mobilization around religious or ethnic iden8

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tities is constitutionally prohibited. What may in other contexts be a straightforward process of forming a party and participating in the political system in and of itself constitutes a disruption of normal political routines and a profound challenge to the ideological basis of the state. Furthermore, as James Franklin’s cross-national study of party opposition in noncompetitive regimes demonstrates (2002), political parties working in constricted circumstances may in fact frequently turn to extrasystemic contentious politics and mass protest. A final and fifth difference is that ethnopolitical contenders in this context may receive less access to decision-making processes directly related to the movement’s agenda and very little say over the content of national policies towards the community in question. In semi-democratic or autocratic regimes, then, terms such as “institutionalization” and “conventional politics” do not adequately capture the intense struggle that may be taking place or the substantial—and violent—opposition activists may face even when they attain the “respectable” status of mayors or members of Parliament. For Kurdish activists in Turkey, as for Basque nationalists in mid-twentieth-century Spain, working in “legal” politics failed to bring them refuge from persecution or substantial influence over policy. Instead, they were threatened, prosecuted, jailed, exiled, and, in some cases, killed. More applicable to describing this process than classic conceptions of institutionalization is what McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly (2001, 8) call “transgressive contention,” in which activists continue to use contentious collective self-representations that are “forbidden within the regime in question.” I have referred to this elsewhere (2006) as “representative contention.” Although it may look like politics as usual, representative contention constitutes “contentious politics” (Tilly 2003, 26–30; Tarrow 1998, 3–4) and a form of social movement activity because the relationship between the state and officeholders continues to be a publicly adversarial one characterized by threats on the status or even the person of the officeholder, who continues to publicly challenge the undergirding premises of the political game. In this framework, representative contention may end and become conventional when the threat of state prosecution and state-sponsored physical intimidation has been removed for a substantial period of time, either because of new policies towards the movement or because activist-politicians cease to publicly use their office to further movement demands. I NTRO D U C TI O N

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ANALY ZING INCORPOR ATION U NDER DU RESS: A REL ATIONAL APPROACH

It is far from obvious why activists would seek to work inside the system under such conditions, what impact they can have, and how this process affects movement organizations, their constituents, and authorities. To provide an initial set of reference points for answering these questions, I draw on studies on social movements by analysts such as Charles Tilly, Doug McAdam, and Sidney Tarrow. Their work was long associated with the political process approach to studying movements and is now becoming identified with what they have termed the “dynamic mobilization” model (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001). These approaches emphasize the following points. First, both the older political process approach and the newer studies focus on the mobilization process and not only the causes of contention. This has encouraged more studies examining the conditions under which movements and movement organizations are most likely to challenge authorities and why they tend to choose some repertoires over others. Common to this literature is an emphasis on the external and internal resources that activists and organizations can mobilize in support of their cause and how political opportunities (i.e., divisions among governing elites) and constraints (i.e., repression) can produce and end cycles of contention. Second, the most productive inquiries into movement impact do not confine themselves to questions about whether movements “succeed or fail” in achieving policy reform, but instead look beyond this to examine a range of possible cultural, social, and political movement outcomes. These include ones perceived by movement partisans as beneficial collective consequences as well as those perceived as nonbeneficial (see, e.g., Amenta and Young 1999). For analysts, assessing impact in terms of overall success or failure is problematic because of the difficulties in selecting whose definition of success to use, because of questions about how to measure success or failure, and because it is not uncommon for movement goals—and movement participants’ perceptions of success— to shift (Giugni, McAdam, and Tilly 1999). Although policy changes can be an important indicator of movement influence, movement consequences may extend far beyond the realm of sought-after reforms and

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into intended or unintended shifts in power relations and structural and sociocultural transformations (Giugni 1999, xxiii). Third, movements—like the states they challenge—are not coherent or unitary. They are configurations of actors enmeshed in what Norbert Elias refers to (1978, 130) as a “flexible lattice-work of tensions.” Regardless of whether they are or appear to be working in a coordinated fashion, most movement organizations are engaged in an intense competition for power with each other as well as with external actors. At the most simplified level, movement organizations are part of a triadic relationship that includes the movement itself, the authorities being challenged, and the communities on whose behalf they claim to operate (Tilly 1999, 257). Movements—and particular actors within them—may be more or less successful in managing each of these sets of relationships and getting what they want out of them. Conceptualizing movements as part of a relational dynamic encourages us to explore the variety of ways that movement activity may affect different movement goals and sets of relations. It also discourages us from the common tendency to conflate ethnic communities with ethnopolitical movements by explicitly disentangling this relationship. Activists view themselves as working—often at great personal cost—to secure greater collective goods for their communities. But at the same time, like other identity movements, ethnopolitical entrepreneurs not only claim to represent and work on behalf of entire ethnic communities but also seek to transform these communities’ behaviors in fundamental ways. As Rogers Brubaker writes (2005, 473), “By invoking groups, [activists] seek to evoke them, call them into being.” Ethnopolitical movements, in other words, don’t just seek policy changes from the target state but are also often involved in nation-building projects themselves. Like nationalizing states, they seek homogenizing categorizations (e.g., “Kurds are persecuted,” or “The Irish want a united Ireland”) and try to evoke generalizations to create a more firmly delineated “we.” Despite the very real sacrifices activists make to further their movements, this creates deeply ambiguous and often conflicted relations with the communities affected by such activities, as well as with authorities, who are competing with movement activists for authority over the same population. Making a distinction between activists who use ethnonational frames as a basis of mobilization and members of minority communities who

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do not is crucial for understanding the context in which the pro-Kurdish parties operate. Most Kurds in Turkey have not treated ethnicity as politically relevant; most have not openly challenged the Turkish state; and many prefer to vote for or participate in mainstream or Islamic parties rather than Kurdish ethnonational parties. Such integration into Turkish politics and parties should not simply be dismissed as the action (or inaction) of the co-opted or as a sense of “false consciousness.” In addition to state policies, technology and urban migration (especially to western cities such as Istanbul and Ankara) have incorporated many Kurds into the fabric of mainstream Turkish life. Public integration did not necessarily mean that Kurds ceased to speak Kurdish at home, work, and other places, or that they “forgot” their Kurdishness and ceased to identify as Kurds. Rather, they did not treat Kurdishness as politically meaningful. At the same time, many people have ignored or challenged the state using what James Scott (1987) calls “everyday forms” of resistance. The most obvious examples of this have been ordinary people’s continued use of a Kurdish language (Kurmanji or Zazaki), naming children with Kurdish names (see, e.g., Aslan 2008), and noncompliance with Turkish laws. It is for this reason that I characterize pro-Kurdish parties and activists as “pro-Kurdish”3 and not simply “Kurdish,” despite the fact that it is a cumbersome and not very precise term. A pro-Kurdish actor is an individual or organization that publicly and explicitly lobbies on behalf of the movement and its goals. Not all pro-Kurdish activists are ethnic Kurds (some are Turks, for instance), and, as I have indicated, not all people identifying themselves as ethnically Kurdish support pro-Kurdish politics (many, in fact, do not). A fourth premise of the dynamic mobilization approach is that the political identities of movement protagonists and antagonists are socially constructed. Although the idea that communities are constructed, imagined, and re-imagined has dominated analyses of nationalism and anthropology more generally, social movement studies long treated social movement organizations as having preexisting and (often) static identities. Newer social movement literature draws attention to the fact that mobilization often occurs when groups of activists appropriate an already existing institution or organization and turn it to their own purposes. Put another way, the structures that facilitate mobilization do not necessarily begin life as challengers but have to be converted to that purpose. It is the process of mobilization itself—as well as internal interactions between movement organizations and between these actors and external actors— 12

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that can construct or reconstruct movement and organizational culture. Furthermore, such identities are not fixed. A guerrilla organization, for instance, that has positioned itself within particular identity frames may well change, sometimes very rapidly, depending on the context.

ARGU MENT OF THE BOOK

The following pages demonstrate that by working within electoral politics, Kurdish challengers gained access to state-allocated material, legal, and political resources that were unavailable to those using armed contention. However, they were constrained in their deployment of these resources by state coercion and by internal movement dynamics that forced them to maintain their identity as “challenger parties.” The central argument of this book is that in order to simultaneously maintain this extrasystemic identity and exploit the resources of the system, pro-Kurdish elected officials and party administrators engaged in two main activities. First, they transformed conventional political arenas and frameworks into “loudspeaker systems” for the transmission of highly contentious information politics that challenged the narratives of security, identity, and representation promoted by Turkish state institutions. Second, they tried to construct a competing “governmentality” (Foucault 1991) and new collective Kurdish “subject” in cities and towns in the southeast. This balancing act was far from neat, easy, or predictable, and it produced many seemingly paradoxical decisions and behaviors. Nonetheless, cumulatively, entering governmental institutions and participating in formal political arenas created a durable platform for activism that helped the movement withstand failing fortunes on other fronts, created new social and political facts on the ground in Kurdish-majority provinces of the southeast, and helped legitimize the movement through votes. In sum, it furthered the movement in ways that armed struggle could not. Armed contenders are able to engage in collective action by drawing on an array of assets, including committed fighters, weapons, and extortion. They gain credibility among constituent communities and external audiences through coercion and by demonstrating their willingness to die for the cause. But even when members of the domestic and international establishment recognize their grievances as legitimate, their status as extrasystemic rebels (or “terrorists”) often precludes them from using I NTRO D U C TI O N

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the tools available to those who play by the rules (or at least play mostly by the rules). Working inside governmental arenas as elected officials and party leaders gave Kurdish parties and activists access to different types of resources they could use to promote the movement and its goals in new ways, from new spaces, and to new audiences. These resources included material and human resources, such as budgets and buildings; legal resources (e.g., immunity from prosecution); access-related resources; role resources, such as administration and diplomacy; and legitimacy resources, especially votes. All elected representatives in Turkey, including the many ethnic Kurds who are members of other parties, gain access to such resources. Two facts transformed such routine benefits of electoral contests and institutions into a contentious struggle between pro-Kurdish parties and authorities: first, the fact that many state and state-supported actors tried to prevent pro-Kurdish politicians from accessing and using those resources; and second, the ways in which activists and parties deployed them. The dynamic of pro-Kurdish party work within the Turkish political system is thus one of intense contestation, with different institutions and branches of the state using an array of coercive methods to try and suppress the parties and their activists. In addition, the PKK heavily circumscribed pro-Kurdish parties. Although the legal pro-Kurdish parties were not created by the PKK, the parties’ most active rank-and-file membership and much of its voter base supported pro-Kurdish parties because they viewed them as sympathetic to or as a surrogate for the PKK. Within the party administration and elected leadership, there were substantial divisions between those who may be termed PKK loyalists (those who maintained close communication with PKK leadership and indeed viewed the parties as an unofficial front for the PKK) and those who sought to maintain some distance and autonomy from the guerrilla organization. There were, consequently, continual power struggles within the parties themselves over how closely to work with the PKK and between the parties and the PKK itself. The outcome of such struggles varied across time and place, with the parties exerting more autonomy at some moments than others. Regardless, it is clear that they were strongly influenced and constrained by the PKK in their strategic as well as daily decision making and in their discourse, and they were limited by this complicated relationship in the degree to which they might take advantage of certain benefits of 14

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working within formal politics. In order to balance this tension, proKurdish party administrators and elected officials sought therefore to use the resources of the system not only to promote organizational and movement goals but to do so in ways that would buttress their challenger credentials. Contentious information politics, extrasystemic protest, and explicitly Kurdish symbolic performances were ways to do this, as were efforts to develop parallel (competing) governance and symbolic realms in ways that appropriated typical state functions or bypassed the Turkish state itself. Such activities within formal political institutions affected the movement and its relationships with state and society in multiple and not always complementary ways. First, the formation of pro-Kurdish political parties and their work affected the Kurdish national movement by producing a new set of movement elites that, while mostly stopping short of openly competing with the PKK, nonetheless dug a distinct “reservoir of power” (Hafez 2003, 20) for themselves. Such a “thickening” of movement leadership produced a new set of Kurdish officials that now served as interlocutors between movement and the representatives of Turkish and foreign states, media, and other social and governmental actors. Second, both electoral support for and active participation in pro-Kurdish activities, such as marches and festivals, publicly incorporated and implicated more Kurds into the Kurdish national project, which more clearly expressed the mass base of the movement and allowed Kurdish activists to bolster their representative claims. Such efforts to build an expressly counter-state Kurdish public “collectivity” clearly differentiates the proKurdish parties from most Kurdish politicians in other parties. This project can be seen as empowering and mobilizing some Kurdish-origin citizens, but also as silencing others who were less comfortable identifying with the more visibly demarcated boundaries of Kurdishness and Turkishness, and “us” and “them.” Third, the recategorization and reproduction of Kurdishness within official spaces undermined the political and ideological authority of the state by demonstrating that a significant number of the country’s Kurdish citizens supported a competing vision of representation and culture to that espoused by Turkish officials. Armed challengers could be more readily classified by state officials as criminals, terrorists, and outside the body politic; those working inside formal political processes could lay claim to sources of legitimation that made it more awkward for Turkish officials to plausibly deny that this alternative I NTRO D U C TI O N

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community (or competing “category”) existed. This restricted the policy options available to the state. More generally, then, organizational identity (whether chosen, forced, or a combination of both) served as a key factor in determining forms of mobilization, the repertoires employed, and the degree to which challengers could maximize the potential benefits of access to the system. Both the resources of the site of mobilization—the political system and offices of local and national governance—and a culture of contention shaped the nature of the interactions between parties, constituents, and authorities.

CHALLENGER PARTIES

Some of the terms I use in this book are not self-evident, so some definitions may be useful. I refer to the pro-Kurdish parties as challenger parties. I define a challenger party as a party that mobilizes political identities or programs viewed by authorities as posing a fundamental challenge to the ideological or organizational basis of the ruling establishment.4 In Turkey, Islamic parties, socialist and communist parties, and pro-Kurdish parties have been challenger parties. Pro-Kurdish challenger parties were not classically anti-systemic, in that they were not necessarily bent on the complete destruction of the political system. Instead they were what Zariski refers to (1986, 30) as chronic or habitual opposition parties, ones that were seen by many voters as potentially endangering the “fundamental interests of the society” and perhaps jeopardizing the survival of the political system itself if they were to come to power. Because they are generally perceived by authorities as a serious threat, challenger parties tend to face a range of possible punitive actions, from marginalization and exclusion to repression and bans. This is to some degree an ideal type categorization, and some parties do not neatly fit the model of either challenger or non-challenger. This is the case, for instance, with Islamic parties in Turkey. After the Islamic Refah (Welfare) Party was ousted from power in 1997, it split into two main groups. The more accommodationist of these two groups, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP), won overwhelming victories at the polls in 2002 and 2007. On the one hand, its broad electoral appeal and solid grip on the civilian reins of government

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indicate it is no longer a challenger party. On the other hand, its tense relationship with the Turkish military and some secular social forces suggests it is still viewed by some as a substantial challenge and threat to the Turkish political system. However, some challenger parties are unambiguously so. This was the case with the pro-Kurdish parties. Key to the parties’ image and culture (and thus legitimacy among certain constituents) was the idea that they were not part of the system (although they were in fact working inside formal political institutions). From the perspective of discursive framing, they might be considered extrasystemic, although they are not so in practice. The pro-Kurdish parties did not constitute challenger parties simply because their membership was largely composed of Kurds. Ethnic Kurds have always participated in Turkey’s politics. They have been and are members of parties of all sizes and political persuasions. Many have risen to top leadership positions within these parties, and some have served as ministers in government cabinets. Distinguishing pro-Kurdish activists, then, is not the fact that they are Kurds participating in electoral politics but that they used the formal political system to launch a public, sustained, and collective challenge to official policies concerning Kurds and governance in the southeast. Pro-Kurdish party leaders claimed domestic and world attention not because they were Kurdish but because they were engaged in a conflict-ridden political process marked by deeply hostile claims and counterclaims. They were attacked not because of their ethnic identity but because they tried to redefine the relationship between Kurdishness, political representation, and sovereignty.

SEMI- DEMOCR ACIES AND SECU RIT Y REGIMES: THE NATU RE OF THE TU RKISH STATE

Turkey is often classified as a semi-democratic regime because it falls into that category of states in which relatively fair and free elections are regularly held but in which there are substantial limitations on freedom of expression, association, or access to actual decision-making power structures (Diamond 1996, 2002; Zakaria 1997). Although there have been regular multi-party elections since 1946, at least until 2009 significant amounts of governing power still resided with what Larry Diamond (1996, 23) refers to

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as “unaccountable internal actors” (primarily the military). There are still substantial restrictions on freedom of expression and association. The term “semi-democracy” does not, however, really capture the complex nature of the state since the 1980 military coup in which, following a period of political and economic instability, the Turkish Armed Forces ousted the elected civilian government and ruled the country for three years. After the coup, many of the institutions of democratic governance were maintained while, at the same time, a high degree of repression and violence was employed against dissenters. In this vein, the Turkish state between 1980 and 2008 could also usefully be conceptualized as a security regime (Dorronsoro 2005b; Cizre 2003, 2008) because its politics and political institutions have been deeply influenced by a national security imperative that identifies Kurdish and Islamist activism as fundamental threats to the security of the state. While the formal mechanisms of democracy are left in place, the security imperative rationalizes the military’s continued involvement in politics and its monopolization of the definition of threat. The military’s identification of Kurdish “separatism” (very broadly defined) as one of the most serious threats to the security of the state excluded civilian officials from having any serious input into policymaking on the Kurdish issue, and contributed to the construction and perpetuation of a repressive juridical and security regime that not only criminalized many types of contention but clearly identified particular “identities of resistance” as internal enemies, thus stripping challengers of their rights as citizens and implicitly (if not explicitly) justifying their persecution. What Uri Ben Eliezer writes of (1998) as the “military way”—an emphasis on military solutions and the ever-present threat of the army’s possible intervention in politics—has thus been characteristic of Turkish political life. It makes sense to consider how movement incorporation works in such ambiguous contexts because many regimes do not neatly fit into the classic categories of “liberal democracy” or autocracy, and because ethnopolitical conflicts tend to occur more often in mixed regimes (Marshall and Gurr 2005, 17). In 2007, Freedom House classified sixty of the world’s 193 countries it surveyed as “partly free,” up from forty-eight partly free regimes three decades earlier (Freedom House 2007). (Arguably, some of the countries Freedom House classifies as “free” might also be classified as semi-democratic, using Diamond’s definition.) Assessing a smaller

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set of cases, Marshall and Gurr (2005, 17) note that since 1985 there has been a “nearly three-fold jump” in the number of states they categorize as anocracies, or states with a blend of democratic and authoritarian characteristics. While such regimes may look competitive and “democratic” from the perspective of formal political structures, suggesting that there is sufficient room within the system to incorporate challengers, the illiberal nature of the political sphere means that authorities’ responses to protest look more like what we might expect in an authoritarian regime. Turkey, for instance, is a competitive electoral regime, but its authorities have nonetheless used every level and type of repression against party organizations and individual party leaders that Franklin uses (2002, 530) as indicators to measure repression in his study of party protest in noncompetitive regimes. An emphasis on the impact of the repressive aspects of the state tends to promote the idea that the Turkish state is a kind of monolithic, unitary actor “bearing down” on Kurdish society and perpetuates a binary, state-versus-society model of Turkish state–Kurdish relations. This model would be overly simplistic. Relations between Kurds and Turkish authorities have been varied and multifaceted, adversarial in some moments and cooperative at others. State plans for containing Kurdish national mobilization have been thwarted and undermined in various ways beyond covert and overt Kurdish resistance. Quite counter to officials’ intent to render Kurdishness meaningless in the public realm, for instance, coercive policies reinforced a sense of difference and served to mobilize many Kurds who might not otherwise have challenged the regime. When authorities enlisted the aid of “loyal” Kurdish tribes to combat those deemed “disloyal,” such support could perpetuate the autonomy of the loyal even as they eroded the autonomy of others. The suppression of public demonstrations of Kurdish cultures fueled resistance by giving pro-Kurdish actors compelling frames (e.g., cultural genocide and minority discrimination) with which to delineate grievances. State policies were also complicated by various interests and priorities between and within different state agencies. As Migdal has emphasized (1988, 2001), military and civilian administrators working in the trenches often do not share the same interests as those in the “commanding heights” of power. Local bureaucrats, judges, and police chiefs in the Kurdish-majority provinces of the southeast were often more concerned

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about governing without excessive disturbance than fulfilling the mandates coming from Ankara, and, in any case, usually lacked the resources to penetrate local society. Making daily decisions that took into account the pragmatic realities of local conditions could lead to divergences or outright reversals of policies in some places. Even when Kurdish was effectively banned, for instance, courtrooms still needed translators for defendants who did not speak Turkish, and police still needed Kurdishlanguage readers to translate potentially “criminal” Kurdish lyrics and writing. Although military rule affected millions of people, thousands of them quite directly, it is probably safe to say that many years of official policies of cultural transformation were quite ineffective in the Kurdish regions of the southeast, and their impact there was generally exaggerated. Finally, central state policies were compromised by the relationships political parties developed with various Kurdish elites and other Kurdish politicians and activists. Especially since the advent of the multi-party period in 1946, parties have served as mediating institutions that could integrate Kurdish political actors into the system; as platforms for political expression of many kinds; and as bases for Kurdish challenge and mobilization. Like tribes and clans (see, e.g., Belge 2008), they have transformed the dyadic relationship between state and society into a triadic exchange of cooptation, bargaining, and contestation. Disproportionately high numbers of Kurds have in fact served in the Parliament; Barkey and Fuller estimate (1998) that as many as one-third of parliamentarians in Turkey have been of Kurdish origin at any given time. Awareness of this complex context is crucial for understanding the origins of the pro-Kurdish parties, the nature of their relationships with other political actors, and some of the opportunities and constraints the parties faced in trying to mobilize Kurds behind an ethnonational agenda. A diversity of possible relations meant that there were avenues of inclusion into the system (via political parties, for example) and, at the same time, that such avenues came with clear although dynamic rules of participation and exclusion. It meant that Kurdish politicians themselves belonged to many parties and that they held different ideas about how best to use the formal political system and to what purposes. It meant that pro-Kurdish activists had allies who were not necessarily ethnic Kurds; and that pro-Kurdish parties were only one party among many that were competing for the support of the ethnic Kurdish electorate.

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THE KU RDISH NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN THE 199 0S AND BE YOND

Pro-Kurdish parties are part of what I characterize as a Kurdish national movement. I refer variously to the people involved in such parties as activists, politician-activists, and, sometimes, as electoralists, to distinguish them from Kurdish activists who used non-electoral means of contention. By movement I mean an interactive field of actors sustaining a public, collective challenge to authorities based on common purposes and social solidarities (see, e.g., Tarrow 1998; Meyer 2007). Its participants seek to repeatedly and publicly demonstrate the movement’s worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment as a means of achieving their goals (Tilly 1999, 260–61). More precisely, the Kurdish national movement is an ethnopolitical movement that seeks to “impress ethnically defined interests on the agenda of the state” (Esman 1994, 27). However, categorizing the parties as part of a movement does not mean that the parties by themselves constitute a movement or that all organizations and actors within this movement worked harmoniously together (on the contrary, relations were often characterized by intense competition), or that all actors within this movement share exactly the same objectives. In this vein, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu (1991, 171–202), and, after him, Rogers Brubaker (1996), I also sometimes describe pro-Kurdish parties as part of a field of Kurdish dissent or resistance to emphasize the fact that they are part of a relational configuration consisting of many different organizations and actors, “each seeking to ‘represent’ the minority to its own putative members, to the host state, or to the outside world, each seeking to monopolize the legitimate representation of the group” (Brubaker 1996, 61). I use the term national movement because it consists of organizations and other actors who view themselves as working on behalf of—and for the reconstruction of—a Kurdish nation. Very roughly speaking, Kurdish movement advocates tend to promote three main goals: territorial authority (land and its resources), cultural freedom (cultural protection and perpetuation via the mechanism of democratization), and Kurdish nation-building. The idea that many Kurdish activists seek territorial authority does not necessarily mean they actively seek independence: many movement organizations would accept some form of administrative devolution or federation. These are also not necessarily goals shared by all

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constituent communities, even those who have supported the movement in various ways. Many ordinary people living in the Kurdish-majority regions of the country might well cease to mobilize against the state if they had more cultural freedom and economic development, for instance. Within the purview of these three sets of movement ambitions, more specific objectives of many movement organizations include the following: to make Kurmanji (the most widespread form of Kurdish spoken in Turkey) the standard language of written and spoken communication among the country’s Kurdish communities; to revise the ideological foundations of the state so as to redefine the country as multicultural and multi-national, with primacy of place for a Kurdish national narrative in the southeastern part of the country; to obtain fully guaranteed legal rights to publish, broadcast, and teach Kurdish in public schools and universities; to obtain fully guaranteed legal rights to form explicitly Kurdish cultural and political associations; direct negotiations between the Turkish government and the PKK; amnesty for the PKK and its fighters; substantial economic development in the Kurdish regions of the country; and administrative devolution and decentralization, or regional autonomy.

Movement Composition

In the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, the Kurdish national movement from Turkey was composed of many groups based in Turkey and outside the country. By far the largest and most influential organization was the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Established in the late 1970s, the PKK resurfaced after the 1980 military coup and launched a guerrilla war against the state in 1984; between 1984 and 2008 nearly 40,000 people died in the conflict. The PKK combined Kurdish ethnonationalism with radical left-wing politics (drawing variously on Marxist, Stalinist, and socialist frameworks depending on the period). In 1999 PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured by Turkish security forces and imprisoned for life, and there was a cessation in armed hostilities until 2004.5 PKK influence notwithstanding, throughout the 1990s the field of Kurdish resistance dramatically expanded, and the movement became increasingly pluralistic and professionalized. Hundreds of movement organizations worked in Turkey, Europe, and other parts of the world. 22

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They included human rights organizations, Kurdish media, political parties and unions, research institutes, and cultural associations. Although many of these organizations were loosely or closely associated with the PKK, this was not true of all of them: some maintained their distance and operated with relative autonomy (a prominent example is the Kurdish Institute of Paris). Pro-Kurdish political parties constituted some of the most important movement organizations in Turkey from 1990 onwards. Although there are overlaps, the sociological foundations and organizational structure of the Kurdish national movement from Turkey are different from those of the Kurdish movements in Iraq and Iran. In the 1980s and 1990s there was competition and warfare between the PKK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraq. Nonetheless, there are many important ideological and sociological links between the movements, and many activists and movement organizations (mostly in Europe and North America) work on behalf of Kurdish communities in multiple countries. One can write, therefore, both of a larger Kurdish national movement that encompasses Kurdish activists from multiple countries, and of Kurdish sub-movements that have maintained quite distinctive internal and external dynamics.

ORGANIZ ATION OF THE BOOK

Chapter 1, “Early Routes: Conditions for Kurdish Electoral Mobilization,” examines how Kurdish activists first used electoral politics to promote the cause of Kurdish cultural recognition and political reform. Although Kurds had participated in Turkey’s political parties for many years, they did not use them as a basis for collective mobilization and challenge until the 1960s and 1970s. The first part of the chapter analyzes the social and political factors that facilitated Kurdish electoral contention at this time. The second part of the chapter explores the form and impact of pro-Kurdish political mobilization in this era, primarily through case studies of Kurdish activist involvement in the Workers Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, or TİP) and in mayoral politics in the city of Diyarbakır in the late 1970s. Chapter 2, “New Collective Challengers: The Institutional Trajectory of Turkey’s First Pro-Kurdish Party,” analyzes how and why a party so closely identified with Kurdish nationalism came to enter the Turkish I NTRO D U C TI O N

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political system in 1990. I suggest that understanding how pro-Kurdish parties operated within the political system requires a shift away from categorizing them as purely ethnonational organizations and instead situating them between the Turkish center-left and the Kurdish national movement. Despite its reputation as a Kurdish nationalist party, the Halkın Emek Partisi (People’s Labor Party, or HEP) was not formed by the PKK but emerged from within the Turkish party system, something that provided it with both opportunities and challenges. While this dualism existed in pro-Kurdish electoral contentions of earlier decades, a number of important social and political transformations in both domestic and international spheres transformed the context in which pro-Kurdish activists were operating in the 1980s and 1990s and made electoral contention more influential than in the past. Chapter 3, “Resources of the System,” examines the kinds of statesupplied resources that politicians and parties could co-opt and use to promote a pro-Kurdish agenda between 1990 and 2008. The chapter first categorizes and describes the type of electoral resources available in Turkey and then discusses how opportunities to use them to promote proKurdish rights changed at the end of the 1990s. The last part of the chapter discusses how internal pressure on the parties from the PKK and the parties’ constituent base conditioned their decision making about how deeply to dip into their state-supplied resource pool. I argue that the parties tended to forgo some access and legal resources in order to maintain an identity as challengers. Chapter 4, “Characteristics of Coercion: Obstructing Access to Resources,” examines efforts made by Turkish officials and other stateassociated actors to prevent pro-Kurdish parties from accessing and deploying state resources. The first part of the chapter documents the different types of coercive methods used against the parties between 1990 and 2008 and then describes how the nature of coercion shifted after 1999 to an emphasis on juridical coercion. I argue that lack of coordination between different state institutions tended to give the parties more room to function than one would expect. Nonetheless, coercion worked quite effectively both to distance the parties from the mainstream and to reduce their effectiveness. I demonstrate this with two brief cases studies: an analysis of coercion and its impacts in the spring of 1994 and an assessment of juridical coercion against pro-Kurdish mayors between 2004 and 2007. Given the opportunities and constraints outlined in chapters 3 and 4, 24

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what did pro-Kurdish parties and elected officials do from within the system to further the movement? Chapter 5, “Producing Competing Truths,” examines how pro-Kurdish activists used electoral institutions and party politics between 1990 and 1994 as a multichannel broadcasting system for the promotion of an alternative “truth” to the narratives of security, violence, and identity perpetuated by the state and many Turkish elites. Through their use of party apparatus, the Parliament, public protest actions, and diplomatic networks, pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and party officials sought to delegitimize state policies and mobilize support for the movement and key parts of its agenda among multiple audiences. Their discourse and methods also reinforced the Kurdish parties’ credentials as challenger parties, even though some of their parliamentary deputies were now in fact part of the government. Chapter 6, “Creating a New Kurdish Subject,” turns to Kurdish parties’ efforts to use municipal government as a contentious platform from 1999 and 2007, when they controlled many cities and towns of the Kurdish-majority regions of the southeast. Although the parties were circumscribed in their debate about administrative and political reform, they could try to create a competing “governmentality” to that of the Turkish state and to create a new kind of Kurdish national subject. Specifically, they did this through modernist administrative projects as well as through symbolic politics, such as the promotion and officialization of the Kurdish language, “Kurdification” of public space, and use of spectacle (fairs and festivals). Such activities served simultaneously to challenge the norms and practices of the Turkish state and to create a nationalized Kurdish citizen who might legitimize and demand a new, specifically Kurdish representation. The final chapter, “Conclusions: Assessing a Challenger’s Impact,” evaluates the impacts of pro-Kurdish parties’ attempts to work within the system and offers a brief analysis of their electoral record over time.

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Friends, I declare myself a candidate of [Kurdish] patriotism. . . . I want to use this municipality for the benefit of patriots and to turn the municipality into a patriotic castle. —M EH DI Z ANA , Bekle Diyarbakır

1 EARLY ROUTES Conditions of Kurdish Electoral Mobilization

T

his chapter explores early efforts to use electoral politics to promote reforms concerning Kurds and to establish a new kind of Kurdish representation in Turkey. In the 1940s and 1950s, Kurds participated in politics but did not openly use their office to challenge state policies concerning ethnicity and governance in the southeast. In the 1960s and 1970s, in contrast, elected politicians began publicly complaining about the status of Kurds in Turkey, calling for the freedom to use the Kurdish language, for Kurds to be granted recognition as a distinct people, and for development and investment in the country’s notoriously poor eastern provinces. By 1979 Kurdish parliamentarians in Ankara had begun to directly contest the status quo, as most famously illustrated by cabinet minister Şerafettin Elçi, who told a Turkish news-

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paper in the spring of 1979: “There are Kurds in Turkey. I too am a Kurd” (Hürriyet, April 19, 1979). Why did politicians begin to use electoral politics to promote Kurdish rights in the 1960s and 1970s when they had not done so before? How did Kurdish partisans obtain elected office given ongoing Turkish state efforts to suppress Kurdish ethnopolitics? More generally, what conditions encourage challengers to use the formal political system to advance their causes in less than fully democratic systems? What explains the nature of such challenges and their strength or weakness? Usual depictions of Kurdish politics in these years tend to describe the new cycle of contention as a Kurdish nationalist revival or “reawakening” (e.g., McDowall 1997, 402; White 2000, 130–31). The problem with this revivalist schema is that it promotes the idea that a kind of preformed, preconstructed political figure—the Kurdish nationalist—burst into the Turkish political system when the conditions permitted it. Changing domestic and international factors are indeed important in explaining the timing of a new cycle of Kurdish national contention in Turkey, but they do little to help us understand the form or frames of Kurdish ethnopolitical activism in these years or how Kurdish nationalism in Turkey became defined. In contrast, I argue that the new presence of pro-Kurdish challengers in the Turkish political system resulted from dynamic exchanges between a young generation of Kurds and several key sets of players, namely, state institutions, political parties—especially those associated with the Turkish left—and social movement organizations. Challenge, cooperation, and engagement between these actors and an emerging cadre of Kurdish leaders provided new frames of reference, new allies and platforms for mobilization, new repertoires, and new resources to help activists obtain elected office. These exchanges deeply affected Kurdish activists’ conceptions of state-society relations in Turkey, changing the way they defined movement goals and their ideas about the ways these goals might be achieved. Such interactions were marked by several tensions that deeply affected the tenor and form of Kurdish ethnic activism. First, systemic social and political changes provided new opportunities for mobilization even as authorities clamped down on collective expressions of Kurdish identity. Second, left-wing political parties operating in Turkey after 1960 gave Kurdish political elites new opportunities to mobilize support for a Kurd-

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ist agenda. These parties, however, could not adequately represent the demands that arose from such mobilization. Third, in part because of this inadequacy in existing party representation, many new Kurdish social groups and social movement organizations entered the political field in the late 1960s and mid-1970s. This produced new resources for Kurdish electoral mobilization, but the pluralism and diversity of organizational life in this period obstructed a more coordinated pro-Kurdish electoral effort. The politics of Kurdish recognition, rights, and self-determination in Turkey should thus be seen as political ideas that have developed in interaction with other political players rather than as an independent or external phenomenon. Put another way, Kurdish activist-politicians became the kind of Kurdish advocates they did at least in part because of their cooperation and conflict with multi-ethnic actors and institutions. More generally, this case highlights how changes in external contexts affect ethnopolitical mobilization less by providing a clearly demarcated opening to be exploited by activists with clear or predefined goals and more by offering possibilities for new kinds of relationships. The complexities of these relationships—in this case, occurring as they did to both enlarge and restrict spaces for reform—profoundly shape challengers’ identities, their ideas about resistance, and their modes of contention. This chapter explores the nature of the new Kurdish challenger, highlighting some of the ways in which Kurdish electoral activism differed from the politics and dissent of earlier years. It examines systemic reforms and repression after the 1960 coup and some of the social and political changes that made new sorts of contention possible. It then looks at how inclusion within national political parties facilitated the growth of a particular kind of Kurdish national agenda in Turkey between 1960 and 1971, and how the diversification and autonomization of Kurdish electoral contention occurred between 1971 and 1980.

NE W CONTENDERS: A NEW STATE- KU RDISH REL ATIONSHIP

Kurdish activists’ use of electoral politics to challenge the state in the 1960s was a novel phenomenon in two distinct ways. First, this was a new use of electoral institutions by Kurds, who had always participated in Turkey’s political parties but until the late 1960s had largely refrained 28

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from using them to mount a collective public challenge to state policies. Prior to the 1960s, the mainstream Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Democrat Party (DP) were “the only game in town” (Barkey and Fuller 1998, 74), and these parties tended to work primarily with Kurdish local notables because they were capable of delivering rural bloc votes. Although a number of Kurdish politicians in these years held Kurdish national sympathies, they did not use their position within the CHP and the DP to mobilize publicly against the state. Working with established parties helped protect their class interests, offered an important means of personal and family advancement, and provided some legal protection (especially important for families who had suffered prosecution and internal deportation). Positions within the party and in the Parliament also allowed Kurdish representatives to divert resources toward home provinces. Second, Kurdish nationalists’ use of electoral institutions as a site of challenge was a new development in the history of Kurdish dissent in Turkey, differing in important ways from an earlier phase of Kurdish national activism that had taken place in the 1920s and 1930s. These differences were not just methodological but sociological and ideological. Kurdish ethnopolitical mobilization in the 1920s and 1930s had been led by rural notables and religious leaders, sometimes in conjunction or association with urban nationalist elites (Bozarslan 2007, 38–41). The goals of the rebels varied depending on the time and place; the Sheikh Said rebellion of 1925 and the Dersim uprising of 1937–38, for instance, were not fueled by the same sorts of grievances or demands and thus should not be viewed as part of a linear or collective nationalist effort. However, these rebellions can be roughly summarized as emphasizing political goals of autonomy and a return to a minimalist state-society relationship, or what Hechter refers to as indirect rule (2000, 35–55). When negotiations with the new Republican leadership failed to produce the desired results, armed uprisings ensued. In the 1960s and 1970s, in contrast, those advocating changes in the status of Kurds were socially and politically diverse; they included many Western-educated lawyers and doctors as well as authors and intellectuals, unionists, teachers, and students. The rise of this Kurdish “counterelite” (Brass 1991) was in many ways the predictable outcome of state policies that co-opted or muted traditional Kurdish religious and political leadership and provided new educational and economic opportunities to E AR LY RO UTE S

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younger Kurds. More educational opportunities, especially at universities in Ankara and Istanbul, helped create a new Kurdish leadership after 1960 that formed the “intellectual spearhead of Kurdish identity” (McDowall 1997, 403). Unlike their predecessors, the new Kurdish counter-elite did not seek indirect rule. Instead, it wanted to transform how the state used its material and symbolic resources and, indeed, to appropriate them. This change in tenor is sometimes described as a shift from political to cultural nationalism (see, e.g., Bozarslan 2007, 47–49), but it can also be seen as reflective of a different conception of state-society relations and new ideas about the state’s productive power. This is evident from activists’ emphasis during the period on development in the southeast and on the reconstruction of Kurdish culture. Socialist journals such as Yön (Direction) and Forum gave considerable space to what came to be referred to as the “problem of the East” (Doğu Meselesi). They called for dramatic social transformation, income redistribution, land reform, and more democratic governance. Such changes required more state involvement in the Kurdish-majority regions, not less. Similarly, the emphasis on Kurdish language and literacy spoke to a new level of social interventionism and to an effort to exert influence over processes that might produce a certain kind of citizen. Several short-lived periodicals (Dicle-Fırat; Deng; Roja Newé) published in the early 1960s were dedicated to the promotion of Kurdish culture and coverage of the east; these played an important role in initiating a more formal development of written Kurmanji in Turkey and offered alternative Kurdish historiographies to both Turkish nationalist doctrine and earlier versions of Kurdish nationalism (Bozarslan 2003, 34–39). The new generation of Kurdish challengers was thus quintessentially modernist in that these activists saw the state and public institutions (such as media) as instruments for societal transformation. The rehabilitation of Kurdish culture required seizing these instruments from state and state-associated proponents of Kemalism.

STATE-AC TIVIST INTER AC TIONS: LIBER ALIZ ATION AND REPRESSION

Political reforms that took place after the 1960 military coup in Turkey provided new “opportunity structures” (Tarrow 1998) that permitted 30

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many different opposition groups to mobilize for the first time, but they also, in some ways, reduced the space for Kurdish ethnopolitical activism. The 1960 coup removing the DP from power and the passage of the new 1961 constitution led to fractures within the ruling elite and the granting of new rights and freedoms that expanded the range of permissible politics. The 1961 constitution, modeled on the European Convention on Human Rights, introduced a bill of civil rights, permitting labor unions for the first time and a substantially greater degree of political expression. An independent constitutional court and a more independent judiciary were created. Universities gained nearly full autonomy, allowing faculty and students to organize in new and diverse ways. Similarly, a relaxation of media laws led to the proliferation of a wide range of periodicals and newspapers. An important portion of them espoused pro-labor and socialist views. These outlets overlapped with political parties and unions, producing new fields of dissent. Electoral reforms were also important. Prior to the 1960 coup, parties earned seats in the Turkish parliament through a winner-take-all system in which the party receiving the most number of votes in a particular province was given all the seats. After 1961 this system was changed to a proportional representation system (the d’Hont system), but parties still had to win a particular number of minimum votes to receive parliamentary seats. In 1965 this was again changed, this time to a “national remainder system,” in which if a party failed to reach the necessary minimum quotient, its votes were transferred to a national pool (rather than being given to the parties that exceeded the quotient) and then redistributed on a national basis (Hale 1980, 404–5). This meant that small parties could now win seats in the Parliament for the first time. These sorts of systemic changes encouraged collective action by new political players such as students and workers. However, Kurdish electoral activism was also shaped during these years by repeated encounters with the coercive arm of the state. While the 1960 coup relaxed some laws, it also brought more extensive military involvement in the government and the application of new policies designed to circumscribe Kurdish activism and cultural expression. The National Security Council, which included many top-ranking military officials, was founded in 1962 to “advise” the government on matters of internal and external security, and military leaders, right-wing political parties, and the new National Intelligence Organization (MİT) maintained a vocal campaign against leftism and E AR LY RO UTE S

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“Kurdism.” In 1960, fifty-five Kurdish tribal leaders and landlords were forcibly removed from their homes in southeastern Turkey. They were sent into “internal exile” in western Turkey under a new law that decreed landowners deemed responsible for “destructive activity against the state” could be forcibly moved and their lands claimed.1 The 1960s also saw more rigorous efforts at Turkification and toponymic renaming strategies. As Kerem Öktem writes (2008), around 36 percent of all villages in Turkey received new names in the 1960s and 1970s. In southeastern and eastern provinces, from 44 to 91 percent of names were changed, depending on the province (Öktem 2008, par. 44). Government censuses that had previously published figures of Kurdishlanguage speakers no longer did so after 1965, reinforcing the official position that the country’s citizenry consisted only of ethnic Turks. Repression affecting Kurdish ethnopolitics took two main forms: targeted repression of Kurdish ethnopolitical “entrepreneurs” and more generalized repression against Kurdish populations in the southeast. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Turkish authorities regularly detained and imprisoned Kurdish intellectuals, activists, students, and politicians involved in left-wing political parties. Such targeted repression facilitated the creation of new leadership cadres by creating new solidarities and networks that helped bridge class and ideological divisions that had impeded collective mobilization in earlier years. One of the earliest and most important examples of this occurred in December 1959, when fifty Kurdish professionals, students, and intellectuals were detained and imprisoned after they sent a letter protesting an anti-Kurdish statement by a member of the Turkish parliament. One of the prisoners died, and those remaining became known as the “49-ers” (kırk-dokuzlular). Many Kurdish activists would come to describe the event as a formative moment in their political development. Author and activist Musa Anter, among those jailed, describes in his memoir (1991, 168–69) how the divisions in the group between the rightists and the leftists were put aside in the interest of defying authorities. A day prior to a government census, for instance, inmates gathered and “debated whether, upon being asked their mother tongue, they should answer Turkish or Kurdish.” From the Right to the Left, we decided that we would write that our mother tongue was Kurdish. Out of sheer obstinacy, when asked about [whether we 32

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knew] foreign languages, we were going to write Turkish. The next day at the appointed hour, a captain and a few officers came to the prison. We were gathered, and they began to write about us. We acted as we had decided. We had them write that our mother tongue was Kurdish and our foreign language, Turkish.

Throughout the 1960s activists were regularly detained and often sentenced to jail. In 1963, twenty-three Kurdish intellectuals were arrested and accused of trying to found a Kurdish state (see, e.g., Milliyet, December 18, 1963; Cumhuriyet, June 29, 1963); these included Musa Anter, quoted above, and Kurdish activist and publisher Edip Karahan. Karahan spent two years in jail from 1963 to 1965; nine months in a Diyarbakır prison in 1967, and one and a half years starting in 1971 (Edip Karahan’ın Anısına 1977, 8). Kemal Burkay, a politician and poet born in the Dersim/ Tunceli region, spent four months in an Ankara jail in 1966 for an article he wrote on the Kurdish question for the socialist journal Yeni Akış. He was arrested again in 1969 and tortured. Along with his imprisonment in 1959, Musa Anter was jailed in 1963 and for three years after the 1971 coup by memorandum. Levels of targeted repression increased after the 1971 coup, when a group of Turkish generals accused the civilian government of driving the country into “anarchy, fratricidal strife, and social and economic unrest” (Ahmad 1993, 148) and forced Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel to resign. Hundreds of party leaders and activists were arrested and sentenced to jail. Politician-activists such as Kemal Burkay, Musa Anter, and Tarık Ziya Ekinci spent more than a year in prison. Generalized repression targeted Kurdish communities in the southeast more generally and indiscriminately, producing new grievances and helping create a more highly politicized electorate. Violence by gendarmerie “commando” forces became widespread in the late 1960s, and some Kurdish villagers came under attack (see, e.g., Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi 1988, 2131). The gendarmerie was responsible for policing rural areas, and by the late 1960s had been infiltrated by rightwing ultra-nationalists, as had much of the police force. Frustration over the lack of control of the commando forces contributed to decisions by some Kurdish leadership to form their own groups and work outside legal channels (see, e.g., Burkay 2002, 209). Legal and juridical repression also affected many different groups and E AR LY RO UTE S

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communities across the southeast, politicizing ethnic differences between Kurds and Turks by instituting different sets of laws and norms in different parts of the country. Martial law was imposed on 26 April 1971 in Diyarbakır and ten other provinces, mostly in the southeast; the New York Times (July 2, 1971) reported that Justice Minister İsmail Arar had told the Turkish parliament that such emergency measures were necessary because “separatist agitation among the nation’s Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey had raised a grave threat to internal security.” In December 1978 martial law was again proclaimed in thirteen provinces, including many in the Kurdish region of the country, after communal and political clashes in Maraş that killed thirty-one people and injured hundreds. It was renewed in 1979 in the southeastern provinces despite protests by many eastern deputies that it was unfairly targeting their home provinces and that leaders in Ankara were exaggerating the level of violence in the Kurdish areas of the country. Such generalized repression had at least two main effects. First, it contributed to the politicization and mobilization of broader sectors of the population in the southeast. Second, it contributed to the splintering of the Kurdish movement from the Turkish left by creating regionally and ethnically based grievances: Kurds in the southeast would now face legal and political conditions (restrictions and attacks) distinct from those in other parts of the country.

SOCIAL TR ANSFORMATIONS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Sociological transformations in the 1950s and 1960s brought societal diversification, increased politicization, and more mobilized voters. More than a million people migrated from rural areas to work in cities in the 1950s, and by 1960 Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara were growing by 10 percent a year (Zurcher 1993, 237). In the southeast the population rose sharply. From 1945 through 1964 the population of the province of Diyarbakır almost doubled; its highest-ever growth rate came from 1965 to 1970, when its official population increased from about 476,000 people to about 581,000 (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2000, 43). Literacy rates also dramatically increased; in 1960, for example, 70 percent of the male

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population of Diyarbakır province was classified as illiterate; by 1975 this had dropped to 44 percent (female illiteracy had declined as well, but as of 1975, 84 percent of women in Diyarbakır province were still classified as illiterate; Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2000, 25 and 47). Such changes altered class structures and patterns of social relations throughout the country, especially in the southeast, where landed elites, often supported by central state institutions, had maintained substantial power. During this time the sociological profiles of Kurds involved in political parties began to become more varied. They included more politicians whose social capital lay in their professional reputations or longterm party service than with traditional resources such as land ownership or family name (Dorronsoro 2005a). Industrialization and the breakdown of traditional labor patterns helped produce a more diverse society and led to the formation of new social organizations that became important forces in economic and political life. In particular, the 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of important socialist and labor movements (see, e.g., Mello 2006; Aydınoğlu 2007) that offered an emerging generation of Kurdish intellectuals and activists new modes of organization and mobilization, new discursive frames, new conceptions of the state-society relationship, and new allies. Such movements played a particularly important role in reorienting Kurdish dissent in Turkey around Marxist, socialist, and left-wing frames of economic redistribution, class struggle, and anti-imperialism. Socialist and left-wing student groups, unions, cultural associations, periodicals and newspapers, and other social movement organizations also allowed young activists to gain political experience and social capital outside of the established political parties. Class-based and socialist frames presented new discourses of universal-izable struggle as well as chances to redefine local struggles in novel ways. As Bozarslan writes (2003, 38), Marxism provided a burgeoning Kurdish nationalist elite with a framework “in which to break out of isolation, giving the Kurds the status of a nation while at the same time allowing them a place in the universal history.” The 1958 overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq, revolution and uprising in Algeria and Latin America, and the student movements of the 1960s encouraged a different phase of contention and helped create an atmosphere in which dramatic political change seemed possible. The return of Mustafa Barzani to Iraq in 1958, the

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alliance (albeit short-lived) between Iraqi President Abdul Karim Qasim and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, and Barzani’s subsequent rebellion all offered inspiration and fresh models of state-Kurdish relations. The transmission of Kurdish-language radio, Kurdish books and news from Iraqi Kurdistan, and the flow of people back and forth across a still porous border were all important in helping to mobilize people and heightening a sense of distinctive Kurdish community. In December 1965, a prominent Kurdish tribal leader, Faik Bucak, founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (KDP-Turkey), a Turkish branch of the Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party. Although relatively few activists actively supported the KDP-Turkey, in part because of its conservative socioeconomic policies, it contributed to the development of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and inspired a number of organizational offshoots. Moreover, despite ideological and class-based differences (which were sometimes more apparent than real), Kurdish activists in both the socialist and nationalist currents could sometimes work quite closely together, and they lent each other support (see, e.g., Burkay 2002, 183; Anter 1991, 211–14).

WORKING IN THE SYSTEM: INCLUSION , MOBILIZ ATION , AND E XCLUSION

Kurdish politician-activists in the 1960s and 1970s were profoundly shaped by their interaction with Turkish political parties and with social movements, especially those of the left. Interaction with parties for the most part took the form of Kurdish activist participation in both mainstream and alternative parties. It was also an exchange marked by a process of ethnic differentiation and, after the 1971 coup, exclusion due to party closures and to Turkish parties’ inability to incorporate Kurdish activists’ demands. Kurdish activist electoralism in these decades can be divided into two main phases. The first phase, from 1959 until the 1971 coup by memorandum, is marked by close association between Turkish leftists and Kurdish politicians, intellectuals, and activists; by the relative coherence of their organizing, framing, and demands; and by an emphasis on political participation in national politics. In the second phase, from the early 1970s until the 1980 coup, left-wing and socialist Kurdish politician-activists mostly worked outside of national political parties. Those advocating 36

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Kurdish rights at the national level tended to be deputies with more economically conservative views (although they might be quite radical on questions of Kurdish nationalism), and left-wing Kurdish electoralism took place much more at the level of local politics. This expansion of Kurdish activism into the sphere of municipal governance was buttressed by the regionalization, pluralization, and growing independence of Kurdish social movement organizations, which provided a new basis of support for left-wing, pro-Kurdish candidates running for local office.

NATIONAL POLITIC S IN THE 19 60S: THE Y TP AND THE WORKERS PART Y OF TU RKE Y

Some influential Kurdish politicians who had been members of the centerright Democrat Party continued to be active in politics after the DP was closed in the 1960 coup and to work to improve conditions in the Kurdishmajority provinces. One of the most important such figures was Yusuf Azizoğlu, born in 1917 in the town of Silvan in Diyarbakır province and educated at Istanbul University’s medical school. He came from a prominent, notable family exiled to western Turkey in the 1930s and 1940s (Ünlü and Aydın 2005, 128–29). Azizoğlu served several terms in the DP in the 1950s and was one of the founders of the New Turkey Party (Yeni Türkiye Partisi, or YTP), established by a group of former DP deputies in February 1961 (Ahmad and Ahmad, 1976, 229). Azizoğlu was reelected to Parliament as a member of the YTP in 1961, 1965, and 1969, and served as minister of health and social services in the İnönü government from 1962 to 1963. The New Turkey Party was a center-right party with a strong emphasis on development, and in the 1961 legislative elections it received 13.7 percent of the national vote and sixty-five seats in the Parliament (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2004). The party was particularly popular in the provinces of the east and southeast, receiving, for instance, 54 percent of the vote in Bingöl, 41 percent in Diyarbakır, and 38 percent in Van in the 1961 elections. This was more than any other party received that year in those provinces. The party became identified with “easternism” because of Azizoğlu’s personal history, because of his efforts on behalf of the fiftyfive “exiled” Kurdish aghas (discussed above), and in particular because of his determined efforts to bring infrastructure and development to the country’s eastern provinces. E AR LY RO UTE S

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However, the New Turkey Party was not a “Kurdish” party (as evinced from the fact that it attracted substantial support in the 1961 elections from Turkish-majority provinces in many parts of Turkey) and did not serve as a vehicle for broader Kurdish mobilization. Although Azizoğlu was personally popular (and faced accusations of “Kurdism” and treason from other members of the cabinet who eventually forced him to resign his cabinet post), the party was dominated by aghas and local notables, which limited its class appeal. In addition, the party leadership did not use its early prominence in the Parliament to directly challenge official discourse concerning Kurds and their status in Turkey, something that angered some young Kurdish activists (see, e.g., Burkay 2002, 148). Rather than the YTP, the most important challenger party of the 1960s was the Workers Party of Turkey (TİP), founded in 1961 by a dozen trade union leaders. The party provided a young generation of Kurdish politicians and activists with material resources, access, and allies, all of which were important in developing social networks, building support for reforms, and providing platforms for articulating new Kurdish national demands in the public realm.2 TİP promoted a democratic socialist platform that called for peaceful change to a “non-capitalist path of development,” the dismantling of a “feudal” socioeconomic system, especially in the country’s eastern provinces, and an end to external exploitation of Turkey and Turkish workers by Western countries. An internal socialist revolution through popular elections could be accomplished, TİP’s leaders argued, only if Turkey’s urban working class and its rural population worked together. In the 1965 national legislative elections, TİP received 3.3 percent of the national vote and, benefiting from the new national remainder electoral laws, sent fifteen members to the Turkish parliament. It was the first socialist party in Turkey’s history to gain parliamentary representation. Among its new representatives were four men from the provinces of Kars, Malatya, Urfa, and Diyarbakır (Diken 2007, 57), all of which had sizable Kurdish populations. Many Kurds joined TİP because of its promises of socioeconomic reform and its more open stance on the Kurdish issue. As Burkay writes of this era (2002, 183), “We Kurdish socialists took up both the national question and, at the same time, its class dimensions.” The party attracted the support of Kurdish intellectuals as well as workers, poor villagers, small business owners and craftsmen, lower-ranking civil servants, and students. Prominent TİP members included Tarık Ziya Ekinci, a doctor 38

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elected to the Parliament from Diyarbakır, as well as Kurdish intellectuals and advocates such as Musa Anter, Kemal Burkay, Naci Kutlay, and Mehdi Zana, all of whom served in leadership roles in the national and local party administrations (see, e.g., Aren 1993, 261–71). The party made concerted efforts to reach rural and urban voters in the southeast, a difficult endeavor for a socialist secular party, and by the mid-1960s it had opened branches in Antep, Diyarbakır, Malatya, and Elazığ. Party members also opened cultural associations in many cities (Burkay 2002, 154–59). TİP incorporated many reform-minded Kurds into the Turkish political system and served as an incubator for Kurdish mobilization. The party’s limited parliamentary representation and lack of powerful allies meant that it could have little influence over actual legislation. TİP’s real impact, especially for Kurdish politics, lay in its effects on political culture and in the ways it helped construct new collective subjectivities, or, as Brian Mello puts it (2006, 19–21), new communities based on collective answers to questions about “who we are” and “what kind of world we want to live in.”

THE ROLE OF TI˙ P IN KU RDISH AC TIVIST MOBILIZ ATION

TİP facilitated and shaped a new generation of Kurdish electoral activism in a number of important ways. First, it provided a young generation of Kurdish politicians with an institutional umbrella under which they could form close bonds and develop political capital. Prioritization of the Kurdish issue within TİP helped create the nucleus of Kurdish activist leadership. Within the party, a Kurdish group formed that became known as the doğulular (easterners); it included a core group of people who would become some of the leading proponents of Kurdish rights in Turkey. As Gündoğan notes (2005, 116), the construction of an “easterners” group within the party was not an intrinsic (natural) development but a response to the way Kurdish socialists were viewed within the party in terms of both their ethnicity and their prioritization of Kurdish concerns. Anter, who joined TİP in 1963, writes (2001, 214): There was always a difference of opinion between these [Turkish socialist] friends and me. Of course, this difference was about the Kurdish problem. E AR LY RO UTE S

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They would say on this topic: just to be a leftist in Turkey brought a lot of trouble to oneself; if one adds the Kurdish problem to this, it would be so difficult that nothing could be accomplished [bu işin altından cıkılamıyacak]. The main argument rested on the premise that, if someday a socialist Turkey was successfully established, then Kurdish rights would be extended. As for me, I defended the premise that the Kurdish problem was Turkey’s basic problem, and that if this problem wasn’t taken up at the outset, no other problem could be solved, and further, that the dynamic Kurdish national potential could not be achieved.

Second, TİP played an important role in challenging Turkish state and nationalist discourse concerning the east and in linking Kurdish national demands to a socialist agenda. In speeches, party programs, and other distributed material, the party’s Kurdish and Turkish leadership called Kurds by name and drew attention to both the economic and political problems they encountered. The party’s 1964 program included a section that read: Parallel to the region’s economic backwardness is the backwards social and cultural circumstances faced by our citizens of this region. Particularly those of our citizens who speak Kurdish and Arabic, and those from the Alevi mezhep [denomination], encounter discrimination because of these circumstances. (110–11)

TİP’s leadership became increasingly critical of Turkish policies towards Kurds and the east throughout the decade, and a resolution passed at its Fourth Congress in 1970 stated conclusively that there was a Kurdish people (halk) living in the eastern part of Turkey who were the victims of “repression, terror, and policies of assimilation” (cited in Aren 1993, 71–72). The party’s popular literature also reiterated the idea that Kurds constituted a distinct people who suffered discrimination. A handbill published in the eastern Ağrı province in 1966, for instance, proclaimed the party’s intention to work on behalf of the people living in “backward eastern Anatolia” and was addressed to Kurds, Laz, and Circassians, as well as Turks. The sheet asserted further that it considered all minority groups equal partners in Turkey, and that the party opposed discrimination against such minorities (Landau 1974, 145–46). Radio speeches by Kurd40

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ish members of TİP also broadcast critiques of class relations and commented on the lack of assistance to people in the area (Ekinci 2004, 277). Third, TİP facilitated grassroots mobilization and community outreach. Its status as a legal party (as distinct from other illegal or underground organizations) gave it considerable advantage in mobilization and recruitment. During elections, TİP candidates campaigned on behalf of the party, visiting villagers, giving speeches in Kurdish, and promoting reforms (Anter 1991, 217). Party members organized teach-ins and classes. The party—or, more precisely, Kurdish leaders in its eastern offices— played a particularly important role in organizing the 1967 Eastern Meetings or demonstrations (Doğu Mitingleri). Spearheaded by TİP’s regional offices in the southeast (see, e.g., Burkay 2002, 205), the demonstrations were held in Diyarbakır, Silvan, Siverek, Batman, Tunceli, Ağrı, and Ankara, and attracted between 3,000 and 10,000 people per gathering. Framed as a protest campaign against economic underdevelopment and lack of democracy, they constituted the first peaceful mass Kurdish protests in Republican history. They introduced western-born Kurds to conditions in southeast Anatolia that they had not witnessed previously first-hand, and they gave Kurdish politicians and intellectuals an opportunity to share their ideas with ordinary people in a public forum. Kurdish was widely spoken, and some participants called for Kurdishlanguage rights. The meetings attracted the attention of both sympathetic and hostile observers and brought together a broad array of activists, politicians, and ordinary people (Watts 2006; Gündoğan 2005; Beşikçi 1992). Burkay writes (2002, 202) that the demonstrations: created a new wave of excitement, opening the way for a “resuscitation” and increased consciousness. . . . In a way, the Kurdish people’s walls of silence were broken down with these meetings. And this time it wasn’t by taking up a rifle and climbing into the mountains as had been usually done in the past, it was being done through the political process and in a public manner.

ETHNIFICATION AND AUTONOMY: ELEC TOR ALISM IN THE 1970S

Kurdish electoral activism in the 1960s was characterized by ethnically integrated, national-level collaboration between Turkish and Kurdish socialists. Socialist or left-leaning Kurds were, furthermore, clearly domiE AR LY RO UTE S

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nant among Kurdish nationalists active in electoral politics. The 1970s, in contrast, saw a splintering of the Turkish socialist and Kurdish political agendas, a growing ethnification of Kurdish national discourse from those activist politicians remaining in national parties, an expansion of the Kurdish field of challenge into regional and local political efforts, and growing movement autonomy. The regionalization, pluralization, and growing independence of Kurdish movement organizations provided a new basis of support for Kurdish activists running for office at the local level, especially in urban areas. The unraveling of the relationship between Kurdish activists and the Turkish left wing occurred for a number of reasons. As discussed above, government repression and paramilitary activity against Kurds in the southeast in the late 1960s and 1970s helped produce a sense of difference and discrimination that accentuated the longstanding division within TİP between those who prioritized a socialist agenda and those who wanted to prioritize the (Kurdish) national struggle. The government decreed Kurdish-language imports or publications illegal in 1967 (McDowall 1997, 408). In the wake of the 1971 coup, two dozen TİP leaders were arrested for “Kurdish propaganda” and for “supporting communism” (see, e.g., Cumhuriyet, March 13, 1971). In addition, electoral laws were again changed in 1968, making it more difficult for small parties to gain representation in the Parliament, although TİP did successfully elect fifteen candidates as independents in 1969. Furthermore, both left- and right-wing political parties employed an increasingly Turkist (ethnified) discourse in the wake of the Cyprus dispute between Greece and Turkey (see, e.g., Dorronsoro 2009), making it more difficult for Kurdish activists to find room in such parties. In the late 1960s some Kurds began breaking with Turkish socialist ranks to form new organizations that focused on Kurdish cultural and political issues. Among the earliest and most important was the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural “Hearths” (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları, or DDKO), founded in 1969 by a group of Kurdish university students in Ankara. Students and activists went on to establish branches in other cities, including Istanbul and Diyarbakır. Although each branch was independent and had different bylaws, they shared common goals that revolved around Kurdish cultural development and community building as well as combating official policies, for instance, through educational seminars. In Diyarbakır, many Kurdish leaders within TİP joined the 42

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DDKO, in part to try to maintain control over Kurdish organizational life. Like TİP, the DDKO was closed in the 1971 coup, and many of its leaders were put on trial. After the coup and throughout the 1970s, legal and underground leftwing Kurdish organizations became more assertive and influential in local and regional politics. The growth of more autonomous Kurdish organizations provided new resources for electoralists, allowing some Kurdish activists to campaign for local election without the support of mainstream parties. This facilitated the emergence of more explicit Kurdish national discourse and a new prioritization of local concerns. TİP was re-founded in May 1975 and maintained the support of a number of prominent Kurdish politicians (most notably Tarık Ziya Ekinci). However, it was a marginal political force compared to the 1960s, and many Kurdish activists who did rejoin its ranks (e.g., Kemal Burkay, Mehdi Zana) worked at the same time within parallel, competing, and often illegal organizations (see, e.g., Diken 2007, 62–63; Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi 1988). The DDKO were reorganized in mid-1974 as the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Dernekleri, or DDKD). Other more nationalistic groups emerged as well, operating both underground and legally (often through journals): the Kurdistan Socialist Party of Turkey (Türkiye Kürdistanı Sosyalist Partisi, or TKSP), for instance, was illegal but closely connected to the legal Özgürlük Yolu (Freedom Road) journal, published regularly from 1975 to January 1979. Its contributors argued fiercely with writers in another important Kurdish journal, Rızgari. The illegal Kurdistan National Liberators (Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşçuları, or KUK) was also active in some parts of the southeast.3 It advocated the formation of a socialist Kurdistan and clashed in the late 1970s with the newly formed PKK.

KU RDISH ELEC TOR ALISM IN NATIONAL PARTIES IN THE 1970S

With Kurdish socialists largely absent from the national political arena, those who remained to articulate a Kurdish rights agenda for the most part did not challenge Turkish established class interests but focused more on the ethnic question from within the mainstream parties. Although E AR LY RO UTE S

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relatively isolated compared to national-level electoralists of the 1960s, these Kurdish parliamentarians championed an increasingly explicit Kurdish recognition and provided local Kurdish politicians with access to Ankara. In a departure from the earlier efforts of left-wing Kurdish parliamentarians, who had largely located discussion of Kurds within frames of socialism and underdevelopment, these Kurdish politicians used their access to the media and their status in Parliament to address the sensitive question of ethnicity. This ethnification of the “problem of the East” was an important discursive shift. Şerafettin Elçi, a deputy elected from Mardin and originally a member of the center-right Adalet Partisi (AP, or Justice Party), was one of the most important such politicians. After he quit the Justice Party in 1977, he joined the Republican People’s Party and became minister of public works in Bülent Ecevit’s government, serving from 1978 to the end of the government’s tenure in late 1979. Elçi was a supporter of the “national” (rather than socialist) strand within the Kurdish movement, had been one of the “49ers” detained in 1959, and was involved in the founding of underground KDP-Turkey. Elçi engaged in high-profile information politics that attracted considerable public attention. In the summer of 1978 he led news reporters on an eight-day tour of seven provinces of the southeast, calling for an end to “fascist terror” and for more development and resources in the region (see, e.g., Hürriyet, July 23, 1978). A reporter wrote that he was greeted like a “leader of the east.” In the spring of 1979 he became the subject of an extensive public debate after a trip to London for medical treatment during which it was rumored he had met with Iraqi Kurdish leaders. This, along with a speech by CHP leader Ecevit arguing that “internal separatists” posed an increasing threat to the country’s security, prompted Elçi to make a series of increasingly explicit statements about Kurdish identity. Front page news headlines quoted him as saying that he accepted the existence of ethnic groups in Turkey and that if there were no Kurds in Turkey then the problem of “Kurdism” (kürtcülük) would not be on the agenda (Milliyet, April 18, 1979). In response to accusations of separatism, he stated: “Separatism and the Kurdish problem are being talked about in Turkey, so it isn’t possible to deny the existence of Kurds. There are Kurds in Turkey. I am also Kurdish. What is separatism, really? Is someone a separatist if he says ‘I am Kurdish, there are Kurds in Turkey?’ Or is separatism the desire to found a separate Kurdish state?” (Hürriyet, April 19, 1979). 44

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Regional and domestic events propelled the Kurdish issue to the forefront of the public agenda, contributing to the development of a sense of ethno-regional difference between some Kurdish parliamentarians and those from other parts of the country. In particular, debates concerning the extension of martial law in the east and southeast (imposed in some provinces in December 1978) caused bitter debate within the ruling CHP over security and economic conditions in the eastern provinces. Citing an increase in separatist activity, the National Security Council voted in the spring of 1979 to extend martial law to nineteen provinces, including Tunceli, Diyabarkır, Mardin, and Hakkari. Although the Parliament and CHP’s leadership approved the extension, a number of Kurdish deputies from CHP publicly expressed their opposition (see, e.g., Hürriyet, April 26, 1979). Independent Kurdish deputies and those from CHP and the Justice Party found themselves increasingly at odds with party policy, leading to sharp internal debates that sometimes spilled over into the public realm. PKK attacks on Kurdish tribal leaders in late 1979 attracted more attention, as did the 1979 Kurdish uprisings against the new Iranian regime led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Coverage of the PKK’s early activities publicized PKK demands for an independent Kurdish state (see, e.g., Hürriyet, August 2, 1979). News accounts clearly highlighted the ethnonational dimension of the group’s attacks and refrained from characterizing them as the work of bandits or terrorists, as occurred in the early 1980s. In the midst of the Iranian-Kurdish fighting, two Kurdish members of Parliament, CHP’s Diyarbakır representative İskan Azizoğlu and independent Mardin deputy Nurettin Yılmaz, called on the government to recognize the existence of Kurds and change its policies (Hürriyet, August 30, 1979). Ecevit reprimanded them, and some members of Parliament called for an investigation against them.

LOCAL ELEC TOR AL AC TIVISM: THE ELEC TION OF MEHDI Z ANA IN 1977

In the second half of the 1970s, Kurdish electoral activism expanded into local politics. This can be attributed to the inability of the national parties to advance the concerns of Kurdish activists, to the High Election Commission’s barring of Kurdish nationalist and smaller socialist parties E AR LY RO UTE S

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from participation in national elections (see Özgürlük Yolu, May 24, 1977, 80), and to the growth of social movement organizations that could offer Kurdish activists alternative (non-party) sources of support and voter mobilization (Dorronsoro and Watts 2009). Municipal government was weak in the 1960s, with very limited finances and responsibilities, but the mayor’s office could still constitute a valuable platform for the advancing of political agendas. This was particularly true by the late 1970s, when deadlock between the ruling CHP and AP and the politicization of all realms of political and professional life led to the retraction of the state in some parts of the country and to growing local autonomy. In the December 1977 local elections, a number of Kurdish activists ran for local office. Unlike in the June 1977 national elections, in which Kurdish cultural and political organizations supported the center-left CHP as the “lesser of two evils” against the center-right Justice Party, in the local elections they encouraged voters and activists to directly support Kurdish activist candidates regardless of whether they were running for CHP or as independents (see Özgürlük Yolu, May 1977, 3–17 and October 1977, 11–14). Candidates who openly advocated Kurdish recognition and rights won office in Diyarbakır, Urfa, and Batman. Most noteworthy was the election of independent candidate Mehdi Zana as mayor of the city of Diyarbakır. His campaign and tenure in office constitutes one of the most important early examples of the use of local government to promote a Kurdish rights agenda and to assert a new kind of local representation. Zana, a working-class tailor from the town of Silvan in Diyarbakır province, had long been an important part of left-wing and Kurdish activist circles in Diyarbakır. A member of TİP in Silvan in the 1960s, he served in administrative positions in the party’s national office and Diyarbakır branch, and he helped organize the eastern meetings of 1967. In the 1970s he was an important contributor to Özgürlük Yolu and maintained links to left-wing Kurdish national associations. He rejoined TİP in the 1970s after it was reestablished but broke with the organization before his election.4 Zana had a local and regional reputation as a charismatic “child of the people” (halk çocuğu), as an activist, and as a local leader. He was known as an unabashed Kurdish patriot (yurtsever) and spoke openly about the need to defend Kurdish culture and community. His election manifesto, published in the local newspaper Yeni Yurt, emphasized these themes, with Zana promising he would “support the struggle of our people against 46

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imperialism, fascism, colonialism, and feudal reactionaries” and “expose the deceitful tricks being played on our labor, our culture, our homeland; in short, on our existence” (Yeni Yurt, August 25, 1977, 1). Running as an independent candidate and without the support of TİP or the DDKD (which fielded another candidate against him), Zana won approximately 35 percent of the vote and became the city’s mayor in December 1977. Key to his election was the fact that he was able to mobilize the support of a number of Kurdish national organizations and of a local grassroots network that included the group associated with Özgürlük Yolu, some tribes, students, and some union activists (although many of the most important unions did not endorse him). By attracting votes from these different sources, Zana was able to break the traditional hold of the national parties and local notables over local politics (Dorronsoro and Watts 2009). The office of mayor brought Zana and the Kurdish movement new visibility, allies, and opportunities. Zana and his staff used Kurdish in the municipality itself and in city council meetings (something Zana was charged with in his court trial following the 1980 coup). He used his access to high-ranking officials, particularly military officials, to directly confront them on their Kurdish policies. He used his ties to Kurdish activists and organizations in Europe to help build the foundations of a transnational Kurdish aid network that would be important for the movement then and later. He made a number of trips to Europe, visiting Stockholm, Germany, and France, where he was hosted by Kurdish organizations. In 1979, several socialist-run cities in France sent the city of Diyarbakır fifteen new buses and trucks, a gift that made national news when some French writers described the buses as a gift to “Diyarbakir, capital of Turkish Kurdistan.” Turkish newspapers ran front-page photos of some of the buses with the words “Kurdistan Libre!” (Free Kurdistan) scrawled across their back windows (see, e.g., Hürriyet, December 4, 1979). Zana’s use of the municipality as a “castle” of Kurdish nationalism was nonetheless constrained in at least two important ways. First, the municipality possessed little legal authority and very few resources. The city was in a permanent state of debt: Zana writes (1991, 241) that the city’s monthly income at that time was 14 million Turkish lira, but it spent nearly double that each month. Second, Zana was relatively isolated because he did not have the backing of a unified political party. This meant he was vulnerable to political pressures from a number of sources. Many experienced memE AR LY RO UTE S

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bers of the city staff resigned when he took office. The police sometimes harassed him, and army generals and the governor’s office ignored him at official ceremonies. Relations with key bureaucrats, such as the regional highway director, were strained, making it difficult to proceed on infrastructural improvements. He also encountered serious challenges from unions and some groups within the Kurdish movement. Despite being associated with the working class, his administration faced constant strikes, instigated at least in part by pro-Kurdish and unionist actors who had formerly supported him and were now engaged in a bitter struggle with him for control of the municipality. In the summer of 1979 a crippling garbage strike flooded the city with waste and become a topic of national controversy. Zana’s relations with Özgürlük Yolu (particularly with its chairman, Kemal Burkay), which were already strained by his decision to run for office without the consultation of the group, soon broke over quarrels concerning the administration of the municipality (Baştürk and Hasar, interview, 2007; Zana 1991). By the summer of 1979 the PKK had also begun military operations in urban centers, including Diyarbakır, killing and injuring several people there. After less than two years in office, Zana was arrested in the military coup of September 12, 1980. Following the coup, municipal governments and councils were dissolved and replaced with officers. Zana writes (1997, 9): “Misfortune befell the rest of us poor, thinking infidels, castoffs of the official religion.” Zana went from the mayor’s office to prison, jailed along with thousands of other elected politicians and activists. He was imprisoned for eleven years, tortured, and released in 1991 (and spent another year and a half in jail from 1994 to 1995).

CONCLUSION

The use of electoral politics to advance a Kurdish ethnopolitical agenda in the 1960s and 1970s can be best understood as a result of a new generation’s interaction with state authorities, left-wing political parties, and Kurdish social movement organizations. Activists with predetermined or fixed identities as Kurdish nationalists did not enter the political system already formed as nationalists or through an instrumental decision-making process. Rather, the political identities of pro-Kurdish politicians and 48

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activists were shaped through their interaction with multiple sets of players and through their somewhat contradictory experiences of inclusion, exclusion, opportunity, and repression. The use of the electoral system to promote a new Kurdish national agenda in Turkey followed a series of socio-demographic changes, regional developments, and political reforms that altered the nature of Kurdish demands and provided those who sought Kurdish rights with new avenues they might use to articulate these demands. While Kurds from different parties began calling for reforms towards “the east” during this time, the most important institutional vehicle for Kurdish activism in the 1960s was the Workers Party of Turkey, or TİP. TİP helped a new generation of Kurdish political elites learn how to play the political game, provided them with a network of alliances and contacts, and gave them access to an array of material, ideological, and human resources they could use to mobilize popular support. Participation in the party also profoundly shaped the ideas and interests of those advocating Kurdish rights in Turkey by encouraging them to recast regional problems in class-based frames of socialist redistribution and to rethink the nature of state powers and state-society relations. The close relationship between Turkish socialists and those promoting collective Kurdish rights loosened at the end of the 1960s and especially after the 1971 coup, when many Kurdish activists shifted to working within their own distinct legal and illegal organizations. By the end of the 1970s, cities like Diyarbakır were home to dozens of different Kurdish groups that espoused a variety of cultural and political goals and variously maintained links with both the Turkish left and Kurdish groups in Iraq and Iran. This expansion in pro-Kurdish organizational activity provided new support and networks of mobilization for activists seeking local office. Municipal government offices were sites that could become, in the words of Mehdi Zana, “castles” for Kurdish national advocacy. Kurdish activism during this period had important ramifications for Kurdish electoral activism to come. Many pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and party leaders of the 1990s, for example, began their political careers in left-wing parties and groups that had formed in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, this period brought Kurdish and Turkish activists together under the framework of the socialist movement, building a series of important relationships that definitively distinguished the movement from its Iraqi Kurdish counterpart. This does not mean, however, that the events E AR LY RO UTE S

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of these decades should be treated simply as a sort of direct or linear precursor to the contention that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. There were fundamental differences between these periods that dramatically affected the nature of the electoral game. The resources available via participation in electoral politics were substantially weaker in the 1960s and 1970s than in the period from 1990 to 2010, curtailing the reach and impact of Kurdish electoral activism. The Turkish state constituted a different sort of regime before the 1980 coup than after it; in the 1960s and 1970s the state behaved more like an absentee landlord in the southeast (with spasmodic and heavy-handed interventions) than the watchdog or overlord state (see, e.g., Robins 1993) that developed after 1980. The structure of the Kurdish national movement was also different: many competing Kurdish organizations existed in the 1970s, in contrast to the dominance of the PKK in the 1990s. This gave Kurdish activists in electoral politics more flexibility and independence than they would have two decades later. Pro-Kurdish electoral politics at this time demonstrated that both local and national parties and politics could indeed serve, at least to some extent, as important vehicles for challenging the state’s policies on Kurds and governance in the east. Participation in electoral politics, parties, and governance mobilized grassroots support for the fledgling Kurdish movement; provided informal and formal access to more influential actors; publicized the grievances of many Kurds living in the southeast; and built the foundations of a distinctive Kurdish political space that began to alter political norms and practices.

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E A R LY RO U TE S

Political parties: a) Cannot put forward the idea that minorities exist in the Turkish Republic based on national, religious, confessional, racial, or language differences. b) Cannot aim or act in a way to disrupt national integrity by creating minorities in the territory of Turkish Republic through protecting, developing or spreading languages and cultures other than Turkish language and culture. c) Cannot use a language other than Turkish in writing and printing in the party statute or program, at congresses, at meetings in open air or indoor gatherings; at meetings, and in propaganda; cannot use or distribute placards, pictures, [phonograph] records, voice and visual tapes, brochures and statements written in a language other than Turkish; cannot remain indifferent to these actions and acts committed by others. . . . —T U R K I S H P O LITI C A L PART Y L AW , Article 81 (1982)

2 NEW COLLECTIVE CHALLENGERS The Institutional Trajectory of Turkey’s First Pro-Kurdish Party

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n June 7, 1990, a small group of parliamentarians submitted a petition to the Turkish Interior Ministry to found a new party called the People’s Labor Party (Halkın Emek Partisi, or HEP). Party chairman Fehmi Işıklar told the press that the new party had been established to take a leading role in the promotion of democracy, freedom, and human rights in Turkey (Cumhuriyet, June 8, 1990). Belying this quiet foundational moment, HEP was closed three years later by the Turkish Constitutional Court for “threatening the indivisible unity of the country” and supporting terrorism. Many of its administrators and some of its elected parliamentary deputies ended up in jail. Dozens of 51

its administrators were killed. Nonetheless, the party spawned a series of successors that would maintain a prominent Kurdish national presence in the political system. HEP is known as Turkey’s first legal pro-Kurdish party because the vast majority of its supporters were Kurdish, because of its overriding emphasis on the resolution of Turkey’s “Kurdish problem,” and because of its close relationship to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It represented a turning point in Kurdish electoral activism in that it was the first time Kurds promoting a Kurdish national agenda formed an official political party capable of competing in and winning elections at both the national and local levels. From 1990 on, those promoting Kurdish rights in Turkey through electoralism could pursue their goals in a party dedicated to representing a collective Kurdish agenda rather than operating only from within more broad-based organizations or as independents. Turkish law bans political parties based on race or religion. It expressly prohibits political parties from promoting the idea that minorities exist in Turkey and from “disrupting national integrity” by developing or spreading languages or cultures other than Turkish. In this context, how was it possible for an ethnopolitical party such as HEP to enter the political game in 1990? Furthermore, what explains the durability and visibility of HEP and its successors? HEP was shut down after three years, but it was replaced by a series of pro-Kurdish parties that carried its torch and maintained a firm if hotly contested place in Turkey’s politics for two decades, competing in and winning many important seats in local and national government. How are we to understand the endurance of pro-Kurdish parties in the 1990s and after, especially as compared to the relative fragility of pro-Kurdish groups in the 1960s and 1970s? More generally, how are relatively isolated clusters of ethnopolitical activists able to establish and maintain political organizations in severely constrained circumstances? HEP and its successors have often been described as fronts for the PKK, and HEP’s entry into the Turkish political system has been depicted as the PKK “creeping into the Turkish political system by stealth” (McDowall 1997, 430). The problem with this instrumental version of events is that it tends to grant the PKK full explanatory power for HEP’s origins and politics and distracts us from closer examination of the institutional origins and distinctive political dynamics of the parties themselves. Treating the parties seriously in their own right, this chapter calls attention to two important features about HEP’s initial formation and political legacy. 52

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First, HEP came to participate in Turkey’s electoral politics not through a deliberate strategic decision but through a kaleidoscopic birthing process shaped by changes in the domestic and international political systems, the opportunities and resources provided by an increasingly vigorous Kurdish national movement, and inclusion in and exclusion from a national political party, the center-left Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti, or SHP). Thus HEP and its successors exhibited a kind of dualism: they were rooted both in the formal party system and in the extrasystemic Kurdish national movement, something that produced both opportunities and tensions. The set of conditions facilitating pro-Kurdish party politics in 1990 echo those that encouraged Kurdish electoralism in the 1960s and 1970s. However, in the 1990s the existence of new societal and movement resources changed the balance of power between authorities and Kurdish challengers, meaning that pro-Kurdish electoralists could now exert greater influence and maintain higher visibility than in past decades. Turkish players and national parties, responding to the new conditions, also began to shift their positions. This created the context for an onagain, off-again flirtation between pro-Kurdish politicians and the Turkish center-left that helped to both incorporate the parties into the system and maintain their distance from it. Second, HEP established the foundations for a particular and quite distinctive kind of Kurdish national party in Turkey. This Kurdish ethnopolitical party was left-wing and secular. It was led primarily by urban, middle- and lower-middle-class professionals who prioritized electoral participation and maintained strong multilateral relations with civic groups and other political parties. Although there were some variations, this typology remained relatively consistent over time, even as one party was shut down and replaced by another. The first section of this chapter summarizes changes in domestic politics, international context, and Kurdish society that provided new opportunities and resources for pro-Kurdish party activism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The second section examines the way such changes affected pro-Kurdish politicians’ participation in the mainstream SHP and the process by which cooperation and conflict produced a distinctive new party, HEP. The third section provides an overview of HEP and its successors’ main ideological and sociological characteristics. In particular, one of the most important of these characteristics was a willingness to N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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form alliances with non-Kurdish (Turkish) parties in order to gain access to electoral institutions.

TR ANSFORMATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC POLITICAL SYSTEMS

Changes in domestic politics and in the international context facilitated ethnopolitical electoralism in the 1990s by providing pro-Kurdish politicians and activists with new opportunities and resources to sustain themselves and to withstand pressure from the state. The military coup of 1980 and the 1982 constitution had centralized political authority in Turkey and granted the military extensive oversight over civilian politics, especially in matters relating to Kurdish and Islamic activism. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, prime minister and then president Turgut Özal tried to “civilianize” the state and curb the military’s dominance over matters of internal and external security (see, e.g., Evin 1994; Özbudun 1994; Ataman 2002). This loosened the military’s grip on many important offices and reduced some of its influence over state institutions and policies. Özal led a 1987 parliamentary review of the country’s defense spending (the first in the Parliament since 1960), appointed his own chief of general staff, controlled the direction of Turkish policy in the first Gulf War of 1991, and, in early 1991, spearheaded a series of important constitutional and legal changes that loosened restrictions on freedom of expression and association. These included the abolition of Law 2932, which was instituted by the National Security Council after the 1980 coup and effectively prohibited the use of written and spoken Kurdish. As Hürriyet newspaper bannered the next day: “Kurdish is being set free” (Kürtçe serbest bırakılıyor) (January 26, 1991). Domestic political reconfigurations took place in a context of broader international and regional changes that placed new constraints on Turkish sovereignty and complicated official perceptions of what might constitute Turkish strategic interests. The end of the Cold War, the 1991 Gulf War, and the growth of the European Community and then the European Union brought previous assumptions about borders, governance, and territory into question. The flight of half a million Iraqi Kurds to the IraqiTurkish border in the spring of 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, resulted in the creation of a Kurdish “safe haven” north of the 36th parallel in 54

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Iraq. Such events heightened public consciousness about Kurds throughout Turkey and around the world and made it much more difficult for Turkish officials to maintain their longstanding silence on “Kurdishness” or to deny that Kurds existed as a distinct group. As Robert Olson has argued (2005), economic and security imperatives in the 1990s drove the Turkish state to develop something close to formal government relations with the new Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that emerged in northern Iraq after 1992. Turkey’s full application to the European Community, made in 1987, and the construction of an international human rights regime in the 1990s also brought higher levels of international scrutiny than before and helped link Turkey’s receipt of foreign economic and military aid with its treatment of Kurds. State treatment of pro-Kurdish parties and politicians became a kind of yardstick for evaluating the status of human rights in Turkey, a key aspect of EU membership.

DIVERSIFICATION AND THICKENING OF THE KU RDISH MOVEMENT

The late 1980s and first years of the 1990s also saw dramatic expansion, diversification, and “thickening” of the Kurdish national movement inside and outside of Turkey. Conceptualized another way, it is possible to sketch the outlines of an expanding field of Kurdish resistance that consisted of three intertwined tendencies: first, grassroots, social-level politicization and mobilization in the southeastern part of the country; second, the dramatic growth and strength of the PKK; and third, a rise in the number and activities of Kurdish cultural and political organizations, both domestic and transnational. Pro-Kurdish politicians were embedded in this field of resistance and strongly affected by its multiple dynamics. Pro-Kurdish parties gained social footing and attracted voter support in the late 1980s and early 1990s because Kurdish society in the southeast was more highly politicized and mobilized than in the past. Mobilization increased dramatically because of the 1980 military coup and the war between the PKK and the state. After the coup, mass trials for alleged members of leftist and Kurdish nationalist organizations resulted in thousands of long jail sentences and around 3,600 death sentences (of which fifteen were ultimately carried out) (Zurcher 1993, 295). Endemic abuse within the prisons and the prisons’ communal lifestyle radicalized N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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many people, developed close networks of activists, and raised political consciousness. Politicization and social transformation continued outside the formal prison because of the heavy militarization of the southeast after 1980 and, after 1985, the creation of the paramilitary Village Guard system, in which close to one hundred thousand Kurdish village men were armed, paid, and protected by the state in an effort to limit the PKK’s room for maneuver (see, e.g., Balta 2004; Bozarslan 2004, 84). In the late 1980s, and especially in the period between 1991 and 1996, anywhere from 945 to 2,967 villages and hamlets (sub-villages) were forcibly evacuated by Turkish authorities in an effort to reestablish state control over areas infiltrated or controlled by the PKK. Most reliable estimates suggest that at least 1.5 million people were displaced (see, e.g., Jongerden 2006, 1–3). Hundreds of thousands of people resettled in urban centers such as Diyarbakır, Istanbul, and Adana. Such processes brought wrenching social dislocation and put great pressure on cities to cope with the sudden influx of new residents. In contrast to the 1970s, when Kurdish mobilization in the southeast fueled the creation of a number of different nationalist organizations, politicization in the 1980s and early 1990s was funneled into support for one group: the PKK. By 1992 the PKK controlled many rural and urban areas and had around ten thousand active fighters in the southeast. It also had a militia force of around fifty thousand (Imset 1992, 218). In cities such as Diyarbakır, the rebels “could shut down the whole city with just a few days’ notice” (Marcus 2007, 175), and the PKK had created parallel systems of competing governance in towns such as Nusaybin, Cizre, and İdil. Many towns were essentially off limits to the Turkish military (see, e.g., Imset 1992, 262–64; Marcus 2007, 175–77). Widespread support for the PKK was due to a number of interrelated factors. PKK warfare, indoctrination, and mythos effectively established its claim to be the “sole legitimate representative” of Kurds in Turkey during this period. The organization significantly changed Kurdish political consciousness, offering new reference points for Kurdish nationalism and an alternative historical narrative that offered a Kurdified mirror image of Turkish nationalism (Bozarslan 2000, 2003). The PKK used heavy levels of violence to suppress any opposition to its activities, hegemonizing the movement on the ground in Turkey. In addition, it developed new sets of Kurdish political and social networks within and outside Turkey (see, e.g., Marcus 2007; Yavuz 2001, 11), which began to funnel people, money, weap56

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ons, and information across and outside the country. The PKK saw a huge influx of recruits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially from high schools and universities in urban areas (Özcan 2006, 200; Marcus 2007). Hundreds of thousands of other Kurds in the country did not become guerrilla fighters but nonetheless viewed the PKK as representing their aspirations and interests. This was made clear in the mass demonstrations and protests that began in March 1990, in what Kurdish activists would later come to call their serhildan, or people’s uprising. Protests and demonstrations against state forces and in support of the PKK began in the town of Nusaybin and spread to other cities and towns across Kurdish regions of the southeast. These demonstrations continued on and off for two years. Clearly, any party that could successfully position itself as a legal surrogate for the PKK had the potential to become an attractive political offering and do better at the ballot box in the Kurdish regions than any pro-Kurdish organization had done in the past. Migration to other parts of Turkey and to western Europe also contributed to the politicization of Kurdish society and to the growth of Kurdish transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Watts 2004). From the 1960s onwards, tens of thousands of Kurds moved to western Europe as guest workers and refugees. By the mid-1990s, approximately 850,000 Kurds lived there. About half a million lived in Germany alone, with about 85 percent of this latter population coming from Turkey. Many migrants became active in Kurdish political and cultural organizations, and especially in the PKK (see, e.g., Wahlbeck 1999), which had an extensive network of aid-related organizations and political branches in Europe. New freedoms and incentive structures, such as government-funded multicultural programs in Europe, helped to produce an array of new Kurdish cultural organizations. Activists within Turkey thus found financial and political resources in a dense web of Kurdish associational life across Europe that included dozens of Kurdish publishing houses, cultural associations, music groups, and research institutes in many different countries. Among the most important was the Institut Kurde de Paris (Kurdish Institute of Paris). Originally founded in 1983, by the early 1990s the Institute had become a center of Kurdish scholarly, cultural, social, and political life and served as a kind of Kurdish embassy and meeting point for many politician-activists from Turkey. Transnational legal activism also became an increasingly imporN E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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tant tool for Kurdish activists in the 1990s, bringing the movement new forms of leverage, material resources, and high-level contacts. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Turkey shifted its formalistic approval of international human rights conventions and institutions to a more integrated or “domesticated” approach (Ataman 2002). It recognized individual complaints made to the European Commission of Human Rights for the first time in 1987, which allowed nongovernmental organizations and parties to petition the commission, and the compulsory jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in January 1990. By the early 1990s pro-Kurdish organizations would begin to institutionalize a pro-Kurdish agenda via the legal enforcement mechanisms of the European Convention on Human Rights. This legally legitimated Kurdish grievances in the international arena and allowed activists to pressure Turkey to more closely align itself with international human rights norms (Watts 2004; Keck and Sikkink 1998). Among the most important members of this network were the Human Rights Association of Turkey (İnsan Hakları Derneği, or İHD), the Turkey Human Rights Foundation (Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı), and a London-based legal advocacy group called the Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), founded in 1992. All maintained close ties with pro-Kurdish political parties. By December 1998 a quarter of the European Court of Human Rights’ pending applications (1,825 cases out of 7,771) were against Turkey (ECHR 1998, 21, 283–84). The majority of these cases were related to Turkey’s treatment of Kurds and activities in the southeast. Finally, dramatic transformations in the media industry inside Turkey and in Europe provided pro-Kurdish parties with greatly expanded possibilities for information politics (Keck and Sikkink 1998) and contributed to the mobilization of Kurdish society. Television stations and radios in Turkey were under state control until 1989, with several articles of the Turkish Penal Code restricting discussions on identity and culture. In 1989 these articles were eliminated, and in 1990 Turkey’s first private satellite TV station began broadcasting from Germany (Öncü 1995, 57). Dozens of other private TV stations soon followed. Newspapers traditionally held and operated by one family also began changing hands, and within a few years the structure of the Turkish media sector was radically changed (Öncü 2000). This media revolution incorporated previously unpublicized voices and opinions into mainstream media discourse and allowed many different religious, political, and ethnic groups to begin publishing 58

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their own papers and developing their own TV stations and programs. Like Alevi communities and Islamic groups, Kurdish activists began publishing their own newspapers, beginning with the pro-PKK Yeni Ülke (New Country) in 1990 and Özgür Gündem, published from 1991 to 1994. Local newspapers in the southeast (e.g., Diyarbakır Söz) and pro-Kurdish papers such as Özgür Gündem gave pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and parties extensive coverage. Despite regular closures, pro-Kurdish newspapers helped develop a new sense of collective identity and maintain support for the PKK. Mainstream Turkish-owned newspapers and television stations also brought pro-Kurdish claims and personalities directly to broader Turkish audiences during these years. One of the boldest examples of this was Mehmet Ali Birand’s 1988 interview with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, published on the front pages of the mainstream Milliyet daily. Med-TV, the first Kurdish satellite station supporting the PKK and linked to the Kurdish movement from Turkey (as distinct from those supporting Iraqi Kurdish parties), began broadcasting from London in 1995 (Hassanpour 1998). Although its license was revoked in 1999, a series of other Kurdish-language satellite stations followed. Broadcasting for most of the day, Med-TV reached millions of viewers in Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East. The existence of such stations played an important role in bridging some of the geographic divisions between Kurds in Turkey and Europe, standardizing and developing Kurdish (especially Kurmanji), and defining Kurdish identity in very particular ways. They also helped maintain the PKK’s dominance, advocating on behalf of the group and restricting political discussion of other Kurdish groups (or ensuring that such coverage was negative). Such changes meant that pro-Kurdish electoralists could build political capital and visibility outside the formal political system, altering the balance of power between mainstream party leadership and pro-Kurdish politicians. For Turkish national parties as well, the reconfigured political landscape offered new possibilities and uncertainties. In particular, electoral competition for the increasingly disenchanted voters in the southeast pushed leaders from many parties toward more flexible policies on questions of ethnic identity (as is discussed further in chapter 5). Nonetheless, mainstream parties could not serve as a long-term platform for the articulation of Kurdish national demands without alienating many of their core supporters and running afoul of prosecutors and military N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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authorities. Thus, as in earlier eras, pro-Kurdish inclusion in Turkish national parties built alliances between pro-Kurdish and mainstream Turkish political elites, produced conflict between them, and provided a context for the emergence of a new cadre of Kurdish electoralists.

PRO - KU RDISH POLITICIANS IN SHP: INCLUSION AND E XCLUSION

The coup of 1980 banned many former politicians from participating in Turkish politics. When this ban ended in 1987, many experienced politicians returned to politics and founded new parties, giving challengers institutional access and new party platforms for the articulation of their demands. Because of a 1983 electoral reform law that imposed a 10 percent election threshold (meaning parties that did not receive at least 10 percent of the vote could not hold seats in the Parliament), there were incentives to work within large parties that could capture significant portions of the vote. Although Kurds joined many parties, including Turgut Özal’s Motherland Party (ANAP), those concerned with the advancement of Kurdish national and cultural rights were largely inclined toward Islamic parties and parties of the left. Some pro-Kurdish politicians joined the Refah (Welfare) Party, a new Islamic party led by veteran politician Necmettin Erbakan. His party offered a vision of Kurdish and Turkish brotherhood under the auspices of an Islamic order. Those supportive of leftist secular politics joined the center-left Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP), founded in 1985 and led by the liberal intellectual Erdal İnönü, son of former Turkish President İsmet İnönü. As the country’s only influential left-wing party, SHP housed an assortment of political groups, including Kemalists, Turkish liberals, Marxists, and Kurdish activists. More conservative factions within the party periodically attempted to “cleanse” it of its “radical elements,” but it remained the party of choice for most liberal Kurds (Ölmez 1995, 53–59; Gürkan, interview, 1994). In the 1987 elections SHP entered Parliament as the second-largest party after ANAP, with 24 percent of the vote and ninety-nine deputies. Among its parliamentarians were a number of Kurdish politicians known for advocating Kurdish cultural and political rights. They included former Mardin parliamentarian Ahmet Türk, who had been imprisoned for alleged support of the PKK during the campaign and was freed after win60

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ning the election (Ölmez 1995, 54). Four of Diyarbakır province’s eight parliamentary representatives in 1987 were from SHP (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2004). Like the Workers Party of Turkey in the 1960s, SHP provided a platform for the development of a new cadre of pro-Kurdish leadership. Many liberal Turks in the party were sympathetic to Kurdish grievances and supported Kurdish activists on questions of democratization, cultural freedom, and the end of emergency rule. As the country’s second largest party, SHP was also competing closely with ANAP for votes in the Kurdish regions of the country, pushing some of its leaders toward more critical approaches to the Kurdish question. Participation in SHP thus gave pro-Kurdish parliamentarians institutional allies, access to the parliamentary podium, and opportunities (as government and party representatives) to express support for Kurdish rights. At the same time, Kurdish use of such opportunities to explicitly challenge Turkish policies created tensions within SHP, both because some party members were more conservative on questions of ethnic identity and because the growing urgency of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey put increasing pressure on Kurdish politicians to agitate more aggressively and in front of broader audiences. In 1988 Istanbul deputy Mehmet Ali Eren, a liberal Kurdish parliamentarian, argued that Turkish law was applied differently in the west and east of the country and criticized the government for denying the existence of Kurds in Turkey (Çevik 1993, 196). This brought SHP criticism and contributed to SHP chairman Erdal İnönü’s decision to resign (although he soon returned to lead the party). In February 1989, Malatya deputy İbrahim Aksoy was expelled from SHP after he told the Turkey-European Joint Parliamentary Commission that a Kurdish problem existed in Turkey that might be solved through autonomy (see, e.g., 2000’e Doğru, February 19, 1989, 19). SHP founder and former parliamentarian Aydın Güven Gürkan remembered several years later that although some within SHP saw a new opening on the Kurdish issue, many in the party leadership were worried about taking any new steps. “Even when we mentioned that there were some Kurdish members of our party who didn’t speak or read Turkish, and suggested that we might translate our party statements into Kurdish so all could understand, this scared them, and the deputy who suggested it was disciplined. . . . In another incident, another deputy who mentioned the Kurdish people as a distinct ethnic group was not allowed to talk furN E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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ther and his statement was taken out of the minutes” (Gürkan, interview, 1994). Former SHP member Murat Bozlak, a lawyer who was a founding member of HEP and later became chair of another pro-Kurdish party, said in an interview in 1994: “We spent six years in this party trying to bring the Kurdish issue to the agenda, but there was no real interest. We said, well, we have no chance with this party, so we’ll go another way and create our own parties.” Transnational Kurdish activism also complicated the dynamic between Turkish parties and Kurdish challengers. European-based Kurdish organizations offered freer forums for articulating Kurdish grievances, as well as material and ideological support. At the same time, what could readily be said in London or Paris would now be reported in the media back in Turkey, where it played very differently. Within this context, the events leading to the formation of HEP can be treated as a series of struggles between the institutionalized Turkish center-left on the one hand, and the various forces of Kurdish national mobilization on the other. The first such struggle occurred in October 1989 when seven Kurdish parliamentarians from SHP disobeyed party orders and attended an international Kurdish conference in Paris organized by the Paris-based Foundation France-Libertés and the Kurdish Institute. The internationally publicized conference hosted many important Kurdish nationalist figures, including Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (see, e.g., Paris Kurdish Institute, 1992). Although the PKK did not participate in the conference (and in fact protested loudly outside the Institute building), the deputies’ attendance at a “Kurdish nationalist” event was widely criticized in the Turkish press and political establishment. SHP party leadership was deeply divided over how to respond to the deputies’ attendance (some SHP leaders had themselves been invited), but the party’s disciplinary committee ultimately expelled the deputies from the party, technically for disobeying party orders (Watts 1999; Cumhuriyet, November 18, 1989). The decision, reached after five hours of debate and a narrow five-tofour vote, created a new crisis within the party. Twelve SHP members of Parliament, including Aydın Güven Gürkan, resigned in protest. So did dozens of regional SHP administrators and about three thousand rankand-file party members (Watts 1999; Barkey 1998; see also Cumhuriyet, November 11–26, 1989). Gürkan said (1994), “It was a very wrong decision, the biggest mistake the party had ever made.” The second such struggle occurred when liberal Turkish elites and the 62

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expelled Kurdish parliamentarians struggled to define a new party in the face of grassroots Kurdish pressure to prioritize a Kurdish rights agenda. In the wake of the resignations from SHP, many former SHP administrators and politicians, along with a number of other left-wing activists, made plans to form the new party, initially referred to as the New Democratic Formation (Yeni Demokratik Oluşum). However, the process of founding a party recapitulated the tension between more conventional left-wing sympathy for Kurdish cultural rights and unconventional Kurdish social dynamism. Pressure from what might be termed the Kurdish base clashed with the ideas and interests of prominent Turkish leftists. At the New Democratic Formation’s first public assembly, held in Ankara in March 1990, most of the attendees were Kurdish, and articles in the press reported that “every mention of the Kurdish issue drew applause.” One analyst wrote: Kurds today are, together with the working class, one of the two most dynamic elements in our society today. They support every initiative that promises equality, freedom and democracy. No one can make a revolutionary, democratic or progressive policy without embracing this force. Yet one can’t even mention this. Therefore, the New Formation’s problem is not whether or not it should be a “Kurdish party” as it is being characterized, [but] will the movement be revolutionary enough to satisfy Kurds? (2000’e Doğru, March 11, 1990, 22)

After the assembly, influential Turkish leftists such as Gürkan and Murat Belge left the fledgling party. Belge, a prominent public intellectual and left-wing activist, said of the events (1994): “The Kurdish problem was the spark that set it going, but a Kurdish party wasn’t what we had in mind. But everything failed. We saw this first meeting was dominated by Kurds, and there were almost no women. And there weren’t many workers—only Kurdish workers. Again, Kurdishness was prominent. And among intellectuals invited to watch, not many came.” And Gürkan said (1994): “It was not entirely a Kurdish movement. But because the basics of the problem lay in the Kurdish problem, there was the danger of it being an ethnic Kurdish party. The Kurds themselves didn’t want an ethnic Kurdish party. But the press kept on very strongly labeling us as a Kurdish movement, and neither the women’s groups or environmental groups attended the conference because of press sabotage. This was a very N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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lively and successful convention, but it was Kurdish dominated. It was a very interesting thing.” In June 1990 the remaining leadership founded the Halkın Emek Partisi (HEP), or People’s Labor Party. HEP was thus born with a kind of dual footing in both the mainstream party system and the rising Kurdish national movement. Of the nineteen parliamentary deputies who had resigned from SHP, eleven joined HEP and became founding members.1 None were known to be close to the PKK. At the same time, the set of events that led to the formation of the party marked it as an institution that could become a Kurdish challenger. The party’s eighty-one signing founders also included author and Kurdish activist Musa Anter; Feridun Yazar, a founder of the DDKO and pro-Kurdish CHP mayor of Urfa from 1977 to 1980; and members of prominent Kurdish families. This dualism was reflected in the party’s early presentation of itself to the public. Party leaders initially sought to frame the party as one “for all of Turkey” and not as a Kurdish party (see, e.g., Turkish Daily News, August 9, 1990; Ölmez 1995, 112–21). Five months after the party was founded, HEP Chairman Fehmi Işıklar defined HEP’s ideal membership, saying: “We are a party of the masses. Our right line extends to ‘democrat’ but our left line stops before armed action. We are inviting the people between these two lines to join us” (Turkish Daily News, November 14, 1990). By the late spring of 1991, however, he was less circumspect. In his speech at the party’s first congress in June 1991, he stated, “There are circles that have attempted to brand HEP in the narrow definition of a Kurdish party ever since it was founded. . . . We are the party of the suppressed—within this framework, we are proud of being branded as a Kurdish party.” Several days later he repeated that HEP’s leaders were “not uncomfortable” with the designation “Kurdish party” because “it [is] the Kurds whose human rights are most infringed upon” (Turkish Daily News, June 11, 1991; Demir 2005, 118). Prominent Turkish parliamentarians who had helped found the party resigned, strengthening impressions that it was indeed a “Kurdish party” (Demir 2005, 116). In an interview conducted in 1995, then parliamentarian Mahmut Alınak said, “HEP’s mission wasn’t to solve the Kurdish problem. It was to fight against the violation of human rights and to fight for democracy. We identified the Kurdish problem as a top priority, of course. But we were very determined to solve the problems of democracy, not just Kurdish problems. . . . But 64

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HEP was always attacked. It was forced in some ways to become more and more Kurdish.” HEP’s early shift towards a more explicit embrace of pro-Kurdish politics occurred in response to pressures from several directions. Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK abandoned their earlier condemnation of legal politics and began to see HEP as a vehicle for promoting PKK interests. This did not mean they simply took over the party, but it did mean that HEP gained more PKK-supportive members and that some of its leadership began to try to steer the party toward an overtly Kurdish nationalist, pro-PKK position (see, e.g., Marcus 2007; Demir 2005, 101). In addition, grassroots support for the PKK from Kurdish voters in the southeast challenged the HEP leadership’s control over the discourse of Kurdish rights. Popular sympathy for the PKK was manifested at every public gathering organized by the party as well as in the 1991 serhildan protests. HEP’s Kurdish New Year, or Newroz, celebration in Istanbul in 1991 attracted fifteen thousand people; some tried to tear down the Turkish flag and chanted slogans in support of Öcalan and the PKK. The party also began shifting its center of gravity away from Ankara towards Diyarbakır and the southeast, holding its first local convention in Diyarbakır in January 1991. Most important, police harassment and state coercion radicalized the party and its leadership, which isolated it from mainstream parties and promoted the politics of polarization and difference (this is discussed further in chapter 4). The murder of HEP Diyarbakır chairman Vedat Aydın in July 1991 was particularly important in this respect.

REINCORPOR ATION: THE HEP-SHP ELEC TION ALLIANCE OF OC TOBER 1991

HEP’s assertion of its Kurdish identity did not end its cooperation with the Turkish left or lead to the party’s immediate exclusion from the system. Instead, Kurdish activist-politicians would be reincorporated into the Parliament through an alliance with SHP, the same party whose expulsion of the deputies had prompted HEP’s formation. This occurred in October 1991, when the governing Motherland Party called early elections, and HEP could not compete because it had not fulfilled election law technicalities. HEP’s leaders discussed running as independents but believed they faced a better chance of winning elected office as partyN E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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sponsored candidates (Alınak 1994, 131–34; Cumhuriyet, September 5, 1991). SHP had lost substantial support in the southeast after ousting the seven deputies in 1989 and was among several parties that began talking to HEP leadership about forming an election alliance. In the first week of September 1991, SHP Chairman Erdal İnönü and HEP Chairman Fehmi Işıklar announced that HEP’s candidates would run on the SHP ticket. İnönü stated that the agreement was “not merely an election alliance” but a step towards reintegration, adding that the “artificial differences” between HEP and SHP were now being removed (Cumhuriyet, September 6, 1991). İnönü writes in his autobiography (1996, 283) that party leaders wanted an alliance with HEP because it might save the party from the accusation that Turkey’s Kurdish-origin citizens were “being excluded from SHP” and because: We would have been promoting the possibility that people who had begun to be seen as representatives of our Kurdish-origin citizens could be elected to a large party open to all ethnic groups, rather than (to) a separate party. In my opinion this was one way, within democracy, of preventing divisions that could threaten the unity of the country.

The coalition did well, especially in the Kurdish-majority provinces of the southeast. SHP won 20.8 percent of the votes and eighty-eight seats, giving it the third most seats in the Parliament. (The True Path Party [Doğru Yol Partisi, or DYP] received the most votes, receiving 27 percent of votes and 178 seats; ANAP won 24 percent of the vote and 115 seats.) Twenty-two out of twenty-seven of the HEP-SHP candidates were elected to Parliament on the SHP ticket, making up a quarter of SHP’s total parliamentary representation. In Muş, Batman, Van, and Şırnak, all of SHP’s elected deputies were part of HEP or joined it after the election. In Diyarbakır, the party received 49.9 percent of the vote, winning seven of the eight seats from the province (in 1987, in comparison, SHP had received only 24 percent of the vote in Diyarbakır). Six of these seven elected deputies were from HEP (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2004). In Şırnak, SHP received an overwhelming 61 percent of the vote; all three of its elected representatives were from HEP (ANAP had won Şırnak in 1987). In Mardin, which ANAP had also won in 1987, SHP won 53 percent of the vote and all five seats; three of its five deputies were from HEP. However, HEP’s victory in the elections introduced new political 66

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dynamics that challenged the election alliance and contributed to the party’s continuing shift toward Kurdish nationalist politics. The creation of a joint SHP-HEP list offered an opportunity for the PKK to influence the party’s top leadership via the formation of the party’s electoral lists. It also brought a new generation of younger, regionally based HEP deputies to the Parliament, some of whom were more closely aligned with the PKK. The party leadership became increasingly divided between those who saw themselves as working for the PKK (rather than HEP) and those who tried to maintain a more independent stance. In part, this dispute reflected generational turnover, and the biographies of the deputies elected in 1991 indicate that the election in fact introduced a new kind of Kurdish representative to the Turkish parliament. Eleven of these new members of Parliament were younger than forty at the time of the election; they included the two youngest-ever members of Parliament (Leyla Zana and Sedat Yurtdaş were both thirty years old when elected). Of twenty-two new deputies, fifteen had no prior experience in national politics. The new parliamentarians reflected HEP’s social grounding in Kurdish regional politics of the southeast much more than the party’s establishment origins. Many of the new deputies had grown up in the late 1970s and early 1980s in an environment shaped by increasingly active Kurdish organizations and the 1980 military coup and its aftermath, and they did not have the same personal and institutional links to the Turkish left as did HEP’s first generation of leadership. All the new parliamentarians were born in the Kurdish regions of the southeast, and many had Kurdish activist connections. Leyla Zana was the wife of former Diyarbakır mayor Mehdi Zana. Sırrı Sakık, another new deputy, was the brother of well-known PKK commander Şemdin Sakık, and Mehmet Emin Sezer, elected from Muş, came from a prominent Kurdish nationalist family.

HEP’ S INSTITUTIONAL FOOTPRINT: PRO - KU RDISH PARTIES AF TER 1993

HEP was founded in June 1990 and closed just over three years later on July 14, 1993. The banning of the party and the arrests and imprisonment of some of its leading representatives (discussed in chapter 4) did not, however, end pro-Kurdish party activism. Instead, following a patN E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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Table 1. HEP parliamentarians elected in 1991 on the SHP ticket Previously

Date

Profession/

in Parliament

of birth

Birthplace

education

Name

Province

Mahmut Kılınç

Adıyaman

No

1946

Adıyaman

Engineer

Adnan Ekmen

Batman

Yes

1948

Gercüş

Business administration

Nizamettin Toğuç

Batman

No

1951

Baykan

Primary school

Abdulkerim Zilan

Batman

Yes

1943

Kozluk

Lawyer; minister of public works 1973–77

Hatip Dicle

Diyarbakır

No

1955

Diyarbakır

Engineer

Fehmi Işıklar

Diyarbakır

Yes

1941

Urfa

Technical school/ unionist

Salih Sümer

Diyarbakır

Yes

1951

Bismil

Middle school

Mahmut Uyanık

Diyarbakır

Yes

1940

Silvan

Lawyer

Sedat Yurtdaş

Diyarbakır

No

1961

Cingişi

Lawyer

Leyla Zana

Diyarbakır

No

1961

Silvan

Middle school

Mehmet Sincar

Mardin

No

1953

Mardin

Teacher

Ahmet Türk

Mardin

Yes

1942

Mardin

High school

M. Ali Yiğit

Mardin

No

1959

Nusaybin

High school

Muzaffer Demir

Muş

No

1953

Bulanık

Doctor

Sırrı Sakık

Muş

No

1957

Muş

Tourism

M. Emin Sever

Muş

No

1944

Varto

Doctor

Zübeyir Aydar

Siirt

No

1961

Siirt

Lawyer

Naif Güneş

Siirt

No

1956

Kurtalan

High school

Mahmut Alınak

Şırnak

Yes

1952

Digor

Lawyer

Orhan Doğan

Şırnak

No

1955

Derik

Lawyer

Selim Sadak

Şırnak

No

1954

İdil

Business

Remzi Kartal

Van

No

1948

Van

Dentist

Source: TBMM Albümü, 19. Dönem 1992; Demir 2005, 131–32.

tern typical of many Turkish political parties, pro-Kurdish electoralists formed new parties to take HEP’s place. This cycle of formation-closureformation meant that pro-Kurdish parties maintained an uninterrupted presence in the Turkish political system in years to come. Surveying these parties over time highlights the degree to which HEP and its first generation of leadership established an institutional footprint with particular characteristics that survived HEP’s demise. Although it would be a mistake to say the parties were identical to one another, for the most part the pro-Kurdish parties did not split or substantially revise their agendas, and they exhibited many of the same characteristics established by HEP. HEP’s immediate successor was the Demokrasi Partisi (DEP), established on May 7, 1993.2 HEP chair Ahmet Türk and most of the HEP deputies joined the party after its first congress on June 27, 1993, in order to prevent themselves from losing their seats in Parliament when the party was closed. More so than HEP, DEP’s administrative leaders were closely linked to regional and transnational Kurdish nationalist circles and often attended Kurdish demonstrations and meetings outside of Turkey. In the months before the party’s formation, many of its future leaders attended meetings outside the country organized by the PKK. The party was deeply divided from the outset between those who advocated maintaining or reestablishing closer relations with the Turkish liberal establishment and those who wanted it to become more closely tied to the PKK. In December 1993 the ascendance within the party of pro-PKK factions became evident when the DEP party congress elected outspoken Diyarbakır parliamentarian Hatip Dicle as party chair. Dicle sought to publicly align the party with the PKK and used the party to advocate on its behalf. At the party congress on December 12, 1993, for instance, he argued that the PKK could not be labeled a terrorist organization (because so many Kurds supported it) and that it should be considered a political party (Demir 2005, 286). Anticipating the closure of DEP (which occurred in June 1994), proKurdish party leaders founded the People’s Democracy Party (Halkın Demokrasi Partisi, or HADEP) on May 11, 1994. Taking charge after a tumultuous spring, new party chair Murat Bozlak made an effort to frame the party more broadly, with an emphasis on democracy and human rights, and shifted away from more confrontational discourse. Nonetheless, HADEP was eventually closed by the Turkish Constitutional Court N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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in 2003. It was succeeded by the Democratic People Party (Demokratik Halk Partisi, or DEHAP), which merged with the newly formed Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi, or DTP) in August 2005, founded by ex-DEP parliamentarians after they were released from jail.3 Each of these parties—HEP, DEP, HADEP, DEHAP, and DTP—was viewed by movement insiders and outside observers as carrying on the work of its predecessors; these were not, in other words, splinter groups, but replacement parties for those closed by the court. Some sections of the parties’ programs were almost identical to one another, and—despite legal interventions and interruptions—the parties tended to be led by many of the same individuals. Continuities could be seen in the pro-Kurdish parties’ agenda, their leaderships’ social composition, and the kind of relationships they established with civic groups and other political parties. The typology HEP established was that of a leftist, secular, ethno-Kurdish party with an emphasis on both the politics of recognition as well as the politics of redistribution (Fraser 1997). This insistence on left-wing social justice was nicely captured in HEP and DEP’s slogan printed on the cover of their programs: this was a party “for all workers and unemployed, villagers, low-ranked civil servants, teachers, democrats, social-democrats and socialist intellectuals, small businessmen and craftsmen, the masses of people subjected to oppression and exploitation, and for all on the side of democracy.” Along with their explicit promotion of a Kurdish rights agenda (discussed in chapter 5), early pro-Kurdish party programs called for land reform and redistribution, programs to eradicate regional economic disparities, continued public ownership of state-owned economic enterprises, and greatly expanded services to aid the poor and unemployed. Reflecting the left-wing economic discourse of the late 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, later pro-Kurdish programs emphasized the need for just, participatory, and sustainable economic development; state investment in health, education, and infrastructure; protection for unions; and laws to protect women’s social and economic status (see, e.g., DTP 2005 program, 53–89). Pro-Kurdish parties were adamantly secular in both ideology and social composition, although this secularism softened a little in the late 1990s with the electoral rise of the Islamic parties and the competition for Kurdish votes. Such secularism to some degree reflected the outlook of the 70

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parties’ core leadership: urban, middle- and lower-middle-class men and women who had gained status and political capital through professional and civic activities. Pro-Kurdish party elites tended to have backgrounds in law, teaching, and—especially by the first years of the 2000s—activity and leadership in nongovernmental organizations. Experience in NGOs, which offered more stable institutional spaces than did pro-Kurdish parties, provided such activists with administrative training, connections, and credibility. Of the twenty DTP parliamentarians who won seats in the Turkish parliament in 2007, for instance, five had served in administrative capacities in the Human Rights Association (İHD) and at least another six had been active in unions, women’s organizations, and bar associations.4 Biographies of pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and mayors speak to the fact that from HEP through DTP, pro-Kurdish parties sought and maintained alliances and shared resources (human, material, ideational, and otherwise) with many different associations and parties. Another characteristic of the pro-Kurdish party leadership was its pragmatic stance toward electoral institutions and processes. Along with their willingness to form electoral coalitions (something that occurred most prominently in 1991 and again in the pro-Kurdish DEHAP’s alliance with SHP in the local elections of 2004), pro-Kurdish politicians emphasized full electoral participation, meaning that, almost without fail, pro-Kurdish candidates took office if they won electoral contests. This can be contrasted with Sinn Fein and (Basque) Herri Batasuna’s onagain, off-again policies of absenteeism, in which ethnopolitical activists participated in elections but then refused to hold office because such offices were seen as part of an illegitimate system (see, e.g., Irvin 1999). Actually holding office puts many more resources into challengers’ hands, expanding the possible scope of impacts.

KU RDISH ETHNOPOLITIC S IN OTHER PARTIES IN THE 199 0S

Between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, Kurdish politicians participated in many different political parties, not only in pro-Kurdish parties such as HEP. While the majority of politicians in these other parties did not use their elected office to mobilize support for the Kurdish movement, some were sympathetic to portions of the pro-Kurdish agenda, especially N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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proposals relating to democratization and to the lifting of emergency rule in the southeast in the 1990s. Moreover, a relatively small but influential number of politicians who regularly challenged Turkish policies in the southeast were clearly identified with Kurdish nationalist sentiments, even while belonging to other parties. Among the most sustained and vocal critics of Turkish policies in the 1990s, for instance, was Kurdish politician Haşim Haşimi, former mayor of the town of Cizre (a front-line city in the PKK-state war) and a three-time member of Parliament. Haşimi was variously a member of the center-right Motherland Party (ANAP) and the Refah and Fazilet parties in the 1980s and 1990s. Known for his Kurdish nationalist sympathies, he chaired a 1997–98 Turkish parliamentary commission on forced migration in the southeast, which produced a report highly critical of the Turkish security forces and called for serious reconsideration of Turkish policies toward Kurds. Another prominent example was Abdülmelik Fırat, grandson of Kurdish rebel leader Sheikh Said. Fırat was a member of the centerright Justice Party and, after that was closed, the center-right True Path Party (DYP). By the early 1990s he also had become increasingly critical of the state’s policies in the southeast, and in September 1994 he led thirty-three deputies from several parties in calling for the discussion of the Kurdish question in Parliament (see, e.g., Kaya 2004, 233–34). (That said, in 1994 Fırat resigned from DYP and worked for the pro-Kurdish HADEP before later founding his own pro-Kurdish party, the Rights and Freedoms Party, or HAK-PAR.) Although politicians such as Fırat and Haşimi were personally popular, they did not have the institutional support or social footing to mobilize large numbers of voters around the Kurdish issue. This was in part because they condemned PKK violence and earned the enmity of the organization. A similar lack of broad-based social grounding also plagued advocates of Kurdish national rights who formed alternative ethnopolitical parties to those of HEP and its successors. Şerafettin Elçi’s Democratic Mass Party (Demokratik Kitle Partisi, or DKP), formed in 1997; its successor, the Participatory Democracy Party (Katılımcı Demokrasi Partisi, or KADEP), formed in 2006; and Fırat’s HAK-PAR were all Kurdish national parties that promoted a pro-Kurdish agenda but explicitly disavowed the PKK. They were parties with leaders and offices but very few members and almost no electoral representation. This made them lone voices of dissent rather than organizations capable of mobilizing voters. 72

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Such alternative pro-Kurdish parties also, like the larger pro-Kurdish parties, suffered at the hands of the state. The DKP was banned in 2003, and court cases were filed against HAK-PAR.

CONCLUSION

Understanding how pro-Kurdish parties entered the political system in 1990 requires a shift away from categorizing them as discrete ethnonational organizations and instead seeing them in the more complicated light of their sometimes cooperative, sometimes conflicted relationship with the Turkish center-left and the Kurdish national movement. Put roughly, HEP and its successors existed in a space somewhere between these two ideological and organizational currents, providing them with access points into the system, resources and restraints, and formative movements of cooperation and disengagement. Pro-Kurdish parties began participating in Turkish political institutions and electoral politics as part of an expansion of a Kurdish field of resistance that accompanied a number of important domestic, international, and technological developments. As a result of these developments, a pro-Kurdish (or Kurdish national) agenda was institutionalized in European political and cultural spheres, and the context of state decision-making changed substantially, with new incentives for Turkish decision-makers to permit at least some pro-Kurdish participation in public life. Such domestic and transnational Kurdish national dynamics fueled the formation and development of pro-Kurdish parties. At the same time, the parties themselves were not simply created by Kurdish nationalists to serve as a nationalist front. Rather, they evolved from within the centerleft, inter-ethnic SHP, with considerable support from Turks and Kurds with multifaceted interests. As in the 1960s and 1970s, pro-Kurdish political activism in the early 1990s was not simply an ethnic or ethnonational phenomenon but a dynamic political tendency that overlapped with Turkish left-wing politics. This dual institutional and ideological legacy is important for understanding both pro-Kurdish opportunities and limitations. Evolution from within the party system meant that HEP’s deputies and leaders had some political credibility among other party leaders and members of the Parliament. It also encouraged pro-Kurdish candidates to actually take N E W CO LLEC TIVE C HALLEN G ERS

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office if they won electoral contests, expanding access to the resources of the system. It also, however, meant that they did not have the legitimacy among pro-Kurdish constituents that they might have had if the party’s leadership had publicly emerged from the PKK or from a division within the PKK itself. They were not in an effective situation to clearly position themselves as an alternative to the PKK or to capture the “hearts and minds” of the populace without reference to the PKK.

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The bounty of state resources and personnel does have a tremendous impact on the rest of society, but often in ways unintended and unanticipated by state leaders. — J O EL S . M I G DA L , State in Society

3 RESOURCES OF THE SYSTEM

E

ntering the legal political game gave Kurdish activists access to a range of tangible and intangible assets that could be used to advance the interests of pro-Kurdish parties and the Kurdish national movement. This chapter examines what sorts of resources proKurdish activists could deploy by working within the formal political system between 1990 and 2008 and some of the internal constraints they faced when deciding which to use. Many contemporary studies on activist incorporation into semi-democratic or autocratic systems sidestep the question of resources, focusing instead on questions of moderation and movement institutionalization. Because religious and ethnopolitical movements are usually framed as counter-state or anti-systemic, there is a tendency to focus on the repressive aspects of the state and the struggle between state and movement 75

actors, which often overlooks the distributive potential of the institutions and processes that make up the state apparatus. Unexplored assumptions about resources means little attention is given to the varieties of resources available; to how their levels, sources, and nature may change over time and across space; and to how some might be more or less attractive than others. Nonetheless, choices about which resources to accept and reject are critical, as they affect the identity and impact of the movement and its relations with authorities. Examining the resources available to those who work within the system does not reduce social movement activity and decision making to a simple cost-benefit analysis. Party supporters and leaders participated in pro-Kurdish politics for a variety of reasons, often at considerable risk to their professional and personal lives. The vast majority of them did not join a party because they sat down and calculated the potential costs and benefits (material or otherwise) of trying to work within the system, versus, for instance, loyalty to or exit from the system (see, e.g., Hirschman 1970). Resources writ large do not offer, in other words, an explanation for why Kurdish politicians and activists—individually or collectively—chose to join pro-Kurdish parties (other than, for instance, doing nothing, joining other political parties, or fighting in the mountains). What systemic resources do help explain is why, given the many constraints on action and discourse, the formal political system could nonetheless be a useful platform for ethnonational mobilization. Thus, although resources do not explain motivations, they do help us understand functionality. This chapter is organized into three sections. The first discusses the concept of resources and outlines the types and levels of systemic resources available to pro-Kurdish parties and elected officials in Turkey. The second highlights significant changes in political context after 1999 that affected access to and deployment of these resources. The third analyzes some of the choices pro-Kurdish parties made when considering the advantages and disadvantages of using available systemic resources.

RESOU RCES IN CONCEPT

Resources are the materials and means used to mobilize, or go “from being a passive collection of individuals to an active participant in public 76

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life” (Tilly 1978, 69). They fuel contention and make change possible. Ideas and ideologies, social and political networks, influential allies, money, materials, infrastructure, laws, weapons, volunteers, votes, and charisma are all types of resources. Entrepreneurs mobilize different resources to build a movement (McCarthy and Zald 1977; Rucht 1996; Jenkins 1983); they deploy them to achieve particular ends and to organize people, space, and time (see, e.g., Giddens 1984, 258–59). Communities and movements themselves can produce resources, as can institutions and other actors such as governments, media, and nongovernmental organizations. Resources can thus be conceptualized as pools of assets coming from various and not necessarily compatible places. While some movement organizations are able to draw on an array of different resource pools, most organizations by default or tactical choice rely more on some than others. Highly professionalized movements that resemble lobbying organizations use more material and legal resources than horizontally structured, grassroots movements, which draw extensively on committed volunteers (see, e.g., Rucht 1996; Glover and Parry 2005). Movements relying on armed struggle are particularly dependent on weapons and fighters, as well as on money and ideological resources to maintain them (Hafez 2003). A decision to access one pool of resources may mean restricted use of another. Most obviously, organizations that use repertoires of violence usually do not have easy access to the systemic resources of legal (formal) politics. It is also common for formal political and professional resources to compensate for a lack of grassroots resources; this is the case, for instance, with many human rights organizations. This chapter focuses on systemic resources: tangible and intangible assets that normally accompany the formation of legal political parties, participation in electoral contests, and the gaining of national and local elected office. Kurdish parties found these resources in different sites within the domestic and international political systems. Some became available simply through the mechanism of founding a legal political party; others were available only to those elected to local or national government. In Turkey, these systemic resources can be divided into five main categories. They are: Material and human resources: budgets, volunteers and workers, membership dues, salaries, buildings, vehicles, grants, and funds from the European Union and other sources R E SO U RC E S O F TH E SYS TEM

77

Legal resources: laws protecting elected officials; domestic and international courts Access: to official governmental and intergovernmental committees, assemblies, parliaments, organizations, parties, and unofficial networks Role resources: opportunities that come with the expectations of fulfilling particular duties, e.g., routine party organizational activities, governancerelated tasks, officiating, institutional development, campaigning, etc. Legitimacy resources: voters and votes Since such resources are potentially available to any party that enters the Turkish political system, what differentiates challenger parties from others is what they choose to do with resources, the ways in which they deploy them, and whether these activities constitute contentious politics or further the movement in some way. Most of the time, political parties deploy resources in routine ways that perpetuate the status quo. Other times, parties may use such resources in a conventional manner that nonetheless advances movement interests (e.g., patronage politics) or in highly unorthodox ways that clearly constitute a challenge to the underlying rules of the game (e.g., Kurdish symbolic politics). Kurdish activists and parties did both.

Material and Human Resources

Forming parties and winning national and local seats meant that proKurdish parties could access funds that could be used to further movement goals and strengthen the party. Most legal parties in Turkey receive on the order of 50 to 70 percent of their annual income from the state (Gençkaya 2000, table 2). Since the early 1980s, parties that surpassed the 10 percent election threshold (hurdle) in the national elections were eligible to receive treasury funds, as were those that did not cross the threshold but received at least 7 percent of the national vote. Although pro-Kurdish parties never surpassed these thresholds, a 1990 amendment to the campaign finance law permitted parties that had not participated in the elections or surpassed the threshold to receive funds if their representatives held at least ten seats in the Parliament. Such a situation could occur if groups of parliamentarians formed or joined parties after they were elected or if they were elected in coalition with another party. After

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HEP’s candidates took seats in the Parliament through their election coalition with SHP, the party was thus eligible to receive treasury funds. It received 86 million Turkish lira in 1990 (about $32,000 at that time); in 1991 it received 817 million TL (then worth about $196,000). According to HEP’s official financial reports, this was more than double the money the party’s central offices and parliamentary candidates received in donations (Gençkaya 2000, table 6). In his legal defense to the Ankara State Security Court in 1994, former party chair and parliamentarian Ahmet Türk stated that HEP had received 12 billion TL (about $840,000 to $900,000) in state support in 1993 and that its successor, DEP, had received 43 billion TL (around $2.5 to $3 million) (Demir 2005, 321). The fact that a challenger party such as HEP received state funding at all contributed to rumors that it had been created by the state (or by President Turgut Özal, who was said to have played a key role in helping the party procure its first funds). Election to municipal office also provided access to city budgets that could be managed in ways that promoted pro-Kurdish parties and the pro-Kurdish agenda (as discussed further in chapter 6). After the proKurdish HADEP won thirty-seven mayoral races in 1999, its mayors took control of local budgetary planning and allocations. In the metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır, pro-Kurdish elections to local office in 1999 and 2004 meant representatives would now control a budget that ranged from $30 million to $53 million annually (Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality 2005). Combined with the municipal budgets of other Diyarbakır municipalities such as Bağlar and Suriçi, pro-Kurdish mayors in the city of Diyarbakır alone oversaw $197 million worth of local revenue in 2005 (TÜİK Bütçeler 1999–2005, 10). Other cities had smaller but nonetheless significant budgets: in 2005 the city of Batman had a budget of about $23 million, for instance, and the budgets of towns and cities in the province of Hakkari totaled approximately $27 million in 2005. Money to further a pro-Kurdish agenda could come from other sources as well. When Turkey was officially classified as a candidate country in December 1999, pro-Kurdish municipalities could apply for millions of dollars worth of European Union pre-accession grants as well as for funding assistance from European banks. Although some of these grants and loans funded basic infrastructural improvements, others served to further pro-Kurdish cultural projects. In 2005, for instance, the European Union Commission contributed 650,000 euros for an ambitious restora-

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tion project in the old city of Diyarbakır (the Gazi Avenue Rehabilitation Program) and gave 40,000 euros to develop a Kurdish oral literature project. Winning municipalities also gave pro-Kurdish parties and officials supervisory authority over hundreds of employees who could be assigned to duties and projects that furthered party and movement goals. Management of employees offered vastly expanded opportunities to practice patronage politics: building support for the party and the movement through the distribution of resources among supporters and constituents. In 2005 the metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır employed 817 personnel; of these, about 595 were temporary workers (Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality 2006). Unlike other contracted civil service employees, whose employment was more dependent on the central state than on the local municipality, temporary workers could be hired and fired at will by the incumbent mayor. This meant that once pro-Kurdish parties controlled municipalities they were in a position to hire movement and party sympathizers. Physical infrastructure constituted another important systemic resource, giving pro-Kurdish activists legal places to meet, organize, recruit, and train. Such safe spaces are critical to the survival of opposition movements, especially in repressive regimes (see Sewell 2001, 69), and had previously been rare in Turkey due to prohibitions on Kurdish activism. By establishing legal political parties, Kurdish activists gained a rationale—in fact, the legal mandate—to open offices in cities and towns around the country and to recruit party supporters. These places were far from fully safe; they frequently came under attack and surveillance, especially in the mid-1990s. Nonetheless, they provided the movement with an institutional backbone for organization and collective mobilization within urban Turkey. Party offices were most often rented from sympathetic building owners and became important spaces of resistance and community building. Even in western cities such as Ankara, visitors to pro-Kurdish party offices would wait in lobbies with television sets tuned to Kurdish satellite TV stations, some of which were banned by the state. Some offices became shrines to the martyrs of the movement, with walls displaying the portraits of party members who had been killed. If a party was closed, administrators usually kept the same offices and replaced the old party

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signs with new ones. This ensured that particular sites would continue to be familiar and readily accessible to supporters. Election to mayoral office gave pro-Kurdish activists easy access to municipal buildings (and the funds to build bigger and better ones). Some of the larger and newer city halls in cities such as Diyarbakır had conference rooms and theaters, making it easier to organize conferences, film festivals, and other events that could serve the movement. After pro-Kurdish electoralists won the mayoral race in Bağlar (a subdistrict of Diyarbakır city) in 1999, they built a new multimillion-dollar city hall to replace the cramped offices the municipality had heretofore used. The new complex was then used by pro-Kurdish municipalities throughout the area as a site for hosting international conferences on topics ranging from multilingualism to historic preservation.

Legal Resources

Election to the Turkish parliament provided pro-Kurdish deputies with parliamentary immunity from prosecution, which gave them considerably more protection for expressing their political opinions than movement supporters outside the Parliament had. Turkey uses a broad form of parliamentary immunity that offers not only parliamentary non-accountability (representatives cannot be legally questioned at any time for their speech and voting in Parliament) but also inviolability, meaning their actions outside the Parliament are also protected by law, unless the Parliament itself votes to remove that immunity (see, e.g., Koçan and Wigley 2005, 123–24). Although in late 1994 Parliament voted to strip some pro-Kurdish deputies of this immunity, rendering them vulnerable to prosecution, this must have seemed highly unlikely to those first entering the system in 1990. Between 1961 and 1998 Parliament had received 2,713 written requests from prosecutors for suspension of immunity for 1,151 members (Koçan and Wigley 2005, 135, 137), but this immunity had been removed in fewer than twenty cases. No parliamentarian had been stripped of immunity, moreover, since 1968. Parliamentary immunity was an established means by which party members gained protection for a range of alleged crimes, including those for which they had already been detained: in both

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the 1987 and the July 2007 national elections, for example, a pro-Kurdish candidate for Parliament was in jail on charges of supporting the PKK at the time of the election. Each time the candidate’s election victory meant a trip from prison to Parliament.

Official Access

Kurdish parties and elected officials gained unprecedented access to decision makers and influential committees, organizations, and platforms. Election to the Turkish parliament provided them with new opportunities to speak in Parliament, to meet with political, diplomatic, and media representatives, and to engage in activities that would attract media attention. Those elected to Parliament within SHP in 1991 could serve in administrative positions within the party. They became eligible to serve in parliamentary administrative positions and to chair and sit on parliamentary commissions and committees, where they might exercise some influence over policies and budgetary allocations. They also gained greater access to foreign governments and diplomats, multi-governmental organizations, and international agencies. This access took the form of both official positions (on intergovernmental committees, for instance) and unofficial networking through diplomatic channels. Election to local office also brought many new access-related opportunities in both domestic and international politics. Pro-Kurdish mayors joined Turkey’s various regional, provincial, and city administrative bodies and became part of regional and national political networks. These included, for instance, the Union of Southeast Anatolia Region Municipalities (Güneydoğu Anadolu Bölgesi Belediyeler Birliği, or GABB) and the Union of Municipalities of Turkey (Türkiye Belediyeler Birliği). They were in close contact with business organizations and with representatives of the business and nongovernmental sectors both inside and outside Turkey. Because there was no pro-Kurdish party representation in the Parliament between 1994 and 2007, pro-Kurdish mayors in Turkey inherited the role played by pro-Kurdish parliamentarians between 1990 and 1994. The mayors served as liaisons between the Kurdish-majority regions and the international community and, more generally, as “official” representatives of the country’s Kurdish population, which for many international audiences was conflated with the pro-Kurdish movement. 82

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They also served in official functions in international governmental organizations. Among the most important was the World Federation of United Cities (FMCU-UTO), an intergovernmental body of almost 1,400 cities. In 2001 Diyarbakır Metropolitan Mayor Feridun Çelik became a member of the executive board of the FMCU-UTO, as did Osman Baydemir after him. In his capacity on the board, Baydemir traveled to Paris, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., between 2005 and 2006. He and other pro-Kurdish mayors gained many opportunities to speak to European delegations and diplomatic audiences; in September 2005, for instance, Baydemir traveled to Brussels and Strasbourg to speak to the European Commission and the European Parliament about the Kurdish issue. Because of the EU accession process initiated after 1999, pro-Kurdish mayors and their staffs were able to submit reports on the region and its conditions to EU representatives, who used them to help draft their regular accession progress reports. Mayors also became key sources for news reporters, human rights organizations, and other NGOs.

Role Resources

Pro-Kurdish party officials and elected representatives also gained access to role resources: the duties, authorities, and expectations that parties, elected parliamentarians, and local government officials are legally tasked with or expected to perform as part of their customary work. These could in turn be used to further the party and movement in various ways. Partyspecific role resources included activities that parties are legally obligated and entitled to do, such as open offices, campaign for office, hold party assemblies and meetings, distribute party information, talk to the press, etc. For parliamentarians, it included writing and voting on legislation, sitting on committees, meeting with constituents, participating in party meetings, and serving in official capacities. Especially after 1999, the role-related resources of local government became particularly important for pro-Kurdish mayors and parties. Because local governments permitted more autonomous activity than national politics, and because of the concentration of Kurds in the southeast, role-related resources allowed pro-Kurdish parties to disaggregate local concerns from national-level political debates and to focus on grassroots community building and building autonomy from the ground up. R E SO U RC E S O F TH E SYS TEM

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That local government would hold such a relatively rich array of rolerelated resources was not self-evident, given the high level of political centralization in the Turkish political system. Such resources had, however, increased considerably since the 1970s. Between 1960 and 1997, the country’s urban population grew from 25 to 65 percent (İncioğlu 2002, 73); by 2000, an estimated 79 percent of the Turkish population lived in urban areas or within municipal boundaries. Reflecting the greater importance of local politics, more people began to vote in local elections. Turnout in local elections increased from an average of 30 to 50 percent in the 1970s to around 70 to 80 percent in the first decade of the 2000s. This growing population proved to be too much for meagerly empowered cities to administrate, prompting new calls from the public and local politicians for decentralization and financial autonomy. Mayors themselves started to play a more visible role at this time in both local and national politics. Their criticism of central policies often brought them into conflict with Ankara (Finkel 1990, 188). In the 1970s, and in defiance of the highly polarized national political scene of that decade, some mayors from different parties tried to collaborate across interparty lines to tackle regional problems (Tekeli 1982, cited in Ergüder 1987, 16). While this municipal movement did not result in reform at that time, it increased the status of mayors and their involvement in public services and presaged many of the decentralization reforms that came after the Motherland Party (ANAP) was elected in 1983 in the first civilian elections since the 1980 coup. Municipalities, already becoming more distinct political spaces, were strengthened, reorganized, and given a new resource base under a series of reforms begun in 1984 by ANAP. These reforms were not only in line with the party’s emphasis on a market economy and decentralization. They also served to promote the party and make it more appealing to urban voters at a time when the SHP and Süleyman Demirel’s True Path Party (DYP) were reentering electoral races for the first time since the coup (Heper 1987, 1989; Bayraktar 2007). The new reforms created a twotier system of greater municipalities, comprising Turkey’s biggest cities, and district municipalities, which included both the districts of big cities (e.g., Beşiktaş in Istanbul) and smaller towns and cities that had municipal status but were not considered big enough to count as a greater municipality. Greater municipalities received considerably more money than

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any city government had seen in the past, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s they were expanded from initially three cities (Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir) to sixteen cities, including Diyarbakır, which received greater municipality status in 1993. By the 1990s the mayors of large cities, in particular, had become increasingly visible and influential actors in both local and national politics. (The most prominent example was Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who served as mayor of Istanbul in the second half of the 1990s before going on to become prime minister.) As Bayraktar writes (2007, par. 40), the post1980 local governments in fact closely resembled a “presidential system at the national scale with a very powerful mayor at the centre of the municipal system.” Kurdish activists who obtained control of municipalities would find an “expanded capacity to administer” (Finkel 1990, 189) that included preparing budgets; creating and implementing master plans; building, maintaining, and naming public spaces such as squares, parks, and streets; providing and maintaining essential services such as water, sewage, and mass transit; building parks and gardens; supplying social and cultural services; conducting health inspections for water and food; and collecting litter (see, e.g., Heper 1987). All of these were resources that pro-Kurdish parties and mayors would turn to the service of the movement in both conventional and creative ways.

Legitimacy Resources

Entering the arena of formal electoral politics made pro-Kurdish actors eligible to draw on a new set of “legitimacy” resources that could “credit them with the right to rule over others,” in the words of Clifford Geertz (1973, 317) Given the Kurdish national movement’s extralegal status, establishing legitimacy was one of the party’s main tasks. It involved not only changing beliefs about which political institutions and representatives were the “most appropriate ones for society” (Connolly 1984), but convincing authorities, constituents, and other influential actors that they should uphold and confirm movement claims (see, e.g., Tilly 1985, 171). Upholding the claims of a movement and its representatives can take the form of sending government officials to meet with them, allocating material resources to them, appointing them to serve as

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mediators, pressuring the target state on their behalf, etc. Because most national movements cannot monopolize force—historically the most common way to establish legitimacy (see, e.g., Tilly 1985)—movement representatives tend to search for additional means of establishing their right to rule. Much of what movements are engaged in, then, is trying to establish legitimacy of claims among multiple possible audiences or donors. One of the most important types of legitimacy resource in mainstream politics is votes, which can establish credibility in ways quite distinct from force of arms or demonstrations. This is both because of the universal normative dominance of electoral democracy and because votes can be read as a more explicit, systematic, and verifiable expression of political preference than, for instance, a street demonstration or a statement of insurgent demands. If they are high enough, electoral numbers carry weight and can become the empirical basis for demands for autonomy and self-determination. Pro-Kurdish parties could hope to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to vote for them. In 1991, when HEP entered the Parliament on the SHP ticket, there were 29,979,123 registered voters in Turkey, which was 52 percent of the country’s population (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2004). However, pro-Kurdish parties were competing most seriously for votes in Kurdish areas of the southeast, which are some of the least populated provinces of the country. In 1991 there were around 6 million people living in the area (including Kars, Urfa, and Tunceli).1 In most of these provinces, about 36 to 40 percent of the population was registered to vote. Diyarbakır, for instance, is the highest populated province of the region; in 1991 about 1.1 million people lived there, according to the census, and about 37 percent were registered to vote. This meant that, not including cities such as Mersin, Istanbul, and Izmir (which have sizable Kurdish populations), pro-Kurdish candidates in 1991 were, realistically, competing for around 2.5 million regional votes. By 2002 this number was around 3 to 4 million (again limiting the numbers to the provinces of the southeast, where significant portions of the electorate were most likely to support them). At that point the region’s population according to official statistics was about 7.2 million people (again excluding Mersin, which has an official population of about 1.7 million). Depending on the province, anywhere from 38 percent of the population (in Urfa and Ağrı) to 64 percent (in Tunceli) was registered to vote in the region. In 2002, 43.7 percent 86

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of Diyarbakır province’s official population of 1.4 million was registered to vote (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 2004).

CHANGING OPPORTU NITIES AND RESOU RCES AF TER 1999

Pro-Kurdish activists’ access to and ability to deploy the resources of party, Parliament, and municipality changed substantially between 1990 and 2008, and I divide these years into two phases: one from 1990 to 1998 and the other from 1999 to 2008. The two phases are differentiated by shifts in PKK strength and presence on the ground in the Kurdish regions of the country; international factors (Turkey’s EU accession process and the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq); and by changes in the nature of governance in the southeast. These phases meant changes in both the level of resources and activists’ freedom to use them.

Variable 1: PKK Strength and Presence

Pro-Kurdish activists’ efforts to work within the system between 1990 and the late 1990s were highly circumscribed by the PKK, which in the early 1990s controlled significant territory in the southeast and wielded near-hegemonic ideological and political power within the movement. Although the PKK lost ground throughout the 1990s—the number of PKK attacks dropped from a reported 3,300 in 1993 to 1,436 in 1995 and 488 in 1999 (Human Rights Watch 2001)—the decisive shift in PKK fortunes came in February 1999, when PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Kenya by Turkish security forces, flown back to Turkey, and put on trial. In June 1999 he was sentenced to death, although his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in September 2002. Thousands of PKK fighters responded to Öcalan’s call for a ceasefire and left the country. During the unilateral ceasefire between 2000 and 2004 there was almost no fighting in the region, and although it resumed again after 2005, the levels of combat and militarization were still low compared to the past, at least until early 2007. The withdrawal of the PKK from active combat, as well as PKK efforts to reconstitute the organization as a political entity between 2002 R E SO U RC E S O F TH E SYS TEM

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and 2004, opened up a new and more flexible political framework, particularly in urban centers such as Diyarbakır. Greatly expanded spaces were available for nongovernmental organizations, artists, and other actors. It brought a reduction of Turkish militarization in the region and left an organizational vacuum in the movement. Although the PKK still influenced pro-Kurdish party decision making, pro-Kurdish mayors and party officials could now seek to operate with more autonomy than they had before. In the local elections of 2004, for instance, reported differences of opinion between PKK leader Öcalan and the pro-Kurdish DEHAP party leadership led to a brief candidacy crisis when the outgoing pro-Kurdish mayor of the greater municipality of Diyarbakır, Feridun Çelik, declared he would run as an independent against the wishes of the party. Öcalan and others close to the PKK leadership initially gave him their public support (see, e.g., Demir 2005, 527–28). In a somewhat controversial decision, DEHAP’s administration selected Osman Baydemir, a longtime human rights activist known for his good relations with nongovernmental organizations, as its candidate. After several days of public accusations and counter-accusations, Çelik withdrew his candidacy, leaving Baydemir—DEHAP’s choice—free to campaign and win the mayor’s office.

Variable 2: Turkey-EU Relations

Material resources, legal resources, and access- and role-related resources also increased after 1999 because of Turkey’s renewed efforts to gain European Union membership. Pro-Kurdish opportunities to exploit these sources also broadened. In December 1999 the European Union agreed to recognize Turkey as a candidate for membership, paving the way for a series of legal reforms that would loosen restrictions on cultural expression and organization that had been in effect for many years. Between 2001 and 2004 the Turkish parliament approved nine reform packages designed to meet the criteria for EU membership. The reforms to the penal code and constitution included the abolition of the death penalty, judicial reforms (most significantly, the abolition of the state security courts), civilianization of the National Security Council, and reforms that brought greater freedom for cultural expression. From 2004 to the end of 2008, these permitted a limited right to broadcast in local lan88

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guages (including Kurdish) and to offer Kurdish-language classes for adults in private institutions (teaching Kurdish in schools and universities remained illegal until early 2009). Along with these legal changes, the EU candidacy process also brought a regular set of fact-finding missions and EU reports. Because Diyarbakır was the largest city in the southeast, was readily accessible to foreign visitors, and had been the scene of serious human rights violations in the 1990s, it became a kind of case study for monitoring Turkey’s democratic reform process. Foreign dignitaries and delegations made regular trips to the city, giving pro-Kurdish mayors there extensive access to European officials and oversight procedures and putting pressure on Turkish authorities. As noted above, EU candidacy also offered new funding opportunities for municipalities, which could now apply for a number of different EU grants open to candidate countries.

Variable 3: Governance in the Southeast

A third important transformation in the political context between preand post-1999 was the civilianization of governance in Kurdish provinces of the country that had formerly been under emergency law. Between the coup of September 12, 1980, and the summer of 1987 much of the southeast was under martial law. When it was lifted in July 1987, it was immediately replaced with Emergency Rule Law (Olağanüstü Hal, or OHAL). At its height OHAL operated in thirteen provinces (Bingöl, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt, Tunceli, Van, Adıyaman, Bitlis, Batman, Şırnak and Muş). OHAL brought these provinces under the jurisdiction of a regional governor who held extraordinary powers. The governor could empower security authorities to search homes and party offices without a warrant, order the evacuations of entire villages, and restrict public meetings. Basic legal and political rights in effect in other parts of the country were in abeyance; individuals could be detained for much longer periods without a trial, and wire taps could be placed on phones without a court order (the signature of a prosecutor was sufficient). Although OHAL was lifted in some provinces in the late 1990s, it was in effect until 2002 in the provinces of Diyarbakır, Şırnak, Hakkari, and Tunceli. The final phase of the lifting of OHAL in 2002 constituted a significant shift in “emergency” governance policies that had been in effect in R E SO U RC E S O F TH E SYS TEM

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the region for as long as twenty-four years (depending on the province: martial law had been declared in some provinces in the southeast as early as 1978). Civilian governors with normal powers of jurisdiction were appointed to the provinces that had remained under emergency law. This permitted political parties and nongovernmental organizations greater freedom of assembly and made it more difficult for authorities to restrict freedom of expression. The dismantling of the state security courts in June 2004 also constituted an important governance change; they had been operating in select regions of the country since 1984 and were used extensively to prosecute activists.

CHALLENGER PARTIES: TENSIONS BET WEEN DIFFERENT RESOU RCE POOLS

Shifts in political context changed the nature and level of material, legal, access- and role-related resources within the system, especially for proKurdish mayors and municipalities in the southeast. They also had a significant impact on politician-activists’ ability to deploy these resources, as I discuss further in chapter 4. However, throughout both these periods, pro-Kurdish parties and their elected officials continued to grapple with difficult decisions concerning how to gain and keep resources provided by often contradictory sets of resource donors. Tangible and intangible resources derived from working within the formal political system could advance the movement and its goals if used in ways that sustained and enlarged support bases. However, the tradeoffs necessary to maximize access to state-derived resources could also create perceptions that the parties had been co-opted and had the potential to fragment the movement. This was the case, for instance, in the Islamist movement in Israel, which split between northern and southern factions in 1996 because of disputes concerning whether or not to participate in Israeli national elections (Aburaiya 2004). Contradictions between the need to maintain exogenous legitimacy (external legitimacy among donors such as individual voters, interest groups, other political parties, foreign powers) and endogenous legitimacy (internal legitimacy: maintaining the allegiance of the party’s activists, members, and habitual followers) may create per90

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petual tension within opposition parties (Zariski 1986, 31). This can result in behavior or discourse that may seem inexplicable on the outside but can be understood as the result of attempts to balance these competing tensions. In addition, internal pressures created by actors within the party may be compounded and reinforced by the presence of powerful antisystem organizations such as the PKK. Both before and after 1999 these tensions were very strong within proKurdish parties, creating self- or movement-imposed constraints on the degree to which activists could exploit the resources of the system. Party administrators and elected officials struggled to balance the very different demands of PKK leaders, committed party activists, and a strongly PKK-supportive rank-and-file constituency on the one hand, and Turkish political and governmental elites, what might be roughly called the mainstream Turkish public, and the European and American international community on the other. (The latter set of actors were not homogenous, but for purposes of the Kurdish movement their expectations and demands were similar.) PKK-oriented actors could provide legitimacy resources such as votes, funds, and committed volunteers, but they came with a steep price in that they complicated pro-Kurdish parties’ access to other resources of the political system and jeopardized the parties’ security. Some of the main ways pro-Kurdish party administrators and elected officials balanced these demands was by deliberately withholding or withdrawing from influential partnerships, not participating in elections, and behaving in ways that could predictably result in their exclusion from influential bodies and decision-making processes. By behaving and talking in ways that perpetuated the idea they were “outside the system,” HEP, DEP, and their successor parties could continue to draw on the resources provided by the PKK and those portions of the electorate that supported it, even if they sacrificed potentially beneficial connections that might have furthered concrete movement goals. Fierce internal disputes arose among some party members and elected officials over the costs of deliberately severing important relations with influential decision makers and potential allies. This was the case in the spring of 1992, for instance, when most of the pro-Kurdish deputies elected on the SHP ticket resigned from SHP. Because SHP was at that point a member of the coalition government, the resignations meant these pro-Kurdish parliamentarians would not only lose access to one of the R E SO U RC E S O F TH E SYS TEM

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biggest parties in the country, but they would also lose close access to members of the government. HEP parliamentarians had also discussed resigning from SHP following their swearing-in ceremony of October 1991. Nonetheless, with the exception of Leyla Zana and Hatip Dicle, who were forced to quit SHP, the deputies remained in the party for the next six months, during which time they served in important leadership positions in the party and Parliament. Pressure to resign became acute in March 1992, when Turkish security forces clashed with Kurdish New Year (Newroz) demonstrators in Şırnak, Cizre, and Nusaybin, killing fifty-eight people. Many HEP members wanted the deputies to resign as a symbol of protest, and the PKK called on them to do so. Former HEP deputy Mahmut Alınak’s memoirs offer a vivid glimpse inside the party’s debates concerning what pro-Kurdish deputies gained by continuing to work within the system and what they would lose if they withdrew. Alınak opposed quitting SHP, arguing that although it would be “easy,” it would come with costs. Alınak argued that it was the HEP parliamentarians’ duty “to create public pressure to put the [Newroz] massacre on the agenda” and that resigning would “take the massacre off the agenda” and replace it with debate about the resignations. In addition, if HEP’s deputies resigned, they would lose their ability to present and debate an SHP committee report on the Newroz events in SHP’s parliamentary group. Pro-Kurdish members of this group hoped to push for a full parliamentary investigation of the incidents. Resigning would, Alınak wrote, strengthen forces in Turkey that wanted to polarize the country’s Kurdish and Turkish communities. Because the PKK had been calling for the HEP parliamentarians to resign, if they did so it would look like they were following PKK orders. As Alınak writes, “If we resigned, it would create comment that ‘Apo [Öcalan] had forced the HEP members to resign.’ This sort of news and comment would lead to the narrowing of our field of struggle” (Alınak 1994, 210–11). Ultimately, despite Alınak’s arguments, the party’s parliamentary leadership decided to withdraw from SHP, a decision apparently made without Alınak’s consent; he writes in his memoirs (212–13) that he only learned of the withdrawal from the press. Reflecting on this decision to withdraw from SHP, Cebbar Leygara, a pro-Kurdish mayor from 1999 to 2004 and a member of HEP in 1991, said that in retrospect it had been a mistake, but that it was understandable in the context of the time. “I say ‘if only we had stayed’ [in SHP], but in 1991 I was a 29-year-old politician and at that point I 92

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defended the idea of leaving. . . . our party directors were being killed, and SHP was not able to be very effective. As a result feelings were very heavy. However, if we had stayed we would have had a partnership” (Leygara in Çakır 2004, 162).Deep internal debates also marked the 1994 decision by the pro-Kurdish DEP’s party leadership to withdraw from the local elections, as I discuss further in chapter 4.

CONCLUSION

Entering electoral and party politics brought pro-Kurdish activists unprecedented access to a range of resources that could be appropriated and used to advance the interests of the parties and the movement. Some of these resources became available simply through the mechanism of founding a legal political party; others were available to members of Parliament or through election to local office. Although all these resources were available to any party that entered the Turkish political system, proKurdish parties used them in unexpected and unorthodox ways to further movement and party goals. The level of available resources and opportunities to use them varied according to time (in general, there were more restrictions before 1999) and level of governance (e.g., national versus local). However, pro-Kurdish parties’ status as challengers meant that they were not able to fully deploy all available resources. The parties’ need to continue to draw on PKK-linked legitimacy and societal resources between 1990 and 2008 discouraged them from maximizing all possible access-related resources and, in particular, to reject access if it might jeopardize pro-Kurdish elected officials’ and parties’ status as challengers or make them appear to be collaborators.

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4 CHARACTERISTICS OF COERCION Obstructing Access to Resources

B

etween 1990 and 2008 pro-Kurdish parties and their members experienced a wide array of coercive measures that restricted their access to the resources of the system, interfered with their ability to use them to advance the movement and its goals, and at times threatened to end pro-Kurdish party activism entirely. Party administrators and activists were shot, prosecuted, jailed, beaten, fined, and threatened. Parties were closed, party offices bombed, and party property confiscated by the state. This chapter examines the form and impact of such state and state-sponsored coercive campaigns against the parties and activists. What effects did coercion have on the Kurdish movement’s efforts to work within the system? What made coercion more effective at some moments than others? How and why did the state’s mechanisms for restricting proKurdish access to and usage of resources shift over time?

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The nature of state coercion and state-party relations can be divided into two main phases: 1990 to 1998, and 1999 to 2008. In the first phase, official efforts to suppress pro-Kurdish parties and their activities were multifaceted and relied on both formal (legal) mechanisms and extrajudicial actors. Put bluntly, in the 1990s pro-Kurdish politicians and party activists were physically and legally assaulted on many fronts and by many types of perpetrators. During the second phase of coercion-repression, authorities relied more heavily on the juridical and bureaucraticpolitical mechanisms of disciplinary or authoritative power (Foucault 1977; Giddens 1984, 33, 258–61) to control pro-Kurdish politicians and activists. Throughout both phases, efforts were made to suppress proKurdish parties as organizations and party members and administrators as individuals. The chapter makes two main points. First, the main effect of heavy levels of persecution in both phases was to perpetuate the pro-Kurdish parties’ status as marginal challengers. The politics of polarization perpetuated by Turkish authorities and by the PKK was one of the main reasons why pro-Kurdish parties did not become institutionalized even after incorporation into electoral politics. Second, the effectiveness of the state’s efforts to restrict both movement access to and use of the resources available in the system varied considerably throughout the years, with pro-Kurdish parties demonstrating a somewhat surprising ability to operate despite significant amounts of pressure applied to them. State success in obstructing the parties (or, conversely, the parties’ effectiveness in mitigating the effects of state pressure) varied according to the degree to which different state actors coordinated their attacks on the parties and, to a lesser extent, to the ability of external actors, such as the European Union, to raise the costs of repression sufficient to limit its application. This chapter first examines the nature of repression against the pro-Kurdish parties and looks at how the types and levels of coercion changed over time. It then explores the dynamics of coercion and its impacts on pro-Kurdish parties through two short case studies: first, the exclusion of the parties from formal political representation in March 1994, when the pro-Kurdish Demokrasi Partisi (DEP) withdrew from local elections and the Turkish parliament lifted pro-Kurdish deputies’ parliamentary immunity from prosecution; and second, juridical coercion as it was employed against pro-Kurdish mayors, particularly in 2006 to 2008. C HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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CHAR AC TERIZING AND COMPARING COERCION

In the late hours of the evening of July 5, 1991, four men knocked on the door of Vedat Aydın’s Diyarbakır home, identified themselves as policemen, and asked Aydın to come with them for questioning. Three days later Aydın’s body was found on a highway outside Diyarbakır. His skull was fractured, his legs were broken, and he had been shot at least fifteen times. The governor’s office released a statement expressing regret for the incident, which was attributed to “unknown assailants.” No perpetrators were ever identified or prosecuted (see Cumhuriyet, July 9–10, 1991; also Ölmez 1995, 126–36) Aydın, a former teacher and one of the founders of the Diyarbakır branch of the Human Rights Association, was the pro-Kurdish HEP party’s regional branch chairman in Diyarbakır and the first victim in what would become a succession of murdered pro-Kurdish party officials and activists. Four days after his body was found, six people were killed and more than 150 people injured after fighting broke out between police and a crowd of an estimated twenty-five thousand people who attended his funeral. Witnesses said the fighting began after several people threw stones at the police station, and security forces intervened with armored cars (see, e.g., Cumhuriyet July 9–10, 1991). These incidents offer examples of some of the more violent methods used to obstruct pro-Kurdish parties and activists from working effectively within the political system between 1990 and 2008. I categorize coercive-punitive measures employed against the parties into four main types: policing; juridical-legal; extralegal; and bureaucratic. These served variously to threaten, intimidate, silence, and radicalize pro-Kurdish activists and potential supporters. Each method also functioned more precisely to remove or restrict pro-Kurdish access to specific sets of resources and to undermine the effectiveness of pro-Kurdish activities.

Policing Measures

Policing measures included detention without trial (and often without charges) of pro-Kurdish administrators, officials, and supporters; restricting pro-Kurdish campaigning and use of public spaces; physical attacks (e.g., shootings, beatings) on demonstrators and party leaders; searches of 96

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pro-Kurdish party offices; and seizures of party property, such as computers and documents. Police, gendarmes, and other security forces used such tactics. Coercive policing made apparently “safe spaces” unsafe, physically prevented pro-Kurdish parties from holding meetings, demonstrations, and campaigning, and intimidated potential allies and supporters, thus impeding mobilization. Such measures began almost immediately after HEP was founded: following HEP’s first national assembly on June 8–9, 1991, for instance, nine administrators and seventy-six other party members were detained (Yeni Ülke, June 23–29, 1991). A month later, Turkish police detained a number of people participating in a nine-day march organized by HEP, arguing that party activists were distributing “separatist propaganda.” On July 26, club-wielding police in Batman beat several HEP members of Parliament and arrested nearly thirty people (see, e.g., Cumhuriyet, July 20–27, 1990). This type of coercive policing was endemic throughout the 1990s. In 1997, 102 directors of the pro-Kurdish HADEP, 327 of its members, and 617 of its supporters were detained (a total of 1,046). Most were released without charges (HRFT 1997).

Juridical-Legal Measures

Juridical-legal measures targeted pro-Kurdish parties as organizations and individual pro-Kurdish activists and politicians through investigations and court cases. Such measures were carried out by the judiciary, including the public prosecutor’s office and an array of civilian and state security courts, and, to a lesser extent, by the Turkish parliament, the Interior Ministry, and other state bodies. Juridical coercion included investigations opened by the public prosecutor’s office, hearings and court cases, and penalties such as fines, bans on participation in politics, removal from public office, and prison sentences that could be many years’ long. (Before it was abolished, capital punishment was threatened but never sentenced.) Juridical coercion ejected parties and the individuals who supported them from the political system. It served as a form of harassment that funneled time and other resources away from the pursuit of movement goals, and it rescinded specific rights and legal assets customarily granted to political participants and elected officials (e.g., parliamentarians’ immunity from prosecution). The public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation against HEP C HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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in the summer of 1991, and the Turkish Constitutional Court closed the party in July 1993. The court’s decision not only prevented the party from participating in the political system, it also granted the state the right to appropriate the party’s material assets and strip any of the party’s parliamentary members from their positions. The Constitutional Court closed HEP’s successor parties, ÖZDEP (in November 1993), DEP (in June 1994), and HADEP (in 2003). The continual threat of closures made it more difficult for the parties to present themselves to the public as viable alternatives, especially during elections. The accompanying turnover in administrators also made it more difficult for the parties to generate their own base of support distinct from that of the PKK. In addition to targeting pro-Kurdish parties as organizations, juridical coercion harassed thousands of individual pro-Kurdish party administrators and members. Most often this took the form of investigations opened by public prosecutors against Kurdish officials and administrators. While the majority of these investigations were eventually dropped, many formal cases were opened, and pro-Kurdish politicians and supporters were forced to appear in court. Hundreds of investigations and cases were opened each year throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s against all levels of activists, ranging from casual supporters to party chairs, mayors, and members of Parliament. A snapshot of 1994 highlights the intense juridical pressure put on pro-Kurdish administrators at that time, probably the most difficult year pro-Kurdish activists experienced between 1991 and 2008. It included the following cases and judgments: •

Conviction in the Ankara State Security Court of eight pro-Kurdish members of Parliament, with prison sentences ranging from three and a half to fifteen years.

•

Conviction in the Istanbul State Security Court of three pro-Kurdish mayors in connection with statements they made to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özg ür Gündem. The three (who had recently joined DEP) were removed from office by the Interior Ministry and given prison sentences of twenty months and fines of TL 208 million (approximately $6,800 in 1994).

•

Conviction in the Konya State Security Court of a former secretary general of DEP and then chairman of a new pro-Kurdish party to twenty months in prison and a fine of TL 41 million ($1,360) because of a speech he gave in Konya in 1991.

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•

Convictions of ten HEP administrators in the Ankara State Security Court. Sentences ranged from two to six years and fines from TL 100 to 250 million ($3,400 to $8,500). Five others were acquitted.

•

Conviction in the Izmir State Security Court of a founding member of DEP to twenty months in prison and a TL 208 million (approximately $6,800) fine because of a speech he gave at a DEP assembly in 1993.

•

Conviction in the Izmir State Security Court of three pro-Kurdish administrators (a former DEP chairman, a founding member of DEP, and a member of the HADEP party assembly) to twenty months in prison and a fine of TL 208 million (approximately $6,800) each in connection with speeches made at a DEP assembly in 1993. One of the same men was sentenced in another court to another twenty months in jail.

• Conviction of former DEP chair Yaşar Kaya in two separate trials to a total of six years in prison and TL 750 million ($25,000) in fines because of speeches he made in 1993. •

Conviction in the Ankara State Security Court of the HADEP Ankara administrative chairman to four years in jail and TL 500 million ($17,000) because of a speech he had made (TİHV 1994, 352–54).

Mayor Abdullah Kaya’s case stands out as particularly notable. Kaya was elected mayor of the town of Kozluk (in the province of Batman) in 1989. He was at that time with SHP. In 1992 he was recognized by the Interior Ministry as an outstanding community politician and nominated for an annual prize awarded in Belgium to acknowledge Europe’s best local administrators. In September 1993 Kaya transferred his party membership from SHP to DEP. On February 9, 1994, he was arrested, detained for more than a month, and expelled from his post by the Interior Ministry. No explanation for his expulsion was given (Amnesty International 1997, 15).

Extralegal Measures

Extralegal measures included attacks on pro-Kurdish party property and physical attacks on pro-Kurdish leadership and membership that took place outside the purview of public policing and security. These measures included the bombing and strafing of pro-Kurdish party offices, homes, and other property; extrajudicial killings, known as “unknown assailant” (faili meçhul) murders; and torture. Extralegal C HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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coercion was carried out by Turkish security forces (police, gendarmerie, and especially the intelligence services) as well as by militias (Turkish Hezbollah, ultranationalist groups, village guard forces). Extralegal measures served to intimidate and silence (in some cases, permanently) pro-Kurdish activists and party members, to make it more difficult for them to mobilize support, and, in some cases, to radicalize activists and potential activists (thus undermining the establishment of a moderate wing of the movement). “Unknown assailant” murders began in 1989 and typically involved the gunning down of victims or their disappearance followed by the discovery of the victims’ bodies, usually shot through the head and with signs of torture. The term “unknown assailant” murders referred specifically to deaths by such means, carried out for political purposes, and to the fact that the perpetrators were almost never publicly identified or prosecuted. By far the majority of such deaths involved pro-Kurdish or left-wing victims, and it came to be widely assumed that the assailants were linked to the Turkish security forces and intelligence apparatus. Suspicions about the identity of the perpetrators in such deaths were confirmed by parliamentary and government investigations into the Susurluk scandal of 1996, which revealed ties between security forces, especially the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism Center (Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele Teşkilatı, or JİTEM, which carried out many murders), and ultranationalist members of “illegal gangs.” Shrouded in controversy, JİTEM was formed in the late 1980s or very early 1990s; confessors from JİTEM claimed responsibility for Vedat Aydın’s death along with that of Kurdish author and activist Musa Anter (Şahan and Balık 2005, 48–53). By 1994 Turkish human rights organizations would report a total of 1,294 unknown assailant murders (these included pro-Kurdish activists along with others) (HRFT 1995, 116). By 2007, 2,610 people had died in such killings. The number of unknown assailant murders peaked in 1995 at 321 deaths, although they remained high through 2001, after which they dropped dramatically (although the Turkish Human Rights Association still recorded fifty such killings in 2003, for instance, and twenty in 2006). The number of murders and attacks on party property by extrajudicial actors and security forces was highest from 1992 to 1994 and dropped after that. Between 1990 and 2007 at least 112 HEP, DEP, and HADEP administrators and activists were killed in extrajudicial murders. Those killed included three regional chairmen (Diyarbakır, Batman, Erzincan), six 100

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subregional chairmen, at least twenty-seven regional and subregional party administrators (board members, secretaries, directors, etc.), one member of Parliament, and one mayoral candidate (Demir 2005, 552–59). Those murdered also included Musa Anter (a founding member of HEP), who was shot dead in Diyarbakır in September 1992 when he was visiting the city for a festival (see, e.g., Diyarbakır Söz, September 21–22, 1992). Along with the death of Diyarbakır branch chair Vedat Aydın, described above, one of the most prominent murders was that of Mehmet Sincar, a DEP (formerly HEP) parliamentarian from Mardin. In September 1993 Sincar was gunned down in Batman along with Metin Özdemir, the local DEP chairman. The escaped gunman also wounded four others, including DEP member of Parliament Nizamettin Toğuç (see Bolkan 2005; HRFT 1994, 130).

Bureaucratic Measures

Authorities also used bureaucratic measures to try to prevent proKurdish activists and politicians from using systemic resources. These included suspension or interruptions in funding, withholding permission for projects or activities, unusually rigid application of procedural rules, political isolation, and restricting access to arenas normally accessible to elected officials (e.g., committees). Bureaucratic coercion was commonly used to make life difficult for pro-Kurdish mayors and to restrict their contentious activities and reach of office. Especially prior to the lifting of emergency rule in 2002, the governor’s office, which exercised oversight function over many mayoral duties, routinely vetoed proposals and planned cultural activities (some Kurdish films, for instance, were sometimes not allowed in municipal film festivals). Pro-Kurdish mayors were excluded from occasions of state to which other mayors were invited to participate. Pro-Kurdish municipalities routinely reported that they suffered from budgetary “embargoes” in which promised funds would not materialize or would arrive late. ProKurdish municipalities were particularly frustrated by the Turkish State Planning Organization’s refusal to approve funds offered to the municipalities from European sources (see, e.g., Democratic Society Party 2006). Such difficulties made it more difficult for pro-Kurdish mayors to engage in public outreach and to work effectively. C HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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CHANGING PHASES OF COERCION

Although all these forms of coercion were employed throughout the 1990–2008 period, there was a substantial shift in their variety and intensity between 1990 and 1998, on the one hand, and 1999 and 2008 on the other. In the first phase, efforts to suppress the parties and their activities were diverse, multi-institutional, and relied on both formal (legal) mechanisms and extrajudicial actors. The second phase of coercion-repression, from 1999 onward, relied primarily on judicial and bureaucratic-political mechanisms to induce compliance. Instances of direct physical violence against the parties and their members dropped significantly, although there were still many moments in which party leaders and rank and file encountered the threat or experience of violence (including murder). The growing reliance on juridical and bureaucratic forms of coercion after 1999 and the sharp reduction in physical means of coercion stemmed from several interrelated factors. First, as discussed in chapter 3, the change reflected democratic reforms linked to the EU-accession process and the quieting of direct conflict between the Turkish security forces and the PKK. In particular, the lifting of emergency law after 2002 and the civilianization of governance in the southeast loosened restrictions on collective organization that had been in effect before and had been used to rationalize coercive policing. In addition, the EU-accession process, with its regular oversight reports and inspectors, demanded an accountable regime of law. Second, the shift after 1999 was in part a result of state efforts to reassert hegemony over forces of violence within the country, as Turkish authorities began to control some of the militias and gangs they had supported in the 1990s (see, e.g., Balta 2004; Bozarslan 2004). Third, the change in the means of coercion reflected the increasingly bureaucratic and institutionalized nature of pro-Kurdish activism itself. Especially after pro-Kurdish party contention shifted to the local sphere in 1999, Kurdish activists were less likely to lead hunger strikes or street marches and more likely to spend most of their time in governance duties. Bureaucratic and legalistic mechanisms of coercion were thus more effective means of restricting contentious impact.

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IMPAC TS: POLITIC S OF POL ARIZ ATION

Very high levels of persecution and prosecution facilitated the PKK’s efforts to continue to hegemonize the movement and the Kurdish field of resistance. First, it made it easier for activists to argue that participation in the formal political system was useless and that armed struggle was the only viable mode of contention. Prominent killings, such as the murder of Mardin parliamentarian Mehmet Sincar in September 1993, brought heavy pressure on pro-Kurdish deputies to resign from their positions and leave Parliament (e.g., see Özgür Gündem, September 1993). Even if pro-Kurdish deputies remained in the formal system, they were under pressure to radicalize their tone and to distance themselves from other elected officials. Repression and persecution can thus be seen as obstructing the normalization of pro-Kurdish activism and increasing the power of hardliners within the movement and the state. Second, coercion directly radicalized the parties by intimidating and imprisoning moderates. At the same time, it indirectly rewarded radicalization by providing the party leadership with legitimacy resources, which allowed them to more easily situate themselves as extrasystemic challenger organizations. Coercion legitimized them through blood sacrifice. Physical attacks on party members and leadership blurred the boundaries between political party and armed flank, validated the parties among certain constituents (or legitimacy “donors”), and linked the parties more closely to the PKK. Clashes with police and high-profile arrests created domestic and international publicity, much of it sympathetic. The murders of pro-Kurdish party administrators and elected officials could be used to demonstrate worthiness and commitment (see, e.g., Tilly 1999). One DEP advertisement published in the spring of 1994 broadcast the toll: In four years, seventy of HEP and DEP’s administrators had been killed (or, literally, martyred for democracy [demokrasiye şehit verildi]). DEP’s chairman was in prison, thousands of its members and directors had been imprisoned, threatened, and tortured, and close to twenty of its buildings had been rendered useless because of bomb attacks and other forms of sabotage. Even funeral ceremonies, the notice reminded readers, had been obstructed, and mourners raked with gunfire (Özgür Gündem, March 1, 1994). Published in a pro-Kurd-

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ish newspaper sympathetic to the PKK, such public notices made it very clear that pro-Kurdish parties could not be considered comprador or to be somehow selling out to the system.

MITIGATING IMPAC TS: A SOMETIMES U NCOORDINATED STATE

Descriptions of coercive mechanisms applied by the state and extrajudicial forces offer a sense of the considerable challenges pro-Kurdish activists faced trying to work within the formal political system, but they reveal little about the overall efficacy of such measures. Clearly, all these forms of coercion had a powerful and often devastating effect on the individuals targeted, with many pro-Kurdish activists and politicians (and their families and friends) suffering severe psychological, professional, and sometimes physical trauma. Nonetheless, although repression and persecution were facts of life, this did not stop the parties from trying to exploit the resources of the system and use them for mobilization and contestation. The effectiveness of coercive mechanisms depended in part on the level of coordination between different state agencies. Heavy repression notwithstanding, authorities’ efforts to obstruct pro-Kurdish parties were often piecemeal, with coordinated action undermined by a range of factors, including bureaucratic inefficiency, disputes between agencies and levels of government, and personality clashes. Lack of coordination provided pro-Kurdish politicians and activists with sometimes surprising moments of reprieve and sites of refuge, something that allowed them and the parties to survive pressures that often seemed on the surface quite impossible. Institutional inconsistencies between Parliament and the judiciary in the early 1990s, for instance, bought pro-Kurdish parties some time within the system to establish themselves. Between 1991 and 1994, proKurdish parliamentary deputies enjoyed the extensive benefits of parliamentary immunity from prosecution, despite the fact that key members of the judiciary tried to strip them of this immunity soon after they took office. After a tumultuous swearing-in ceremony (described in chapter 5), the public prosecutor’s office, led by Nusret Demiral (chief public prosecutor of the Ankara State Security Court; he became well known for his 104

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determination to prosecute pro-Kurdish politicians) sent a petition to Parliament asking it to lift the immunity of twenty-two pro-Kurdish and SHP deputies so that they might be charged with violating Article 125 of the penal code. Article 125 prohibited activities aimed at dividing the unity of the state or country, and at that time allowed that those found guilty of such activities could be sentenced to death. However, the petition was returned without consideration in January 1992 by Parliament Speaker Husamettin Cindoruk, a veteran politician and then member of Tansu Çiller’s True Path Party (DYP). Press reports stated that Cindoruk had objected to the wording of the petition, which reportedly asserted that “PKK members had taken shelter in Parliament,” and had sent it back claiming its language “insulted the Parliament and was contrary to the principles of parliamentary immunity, the [parliamentary] podium, and jurisprudence” (Cumhuriyet, April 10, 1992; Watts 1999). On April 2, 1992, Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel’s office sent the petition back again to the Parliament, this time with an additional eighteen-page note from the public prosecutor arguing that Cindoruk was preventing the prosecution from doing its duty. This created a small stir in the press, with Cumhuriyet newspaper predicting a crisis that would pit Cindoruk against Nusret Demiral. Cindoruk said he was “not afraid” of prosecutors and that he expected the prosecution to grant Parliament the respect it was accorded in the constitution. He also argued that members of Parliament “had freedom of the rostrum” and should be free to speak their minds (Cumhuriyet, April 12, 1992; Briefing, May 25, 1992). When the petition was eventually approved for parliamentary consideration (something that happened only when Cindoruk was temporarily unable to act as speaker), it still took nearly two years for the joint Justice and Constitutional committees to bring the petition to the agenda, during which time pro-Kurdish deputies continued their work in Parliament. Even after Parliament voted to lift the immunity of eight pro-Kurdish deputies in 1994 (as discussed below), Cindoruk gave DEP deputies Sedat Yurtdaş and Selim Sadak asylum in the Parliament after a warrant for their arrest was issued by prosecutor Demiral. Turkish television viewers saw their elected representatives fleeing quite literally from the hands of one branch of the state to shelter in the hands of another, as Yurtdaş and Sadak wound through Ankara streets to the Parliament building, pursued by police cars and TV cameras. Cindoruk insisted the deputies could not be arrested until the Constitutional Court’s decision to ban C HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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DEP and arrest thirteen of its seventeen deputies had been published in the Resmi Gazete (Official Gazette), where state decisions must be published before they go into effect. He was on this occasion supported by Süleyman Demirel (now serving as president), who met with Yurtdaş and Sadak after the court’s decision (Cumhuriyet, June 25, 1994). Despite their own criticisms of pro-Kurdish politicians, many in Parliament were uncomfortable seeing deputies’ powers curtailed by an agency other than the Parliament itself. Diversity of legal opinion within the judiciary also sometimes gave pro-Kurdish politicians some space to continue their work. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, public prosecutors around the country opened thousands of investigations and cases against pro-Kurdish politicians and administrators, but judges dismissed the vast majority of them. One of the most significant divergences of legal opinion came in the spring of 1999, when on March 8 the Constitutional Court unanimously rejected Chief Public Prosecutor Vural Savaş’s petition to prevent HADEP from participating in the April 18th local elections (Diyarbakır Söz, March 9, 1999, April 15, 1999; also Demir 2005, 450–51). Savaş argued that because a petition to close HADEP had been filed, the party should be prevented from participating in the elections (even though the case had not yet been heard). After the Constitutional Court rejected his appeal, he submitted the petition again, whereupon it was rejected a second time (although only four days before the election, throwing HADEP’s campaign efforts into disarray). The high court’s decision allowed HADEP to participate in the election and win hundreds of mayoral and municipal council seats.

HOW COERCION WORKED: T WO CASES

Gaps and competition within the system gave pro-Kurdish parties and their elected representatives a certain amount of room in which to maneuver. Nonetheless, these were still circumscribed and unstable spaces, vulnerable to the shifting dynamics of the Turkish political system. This vulnerability became quite apparent after April 1993, when Turkish President Turgut Özal died of a heart attack. Executive decision making shifted to the new president, Süleyman Demirel and, after July 1993, Prime Minister Tansu Çiller. Although voicing some relatively conciliatory ideas about the Kurdish issue at the outset of her tenure (e.g., suggesting that 106

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a “Basque model” could possibly be applied to help resolve the problem in Turkey), Çiller did not have the political backing or personal influence to challenge the military or Demirel. She also soon found nationalism to be a useful tool to boost DYP’s standings in upcoming elections. A new strategy of “all out war” against the PKK was announced in the summer of 1993, and pro-Kurdish parties came under renewed attack. Two pivotal events followed. On February 25, 1994, DEP, under intense pressure, withdrew from the local elections, scheduled for March 27. This meant that no pro-Kurdish party mayors would serve in local office for the next five years. At the parliamentary level, SHP was not strong enough within the coalition to protect pro-Kurdish parliamentarians (especially because of deep divisions within its own ranks). Less than a week after DEP announced its withdrawal from the municipal elections, the Turkish parliament voted to strip six (and then more) pro-Kurdish members of Parliament of their parliamentary immunity from prosecution. This resulted in their arrest, trial, and sentencing to jail. The “March 2 coup,” as the press dubbed it, marked the end of pro-Kurdish party representation in Parliament for the next thirteen years.

Election Boycott

Debates about whether to participate in the local elections scheduled for March 1994 had taken place within DEP and pro-Kurdish circles as early as mid-1993. Nonetheless, DEP announced its intention of participating (although the party had not yet announced any candidates). By February 1994, party leaders were publicly questioning the decision (see, e.g., Özgür Gündem, March 10, 1994). Pressure to withdraw from the elections came both from the PKK, which called for an election boycott and threatened to attack any party that did not abide by it (Özgür Gündem, March 11, 1994), and from an array of state and extralegal forces (for a thorough description, see Ölmez 1995, 349–68). DEP suffered an unprecedented series of bombing attacks on its party offices between January 10 and February 18, 1994, when there were seven major bombings of party offices around the country, including a massive bombing of DEP’s Ankara headquarters. This attack killed one person and injured around twenty others. The building was seriously damaged and a great deal of party property destroyed (including the party’s archives). C HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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Observers wrote that the site where the building had been “looked like a field of war, as if it had been bombed from the air” (Ölmez 1995, 345; see also Diyarbakır Söz, February 19, 1994). The challenges of campaigning in the spring of 1994 were not confined to DEP. There were attacks on other election headquarters and candidates, and many party leaders worried about campaigning in the southeast in the context of the war and the PKK call to boycott the elections. On March 11 the ANAP election bureau was bombed in Diyarbakır, and on March 25 a coffeehouse the party used as a local election bureau was strafed with automatic gunfire, killing one person. On March 18 SHP’s election bureau in the Diyarbakır subdistrict of Sur was bombed; nineteen people were injured, two of them critically. On March 23 the center-right True Path Party (DYP) election bureau was bombed and several people were injured. On March 16 CHP’s mayoral candidate in the Diyarbakır subregion of Kayapınar was shot and killed by “unknown assailants” (for reports on the attacks, see Diyarbakır Söz, March 12–26, 1994). Other cities were not immune from the violence; in Adana on March 25 three bombs went off at the DYP, CHP, and Refah Party election bureaus, killing a child. Fearing attack, many parties withheld the names of their candidates competing for offices in the southeast until the last legal date by which they could declare them to the High Election Commission. DEP, however, faced the most severe persecution. Along with the bombings, between January and late February 1994 party administrators and supporters were subjected to an intense public intimidation campaign. Security forces detained at least 140 DEP administrators, candidates, and active members in January and February, including the party’s candidate for the greater metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır, Metin Toprak (Diyarbakır Söz, February 14, 1992). Toprak, southeast regional director for Emlak Bank, had been considered one of the top bureaucrats in the region until he was accused of supporting the PKK and detained. Other candidates were threatened by security forces and ordered to withdraw from the election. On February 6 DEP’s general secretary, Murat Bozlak, was attacked in his Ankara home by two armed men, shot four times, and seriously wounded. Dozens of candidates’ homes were searched and strafed. Half a dozen DEP members were killed in January and February; family members were also targeted. On February 13 a DEP administrator’s brother was shot and killed in an armed attack in the .

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city of Batman. On February 24, as DEP administrators met in Ankara to decide whether to participate in the elections, two sons of the DEP mayor of Bağlar (another subdistrict of Diyarbakır) were shot and killed. DEP’s administrative committee had been deeply split over whether to withdraw, but the death of the mayor’s sons swung votes in favor of those advocating a boycott. On February 25, 1994, DEP chairman Hatip Dicle announced at a morning press conference in Ankara that after two days of deliberation, DEP had decided to withdraw from the March 27 local elections because of the “anti-democratic” environment in which the elections were taking place (see, e.g., Diyarbakır Söz, February 26, 1994). Party administrators were also uncertain whether, given the conditions of the moment, election returns would demonstrate the support they believed they actually had in the region (see, e.g., Demir 2005, 298). The main beneficiary of DEP’s withdrawal from the race was the Islamist Refah Party, which won the mayor’s office in Diyarbakır with 36 percent of the vote (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 1994; see also Diyarbakır Söz, March 28–30, 1994). Despite the PKK threat to kill candidates and voters if they went to the polls, about 90 percent of voters went to the polls nationwide. In many provinces of the southeast voter turnout was lower (about 70 percent in Diyarbakır, for instance), but not substantially lower than normal. Tens of thousands of troops moved into the area in early March, bringing the total number of regional security forces, including police and village guards, to more than 300,000 (Turkish Probe, April 1994). Election day passed peacefully except for two landmine explosions in Diyarbakır and Silvan. DEP’s withdrawal from the elections meant that pro-Kurdish party officials would not hold local office until 1999.

The “March 2 Coup”

Pro-Kurdish party representatives were not only absent from local political offices in the second half of the 1990s, they were also ejected from Parliament in a series of high-profile political dramas closely followed by the domestic and international communities. The DEP deputies’ eviction from Parliament and their arrests and long-term imprisonment were due to an unusually coordinated coercive effort between the Turkish parliament, the military, and the judiciary. These three establishment institu-

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tions carried out a number of rapid strikes against pro-Kurdish deputies: in March 1994 Parliament removed their parliamentary immunity from prosecution, and security forces detained them; in June 1994 the Turkish Constitutional Court closed DEP and immediately published its decision in the Official Gazette (thus stripping the remaining DEP parliamentarians of their immunity); and in December 1994 the Ankara State Security Court delivered guilty verdicts to the former deputies, sentencing them variously to three and a half to fifteen years of jail. Pressure on pro-Kurdish members of the Parliament (now mostly members of DEP because of anticipation that HEP would soon be closed by the Constitutional Court) had been growing for a number of months. Throughout 1993 there was an upsurge in violence against pro-Kurdish party administrators and activists; HEP deputy Mehmet Sincar was killed in September 1993, and tumult over his funeral had heightened tensions (Bolkan 2005, 127–83). The very high level of violence prevented internal party factional fighting from becoming a formal split and strengthened more confrontational currents within the party. DEP party chair Hatip Dicle’s comment that a PKK attack in Istanbul killing five military cadets was a “normal” part of war (see, e.g., Sabah, February 17, 1994; Turkish Daily News, February 23, 1994) served to inflame public opinion against the party and provided ideological ammunition to hardliners within the political apparatus. These developments were fully exploited by military and civilian officials who wanted pro-Kurdish deputies out of Parliament. After the Istanbul attack, Chief of General Staff Doğan Güreş urged parliamentarians and the government to “get the PKK out of parliament,” a theme picked up by Tansu Çiller and the DYP in the run-up to the local elections. In well-reported parliamentary group meetings and campaign speeches, Çiller and other DYP deputies began calling Dicle and other pro-Kurdish deputies “traitors” and called for their removal from Parliament via the lifting of their immunity (see, e.g., Nokta, March 6–12, 1994, 20). By 1993 a disillusioned Leyla Zana would tell interviewer Chris Kutschera that she no longer tried to speak in the Parliament and that: I no longer believe in the Turkish parliament. Its role is to cover up the action of the State, to conceal the misdeeds of the army and the police. The people who make the decisions in Turkey are the members of the National Security

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Council. Members of parliament are like notaries, they merely register the decisions. In fact, it is against everything I believe in; I do not have a voice. (Middle East Magazine, Fall 1993)

Ignoring the protests of SHP, which was still a partner in the coalition government, on March 2 the DYP rushed through a set of proposals to lift seven HEP-origin deputies’ immunity. Except for Orhan Doğan, who was accused of sheltering PKK members, the other pro-Kurdish parliamentarians were all accused of crimes related to speeches they had made on the Kurdish issue. These accused crimes carried the death penalty. In a long parliamentary speech that was frequently interrupted by applause and cheers from the right-wing party benches, conservative deputy Coşkun Kırca, a member of the committee that recommended lifting their immunity, argued it was “in the public good” to remove the deputies’ immunity. He argued that the pro-Kurdish deputies’ proposals to lift emergency law in the southeast and to establish regional assemblies had revealed their true intentions “to destroy the unity of the country, people, and state in Turkey.” Leaving the deputies “inside the democratic process” so that their ideology might be “softened,” he said, was not worth the potential risk to the security of the nation (TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, March 2, 1994, 273). Working late into the night in what Milliyet newspaper would later call “record time,” the Parliament voted in turn to remove the immunity of Orhan Doğan, Sırrı Sakık, Mahmut Alınak, Hatip Dicle, Leyla Zana, and Ahmet Türk.1 On March 3 they finished by lifting the immunity of Selim Sadak and Islamist deputy Hasan Mezarcı. All DYP members of the assembly voted to lift the immunity, as did members of ANAP, CHP, and Refah. Most deputies from SHP and the newly re-formed CHP were missing from the assembly; with the exception of one SHP deputy, those that did attend the session (sixteen or so) voted against the proposal. SHP leaders Erdal İnönü and Murat Karayalçın were both absent (İnönü was in Paris at the time); both argued in the press the next day that lifting the immunity was a mistake. It was the first time a member of Parliament had been stripped of his or her immunity since 1968. Notably, although there were around a hundred other files from the judiciary asking Parliament to lift the immunity of other members for a variety of alleged crimes, none had been acted on. This first strike against the deputies was swiftly followed by a second.

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Even before the decision to lift the immunity had been made, police and teams from the Anti-Terror Branch of the Ankara Security Directorate gathered at the gates of Parliament, apparently on the order of the chief public prosecutor. Dicle and Doğan left the assembly building at about 5 p.m. on March 2, during a break in the debates. They were immediately seized by security forces and taken to the Ankara Security Directorate. When news of this reached Parliament, an uproar ensued. Zana, Sakık, and Alınak took asylum in the Parliament building and spent two nights there. After Sadak was stripped of his immunity the next day, he also refused to leave the compound. The event created a major media circus (footage and pictures of Orhan Doğan being dragged by police to a car were widely circulated; see, e.g., the cover of Nokta, March 6–12, 1994), and an outpouring of international condemnation followed. French President François Mitterrand telephoned Ahmet Türk on March 3 at the Parliament building; French Socialist assemblywoman Segolène Royal, in Turkey at the time, spent the night with the five deputies who were barricaded in the building. Despite protests on the part of the international community, on March 4 the deputies surrendered to police and were detained. Some would remain behind bars for the next thirteen years. A third strike against the pro-Kurdish parties and their nationally elected representatives occurred in June, when the Turkish Constitutional Court voted to close DEP. Because thirteen pro-Kurdish members of Parliament were DEP members at the time, the court argued that they had henceforth lost their status as elected members of Parliament and were now also vulnerable to prosecution. The verdict stripped Mahmut Kılınc, Zübeyir Aydar, Remzi Kartal, Naif Güneş, Nizamettin Toğuç, Ali Yiğit, Sedat Yurtdaş and Selim Sadak of their status as members of Parliament. Six of these deputies fled to Europe. The other two (Yurtdaş and Sadak) remained in Turkey, where they were imprisoned and put on trial. The final strike that year against the elected deputies came at the end of the year with the conclusion of their sentencing by the Ankara State Security Court. The trial, which began in August and ended on December 8, 1994, resulted in jail sentences of fifteen years for Leyla Zana, Ahmet Turk, Orhan Doğan, Hatip Dicle, and Selim Sadak.2 They were found guilty of “membership in an illegal organization” (the PKK) that threatened the “indivisible unity” of the country. DEP deputy Sedat Yurtdaş was sentenced to seven and a half years in jail. Mahmut Alınak and 112

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Sırrı Sakık were each sentenced to three and a half years in jail but were released on appeal (Demir 2005, 325–26; Ölmez, 1995, 446–55).

HOW COERCION WORKED: MAYORS AND J U RIDICAL PRESSU RE, 20 04–20 08

State efforts to suppress pro-Kurdish parties and restrict their representatives’ activities shifted after 1999 toward an emphasis on juridical (legal) coercion. This does not mean other forms of coercion ended; policing mechanisms such as detention without trial and searches of party offices continued, although the number of detentions appears to have peaked in 2002 and then to have dropped sharply, at least until 2006 (İnsan Hakları Derneği 2007). Extralegal measures, especially extrajudicial executions, fell dramatically. The number of investigations and court cases against pro-Kurdish party administrators and elected officials, however, remained very high and consumed a great deal of time and resources. Juridical coercion only occasionally removed pro-Kurdish elected and party officials from the system entirely; its more comprehensive impact was to circumscribe their discourse and behavior so as to render them less effective. Aside from nullifying their threat, muting pro-Kurdish voices and comportment alienated activists from their support base and weakened the parties and the movement. Coercion worked in this phase in two ways: first, through “internal” disciplinary mechanisms, which relied on continual harassment, surveillance, the persistent threat of punishment (without necessarily delivering it), and the promise of the advancement of selected movement goals (namely, some cultural freedom of expression); and second, through selected targeting, or making an example of officials who repeatedly transgressed the red lines of the system. After the first wave of their election in 1999, pro-Kurdish mayors began to use municipalities as a platform for mobilization (discussed in chapter 6). Because there was no pro-Kurdish party representation in the Parliament after 1994, pro-Kurdish mayors became the movement’s most visible representatives in Turkey. They were increasingly obvious legal targets. In February 2000, in one of the earliest high-profile cases, Turkish authorities arrested metropolitan Diyarbakır mayor Feridun Çelik, Siirt mayor M. Selim Özalp, and Bingöl mayor Feyzullah Karaaslan. The three were charged with aiding the PKK, detained in the AntiC HAR AC TER I S TI C S O F CO ERC I O N

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Terror Branch of the security forces in Diyarbakır, and then transferred to the prison in Diyarbakır. After domestic and international outcries, however, the mayors were released ten days later and allowed to resume their posts (see, e.g., Demir 2005, 455–59). Other mayors also faced legal harassment on charges ranging from aiding the PKK to abuse of their office or other administrative violations. In 2002 alone, 393 HADEP administrators and members were arrested (İnsan Hakları Derneği 2002). In 2003 HADEP was closed by order of the Turkish Constitutional Court. Juridical coercion became particularly onerous beginning in 2006, when a number of high-profile cases against Kurdish mayors came to court. Many of these carried the threat of stiff penalties. This juridical pressure can be attributed to a number of factors: the election in March 2004 of a second wave of pro-Kurdish mayors and council members, who promoted Kurdish cultural politics more aggressively than their predecessors had (in part because of new reforms that, on paper, seemed to permit more freedom for such activities); the resurgence of open conflict between PKK guerrillas and the Turkish Armed Forces in 2005; the breakdown of the EU accession process, or, at least, the perception that it had broken down; a rise in Turkish nationalist discourse, in part because of concerns over Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government; a new anti-terror bill approved by the Parliament in June 2006; and the ruling AKP’s standoff with the military, which undermined its ability and willingness to further challenge the military in other sensitive policy arenas.

The Nature of Cases from 2004 to 2007

Investigations against pro-Kurdish mayors and administrators were opened by the public prosecutor’s office of the Turkish Justice Ministry or by the Turkish Interior Ministry in the relevant jurisdiction. In some cases the governor’s offices also opened cases against pro-Kurdish municipalities, primarily to prevent them from using Kurdish names or references to the movement in its naming of public parks, streets, and other places. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, cases against Kurdish politicians were often filed in the state security courts, but after

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these courts were disbanded in 2004, cases against pro-Kurdish parties and activists were funneled into a number of different courts. These included the “peace” courts (Sulh Mahkemeleri), the lowest civil courts in Turkey; the regular criminal courts (Asliye Ceza Mahkemesi); “heavy” criminal courts (Ağır Ceza Mahkemesi, or criminal courts that consider offenses and crimes involving a penalty of more than five years of imprisonment); and the Turkish Council of State (Danıştay), the highest court in Turkey that deals with disputes between and against public agencies. Hundreds of investigations were opened against pro-Kurdish mayors each year, and hundreds more were filed against pro-Kurdish party administrators. Most were dropped because of lack of evidence, but those investigations that did result in court cases became an increasingly serious threat to the mayors’ and administrators’ political activities as well as to their personal freedom, especially after 2005. In the first two years of her tenure, for instance, prosecutors filed three cases against Tunceli mayor Songül Erol Abdil. In comparison, between 2006 and 2008, twelve cases were filed. From his election in March 2004 to July 2008, more than a hundred investigations or inspections and twentyeight court cases were filed against Diyarbakır metropolitan mayor Osman Baydemir (Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality 2008, July; see also Güneydoğu Ekspres, August 11, 2006). In April and May 2007, for instance, Baydemir had to appear in court for at least five different cases. Investigations and charges were largely based on three main types of alleged violation: misuse of office (a violation of article 257 of the Turkish Penal Code); violations of the political party laws concerning Kurdish language use; and aiding, encouraging, or belonging to the PKK, which fell under charges related to the aiding of a terrorist organization, inciting enmity amongst the population, and/or using the press to make terrorist propaganda. These were the legal violations cited in court documentation. In reality, the vast majority of investigations and cases were opened for political reasons linked to three main activities: promotion or use of the Kurdish language; other symbolic or service politics that could be seen as legitimizing the PKK and/or the Kurdish national movement; and public comments regarding the resolution of the Kurdish question or the status of the PKK. Penalties requested by the prosecutors ranged from monetary fines to removal from office and lengthy jail sentences (e.g., more than ten years).

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MISUSE OF OFFICE AND OTHER VIOL ATIONS: AMBU L ANCES AND “ W ”s

As of mid-2006 at least sixteen investigations had been opened because mayors supplied ambulances and burial services for dead PKK fighters (mayors are technically obliged to provide such services if requested by a local citizen). One report (Democratic Society Party 2006) noted that the previous dismissal of similar investigations and cases did not prevent new ones from being opened. Early in his tenure, Osman Baydemir was investigated for visiting the family of PKK fighters killed in a clash (the investigation was dropped for lack of evidence). One of many investigations concerning Sur Mayor Abdullah Demirbaş accused him of unlawfully building a memorial statue officially dedicated to stopping violence against children. It had been commissioned after a twelve-year-old Kurdish boy was killed by police in 2005 in the province of Mardin. Erecting statues is among the lawful duties of a municipality, however, and the investigation was dropped in May 2006. In 2006 and 2007 at least twenty investigations of the Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality and the Diyarbakır municipalities of Sur and Kayapınar were opened for activities that included the following: billboards advertising a human rights week in Turkish, Kurmanji, and Zazaki; the Sur municipality’s release of a Kurdish translation of the free Linux software release “Ubuntu”; municipal use of Kurdish to officiate during wedding ceremonies; publication of children’s books in Kurdish and Turkish; publication of public brochures on health and cleanliness in Kurdish and Turkish; and the publication by the greater Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality of a book of Kurdish baby names.3 As of mid-2008 about twenty-five of the legal prosecutions against Baydemir directly concerned use of the Kurdish language. Although such investigations were usually dropped, a considerable number were not. Investigations that resulted in court cases usually resulted in acquittal, but again, some did not. Penalties ranged from symbolic to severe. Dalhan Kaya, the pro-Kurdish mayor of Doğubeyazıt (in the province of Ağrı), was fined 200 Turkish yeni lira (YTL) (then worth about $170) for using the word “Newroz” in a 2006 Kurdish new year celebration. In April 2006 a court in Bitlis sentenced seven DTP party administrators to six months of jail each for using Kurdish in a

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May 2003 party assembly meeting (they were found guilty of violating the political party law). In February 2007 an Ankara court sentenced administrators of the pro-Kurdish Rights and Freedoms Party (Hak ve Özgürlükler Partisi, or HAK-PAR) to six months of jail for their use of Kurdish in the party’s first assembly meeting (held in January 2004); the sentence was converted to a 1,980 YTL fine. Most seriously, in June 2007, Sur mayor Abdullah Demirbaş was removed from office and the Sur City Council was disbanded after a unanimous ruling by the Turkish Council of State declared that providing municipal services in both Turkish and Kurdish was illegal and reached beyond the bounds of municipal duties. The municipality had voted to provide official services in Turkish, Kurdish, English, and Syriac in October 2006. The Diyarbakır public prosecutor’s office also asked that Mayor Demirbaş and the council be given jail sentences of three and a half years each (İnsan Hakları Derneği 2007; Zaman, July 31, 2007; New York Times, February 17, 2008).

PKK SU PPORT AND PROPAGANDA

Many other investigations and cases were filed against pro-Kurdish administrators and mayors for alleged support of the PKK. These tended to carry the most severe penalties. Most often, alleged propaganda on behalf of the PKK was cited as support. Prosecutors found evidence of such “propaganda” in a range of comments and references, some that mentioned the PKK or its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, by name, but many that did not. On March 20, 2006, a case was filed against Abdullah Demirbaş (the Sur mayor who was dismissed from office by the Turkish Council of State) because of a speech he made advocating multilingualism and, specifically, the use of Kurdish in Turkey in municipal services and local government. The talk was delivered at the European Social Forum in January 2006 and did not include any direct or indirect reference to the PKK (a point later affirmed by the court). Demirbaş was acquitted of these charges on September 19, 2006, although the public prosecutor appealed the verdict. One of the most serious of cases alleging support of the PKK was against fifty-six DTP mayors who had signed a collective letter sent to the Danish prime minister concerning the possible closure of the pro-

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Kurdish (and pro-PKK) Roj TV station. The mayors were charged with “abetting and aiding an armed organization” in supporting the station, and the prosecutor requested that they be given jail sentences of seven and a half to fifteen years (İHD 2007b; Democratic Society Party 2006). Fiftythree of the mayors were given two-month jail sentences in April 2008, which were later commuted to fines. Beginning in 2006 more administrators and mayors began to be detained or imprisoned in relation to cases involving alleged support of the PKK; when they went to trial, more of the cases began to be decided against them. In March 2007 the pro-Kurdish mayor of Hakkari, Metin Tekçe, was sentenced by the Van criminal court to seven years and one month in jail for membership in the PKK and for “propagandizing on its behalf”; the case against him was based on comments he had made in a speech. In April 2007 the mayor of Cizre, Aydın Budak, was arrested because of a speech he had made at the Kurdish new year festival in Şırnak; in his talk, given in Kurdish, Budak had said that Öcalan was also celebrating Newroz and referred to the PKK in other ways. He was accused of making propaganda on behalf of the PKK and of sowing enmity among the people. Although he was released on appeal, he was dismissed from his post in May 2007 (İHD 2007b, 393; news sources). Along with the mayors, pressure on DTP administrators was severe, especially in 2006 to 2008. Many executive members of the DTP were sentenced to prison terms, including DTP chair Ahmet Türk and vicechairs Aysel Tuğluk and Sedat Yurtdaş. Tens of DTP province offices were raided by the police, and more than seventy members of DTP were apprehended. More than thirty of these were charged, including the branch chairs of DTP in Diyarbakır.

SILENCED SPACES

After 1999 both the threat of juridical coercion and the promise of EUlinked democratic opportunities combined to create a bifurcated political field in which there was greater room for expressions of cultural identity along with substantial restrictions on political expression. Coercion after 1999 for the most part worked less by physically constraining pro-Kurdish activists and more through internalized disciplinary mechanisms that

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relied on surveillance and the continual threat of punishment, without necessarily actually delivering it (see, e.g., Foucault 1991; Wedeen 1999). The EU-sanctioned democratization framework emphasized cultural freedom rather than self-determination or administrative transformation, promising the advancement of some movement goals if activists behaved “appropriately.” This encouraged a considerable amount of selfcensorship. Highly restricted political tropes included proposals for administrative devolution or autonomy, the history of the war in the southeast, and the PKK (including discussions of amnesty for its fighters and leadership). There was little or no room in this context to discuss the meaning of the war in the southeast that had occurred between 1984 and 1999, how to remember those who had died, and how to reintegrate those who had gone to prison into the community. One brief exception to this silence was an art exhibition displayed as part of the 2005 Diyarbakır arts and culture fair. The exhibition displayed photographs of Turkish soldiers and PKK fighters killed in the war, accompanied by narratives remembering them written by family members. Turkish authorities closed the exhibit after a couple of days (Sadak, interview, 2006). Especially between 2005 and 2008 the renewal of conflict between PKK guerrillas and the Turkish Armed Forces, the stalling of the EU accession process, and growing Turkish concerns about Kurdish political autonomy in northern Iraq heightened tensions in the region and reduced the space in which Turkish and pro-Kurdish officials could maneuver. The ruling AKP, put on the defensive, shelved its more conciliatory approach in favor of a more outspoken Turkish nationalist line. Fighting between PKK militants and Turkish soldiers made it more difficult for pro-Kurdish officials to avoid questions of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of armed struggle. Because pro-Kurdish elected officials’ legitimacy among some Kurdish constituents relied in part on their perceived support of the PKK, they sought to maintain a delicate balancing act whereby they indirectly referenced the PKK and its fighters without directly discussing serious movement demands, such as administrative devolution or PKK amnesty. Most commonly, this took the form of public burials for PKK fighters, the continued use of ambulances to transport their bodies, visits to family members of dead fighters, and a discursive framing that included PKK fighters—especially youth—as part of the community rather than as a deviant element.

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The tension between holding elected office while referencing the legitimacy of another political enterprise became obvious in late March and early April 2006, when demonstrations erupted in Diyarbakır during funeral ceremonies for four PKK fighters. Clashes between security forces and pro-PKK protesters in Diyarbakır and, later, in Batman eventually resulted in thirteen deaths, including of children, who were shot by security forces. Some shops and public buildings were vandalized and set on fire by protesters. On March 28, 2006, Diyarbakır mayor Osman Baydemir spoke to the protesters in the neighborhood of Bağlar in an effort to persuade them to go home. The written transcript of his pleas to protestors—submitted as part of Turkish court documentation—captured the profound challenge he faced when trying to maintain credibility among pro-PKK youth while trying to prevent more violence. Speaking in both Turkish and Kurdish, Baydemir told the assembled crowd that although he “shared their pain,” more demonstrations would harm the city and undermine the demonstrators’ demands for democracy and freedom. When the crowd ignored him, chanting its support for Öcalan, Baydemir struggled to persuade them that civil and elected leaders would represent their concerns more effectively and safely. A brief portion of the court transcript as translated by his staff into English from Turkish court documents reads as follows: Slogan shouted by the crowd: Teeth to teeth, blood to blood, we are with you Öcalan! baydemir (speaking in Kurdish): Friends, please listen to me for two minutes, please listen for two minutes. If we do not listen to each other, we will not have progress. Please . . . today we had a meeting with all our civil society organizations, our party, and our mayors. We thank you very much for your demands and courage so far. Slogan shouted by the crowd: Long live President Apo, long live President Apo! baydemir (speaking in Kurdish): You claimed your identity; you claimed your people with burnt hearts. . . . We are also with you. Be sure of this. For the priority of peace, for the priority of your success, we have to listen to each other under the leadership of the party. We fear that this mobilization from now on will harm our nation and our people. From now on, we all will go back to our home quietly. (Democratic Society Party 2006, 28–29) 120

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CONCLUSION

Despite forming legal parties and participating in electoral processes, pro-Kurdish parties and their members encountered very serious levels of coercion between 1990 and 2008. Coercive measures were carried out by state institutions, particularly the security forces and the judiciary, as well as by extra-state militias. Types of coercion can be divided into four categories: policing, juridical-legal, extralegal (e.g., murder), and bureaucratic. Within this purview, parties were closed and their property was confiscated. Pro-Kurdish administrators and activists were murdered, shot, jailed, fined, taken to court, and threatened in a variety of ways. The nature and application of coercion falls into two main phases: 1990 to 1998, and 1999 to 2008. In the first phase, multifaceted, official efforts to suppress the parties and their activities relied on both legal mechanisms and extrajudicial actors. During these years, physical attacks on party property and individuals were common. The second phase of coercion and repression, from 1999 to 2008, saw authorities rely more heavily on juridical, bureaucratic, and political mechanisms. The impact of coercion and persecution was to some degree mitigated by divisions within the state that gave the parties some room to maneuver and pursue their objectives. Nonetheless, heavy levels of coercion had a profound effect on the parties’ ability to access the resources of the system. In particular, it obstructed normalization of the parties. Politics of polarization and violence promoted by both state authorities and the PKK made it very difficult for the parties to distance themselves from the PKK and to establish an alternative base of authority. Rather, coercion strongly reinforced their status as extrasystemic challengers. In 1994, a coordinated set of coercive actions by the Parliament, the police, and the judiciary ejected pro-Kurdish parliamentarians from national politics. At the same time, state and extra-state persecution—as well as PKK pressure—pushed them out of local politics. Even after a shift toward more selective forms of coercion after 1999, juridical and bureaucratic pressure against pro-Kurdish mayors and municipalities severely limited open dialogue and discussion concerning administrative reforms. This space of silence became acute after 2006, when legal action against pro-Kurdish mayors became particularly onerous.

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his chapter describes how pro-Kurdish parties used the formal political system between 1990 and 1994 as a “broadcasting system” for the transmission of a pro-Kurdish narrative that challenged the state’s discourse on security, violence, and identity. Entry into the system—and, especially, the Parliament—provided unparalleled access to influential decision makers, legitimacy and legal resources, and considerable material benefits. Party members used these resources to redefine the conflict between the state and the Kurdish movement as well as to build support for the movement and its agenda among diverse publics. More than just a war of words, highly contentious information politics established the empirical foundations for undermining state policies and mobilizing support for the pro-Kurdish movement among multiple domestic and international actors. These communities of actors and 122

potential allies—Kurdish voters, Turkish intellectuals, nongovernmental organizations, foreign governments, etc.— could in turn put pressure on the state in domestic and international versions of the “boomerang effect” (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Pro-Kurdish politicians were not alone in their criticisms of state policies; civic and human rights organizations, media, and Kurdish cultural and political associations inside and outside the country also endeavored to reframe the conflict. What made party activism particularly important was the fact that pro-Kurdish politicians were operating within a set of political arenas and governmental networks that offered larger theaters of operation and more direct influence over policymakers than those operating on the “outside.” Pro-Kurdish information politics broadcast from multiple sites and in a variety of forms helped mark the parties as challengers and convey the idea that they were working in contradistinction to the Turkish establishment. Contentious verbal narratives were reinforced by the use of repertoires—hunger strikes, marches, etc.—more commonly identified with social movements than with conventional political parties. The paradox the pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and parties faced was that although their confrontational stance helped maintain support among a highly politicized, pro-PKK constituent base, it also compromised their relationships with many other elected officials and their ability to fully exploit the resources of the system. Engaging in information politics and public outreach was a vital part of pro-Kurdish political activities throughout the 1990s and continued to be one of the most important functions of pro-Kurdish mayors between 1999 and 2008. I focus in this chapter on the years between 1991 and 1994 because it was during this time that the most polarized, discursive confrontation occurred between pro-Kurdish activists and key elements of the central state. These years mark a moment in which formerly muted criticisms of state policies became more scientific, more insistent, and a more significant challenge to the military-driven policies in the southeast. It was during pro-Kurdish politicians’ several years in the Parliament that the most concerted and direct effort was made to transform state policies from within central halls of governance. In contrast to later years, challengers’ strategies during this time were based on the idea that the state was indeed reformable. This top-down approach was largely abandoned after 1995, when pro-Kurdish activists were shut out of Parliament, and especially PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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after pro-Kurdish activists moved into municipalities in 1999. Movement efforts then shifted to creating “new facts on the ground” through local administration and through reconstituting Kurdish society itself. Kurdish activist engagement in the formal political system and legislative process did not result in the policy changes they sought, and many Kurdish activists view this time as a period of dashed hopes and missed opportunities. Pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and their various allies were consistently outvoted in the Parliament on key policy issues (such as whether or not to extend emergency law rule in the Kurdish provinces of the southeast). Many pro-Kurdish deputies and politicians ended up in jail or in exile, or retired from politics. However, while there were real limitations on what they accomplished, the wholesale discursive assault on central tenants of the state launched from key governing institutions and in alliance with mainstream politicians was an important step in expanding the scope of pro-Kurdish discourse. Instead of being confined to the fringes or periphery of politics, a pro-Kurdish agenda was promulgated from within central state arenas, with activists attempting to affect policy at the top levels of governance. Until this time mobilization and political activism had been largely located in the Kurdish regions of the southeast. During the early 1990s, however, western Turkish cities, especially Ankara, became key sites of struggle.

MAIN THEMES AND FR AMES

Pro-Kurdish parties directly challenged official discourse on four main issues: the sources of the Kurdish problem in Turkey, the identity of the actors involved in the conflict, the nature of the PKK’s relations with ordinary Kurds, and the best way to end the conflict. Until the late 1980s, discourse on these topics was circumscribed by the Turkish security apparatus, which rejected the idea that there was any Kurdish problem distinct from terrorism. As referenced in the print and television media, in publicly issued government documents, in speeches, and in parliamentary debates, the PKK was a group of “bandits” (eşkiya), separatists, and terrorists. Especially in the mid-1980s, the PKK and the war were rarely referred to in ethnicized terms (i.e., as a Kurdish organization or conflict); the PKK and the war were depicted as existing distinct from and unrepresentative of any portion of Turkey’s Kurdish population. The problem 124

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was a matter of security and “separatist terror” (not politics, democracy, economics, or identity) and could thus be resolved by taking stricter security measures (emergency rule law, increased numbers of troops, and better intelligence). In this interpretation, the PKK itself was a disruption of the social order: to eradicate the organization would thus eradicate the problem. In the late 1980s official discourse concerning Kurds and Kurdishness began to diversify and become more complicated, especially after SHP returned to the political arena in 1987 and after tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurdish refugees fled to Turkey in 1988. Murat Somer has documented how discourse on Kurds and Kurdishness exploded in the years between 1991 and 1993; in 1984 and 1985, for instance, the mainstream Hürriyet newspaper published only twenty-five articles referring to Turkey’s ethnic Kurds, whereas in 1991 it published 238, and in 1992 it published 423 (Somer 2005, 598). Along with SHP and some of its Kurdish parliamentarians, prime minister and then president Turgut Özal initiated a more open discussion of Kurdishness in mainstream and official circles, advancing a shift toward official recognition of ethnic diversity within the country. In 1989 he broke something of a taboo when he publicly stated that his grandmother was Kurdish (see, e.g., Cemal 2003, 107). By the early 1990s mainstream periodicals such as Nokta were running regular articles on the Kurdish question, pointing out, for instance, that debate over the status of Kurdish was not limited to SHP but was causing friction within other parties such as ANAP (Nokta, January 7, 1990, 18–19). However, even as these more open conversations about Kurdishness began to enter the public realm, highlighting the deep differences within the Turkish establishment between what Somer (2005) terms “nationalist-hardliners” and “moderate-nationalist elites,” most Turkish officials continued to treat the Kurdish question and the PKK as discrete topics: Kurds as citizens might have legitimate grievances, but the PKK did not, and nor could the PKK be depicted as representing the country’s Kurdish populations in any way. Moreover, more formal calls to significantly rethink the country’s policies toward the southeast made by pro-Kurdish deputies such as Mehmet Ali Eren and Fuat Atalay were met with harsh reactions inside and outside of Parliament. Pro-Kurdish deputies and party administrators directly challenged this distinction between Kurds as citizens and the PKK. For them, the source of the Kurdish question was political and stemmed from two PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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main problems: the antidemocratic framework established after the 1980 military coup and renewed through emergency law in the southeast after 1987, and a “fascist” ideology of ethnic Turkish nationalism. The conflict was not, as state officials would have it, one between a group of terrorists and the Turkish state serving as the protector of a united Turkish nation. Rather, it was a struggle between the Kurdish people (Kürt halkı) and a repressive Turkish state apparatus. On a grander scale, it was a struggle between the forces of modern democracy and authoritarianism. In this framing the PKK became a predictable outgrowth of the will of the people, even though some pro-Kurdish deputies did not agree with its tactics or necessarily share its goals. Within this framework, the solution to ending the conflict was not to apply security measures: these were, in fact, precisely the steps that prevented the conflict’s resolution. Pro-Kurdish deputies instead demanded significant reforms to the 1982 constitution, an end to emergency law, the dismantling of the village guard system, and an investigation and prosecution of “unknown assailant” murders (accountability and prosecution). In principle these proposals were not necessarily different from those of nationalist-moderates within the Turkish establishment. The pro-Kurdish deputies’ aggressive prioritization of these issues, however, and their personalized style of presentation set them apart, as did their linking such reform proposals to a new approach to the PKK itself. Most controversially, some HEP and DEP administrators and elected parliamentarians labeled the PKK not as a terrorist organization but as a political party that represented the aspirations of many Kurds. In this frame, the perpetrators of “real” terror were not PKK fighters but the Turkish security forces, and Kurds were the victims of “state terror,” not PKK terror. Because the PKK was treated as articulating genuine political grievances, it made sense within this framework to call for a general amnesty for PKK fighters and to bring the PKK to the negotiation table, something no Turkish official would openly consider. Significant differences of opinion concerning framing and discourse existed among pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and party administrators, especially when it came to the topic of the PKK. There were frequent power struggles between the party administration, elected parliamentarians (themselves not a unified bloc), SHP, and the PKK. Nonetheless, though not all HEP-origin deputies agreed about how bluntly to chal-

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lenge the state, ultimately all were held responsible for the discourse and actions of the party’s most outspoken members. Kurdish activists and politicians used four main channels to articulate their claims and situate themselves as both elected officials and extrasystemic challengers. These channels were: 1) the formal political party apparatus and its associated activities; 2) the Parliament; 3) contentious protest in public arenas; 4) domestic and transnational civil society and diplomatic networks. I examine each of these in turn.

Channel 1: Party Apparatus

The legal requirements of establishing and maintaining a party, which included activities such as publishing political programs, holding public meetings and congresses, and campaigning for office, gave pro-Kurdish electoralists important outlets they could use to legitimize their counterstate narrative to Kurdish constituents, the Turkish public, and domestic and international officialdom. All political parties in Turkey are legally required to follow strict protocols in publishing their programs and bylaws. Abiding by this requirement offered pro-Kurdish parties an opportunity to advance some of their key demands in a written and legally distributable form. Contained within their programs were a series of proposals for a substantial restructuring of the administrative and ideological framework of the country. These proposals included calls for devolution and decentralization, a new constitution, and a shift away from an emphasis on Turkish nationalism to an embrace of multiculturalism. HEP’s programs were the first after the 1980 military coup to deal explicitly with what they called the country’s “Kurdish problem” (Kürt sorunu); even by the mid-1990s many other party programs still did not mention a Kurdish problem by name. Like those that followed it, HEP’s program called for a new constitution to replace the 1982 constitution, which it labeled one of the country’s biggest obstacles to democratization. It argued that “policies of oppression and assimilation” were being carried out in the east and southeast, called for the ending of emergency rule law, and criticized Turkish political life as dominated by “racism” and “chauvinist nationalism.” In place of a “policy of assimilation,” it called

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for recognition of the country’s diversity of cultures and historical inheritances (HEP Program 1990, 60). The distinction between HEP and the PKK was implicitly established through a statement asserting that the party aimed at “solving the Kurdish problem through peaceful and democratic methods in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Human Rights Agreement, and the statutes of the Helsinki Final Document” (HEP Program 1990, 18–19). Proposals for a nationwide devolution of power and a strengthening of local government figured prominently in all pro-Kurdish party programs, although the exact wording varied. HEP’s second program included a call for federalism as a possible solution to the conflict. This was the most direct written proposal for Kurdish national autonomy contained in any legal party program during the 1990s. The program stated: HEP remains devoted until the end to the principle of the “People’s Fundamental Right to Self-Determination” in the solving of the Kurdish Problem. In this framework it will wholeheartedly support, without any reservations . . . every means of reaching a solution, including a referendum, a federation, and similar solutions that are developed by the people. (HEP Program 1992, 17–18)

Later pro-Kurdish party programs were more circumspect and did not call explicitly for federation or link such proposals to the Kurdishmajority regions of the country per se. They did, nonetheless, forcefully advocate decentralization, substantial strengthening of local government, civilianization of politics, and the creation of regional and subregional parliaments (yerel parlamentolar): “As central administration is diminished, local administrations—city, provincial and sub-provincial assemblies—should be elevated to the status of local parliaments. Within this framework, local administrations should be given authority to appoint governors, security directors and provincial officers as well as authority in the fields of security, health, and internal security” (HADEP Program 1994, 10; DEHAP Program 1997, 10; the wording is identical in both programs).1 Programs put the party on record but were read by a relatively limited number of people. Legally mandated party meetings, conventions, and assemblies provided a much louder channel through which pro-Kurdish party administrators could influence public discourse and perpetuate their “Kurdish nationalist” credentials. The parties’ general conventions, 128

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in particular, were tense political performances that often involved difficult juggling acts and dramatic internal struggles. Predictably, they often resulted in media scandals and multiple arrests. All political parties in Turkey are required by law to hold regular conventions at which party leaders are elected at the national level by delegates chosen by smaller provincial assemblies. Most generally, pro-Kurdish party conventions could be used as morale- and community-building events for party supporters and sympathizers. Contentious challenges to official Turkish discourses at such meetings came in the form of both direct speech and symbolic politics, which served multiple internal and external functions. In 1998 I attended a HADEP party convention at a sports arena in Ankara. Thousands of attendees had been bussed in from outlying neighborhoods and towns, Kurdish music played loudly outside the building, and hundreds of people danced and picnicked on the grass. The event was as much a Kurdish cultural festival as a party meeting, and the contrast between this clear enunciation of the political relevance of Kurdish identity and Ankara’s official discourse could not have been starker. Many pro-Kurdish party conventions highlighted the tensions within the parties over their relationships to the PKK and served to (impossibly) situate them as both inside and outside the sphere of legal Turkish politics. The paradoxical nature of these performances was manifest in the symbolic politics that accompanied such conventions. In 1992, a HEP party congress hosted Abdullah Öcalan’s mother as an honored guest, and HEP parliamentarian Leyla Zana made headlines by kissing her hand. At the HADEP party convention held in June 1996, a young man climbed into the rafters, cut down the Turkish flag, and hoisted a PKK flag in its place. Although party officials quickly removed the PKK flag, the incident of the “flag crisis” provoked an outpouring of media and political condemnation, a national Turkish flag campaign to protest the party, the rapid arrests of most of the top party leadership, and, eventually, prison sentences from four to six years for the chairman of the party and thirty other party officials. Faysan Akcan, the young man who hung the PKK flag, received a jail sentence of twenty-two years (Demir 2005, 407). In the wake of the event, columnists, academics, activists, and other observers argued about whether the flag incident was a plot by state or right-wing elements to sabotage the party, whether it was a deliberate effort by the PKK to undermine its legal (or quasi-legal) competition, PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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whether it was planned by some party officials, or, in the end, whether it was simply a popular expression of support for the PKK by a small group of impassioned youth. Regardless, the event and the debate surrounding it illustrated not only the challenge pro-Kurdish parties faced in trying to maintain their status as legal but counter-systemic parties, but also the party’s internal struggles over how best to manage this dualism. More routine assemblies and public meetings were also regularly used to mobilize support among constituents, and party branch offices often organized conferences and workshops that targeted specific audiences. These meetings usually featured the discursive dualism between the party leadership’s emphasis on peace and multiculturalism and attendees’ expressions of support for the PKK and its broader national agenda. Although demonstrations of popular support for the PKK at party meetings damaged the parties’ image among the mainstream Turkish public, they helped maintain cultural capital among pro-Kurdish sympathizers. A March 1992 HEP gathering in Şişli, Istanbul was typical: some attendees unfurled the PKK flag and chanted slogans such as the ubiquitous “Biji Kurdistan” (“Long Live Kurdistan”) (Cumhuriyet, March 1, 1992). Party administrators could also use such meetings to exert public pressure on elected pro-Kurdish deputies and maintain party discipline. In March 1992, for instance, HEP chairman Feridun Yazar used a regional HEP assembly in Diyarbakır to denounce the government, which included SHP and some of the pro-Kurdish deputies within it, although he added that the party still supported the parliamentarians who originated in HEP (Cumhuriyet, March 14, 1992). Election campaigns were another important means by which proKurdish politician-activists could legally challenge official discourse, promote a pro-Kurdish political platform, publicize the parties, and appeal to different constituencies. Even when pro-Kurdish parties withdrew from the elections (as occurred in 1994) or were unsuccessful in surmounting the 10 percent threshold for taking seats in Parliament, the campaigns themselves offered a valuable opportunity to travel in the Kurdish regions of the country, meet with voters, hold large public meetings, and attract media attention. Pro-Kurdish candidates traveling in the southeast, especially in smaller towns, mixed some Kurdish into their Turkish-language speeches, despite official prohibitions on using Kurdish for election campaigns. Elections offered daily opportunities to promote pro-Kurdish counter130

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narratives. In the 1994 local elections, the occasion of the announcement of DEP’s seventy-seven candidates in the southeast was used by chairman Hatip Dicle to emphasize the party’s commitment to multiculturalism: among the party’s candidates, he announced, were “Laz, Circassion, Arab, Suryani, Turkish, and Kurdish-origin candidates.” He also used the opportunity to highlight recent attacks on DEP and its candidates in very precise ways: in the month preceding the announcement, 351 DEP members had been detained, three had been killed in unknown assailant murders, and two DEP mayors had been dismissed from their posts without explanation (Diyarbakır Söz, February 16, 1994). Choices of candidates offered important opportunities for the party to validate its martyrs and cultivate symbolic capital: in the 1994 elections, slain parliamentarian Mehmet Sincar’s widow, Cihan Sincar, was chosen by the party as a candidate for the Mardin town of Kızıltepe (and was a successful pro-Kurdish candidate in local elections in later years). Choosing candidates known as linked to current or former PKK leaders (widows, brothers, etc.) also allowed the party to indirectly articulate support for the organization.

Channel 2: Parliament

In Parliament, pro-Kurdish politicians could hope to affect national policy directly, through building enough support from other deputies in Parliament to change or modify policies; indirectly, by attracting domestic media or international attention that could in turn put pressure on government and state officials; and by using moral leverage, which exposed differences between government word and deed (Keck and Sikkink 1998). As discussed in chapter 2, twenty-two pro-Kurdish deputies from HEP were elected in the 1991 elections in a coalition with SHP. Their election to Parliament in 1991 brought the movement unprecedented access to some of the most important governing offices of the Turkish Republic. Because SHP formed a minority government with the center-right DYP and became part of the governing coalition, HEP’s deputies exerted substantially greater influence than either their numbers or their politically marginal status would have indicated. With the exception of Hatip Dicle and Leyla Zana, who resigned from SHP and became independent deputies following the swearing-in ceremony, HEP’s deputies remained in PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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coalition with SHP for five months. Five served in high-ranking positions in the party and the Parliament: within SHP, Mahmut Alınak served as deputy chairman of SHP; Fehmi Işıklar (who had served as HEP’s first chairman) was one of four deputy speakers of Parliament; Salih Sümer, elected from Diyarbakır, became one of three chief parliamentary administrators; Adnan Ekmen (from Batman) served as chair of Parliament’s Public Works, Development, Transportation, and Tourism Commission; and veteran politician Ahmet Türk (from Mardin) became chair of the Human Rights Investigatory Commission (TBMM Albümü 19. Dönem 1992, xv–xvi). The influence HEP’s deputies could expect to wield from these positions and within Parliament was primarily that of setting agendas, although initially many had hopes of influencing policy as well. Their most important access point was within SHP itself, where they could lobby sympathetic factions of the party, including party chair Erdal İnönü, who was known for his liberal politics. After fifty-eight people were killed across the southeast during Newroz demonstrations in the spring of 1992, pro-Kurdish deputies within SHP successfully convinced party leadership to support sending a delegation directly to the region to investigate the events. The delegation of seven, which included three HEP-origin deputies, spent three days in the region and then wrote a controversial report for Parliament on the incidents (Alınak 1994, 204–6). HEP-origin parliamentarians within SHP also played important roles in debates and policymaking on whether to support the extension of emergency rule in the southeastern provinces. Election to the Parliament also gave pro-Kurdish party representatives and, more generally, the movement access to other influential policymakers and representatives. Although this did not result in policy changes, for several years it meant that despite pro-Kurdish parliamentarians’ relatively radical political platform, they maintained a dialogue with many more conservative members of the government. HEP members met multiple times with Turkish presidents, prime ministers, and members of the chiefs of general staff. They used such meetings to promote key portions of their agenda, especially the idea of a ceasefire in the southeast and the lifting of emergency rule (Cumhuriyet, February 26- 27, 1992). HEP activities were sometimes supported by parliamentarians from other parties: a February 1992 declaration calling for a general amnesty for PKK fighters, an end to fighting in the southeast, the abolition of the 132

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village guard system, and democratic reforms was signed by forty-nine deputies, including thirty-eight from HEP/SHP, five from DYP, and six from other parties (Cumhuriyet, February 28, 1992). DYP deputies from the southeast and HEP-origin SHP representatives also worked together on the issue of emergency rule and conducted tours of the region together. And many members of the Islamist Refah party, for instance, ultimately voted against the extension of emergency law (Cumhuriyet, March 18, 1992). One of the legal functions of the Turkish parliament is to “supervise the executive,” an activity that takes several forms. Written and verbal questions about policies or applications of policies can be directed at the government or individual ministers by members of Parliament; the minister is then legally obligated to provide a written or verbal response. Such questions can lead to more serious parliamentary motions (gensoru) that, if approved by a majority, can remove a minister from power. These require the signature of at least twenty deputies to be considered by the Parliament. Parliament can also directly initiate a parliamentary investigation by forming a parliamentary committee to examine an event or set of circumstances. The report prepared by the committee is then discussed in the General Assembly. While in the Parliament, HEP-origin deputies maintained an aggressive interpretation of Parliament’s oversight role,2 using their position to challenge the government, especially the Turkish Interior Ministry, over its policies in the southeast and toward Kurds. İsmet Sezgin, interior minister from November 1991 to June 1993, was forced to regularly respond in writing and to appear in Parliament to answer pro-Kurdish parliamentarians’ queries on a range of topics, including emergency rule law, the conduct of the security forces in the southeast, village burnings, the murders of pro-Kurdish activists, journalists, and politicians, and allegations of torture. Such exchanges established a kind of reverse theater of interrogation in which pro-Kurdish deputies took the role of prosecutors, and the government (or minister) the part of the accused (with a predetermined assumption of guilt). Proposals to consider removing government officials from office during this time were mostly initiated by pro-Kurdish deputies from HEP and DEP, although occasionally motions for an interpellation were made in collaboration with deputies from other parties. The Parliament consistently rejected such motions, but they nonetheless helped produce a highly critical parliamentary discourse circulated PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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by the mainstream and pro-Kurdish press. The tone of such performances reinforced the distance and the tension between pro-Kurdish politicianactivists and the cabinet, with pro-Kurdish deputies often utilizing a kind of contra-state discourse that appropriated the language of the state (especially on matters of security). Pro-Kurdish deputies routinely accused the government, for instance, of supporting “state terror” in the name of the security forces (see, e.g., a proposal for an interpellation of the interior ministry in the TBMM Tutanak Dergisi—the records of Parliament’s debates—of September 22, 1992, 236) and of persecuting its own people. In July 1993, for example, DEP deputy Mehmet Sincar called for an investigation into the behavior of village guards and security forces in two villages in the province of Mardin, asking the new interior minister to explain how the government was “going to bring freedom to the region by bombing and burning the villagers” (Özgür Gündem, July 23, 1993). HEP and DEP members of Parliament were also active in proposing and organizing parliamentary committees to investigate incidents of violence in the Kurdish regions of the country. Such investigations explicitly challenged the competence and authority of the interior ministry (which would normally conduct such investigations) and, when carried out, were an important means for pro-Kurdish deputies to reinforce their connections with local Kurdish populations. HEP-origin parliamentarians were, for instance, instrumental in persuading SHP to investigate and report back to the party and Parliament on events such as village burnings and the death in detention of a Kurdish newspaper correspondent with Özgür Gündem (see Özgür Gündem, August 13, 1993). HEP-origin deputies were regular if beleaguered speakers at the parliamentary podium, actively participating in both scheduled debates and off-agenda discussions, and using the podium to promote contentious claims. Their most dramatic use of the podium came during their swearing-in ceremony held after the October 1991 election, when the Kurdish deputies elected to SHP from HEP wore pocket handkerchiefs with the Kurdish colors of red, yellow, and green. Leyla Zana wore a red, yellow, and green headband. During the ceremony itself Hatip Dicle stated that he was taking the oath of office under duress, and Zana added a phrase in Kurdish stating that she was saying the oath on behalf of the “brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples” (see, e.g., Bildirici 2008, 124; Alınak 1994, 156–64; Demir 2005, 134; also Sezer, interview, 2007). The incident, televised nationally, created an uproar in the Parliament and a 134

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media firestorm. Dicle and Zana had to retract their words in order to be sworn in and were forced to resign from SHP. More standard was pro-Kurdish deputies’ use of otherwise routine political debates in the Parliament to criticize the government and its policies in the southeast. The occasion of the forty-third anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1991, for instance, was used by HEP deputy Mahmut Alınak to cite multiple and specific violations of the declaration by Turkey (TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, December 10, 1991, 412). HEP deputy Remzi Kartal used the same occasion to label the September 12th constitution antidemocratic. Legally mandated limitations on the extension of emergency rule law in the southeast also provided regular opportunities for HEP deputies to criticize the system and bring up associated issues such as unknown assailant murders, the village guard system, and human rights abuses. Along with these more standard issues concerning political liberalization, pro-Kurdish deputies used the pulpit to try to dramatically reframe the PKK-state conflict, something that brought them into sharp conflict with other deputies and members of the government, particularly interior minister İsmet Sezgin. One debate over the renewal of emergency rule law in November 1992 saw pro-Kurdish deputy Sırrı Sakık and Sezgin arguing over “who loved the country more,” with Sezgin accusing an indignant Sakık of separatism (TBMM Tutanak Dergisi). In December 1991 Mahmut Alınak was physically pulled from the podium while giving a speech on violence in the southeast. Alınak had begun to describe two young men from Kars who had lost their lives, one a PKK fighter and the other a soldier, but his positioning of the two within a common frame of loss ran counter to mainstream narratives that placed PKK fighters outside the community. Alınak was dragged from the podium and lost his position as a deputy chair within SHP because of the incident (although he argues in his memoirs that SHP had approved the text beforehand; see Alınak 1994, 174–80; Milliyet, December 27, 1991).

Channel 3: Extra-Systemic Politics and Protest

Pro-Kurdish party leaders and elected representatives did not confine themselves to traditional party activities but also drew heavily on repertoires of contention commonly used by social movements. Between PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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1990 and 1993 they led dozens of protest events that attracted significant domestic and international media attention and reinforced their status as activists rather than officials. These included marches, advocacy campaigns, commemorations, funeral demonstrations, and hunger strikes. Party administrators and HEP-origin deputies led a campaign against the first Gulf War in the last six months of 1990; organized Kurdish new year celebrations in 1991 and 1992 (often in defiance of regional restrictions on such events); and held a sit-in in Parliament in July 1992 to protest emergency rule law and conditions in the southeast. They organized advocacy campaigns that used reverse framing to turn official discourse on its head: in reference to a declaration that the Turkish state would wage “all-out war” on the PKK, for instance, DEP’s leaders helped coordinate a campaign in late summer of 1993 “against all-out war” and in support of “all-out peace” (topyekun barış kampanyası) (see, e.g., Özgür Gündem, August 21, 1993). They also engaged in other types of informational and public outreach, such as organizing conferences and tours of the Kurdish regions of the country. Such public gatherings created tension between pro-Kurdish politicians and Turkish officials as they battled over control of public space. Sometimes these resulted in high-profile clashes, which in turn attracted more attention and cultural capital to the parties and their agenda, reinforcing the idea among some audiences that the security forces were unfit representatives of the state. These struggles were evident, for example, in one of HEP’s earliest public actions, a march from Istanbul to Diyarbakır for an “honorable and free life.” HEP was not well known at the time, and the march, which included a series of public meetings in cities across the country, was a way to draw attention to the new party. HEP began to clearly articulate key components of its agenda to a broader public in the southeast. Along with calling for the lifting of emergency rule law, HEP chairman Fehmi Işıklar told crowds of more than ten thousand people in Diyarbakır and Batman that the “Kurdish question constituted the greatest obstacle to democratization in Turkey” and that it “wasn’t a problem that could be solved by decree from the top down” but necessitated democratic debate. Police disruption of HEP’s July 1991 march and associated meetings brought reports in mainstream papers of HEP parliamentarians being punched by police and the arrests of dozens of people (Cumhuriyet, July 26, 1990). Symbolic hunger strikes were also used. These put little pressure on authorities because they were always demarcated by clear time limits, 136

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but they did attract domestic and sometimes international attention. Because hunger strikes were a repertoire employed by the PKK and other prisoners, they were also an implicit way of linking pro-Kurdish party administrators and elected representatives with those jailed for alleged PKK-related crimes. In late March 1992 parliamentarians Leyla Zana and Hatip Dicle went on a forty-eight-hour hunger strike to protest security forces’ attacks on Newroz demonstrators (Cumhuriyet, March 25, 1992), and pro-Kurdish deputies participated in a one-day hunger strike in July of the same year to protest restrictions on their planned commemoration of HEP administrator Vedat Aydın’s death. A more ambitious hunger strike came in November 1992 when eighteen HEP deputies went on an eight-day strike at party headquarters in Ankara as a general protest of “70 years of oppression against Kurds” and the Parliament’s lack of action on the matter (Özgür Gündem, November 13, 1992). Their fast was covered by German, Dutch, Swiss, and Turkish television, and the strikers were visited by dozens of human rights and union leaders, as well as by poets and artists sympathetic to the movement. When the strike was called off on the eighth day of fasting, parliamentarian and party chairman Ahmet Türk told the press that the action had never been a fast to the death but had been undertaken with the goal of delivering a message to the public, and he was satisfied they had accomplished this (Cumhuriyet, November 13, 1992; Özgür Gündem, November 20, 1992). Funeral demonstrations and commemorations were organized for party officials who were killed and for other Kurdish activists. In July 1991 HEP parliamentarians participated in a funeral demonstration for HEP regional administrator Vedat Aydın, who had been murdered by “unknown assailants” (see chapter 4). The funeral brought tens of thousands of demonstrators and culminated in fighting between security forces and protesters that killed at least fourteen people. A year later, HEP deputies planned a commemoration for Aydın in Diyarbakır but were prevented by the regional governor from entering the city. Eight HEP members were beaten and ten people were jailed when security forces stopped one group at Diyarbakır’s Mardinkapı Gate; fourteen HEP deputies were stopped on another road to the city. Their buses were searched, and two hundred people were detained. HEP parliamentarians called it a “forbidden city” and went on a one-day hunger strike in protest (see 2000’e Doğru, July 12, 1992, 21; Özgür Gündem, July 10–11, 1992). Pro-Kurdish deputies also organized “reality tours” to Kurdish regions PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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of the country to build support for their proposals among other parties and deputies. These were particularly important because of restricted press coverage in the areas and because they created opportunities for journalists and politicians to hear ordinary people express sentiments in support of pro-Kurdish parties. In March 1992, HEP led a convoy of four buses carrying journalists and twenty-two deputies to the southeast. They spent several days touring the province of Diyarbakır, including many towns that were routinely off limits. HEP/SHP deputy Sedat Yurtdaş told the press that the delegation had come to “listen to people directly and to take what we see and learn to the government and the parliament” (Diyarbakır Söz, March 3, 1992). Along with demands for alleviation of unemployment and the lifting of emergency rule law, the convoy also spoke with Kurdish villagers who emphasized their support (in Kurdish) for the PKK (Cumhuriyet, March 9, 1992). One Cumhuriyet newspaper reporter on the tour wrote a series of articles from the region, noting of a boy he talked to that “when he gets bigger, Şehmuz is clear that he is not going to be a soldier. ‘I will go to our army,’ he says. What he means by ‘our’ is the PKK’s military wing, ARGK” (Cumhuriyet, March 10, 1992). The delegation was also met by protests from pro-PKK demonstrators who told the deputies: “We don’t want factories, roads, water, and electricity from you; we want freedom!” (Diyarbakır Söz, March 5, 1992).

Channel 4: Nongovernmental and Diplomatic Networks

The legitimacy, role, and access-related resources of party administration and elected office placed pro-Kurdish electoralists in a strong position to take advantage of transnational human rights, academic, and diplomatic networks. Unlike PKK leaders, whose connection with an armed struggle made them difficult liaisons, elected members of Parliament could readily be presented by domestic and foreign actors as legitimate representatives of Kurdish communities in Turkey. This representation was important both domestically and internationally. Between 1990 and early 1992 there were attempts within scholarly and nongovernmental circles within Turkey to advocate for a political (as opposed to military) solution to the Kurdish conflict. Pro-Kurdish party administrators and elected officials were included in these discussions, which took place at universities and as part of panel discussions and 138

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meetings organized by nongovernmental actors such as Helsinki Citizens Assembly (see, e.g., Cumhuriyet, February 16–18, 1992; March 13, 1992). Relationships with foreign government representatives and intergovernmental associations provided pro-Kurdish representatives with resources and sanctuary, and they put pressure on the Turkish government to reform its policies. As discussed in chapter 2, in the early and mid-1990s there was a rapid growth in communication and collaboration between pro-Kurdish actors within Turkey and governments, intergovernmental organizations, human rights associations, Kurdish associations, diaspora communities, media, and academics based outside the country. The actors in these networks reframed the national cause as one of fundamental human rights and depicted the Turkish rejection of proKurdish parties’ demands as a violation of an international human rights norm that the Turkish state had already agreed to uphold in various treaties. Elected Kurdish officials and party administrators were key parts of these networks and cultivated close relations with foreign diplomats and representatives in Turkey. They made frequent visits to Europe and used the forums provided by European political parties, governments, universities, and commissions to advocate on behalf of the Kurdish movement (and, sometimes, the PKK) and to criticize the Turkish government and security forces. In May and June of 1992, for instance, HEP parliamentarians visited Switzerland, Britain, Italy, and Germany (see, e.g., Cumhuriyet, May 20, 1992); and in September 1992 two HEP deputies met in Switzerland with an assistant to the UN General Secretary (Cumhuriyet, September 30, 1992). They also spoke with officials in the United States; in May 1993, Leyla Zana and Ahmet Türk traveled to Washington, DC to give a briefing to the Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (now called the OSCE). Türk summarized the party’s demands as including a general amnesty for all political prisoners, cultural recognition, and as governance-related demands, including the abolition of the village guards and the regional governorship (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1993, 35). Close relations with European officials and European-based Kurdish organizations helped six of DEP’s elected parliamentarians gain asylum in Europe in 1994 and to win Leyla Zana the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament in 1995. Beginning in 1994, European and U.S. military aid and loans to Turkey were periodically cut or made conditional on better treatment of the Kurds. Turkey’s application to the European Union was repeatedly PRO D U C I N G CO M PE TI N G TR UTH S

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obstructed in part due to problems with its human rights record and its treatment of Kurds. In what Ivo Duchacek has described as the “perforation of sovereignty” by subnational authorities (Duchacek 1988, 407), European officials began regularly meeting with Kurdish leaders within and outside Turkey for information on events in Kurdish areas of Turkey, sometimes completely bypassing Turkish officials altogether.

CONCLUSION

Pro-Kurdish activists used the formal political system and legislative process between 1990 and 1994 as a multichannel broadcasting system for the transmission of a pro-Kurdish narrative that challenged the state’s discourse on security, violence, and identity. In contrast to official discourse, their narrative attributed the PKK-state conflict to the state’s antidemocratic legal framework, military policies, and Turkish nationalist ideology. Within this narrative the PKK was not a terrorist organization manned by “terrorists” outside the body politic, but a legitimate representative of Kurdish grievances, with fighters who were not so different from the soldiers in the Turkish army. Solutions lay not with heavier application of military force but via the mechanisms of democratization, which proKurdish activists saw as necessarily including dialogue with the PKK. While this perspective on the conflict was not entirely new, pro-Kurdish use of the channels of party administration, Parliament, extra-systemic protest, and nongovernment and diplomatic networks gave party administrators and elected officials access to greater resources and vastly larger audiences. Of particular importance was pro-Kurdish deputies’ access to decision makers within the mainstream SHP, which served as a member of the coalition government in the early 1990s. This access allowed them to try to influence policy and push the Parliament into playing a greater and more critical role in policymaking toward the southeast. The parties’ confrontational pro-Kurdish discourse also served to construct their identity as extra-systemic challengers at an early moment (1990–92), when this identity was extremely fluid. Party congresses, speeches made at the parliamentary podium, hunger strikes, a highly adversarial relationship with the interior ministry via the role of parliamentary oversight, and the selection of candidates in election campaigns all served as opportunities to buttress the parties’ Kurdish national cre140

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dentials and to indicate support for the PKK’s mission (if not always its tactics). By late 1993 and early 1994, when Hatip Dicle became party chair and the party withdrew from the local elections, this identity had been clearly enunciated as in alignment with the PKK and its agenda. Although the parties’ access to national politics therefore played a very important role in expanding discourse on the Kurdish issue in both public and political arenas, their status as “disloyal” challengers muted the force of their discourse in elite circles.

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The everyday world in which the members of any community move, their taken-for-granted field of social action, is populated not by anybodies, faceless men without qualities, but by somebodies, concrete classes of determinate persons positively characterized and appropriately labeled. And the symbol systems which define these classes are not given in the nature of things—they are historically constructed, socially maintained, and individually applied. — C LI FFO R D G EERT Z , The Interpretation of Cultures, 363–64

6 CREATING A NEW KURDISH SUBJECT

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n April 1999 pro-Kurdish party candidates swept into local offices in towns and cities across the southeast. For the first time in Turkey’s history, a Kurdish political party expressly committed to furthering collective Kurdish rights had gained control of dozens of municipalities in the Kurdish-majority southeastern provinces. In local elections in 2004 and 2009, pro-Kurdish candidates repeated this election feat and won even more seats in local government. This chapter argues that pro-Kurdish parties and officials used the resources of local office to try to establish an alternative Kurdish governmental presence and to construct a new Kurdish subject or collective community. Who were the subjects who lived in Diyarbakır’s Sur, Bağlar, and Yenişehir neighborhoods? What did this citizenry look like, how did

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people sound and behave, what did they need, and what did they want? Pro-Kurdish elected officials provided alternative, “Kurdified” kinds of answers to these questions through two main mechanisms. First, they engaged in bureaucratic activities and modernization projects that could serve to build a competing vision of state-society relations as well as legitimize Kurdish activists’ demands for more local or regional autonomy. These projects can be understood as a pro-Kurdish effort to develop, in Michel Foucault’s classic formulation, a new governmentality, a style of governance in which the welfare and aspirations of a population become both object and subject of rule (Foucault 1991, 87–105). Second, pro-Kurdish mayors made extensive use of symbolic politics that helped routinize explicitly Kurdish norms and practices, re-marked the cultural and physical landscape as Kurdish, and perpetuated pro-Kurdish mayors’ images as anti-systemic challengers. Pro-Kurdish mayoral activities between 1999 and 2008 can also be seen as a form of “as-if politics”: politics that, although understood by all involved to be somehow less than they seem, nonetheless produce guidelines for speech and behavior, define national membership, and create complicity by involving large numbers of people in their performance (Wedeen 1999, 6, 83–84).1 Pro-Kurdish mayors continued to operate within a highly constrained political context, in which provincial governors, prosecutors, security forces, and other central authorities retained considerable capacity to circumscribe their activities through bureaucratic and legal procedures. The mayors’ construction of a Kurdish national space from the inside out was thus a tenuous and piecemeal project that was highly vulnerable to external dynamics (especially actions of the state and of the PKK). Nonetheless, access to the many different types of resources of local office allowed pro-Kurdish mayors to try to build a kind of “as-if Kurdistan” that served to convey an impression of authority and to construct a new sociopolitical community. These activities directly challenged Turkish official narratives that rejected collective Kurdish identities while reinforcing the notion of a cultural space (Kurdistan) distinct from the rest of Turkey. Cumulatively, control over municipalities was an important mechanism by which mayors and party representatives extended their authority and influence among local Kurdish populations and advertised the cultural basis for a political desegregation from Ankara. Municipalities—especially Diyarbakır—also came to

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serve as lead organizations in the coordination of various pro-Kurdish political and social organizations. As Zeynep Gambetti writes (2005, 53), “The existence of a DEHAP municipality [in Diyarbakır] spatially united—while at the same time ideologically distinguishing—the various social and civic actors already involved in opening up niches for themselves in the polarized public space.” This chapter first discusses pro-Kurdish mayors’ efforts to build a kind of competing governmentality and then examines pro-Kurdish symbolic politics. Although I incorporate material from a number of different cities and towns, the bulk of the discussion centers on the city of Diyarbakır, which constituted the largest and most important site of pro-Kurdish electoral activism from 1999 to 2008.

SELF- RU LE: MODERNIZ ATION AND COMPETING GOVERNMENTALIT Y

In April 1999 the pro-Kurdish HADEP won thirty-seven mayoral races across the southeast in local elections. Although pro-Kurdish mayors had held office in the 1990s (and earlier, as in 1977), this was the first time they had done so unified under the auspices of one pro-Kurdish political party. Their victories included the metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır as well as the cities of Van, Batman, Mardin, and Hakkari. They also won many seats in provincial and city councils across the southeast. In the local elections of 2004, pro-Kurdish candidates from DEHAP, this time competing in an election alliance with SHP, again won high numbers of seats in provincial and local councils in the southeast, as well as around fifty mayoral races (although they lost the city of Van). After the formation of the new pro-Kurdish DTP in 2005, fifty-six mayors switched to the party. Despite an aggressive effort by the ruling AKP to unseat DTP, in the March 2009 local elections DTP increased its share of the vote in Diyarbakır and won back the city of Van, winning (by initial counts) ninety-nine mayoral offices across the southeast (this includes smaller administrative mayoral districts, called belde). HADEP’s election slogan in the 1999 campaign was “We will manage ourselves and our city on our own” (Kendimizi de kentimizi de biz yöneteceğiz”) (Demir 2005, 455), and control over local office provided

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the opportunities to carry out many governance functions previously monopolized by Turkish authorities. “In the past, Europeans and other observers would come to Diyarbakır, and they thought we couldn’t run anything ourselves,” said Cabbar Leygara, the former pro-Kurdish mayor of Bağlar, a sub-district of Diyarbakır. “But now we as Kurds have demonstrated that we have power, and we can manage our own affairs. Even though it is our first experience in office, we have proven we can manage, even in these difficult conditions” (Leygara, interview, 2003). This alternative (parallel) governmentality emphasized, like its Turkish counterpart, modernization and the definition and regulation of the population, in this case defined as multicultural and mostly Kurdish. Pro-Kurdish mayors and their staffs invested substantial time and resources in a wide-ranging set of activities, including sanitation and health programs, city beautification and urban planning, economic and social surveys, fire prevention, transportation and street improvements, and water and sewage infrastructure. These could cement pro-Kurdish party control of the region through service and patronage politics, something that might ultimately help shift the charismatic base of the Kurdish national movement to a more sustainable form of legal-rational authority, in Weber’s classic terminology (Gerth and Mills 1958). These activities reflected modernist paradigms identifying a host of social problems, which could in turn justify state intervention. In contrast to official solutions, pro-Kurdish mayors viewed their community’s problems (e.g., illiteracy) and possible solutions (in this case, literacy programs) through a lens of Kurdish nationalism. Reconstructing Diyarbakır and its inhabitants as “modern” was one way for pro-Kurdish mayors to refute social stereotypes of Kurds as dirty and primitive. It also served to fulfill domestic and international conceptions of what it meant to be appropriately governed. Transforming Diyarbakır into the “Paris of the East” (a slogan that went back many decades) could establish credentials for selfgovernance and better integrate the city into supranational communities such as Europe. As Diyarbakır Metropolitan Mayor Osman Baydemir said in 2005: “Our fundamental vision is to make Diyarbakır a city that lives up to the European vision: a city dedicated to protecting the environment and natural resources, its people, and its heritage. To achieve all of this we need time and resources, and, of course, peace. There must be no conflict” (Baydemir, interview, 2005). Conversely, perceptions that the mayors had

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failed to uphold such standards could produce sharp criticisms that they were sacrificing community governance for pro-Kurdish politics; in the spring of 2006, for instance, the municipalities came under intense criticism for their handling of an outbreak of Asian bird flu in the area. The modernist logic of pro-Kurdish governance was evident in many of their activities and in their discourse. This was first apparent to me when the former pro-Kurdish mayor of Bağlar, Cabbar Leygara, was showing me around the neighborhood in 2003. Bağlar is one of Diyarbakır’s poorest districts and has a large number of recent immigrants who came to the city from villages in the 1990s. Next to a small park the municipality had built were a number of stone benches. Leygara noted that he and other municipal employees were having trouble teaching the villagers to sit on the benches. “They always want to sit on the ground,” he said, “but we need to teach them how we live in the city” (Leygara, interview, 2003). Hygiene and sanitation programs also figured prominently in municipal activities. Along with programs for the centralization and regulation of food sales such as yogurt, campaigns to clean up Diyarbakır’s city streets were heavily promoted by the municipalities: Diyarbakır Metropolitan Mayor Osman Baydemir and other mayors were often photographed with boots on feet and hoses in hands washing the city streets or shoveling the snow away. The municipality police were assigned special duties as “garbage detectives” to identify local residents who put their garbage on the streets at times other than the designated hours, and plastic garbage bags were handed out with the injunction to hold neighborhood competitions for the cleanest street in Diyarbakır (see, e.g., Bugün, January 10, 2007; Öz Diyar, December 14, 2006 and August 9, 2006). Municipalities also carried out surveys that provided a positivist, “scientific” basis for their pro-Kurdish initiatives. These often included questions and/or provided optional responses that would not be included in published central government surveys. In 2006, for instance, the Sur municipality carried out a survey of the languages spoken in Suriçi, the area inside the Diyarbakır city walls. The survey’s results indicated that 72 percent of Suriçi’s inhabitants spoke Kurdish, 24 percent Turkish, and the rest Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian. After the results of the survey were announced, the municipality used the survey as the empirical basis for its decision to carry out its business in multiple languages, including Kurdish (Sur Municipality Press Release, January 4, 2006).

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In 2005 and 2006 the municipality of Yenişehir surveyed around a thousand people about their social habits and economic status. Some of the questions were crafted to include the possibility of responses that might indicate pro-Kurdish preferences. One question, for example, asked respondents which television station they watched most frequently. In the 2005 survey, 22 percent of respondents listed the Kurdish nationalist Roj TV (beamed from Europe, banned in Turkey), a higher percentage than any other channel. Another question asked respondents to indicate whom they were most likely to vote for in the next elections. More than half the respondents indicated pro-Kurdish parties. Another question asked respondents how they had come to Diyarbakır: 29 percent marked the response “forced migration” (Yenişehir Belediyesi 2006). Although the accuracy of the survey might be questioned, what is striking is the fact that a pro-Kurdish municipality engaged in an activity usually reserved for central authorities. Moreover, their surveys permitted respondents to provide answers indicating direct or indirect support for movement and party goals. The results of such surveys were widely publicized: in 2006 the Yenişehir municipality held a press conference to announce its survey results; it was reported in the regional and pro-Kurdish press. The results were also published in the municipality’s monthly magazine.

SYMBOLIC POLITIC S

Election to local office in 1999 and 2004 gave pro-Kurdish politicians and party administrators new resources and opportunities to define (and redefine) the Kurdish population and geographic terrain. This was carried out through the extensive use of cultural and symbolic politics that served to routinize explicitly Kurdish norms and practices. Symbolic politics also perpetuated pro-Kurdish mayors’ image as challengers and activists; even while serving in government, they could now point to specific ways in which they promoted essential components of Kurdishness and acted as guardians or perpetuators of Kurdish national culture. Symbolic politics is the use of representation—narratives, symbols, and spectacle—“to maintain or transform a power relationship” (Brysk 1995). In distinction to framing, which refers more specifically to the ways a movement and its organizations are coded, named, defined, and “read,”

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I use symbolic politics to refer more generally to cultural representations that promote particular categories of what Rogers Brubaker (2005, 470– 92) calls “groupness.” Because both authorities and activists recognize the power of controlling public visions of who constitutes “the community,” ethnopolitical challengers are thus engaged in a fierce struggle with state authorities over “the imposition of the legitimate vision of the social world” (Bourdieu 1991, 238). Challengers who establish authority over symbolic realms are in a greatly enhanced position to redefine the meaning of such fundamental cultural markers as language, dress, and commemorative events, and consequently to redefine what is “normal” and what is practiced. Particular types of clothes designated by authorities as “primitive” can be redefined as “authentic” and “indigenous.” Challengers speaking to large crowds in a language that authorities have tried to suppress, or have wanted to confine to the private sphere, are redefining that language as politically relevant and communally shared. Gaining control over symbolic politics using governmental offices also offers opportunities to redefine geographic spaces and create new visual landscapes, both physical and mental. In this way, not only the population within a territory but the territory itself becomes categorized and marked as intrinsically ethnic (or religious, etc.). Successful symbolic politics can create new facts on the ground as increasing numbers of people begin presenting themselves publicly in new ways. The collective and “concretized” expression of new identities in familiar but re-marked spaces reinforces the political claims of movement activists who seek new political arrangements. More than uncovering “hidden transcripts” of dissent (Scott 1990), such practices may in fact be something quite original, a result of new interactions and particular historical moments. When three hundred local constituents packed a municipal theater to see a Kurdish-language play, or hundreds of thousands Diyarbakır residents gathered for a Kurdish new year festival, they were participating in the formation of an expanded awareness of community, of a Kurdish “us” that existed vis-à-vis the ethnic Turk; they had become both participants in and consumers of particular “advertisements” of Kurdishness. While this implicates and mobilizes many more people, it can also silence others and produce new conflicts internal to the movement and to local society. Such usurpation of the symbolic field constitutes a fundamental challenge to authorities and an affront to the symbolic domination of the state. 148

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If, as Wedeen argues, spectacles such as fairs, festivals, and demonstrations (to name just one genre of symbolic politics) are effective for states because they “regiment bodies,” provide occasions to enforce obedience, and help frame the way people view themselves as citizens (Wedeen 1999, 19), then for states to lose or relinquish control of such spectacles suggests at the very least a shift in state strategies for managing populations (especially troublesome ones), and/or a considerable erosion of their power to enforce policies. As with collective forms of “everyday resistance” (Scott 1987), the policy options of the regime have now been restricted; officials cannot now so readily deny the existence of the community in question or suppress use of its language, holidays, or special dress. The cost of reasserting symbolic control may simply be too high. Many social actors use symbolic politics to challenge the cultural status quo, not just elected officials. Pro-Kurdish nongovernmental organizations such as the İHD and the Kurdish media have been especially important in challenging Turkish authorities in the realm of language politics. Even in highly militarized areas such as Hakkari, musicians and local communities have used Kurdish music as a mode of symbolic defiance, playing it loudly, for instance, across from police stations (Kanakis 2006). Nonetheless, the scale of the resources available to pro-Kurdish elected representatives made their use of anti-hegemonic symbolic politics particularly important. PRO - KU RDISH SYMBOLIC POLITIC S , 199 0 –1999

Prior to 1999, pro-Kurdish parliamentarians and party administrators had often used symbolic politics to convey defiance of the state and its symbolic universe and to signify allegiance to the Kurdish national cause and, sometimes, to the PKK. Because they did not control many municipalities during this time and because of the conditions of emergency rule law, the degree and range of such symbolic politics were more limited. They tended to be one-time events that attracted significant domestic and international media attention rather than more comprehensive reconfigurations of societal norms and ways of conduct. Nonetheless, many early cases of symbolic, highly contentious struggles challenged what had been the dominant national narrative about the Turkishness of the country’s population and mobilized support for the party and the movement. The murders of pro-Kurdish party members C R E ATI N G A N E W K U R D I S H S U B J EC T

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such as parliamentary deputy Mehmet Sincar produced fierce public debates about whether he would want to be buried with the Turkish flag (see, e.g., Bolkan 2005). The party could indirectly reference and convey its support for the PKK through its symbolic association with particular individuals; Abdullah Öcalan’s mother, as mentioned earlier, attended the HEP assembly in 1992, where she was received as an honored guest, and she was a guest at other pro-Kurdish party functions later on as well. Kurdish Newroz festivals in particular became major points of conflict between Turkish officials and Kurdish activists in the early 1990s. Held on the spring equinox (March 21) and most prominently associated with the lighting of a bonfire, Newroz has served as the “corner-stone of the Kurdish myth of resistance” (Hirschler 2001, 154) since the 1980s. Newroz is perceived by both Kurdish activists and the Turkish state as a potent symbol of Kurdish nationalism. At the same time, Turkish authorities have tried to reclaim and reinvent the event as a Central Asian—and thus Turkic—ceremony, leading to public and competing clashes over its meaning (Yanik 2006; Gambetti 2005). Newroz celebrations were regularly suppressed in the southeast by Turkish authorities until 2000, but pro-Kurdish party administrators and some elected parliamentarians organized and participated in the events in spite of the government restrictions and the violence that came to be associated with them. Another early form of symbolic contestation occurred when proKurdish elected and party administrators used normally conventional occasions for unconventional purposes. The 1991 parliamentary swearing-in ceremony in which HEP-origin deputies wore handkerchiefs in the Kurdish colors of red, green, and yellow (described in chapter 5) was one of the most prominent examples of this. In 1996 a group of candidates from the pro-Kurdish HADEP party who had been elected to Parliament in the 1995 election but had not gained seats because the party failed to pass the 10 percent threshold toyed with the idea of holding an alternative swearing-in ceremony to convey their protest. They also participated in an alternative HABITAT II conference, designed to draw attention to village emptyings and human rights abuses (Demir 2005, 390–91), and in 1997 worked with the İHD and some European nongovernmental organizations in organizing a peace train named after author and activist Musa Anter.

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PRO -KU RDISH SYMBOLIC POLITIC S , 1999 –20 08: L ANGUAGE

Beginning in 1999 and especially after 2004, pro-Kurdish mayors gained access to resources that allowed them to engage in more comprehensive symbolic projects. Many mayors began using them as a means of reconstructing Kurdish culture (defined in very concrete ways) and of changing norms and practices on the ground in both official and societal arenas. If, as Low and Lawrence-Zuniga write (2003, 22), “the production and reproduction of hegemonic schemes require the monopolization of public spaces in order to dominate memories,” Turkish authorities’ profound loss of control over public space, especially in pro-Kurdish party-held cities and towns in the southeast, constituted a considerable erosion of state power (even if it was never as fully hegemonic as sometimes depicted). Municipal use and promotion of the Kurdish language constituted one of the most important instances of symbolic politics. In practice, Kurmanji was mostly promoted, although other Kurdish dialects, such as Zazaki, were used in advertisements and other media. Turkish law banned the use of Kurdish in public from 1983 to 1991,2 and until the second half of the 1990s considerable restrictions on Kurdish-language publications and music still existed. Local government use of Kurdish in spoken and written contexts—signaling both its everyday nature and its potential as an official language—thus constituted a serious normative shift and symbolic challenge. Soon after he was elected to office, Diyarbakır mayor Osman Baydemir began using Kurdish in the municipality and for promotional materials. Baydemir said: “For a long time during the conflict one of the goals of the state was to destroy Kurdish language and culture. One of the signs of peace would be to be able to use Kurdish freely, in public and official places. It was also very important as a way of reestablishing the municipality’s relations with the people. So as soon as I came into office we started using Kurdish in some official documents and in most meetings, except the most official. Of course there was some debate about it, but it was very important to me. The governor didn’t like it—he told us to stop—but he couldn’t do anything about it” (Baydemir, interview, 2005). Announcements for festivals, concerts, and conferences were commonly made in Kurdish, Turkish, and English. Information material on the campaign to clean up Diyarbakır was distributed

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in Kurdish and Turkish. Baydemir and other pro-Kurdish mayors also began using Kurdish when speaking to local and international audiences, in contexts ranging from the opening of a conference on multilingualism to an announcement of the successful mediation of a local blood feud between three families (Diyarbakır Söz, December 14, 2006). Municipal posters advertising film festivals and Kurdish new year celebrations were headlined in Kurmanji, Turkish, English, and, in 2006, Armenian and Arabic. Festival brochures were published in both Kurmanji and Turkish. As of 2009 Turkish law still required all party business (campaigns, congresses, and official correspondence, for instance) to be conducted in Turkish. The law applicable for municipalities was somewhat more vague, requiring Turkish for “official business” but stating that municipal use of other languages for interpersonal communication was permissible if necessary. Pro-Kurdish mayors in some municipalities, especially in Diyarbakır, tried to take advantage of this loophole. In 2006 the Sur and Yenişehir municipalities and the metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır began publishing Kurdish-language versions of the cities’ official Web sites. Conferences were also held in Diyarbakır to promote the standardization of Kurdish as a written language. Many pro-Kurdish municipalities began publishing their municipal newsletters and distributing public information in Kurdish as well as Turkish. Fırat Anlı, elected mayor of the Diyarbakır district of Yenişehir in 2004, recounted: Turkish is supposed to be spoken in official institutions. But in order to make it easier to conduct business with people you can speak English, you can speak Kurmanji, you can even speak Zazaki. We gradually increased our application of this and began using it in writing. Sometimes we have used Kurmanji in our official documents. We used it in our official meetings. For instance, a wedding ceremony is an official ceremony. In [our use of Kurmanji in situations like this], we have de facto begun to [force an] increase in its use. (Anlı, interview, 2006)

The most aggressive promotion of Kurdish came from Diyarbakır’s Sur municipality between 2004 and 2007, led by mayor Abdullah Demirbaş, a former teacher and union activist known for his interest in education and children. Sur was one of the first municipalities to offer a Kurdish-language version of the city’s Web site. It published children’s workbooks in Kurdish and, in 2006, began offering Kurdish-language classes for munic152

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ipal personnel. For Demirbaş, language also served as a way to frame proposals for comprehensive political reforms. In 2005 he drafted a forceful statement advocating multilingualism in municipal governance. The text, circulated to domestic and international audiences, went well beyond discussions of local government services to include a harsh denunciation of official Turkish policies (which he referred to as “despotic”) and a suggestion that an identity of “Turkey-ism,” or Türkiyelilik in Turkish, 3 should become the basis of the constitution. Demirbaş argued, moreover, that not only should municipalities provide full services in a multilingual manner (“i.e., Turkish, Kurdish, Zazaki, English”), but that such language distinctions should become the basis of ethnolinguistically differentiated advisory bodies. In the words of the text, “Each language group should establish its own ‘people’s assembly.’ These public assemblies should use their own languages and dialects in their own meetings, and then make recommendations on issues to the municipality.”4 Accordingly, in October 2006 the Sur municipal council voted to provide official services in Turkish, Kurdish, English, and Syriac, thus elevating Kurdish to the status of an official language. In June 2007, as discussed in chapter 4, Demirbaş was removed from office and the municipal council disbanded by court order. The court ruled that providing services in Kurdish was illegal and went beyond the legal purview of municipal responsibilities.

RE- KU RDIFICATION OF SPACE: NAMES AND COMMEMOR ATION IN U RBAN TERR AIN

Pro-Kurdish mayors and their staffs also attempted to reappropriate and re-mark geographic spaces in ways that resembled the re-Palestinization of space in Israel (see Ben-Ze’ev and Aburaiya 2004). Such efforts constituted an effort to transform the local spatial vision (Öktem 2004, 569), in this case from a Turkish national model to one presented as Kurdish. From the 1920s through the 1970s, Turkish officials had used “toponymical strategies” of changing village names and installing Turkish nationalist symbols to “Turkify” the mostly non-Turkish southeast (see, e.g., Öktem 2004, 568–69). Between 1999 and 2006, pro-Kurdish mayors countered this effort by reclaiming local geographies and inscribing them as Kurdish or as in reference to pro-Kurdish struggles. These attempts were not unprecedented; in 1992, for instance, then Diyarbakır mayor C R E ATI N G A N E W K U R D I S H S U B J EC T

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Turgut Atalay changed the name of one of the city’s biggest parks from Anıt Park 5 to Ahmet Arif Park. (Born in 1927, Ahmet Arif was a prominent Kurdish poet and author from Diyarbakır who had spent two years in jail for political activism. He died in 1991.) However, from 1999 to 2007 such toponymical efforts occurred much more frequently and can be seen as part of the production of a new historical memory. After his election in 2004, mayor Osman Baydemir quietly removed a statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from one of Diyarbakır’s main squares. He also removed one of the signs to the city which proclaimed in Turkish, “How Happy Is the One Who Can Say He Is a Turk” (Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyene), a nationalist slogan. In late 2005 Yenişehir mayor Fırat Anlı unveiled a statue in honor of Kurdish author and activist Musa Anter who, as described in chapter 4, was shot to death by “unknown assailants” in September 1992 when visiting Diyarbakır. City officials built a small park and raised the statue in the spot where Anter was killed. About three hundred people, including many of the region’s most prominent mayors, attended the commemoration ceremony to unveil the statue, designed by Iranian Kurdish sculptor Babek Sophi (see, e.g., Yenişehir Belediye Bülteni 2006, 5). Between 1999 and 2007 pro-Kurdish mayors repeatedly sought to use the naming and renaming of parks and city streets as a means of Kurdifying urban space. Such moves sometimes resulted in conflicts with the regional governor’s office and, ultimately, in court cases. In one of the earliest and most widely publicized instances, in June 2000 the proKurdish mayor of Batman, Abdullah Akın, tried to change around two hundred street names in the city, christening some after prominent Kurdish events, leaders, and leftists who had supported the Kurdish cause. The mayor’s move made headlines in Turkey and in Europe when a Turkish court rejected some of them, including Gandhi and Zilan streets (Zilan is a prominent Kurdish tribe that took part in the 1930s Kurdish uprisings, and also a well-known code name for a female PKK suicide bomber).6 The regional governor rejected the Diyarbakır municipality’s efforts to name one road Vedat Aydın Street, after the pro-Kurdish party leader murdered in 1991 (Çelik, interview, 2003). Later mayors, recognizing potential run-ins with the governorship, conducted public surveys in which they asked area residents what they wanted to name new parks and streets; the municipalities could then justify the choice of names by attributing them to popular demand, making it harder for the governor’s office to reject 154

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them (Anlı, interview, 2006). By early 2009, in the rapidly expanding Diyarbakır neighborhood of Kayapınar, visitors and locals driving west along Musa Anter Boulevard could turn left on Yılmaz Güney Avenue (named after the left-wing film director), right on Selahaddini Eyyubi Boulevard (Salahaddin—known in English as Saladin—was Kurdish), and left again on Ahmet Arif Boulevard.

RESTOR ATION AND CU LTU R AL HERITAGE PROJ EC TS

Pro-Kurdish mayors also sought to counter what Öktem describes (2004) as official strategies of “destruction and neglect” of Kurdish heritage. Under Diyarbakır mayor Feridun Çelik, the municipality and the governor’s office launched an ambitious initiative to restore and rebuild the ancient city walls of Diyarbakır, which are about five kilometers long and circle the old part of the city. The walls were in a state of extreme disrepair, with shops, gas stations, and homes abutting the walls and preventing access. From 2000 to 2007 the ongoing restoration project removed these buildings and put in a grassy park that ran alongside the walls. The walls themselves were cleaned, and portions were restored.7 City officials framed the project as an essential step to protect Diyarbakır’s multicultural civilization heritage (described variously as encompassing twenty-six to thirty-three peoples), in sharp contrast to the official emphasis on the Turkish heritage of the country.8 In much pro-Kurdish documentation, the walls in fact served as a metaphor for the treatment of the city’s populations: “According to historical sources, the Walls of the City were embroidered in epigraphs in fourteen languages, of peoples who inhabited the city in its long history, including Greek, Aramaic, Latin, Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish. Through neglect and at times deliberate destruction very little of these have been left today.”9 Restoring the walls and the city through the prism of multiculturalism and cultural heritage was a way to try to reconstruct both historical memory and future narrative, producing a new physical and imaginary space. The metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır also launched a number of cultural programs that offered new representations of local culture and political experiences. Unlike some of the larger festivals, these were intended primarily for local consumption. In 2003 the municipality C R E ATI N G A N E W K U R D I S H S U B J EC T

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opened a cinema unit that made and showed films and offered workshops in cinematography. Among the most important of the films produced by the municipality were the Kurdish-language Xeyalên ji bêrf (Dreams Like Snow), a documentary about Kurdish adolescents sent to Quranic schools; the Turkish-language Semerci Fesih (The Saddle-Maker Fesih), about urbanization and the dying art of saddle-making in the area; the Kurdish-language Çek Çek (Handcart), about the life of an elderly cartpuller in Diyarbakır; the Turkish-language Ayhan Işık öldi (Ayhan Işık is dead), about a poor Kurdish child who fantasizes about going to the Turkish cinema; and another Turkish-language film about a newspaper distributor who has been detained and tortured. In 2007 the Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality also opened an archival research office under the auspices of the city Cultural Directorate, which employed two full-time researchers. Its main mission was to provide a center for social scientists and researchers studying topics related to the Kurds. The center also collected Kurdish songs and oral narratives and researched local oral histories. In conjuction with the European Union and the Turkish Cultural Ministry, the office published The Anthologie of Dengbêj (storytelling) in 2007. The publication was available as a book in Turkish and Kurdish and as a music CD. Despite the involvement of the Turkish Cultural Ministry, an investigation was opened against the municipality for publication of the book. Pro-Kurdish mayors were also active supporters of the “Save Hasankeyf” campaign. Hasankeyf, a town of approximately five thousand people on the Tigris River and a site of many ancient buildings, will be flooded if the completion of the Ilısu Dam occurs as planned. The campaign broadened into an international rescue effort, with Kurdish activists framing the issue as a particularly egregious example of Turkish authorities’ destruction of Kurdish cultural heritage spots. Turkish authorities argued that the flooding of the town would be the unavoidable if unfortunate byproduct of a dam that was necessary for the development of the area. In February 2006 a number of pro-Kurdish DTP municipalities (led by the Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality) along with two other municipalities (Hasankeyf and Batman-Kozluk) run by other political parties financed a symposium on the issue. In August of that year, a big concert was held in Hasankeyf against the planned groundbreaking ceremony the next day at the Ilısu dam site. The municipalities also completed a plan to build a large cultural park in Hasankeyf that would cost about 200,000 156

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YTL; this would be financed by the Union of Southeast Anatolia Region Municipalities (GABB), dominated by pro-Kurdish municipalities.

CU LTU R AL PERFORMANCE: FAIRS AND FESTIVALS

Some of the most dramatic forms of pro-Kurdish symbolic politics were found in fairs and festivals. These high-profile cultural performances served as important—perhaps the most important—vehicles for the reimagination and reconstruction of Kurdish culture. They mobilized local populations, provided forums for reflections on “Kurdishness,” produced new meanings of community, representation, and identity, demonstrated support for the movement, and challenged official narratives. Beginning in 2000, the metropolitan municipality of Diyarbakır resuscitated the Diyarbakır Cultural and Arts Festival and, in 2003, began holding annual “Literature Days” and film festivals. Belying their innocuous billing, these events were intensely political. The 2003 Cultural and Arts Festival (known as the “Art Despite Everything” festival in not-so-subtle reference to the governor’s restrictions on its events and the challenging political context) saw Diyarbakır’s popular Sanat Sokağı (Art Street) transformed into a site of Kurdish cultural production and commemoration. Kurdish book publishers and pro-Kurdish student groups set up stalls that lined the street, Kurdish music boomed from a small stage at the end of the road, and an art display featured human-sized cutouts painted in red and black. The 2006 festival featured panels on topics that included “The Kurdish question from the past until today, and ways to a solution,” and Kurdish-language journalism. Diyarbakır’s “Literature Days” in particular not only showcased Kurdish literature, language, and politics but served as an educational medium. This was especially important given the fact that Kurdish language teaching could not occur in public schools. The 2005 program included a language conference on the standardization of Kurdish and children’s fairy tales read aloud in Kurdish. By far the most ambitious festivals were the celebrations of the Kurdish New Year in March. As conditions in the southeast relaxed after 1999, pro-Kurdish mayors and party organizers in many towns and cities began organizing enormous Newroz events that attracted hundreds of thousands of locals, nationwide press coverage, and dozens of international observers. In 2002 hundreds of thousands of people attended the C R E ATI N G A N E W K U R D I S H S U B J EC T

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Diyarbakır Newroz celebration; in 2004 and 2005 there were an estimated 250,000 (see, e.g., Radikal, March 22, 2005). Patrolled but not halted by police and security forces, Newroz festivals constituted a clear assertion to multiple audiences that the Kurdish national movement had not died with Abdullah Öcalan’s capture but, to the contrary, was ever more capable of writing its own narrative in opposition to the state. In Diyarbakır, Newroz festivals were organized primarily by proKurdish party headquarters, with municipalities serving on the organizing committees and playing key roles in funding, hosting, publicizing, and officiating them. More than any other type of symbolic politics, Newroz festivals implicated and engaged local populations in a ritualized public spectacle designed to simultaneously build community cohesion and broadcast concrete messages to external audiences. Many festival attendees—women, men, children, young and old—would walk miles to the fair site (usually held about six miles outside Diyarbakır proper) to find the best spots, picnic, and dance. The festival hosted a prominent line-up of singers and pop stars. In addition to a smaller, more sedate bonfire lit by city officials, an enormous flame was lit on a high pole away from the stage, visible from miles around. Festival organizers spent weeks deliberating the themes of the festival and would print these on huge banners hung from the fairground buildings. Some activists and attendees also used Newroz as an opportunity to wear clothes clearly marked as Kurdish or insurgent (not necessarily the same thing): flowing sequined gowns, particular types of head coverings, and Palestinian-style kufiyeh, for instance. Support for Öcalan through chanting, photographs, and signs was an endemic feature of the event, as were Kurdish flags of red, yellow, and green. By 2006 highly politicized speeches that affirmed a distinctive, non-Turkish sense of representation became a standard part of the festival. In 2007, Leyla Zana used the occasion to give a speech remarkable not only for its references to Öcalan, Massoud Barzani, and Jalal Talabani but its invocation of Kurdish unity, given the previous warfare between Öcalan and Iraqi Kurdish leaders. Speaking in Kurdish, Zana said: The Kurds have three comrades. All of them are very precious. They occupy a significant space in Kurdish hearts. . . . First of these is Uncle Jalal [Jalal Talabani], the president of Iraq. He is a Kurdish leader and a believer in brotherhood; he accepts all of us. The second one is Uncle Massoud [Massoud 158

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Barzani], the leader of the Kurdistan region. The third one is the one you call the guide, the leader: he is the will of the Kurdish people as we all know in our hearts, Öcalan. All three are our pride, ears, hearts and brains. They are etched in our hearts. (Zaman, March 22, 2007)

CONCLUSION

Between 1999 and 2008 pro-Kurdish parties and officials used the resources of office in municipalities across the southeast to construct an alternative governmentality and to conduct symbolic politics that might help create alternative Kurdish subjects. Modernist and “scientific” administrative projects carried out by pro-Kurdish municipalities such as sanitation programs; the promotion and use of the Kurdish language, especially in official settings; the “Kurdification” of geography and public space; commemoration and restoration; and Kurdish fairs and festivals all helped produce “as-if politics” that served both to identify and redefine the Kurdish citizen and to undermine Turkish authority. Control over municipalities was an important means by which mayors and party representatives could cumulatively extend their authority and influence among local Kurdish populations and buttress their political proposals for administrative devolution and alternative representation. In addition, intensive production of symbolic politics maintained their identity as challengers. This was particularly important given that proKurdish administrators were working alongside representatives from state-appointed organizations, such as the governor’s office. Pro-Kurdish mayors and municipal councils did not conceptualize an alternative modernity but an alternatively nationalized one. Many mayors and members of their staff viewed themselves vanguards in an effort to rebuild Kurdish culture among Kurdish subjects. Their efforts can be read as a kind of official nationalism with an emphasis on secular high culture, modernization, and a tendency toward standardization (if not homogenization) of language and experience. Although some pro-Kurdish officials were sensitive to this and sought to integrate local people into planning activities, overall the effort created internal tensions around the authenticity and political implications of cultural identities. Especially after 2005, some Diyarbakır residents and those involved with organizing the festivals began to question the wisdom of spending C R E ATI N G A N E W K U R D I S H S U B J EC T

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scarce resources on such luxuries as headline singers and films and to consider new ways of engaging their populations. Cevahir Sadak, cultural director for the Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality, said in March 2006: In the first years even to be able to have a festival and to use Kurdish was the most amazing thing. But then after a couple years, in 2002, 2003, 2004, we started looking around and saying, “What are we doing? What are we doing with these festivals?” . . . The current type of festivals is fictional—we can’t explain to people why we are holding them.

Instead, Sadak said, fair-organizers would begin to incorporate preexisting, more indigenous traditions into the festivals, such as sheep-shearing, and, as she put it, “to involve people in creating this platform, but not just for representation but to bring the different parts of Kurdistan together” (Sadak, interview, 2006). Replications of the performance of regime by pro-Kurdish politicians were nonetheless carried out within spaces still strongly bounded by the rules and institutions of the Turkish state. Local mayors and municipalities acted as if they could alter the fundamental rules of the political game (through, e.g., national language and citizen identification), creating the illusion of a Kurdish national state. In fact, they were still legally bound by the rules constructed by Turkish authorities. Although they could act “as if” they had sufficient autonomy to construct an alternative nationhood, they were heavily circumscribed in their range of possible policies and thus were not able to conduct open dialogue at the local level about what sorts of administrative and cultural reforms people actually wanted.

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CONCLUSIONS Assessing a Challenger’s Impacts

I

n July 2007 a pro-Kurdish party won representation in the Turkish parliament for the first time in thirteen years. Although running as independents, the nearly two-dozen new parliamentarians represented the Democratic Society Party (DTP), formed in 2005. Among the unlikely new members of Parliament was a Kurdish lawyer who had been imprisoned on charges of separatism until the day she was voted into office and a former human rights activist who had barely survived an assassination attempt in which he was shot six times. The moment of their election was not auspicious: the new deputies took the oath of office at a time when proKurdish mayors and party administrators were routinely being detained and taken to court, when rising numbers of clashes between PKK forces and the Turkish Armed Forces were killing tens of people every month

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(and, soon, every week), and when it looked as if Turkey might go to war with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. Hopes for a peaceful solution to the country’s “Kurdish conflict” seemed increasingly bleak. The election thus returns us to some of the central questions of this book: given the unpromising context, what could pro-Kurdish activists such as these newly elected parliamentarians gain by using Turkey’s formal political system? In a field of conflict structured primarily by violent conflict between the PKK and the Turkish Armed Forces, what could they do from within the system that might make a difference? How might their time in office affect the communities they claimed to represent and the movement’s relations with Turkish authorities? Was it, to put it bluntly, worth their trouble? Assessing pro-Kurdish efforts between 1990 and 2008 highlights some of the very real opportunities and constraints of using the ballot box and formal party politics to promote a Kurdish national agenda in Turkey. Creating political parties and winning elected office provided new material, legal, access, role-related, and legitimacy resources that were largely unavailable to armed contenders or other actors working outside formal politics. These resources included tangible assets such as state funding for political parties, municipal budgets, use of buildings as “safe spaces,” control over the hiring and use of thousands of employees, legal protection, and votes. They also included less tangible resources such as access to high-level decision makers and the role resources of administration and governance. All of these could be used to further a pro-Kurdish agenda in various ways. However, pro-Kurdish party members, activists, and administrative and elected officials were subjected to heavy levels of coercion from the judiciary, security forces, Parliament, bureaucracy, and extra-legal, stateaffiliated actors. The effects of this coercion varied according to time period, level of coordination between different branches of the state, and type of coercion employed. Lack of coordinated coercion often meant the parties had a certain amount of room in which to maneuver; despite paying a heavy price in human life and liberty, the parties and elected representatives could still take some advantage of the opportunities of party politics and elected office. These spaces within the system were, nonetheless, highly unstable, as evidenced in 1994 when the parties’ parliamentary deputies were ejected from national politics through the combined

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efforts of the Parliament, security forces, and judiciary. The parties also withdrew from local politics at this time due to coercion from Turkish authorities and the PKK. In the less militarized environment of 1999 to 2008, juridical coercion against local pro-Kurdish administrators and elected mayors, and EU-related incentive politics favoring a discourse of democracy over self-determination, also circumscribed pro-Kurdish political discourse. High levels of coercion, in addition to internal movement and party dynamics, pushed the party leadership to establish and maintain the parties’ identities as “challengers” throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. Although pro-Kurdish parties emerged distinct from the PKK and were not formally subservient to it, some of their administrators and elected officials were close to the PKK, and most of their rank-and-filed constituents were sympathetic to it. In addition, the PKK imposed constraints on party activities in the southeast. Becoming too close to the governing establishment, making too many concessions, becoming too moderate, or publicly criticizing the PKK would have jeopardized the ability of the parties to function and to maintain the support of pro-PKK constituents. Seeking both to maximize the opportunities provided by access to systemic resources and to maintain their identity as genuine dissidents, pro-Kurdish parties and elected officials deployed the resources of the system in two main ways. First, they used formal politics as a multichannel broadcasting system for anti-hegemonic information politics that directly challenged official discourse on questions of identity and security, especially regarding the PKK and the governance of the southeast. For pro-Kurdish leaders, the PKK-state conflict could not be understood as a problem of “terrorism” but as the result of repressive state policies. Solutions could not be found in military strategies but only in a comprehensive democratic reform process and reconsideration of some of the fundamental principles of the Turkish political system: namely, Turkish nationalism and unitary government. Between 1990 and 1994 the framework of formal party politics, the Parliament, extra-systemic contention, and diplomatic networks all served as channels for the transmission of these ideas and for the mobilization of popular Kurdish support. Second, beginning in 1999, pro-Kurdish electoralists used their control over local government offices in the southeast to build an alternative gov-

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ernmentality and to engage in Kurdish national symbolic politics. Modernist administrative projects; Kurdish fairs and festivals such as Newroz; the promotion and use of Kurdish in posters; public ceremonies and speeches; changing geographic markers to reference prominent Kurdish figures and the Kurdish national struggle; the restoration and protection of heritage sites that could be claimed as part of a distinctive Kurdish and local history—all served to help construct a citizenry that would identify as part of a Kurdish national community readily distinguishable from the Turkish national model. Such activities defined Kurdishness in very particular ways promoted by the Kurdish national movement and challenged Turkish official claims to represent all of Turkey’s citizens regardless of ethnicity.

OUTCOMES AND IMPAC TS

In nearly twenty years of activism within the political system, what impacts did pro-Kurdish activities and experiences in office have on the movement, its constituents, and their relations with Turkish state and society? Although the parties did not position themselves as competitors to the PKK and maintained close links to the group, their participation in politics nonetheless provided new depth to the Kurdish movement’s organizational leadership. Pro-Kurdish parties obtained access to resources unavailable to external movement actors and constructed an overlapping but distinct base of power in Turkey that permitted them to mobilize support in new ways. This produced new groups of movement elites distinguished not only by their choice of tactics but by their sociopolitical backgrounds. Pro-Kurdish party administrators and elected representatives tended to be lawyers and other professionals and leaders of nongovernmental organizations. They could more readily serve as intermediaries and spokespeople and provided a new public face to the movement, especially in media and diplomatic circles. Their ascendance marked a process of activist professionalization and a shift in the class base of the leadership of the movement. Working within the system also created a more durable movement infrastructure and organizational platform that could survive the many vicissitudes of pro-Kurdish contention. Despite the parties’ full ejection from elected office in 1994 and considerable setbacks to the movement’s

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armed wing in 1999, party-based mobilization and contention continued. Party offices and municipalities were places in which supporters and leaders could meet, train, and organize. Money was now available both through domestic and international funding to support pro-Kurdish activities such as Kurdish festivals. Within parties and as elected officials, Kurdish politician-activists gained the legal right to speak in front of crowds and organize public events. Filling the role of elected representatives created multiple opportunities to promote a pro-Kurdish agenda in domestic and international arenas and to establish influential alliances, especially across national borders. All of this meant that the movement and its agenda became an established part of Turkish and international political life: it could not be “disappeared” or silenced. Between 1999 and 2009, pro-Kurdish parties and politicians working at the level of local government built nationalized and “Kurdified” public spaces. This served to construct a public narrative of Kurdishness and broaden the field of contestation in Turkey, even though this field was in some ways fragile. In essence they created new facts on the ground, crafting nonconventional moments and cracks of alternative practice within a Turkish administrative and ideological edifice. Pro-Kurdish activists and politicians during this time acted “as if” new rights and freedoms were in fact in place, pushing the boundaries of legal and illegal behavior and seeking legal reforms. In the process, they forced a degree of expansion in Turkey’s political space (see, e.g., Natali 2005), especially in the arena of cultural freedom. Nonetheless, many of the political reforms were not fully institutionalized or backed by comprehensive judicial reforms. The risks of operating in an as-if democratic environment became increasingly apparent after 2006 as pro-Kurdish mayors and party activists were imprisoned and prosecuted. The uneven nature of cultural tolerance versus actual political freedom or, in Robert Dahl’s classic terminology (1971), the unevenness of inclusion versus contestation also put increasing strain on movement elites as they struggled to articulate the movement’s political goals within a legal framework. Kurdish mayors went ahead and worked on government and nation creation before freeing themselves and their populations from the coercive arm of the Turkish state. This meant that they were vulnerable, limited in their range of maneuver, and sometimes constrained in their relations with local populations.

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ASSESSING ELEC TOR AL PERFORMANCE: THE POWER OF N U MBERS

Voter support was critical for putting pro-Kurdish candidates into offices they could then use to advance movement goals. Voter support also served as a key “legitimacy resource” that to a large degree helped justify pro-Kurdish claims and gave the movement a considerable, although not unqualified, legitimacy of numbers. An evaluation of the parties’ electoral record in two decades of elections highlights three trends. First, pro-Kurdish parties enjoyed an extraordinarily consistent level of support during these years that stands in sharp contrast to the general instability of party performance in Turkey during these decades. In every local and legislative election between 1995 and 2009, the parties (or their candidates) received from 4.2 to 6.2 percent of the national vote. In 1995, the first year a pro-Kurdish party competed independently in national elections (that is, without an election alliance with a larger national party), the pro-Kurdish HADEP won 4.2 percent of the national vote (1.171 million votes). In 1999 it took 4.7 percent (1.482 million votes). In 2002 the pro-Kurdish DEHAP increased this share to 6.2 percent of the total vote (or 1.9 million votes). In 2007 it received about 5 percent of the national vote (interpretation of the results was complicated by the fact that the DTP candidates ran as independents, and not all independent votes were for the DTP). Overall, 5.39 percent of the country’s votes went that year to independent candidates, putting twenty-six of them into the Parliament. Of these, twenty-four were pro-Kurdish candidates. Second, in most provinces, substantially greater support for pro-Kurdish candidates came from urban areas (cities) than from rural areas and villages. In Diyarbakır province, for instance, about 52 percent of urban voters supported DEHAP/SHP in the 2004 local elections, versus about 33 percent of voters in villages. In other provinces such as Hakkari, Batman, Mardin, and Siirt, more than 30 percentage points separate the urban-rural vote for pro-Kurdish parties. Out of all the provinces that gave at least 10 percent of their votes to DEHAP/SHP in the local elections of 2004, only in Muş was there more support for the pro-Kurdish party from the villages (30 percent versus 28 percent support for DEHAP/ SHP in the cities). The urban-rural division highlights the importance of

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urban support for Kurdish nationalism during these years, even though the PKK's base was largely rural. Third and most importantly, the parties’ support base was clearly ethnogeographically delineated. The overwhelming majority of voters supporting pro-Kurdish candidates came from thirteen provinces: Ağrı, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Tunceli, Van, Batman, Şırnak, and Iğdır. In all these provinces the population is at least 50 percent Kurdish,1 and in all these provinces support for the parties was at least 20 percent in 2002. The highest level of consistent support in national elections in 2002 and 2007 came from Batman, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, and Şırnak, and where support ranged from 40 to 56 percent (see table 2). Similarly, in local elections pro-Kurdish parties and candidates did best in these provinces, winning from 40 to 60 percent of the vote. In addition, provinces with sizeable Kurdish minorities such as Urfa (where about 47 percent of the population is estimated to be Kurdish) and Kars (about 20 percent Kurdish) also showed higher levels of support for Kurdish candidates and parties than areas in which Kurds constituted a small percentage of the population. The 2009 local elections in particular gave pro-Kurdish parties resounding victories, increasing their representation on local councils by substantial margins in every Kurdish-majority province (and many others as well). The number of DTP mayors increased from 56 (in 2005) to about 99 in 2009 (using preliminary election results), with the DTP now controlling municipalities in Batman, Diyarbakır, Kars, Şırnak, Van, and many other towns and cities. These numbers meant that electoral maps published after the local and national elections between 1995 and 2009 showed a very clear—and, for Turkish officials, unsettling—distinction between voter preferences in the Kurdish-majority regions of the country and voter preferences elsewhere. Such numbers and maps provided strong validation for proKurdish parties and the movement for domestic and international audiences and provided verifiable evidence of support for the parties and, by extension, their agenda of autonomization and Kurdish nationalism. The fact that pro-Kurdish parties were given no representation in Parliament from 1995 to 2007 because of the 10 percent election threshold could also be used to buttress party claims that Kurds were being denied proper representation in the Turkish political system.

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Table 2. Percentage of voter support for pro-Kurdish candidates in selected provinces in the legislative elections, 1991–2007

Adana

HEP/SHP

HADEP

HADEP

DEHAP

DTP/Ind.

1991

1995

1999

2002

2007

22.07

6.66

7.37

9.27

5.92

Adıyaman

27.18

9.47

7.52

11.97

8.04

Ağrı

15.35

17.91

33.73

35.06

24.36

Ardahan

n/a

6.49

7.84

15.93

9.27

Batman

52.74

37.24

43.40

47.10

39.42

Bingöl

17.90

7.11

12.87

22.18

14.28

Bitlis

21.89

10.00

13.70

29.55

21.77

Diyarbakır

49.87

46.31

45.90

56.13

47.01

Elazığ

15.47

3.94

4.94

7.12

3.06

Erzurum

9.00

5.90

6.17

9.84

5.37

Gaziantep

28.03

6.66

5.48

8.00

5.05

Hakkari

19.04

54.21

46.08

45.10

56.24

n/a

21.65

29.75

32.68

40.53

Iğdır Istanbul

18.85

3.64

4.03

5.51

5.87

Izmir

24.50

3.67

4.36

5.18

3.97

Kars

31.13

6.79

17.50

19.58

15.63

Mardin

53.88

21.95

25.26

39.58

38.77

Mersin

28.12

7.87

8.84

9.53

6.60

Muş

41.84

16.71

31.80

38.09

45.81

Şanlıurfa

20.68

13.72

16.56

19.28

20.14

Siirt

39.59

26.60

22.12

32.17

39.51

Şırnak

61.23

25.88

24.08

45.94

51.83

Tunceli

57.90

16.94

13.37

32.55

59.96

Van

22.29

27.99

35.71

40.85

32.60

Source: http://www.belgenet.net Notes: Selected provinces are ones in which at least 9 percent of voters supported pro-Kurdish candidates in one legislative election, or, in the cases of Istanbul, Izmir, and Mersin, ones with politically significant Kurdish populations. Boldfaced provinces in 2007 are ones in which all independent candidates joined the DTP group after the election. HEP/SHP’s significantly better performance in 1991 in some provinces is due to the fact that voters in these areas voted for SHP (not HEP) candidates. Iğdır and Ardahan are listed as n/a in 1991 because they were not yet separate provinces. Until 2002 Mersin was called İçel (and listed as such in electoral data). In 2002 the election results for Siirt province were annulled, and in the by-election of March 2003 DEHAP was not allowed to participate. Results here show the original election. Both independent candidates elected to the Parliament in 2007 from Istanbul were supported by the DTP, although only one of them formally joined the DTP parliamentary group after the election.

Table 3. General Provincial Council votes for pro-Kurdish parties in selected provinces, 1999–2009 (percentage of total votes)

Ağrı

1999

2004

2009

22.26

19.26

37.23

Batman

39.27

50.11

53.22

Bingöl

11.82

13.05

20.60

Bitlis

7.40

15.24

27.32

Diyarbakır

40.92

43.38

59.44

Hakkari

42.85

45.28

73.72

Iğdır

23.56

24.07

32.37

Kars

10.72

8.89

17.65

Mardin

22.38

26.93

44.19

Mersin

6.24

9.98

10.44

Muş

23.86

29.52

42.53

Şanlıurfa

12.06

16.85

19.64

Siirt

20.13

26.89

37.32

Şırnak

N/A

37.95

60.75

Tunceli

12.33

17.59

19.76

Van

28.41

26.26

48.27

Source: http://www.yerelnet.org.tr; http://www.ntvmsnbc.com (unofficial final election results for 2009).

COMPLICATING THE RETU RNS: AKP AS AN “ALTERNATIVE” PRO -KU RDISH PART Y?

Pro-Kurdish party use of electoral returns to legitimize movement claims could also be problematic, for at least two simple reasons. First, the proKurdish parties’ inability to gain more than 6 percent of the national vote and their generally poor performance outside the southeast supported critics who argued that the PKK and the movement were unrepresentative of many ordinary Kurds. Ascertaining exactly what percentage of Kurdish voters vote for pro-Kurdish parties in any given election is impossible because of the lack of hard data on what percent of Turkey’s population is ethnic Kurd. However, some very rough estimates suggest that a third to as many as half of the country’s Kurds do not regularly vote CO N C LU S I O N S

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for pro-Kurdish parties. Examining actual votes cast in Kurdish-majority provinces—where it is safe to assume that the vast majority of voters are Kurds—is, however, illustrative: In the July 2007 national elections, just under a million of the 2.1 million valid votes cast in the thirteen Kurdish-majority provinces went to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) rather than to candidates from the DTP (see table 4). Overall, the AKP out-performed the DTP in 2007 in the thirteen provinces, winning about 44 percent of the total vote versus the DTP’s 38 percent. The 2007 results highlighted the second challenge of using voter support to validate movement claims. Although voter support was generally consistent, it still fluctuated. In the 2007 national elections, votes for pro-Kurdish candidates declined in a number of places that traditionally supported pro-Kurdish party candidates, going instead to the governing AKP (see table 4). Support for AKP among Kurds in the southeast stemmed from a combination of factors: the perception among many voters that an AKP representative in Parliament would be most likely to deliver improved services (especially jobs and job creation); AKP’s continuing identity, accentuated by its standoff with the Turkish military over the appointment of the new president, as a challenger party that was more likely than most Turkish parties to accommodate Kurdish identities and promote reform, especially through EU channels; the failure of the DTP to offer a concrete strategy for how it would use its representation in Parliament; a generally top-down approach to the selection of DTP candidates; a growing frustration among some in the Kurdish electorate over the remilitarization of the conflict in the southeast; and lack of realistic solutions to economic, security, and political problems from the DTP. The relatively high level of public apathy toward pro-Kurdish parties at that time could also be seen in the muted (and sometimes nonexistent) public response to the prosecution of pro-Kurdish party mayors, including their removal from office. The 2007 election results and the AKP’s determined effort to “win back” Kurdish cities in the 2009 local elections generated a great deal of debate about whether the AKP could serve as an alternative pro-Kurdish party to the DTP (see, e.g., Kirişci 2007) and whether the pro-Kurdish parties would become increasingly marginal. However, the DTP’s resounding comeback in the 2009 local elections and the AKP’s loss to DTP of many municipalities it had held since 2004 suggested that the AKP’s ability to serve as a new space for Kurdish national moderates was 170

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Table 4. Support for AKP and DTP/independents in the Kurdishmajority provinces of the southeast, July 2007 national legislative elections (actual votes cast)

AKP Ağrı

DTP

Total actual votes

103,138

39,871

165,737

Batman

73,713

62,615

161,438

Bingöl

78,467

15,750

112,488

Bitlis Diyarbakır Hakkari Iğdır

68,381

25,314

118,236

191,214

219,779

479,617

29,513

49,560

89,867

18,672

26,175

65,228

105,905

93,201

244,095

Muş

54,295

64,438

143,230

Siirt

44,836

36,320

93,587

Şırnak

33,179

63,866

126,093

Mardin

Tunceli

5,204

25,424

42,999

Van

163,193

99,973

313,087

TOTAL

969,710

822,106

2,155,702

Source: http://www.belgenet.net/ Note: Total actual votes include votes for parties other than AKP and DTP.

a complicated endeavor and not necessarily indicative of a new trend. The AKP’s troubled relationship with the Turkish military and the relatively conservative perspectives of many of its core constituents limited its leadership’s ability to adopt or even articulate pro-Kurdish demands, especially in the arena of political or administrative reforms. The AKP’s bifurcated approach to the Kurdish issue—between reform on the one hand and continuing repression on the other—became very apparent by the second half of 2009. Beginning in mid-April of 2009 and continuing throughout the year, hundreds of pro-Kurdish activists and politicians in the southeast were detained, many for very lengthy periods of time, and in December 2009, the DTP was banned. What was clear was that competition for the Kurdish electorate, especially in the southeast, could help push policy reform, as governing parties tried to win voters away from the DTP. This was true both in the early CO N C LU S I O N S

17 1

1990s and in the first decade of the 2000s. Between 2004 and 2009 the AKP implemented a number of reforms on issues relating to Kurdish cultural identity. State TV broadcast short programs in Kurdish for the first time in June 2004. This programming was dramatically expanded in January 2009, when, in the run-up to the hotly contested local elections, the AKP-government approved a new Kurdish-language, state-run TV station (TRT6). In the same month the government began making plans to open the country’s first Kurdish-language programs at two Turkish state universities. While the AKP’s reforms on Kurdish cultural identity were very much part of the EU-mandated reform process, it is clear that such radical reforms to long-term policies were not due only to external pressure but also reflected domestic calculations and sentiments. Pro-Kurdish parties’ consistently high performance at the ballot box, in other words, put pressure on other parties to make concessions to Kurdish national demands.

IMPAC TS: REGIONAL REL ATIONS

The years that pro-Kurdish parties spent working in Turkey’s formal political system were ones of profound regional transformation, especially across the border in Iraq. In 1991 the creation of a Kurdish safe haven in Iraq led to elections and the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 1992. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Kurdistan looked and behaved increasingly like an autonomous state, with its own distinctive economy, armed forces, representative institutions, and cultural identity. Iraqi Kurds informally polled during the January 2005 Iraqi elections showed 95 percent supporting independence, and links between Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan and Arab Iraqis living in the rest of Iraq have grown weaker (see, e.g., Barkey and Laipson 2005). Before 2003 the growing autonomy across the border did not immediately produce the kinds of cross-national, Kurdish political collectivity feared by Turkish authorities, and in the 1990s pro-Kurdish politicians in Turkey had relatively limited relations with their Iraqi Kurdish counterparts. As one former mayor complained in 2000: “The only time I see Iraqi Kurdish party representatives is when I sit down at a state dinner in Ankara” (Çelik, interview, 2003). Regardless of the exact truth, the com172

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ment reflected the tense relationship between the Iraqi Kurdish PUK and KDP, and pro-Kurdish parties and movement organizations in and from Turkey. This was primarily due to the very poor relations between the PKK, on the one hand, and the PUK and KDP, on the other. Between 1992 and 2000 there was outright war between the PKK and the KDP, a conflict that sometimes took strategic precedence over the fight against the Turkish state. However, after 1999 and the PKK ceasefire (and after a failed PUK attack on PKK camps in 2000), the relationship between the KRG and the PKK improved, with the KRG permitting PKK bases and territorial control of the Kandil mountains despite complaints from Ankara and cross-border attacks. After 2003 the growing independence and economic influence of the KRG transformed the regional environment, both facilitating new transborder traffic between Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kurdish-majority provinces of Turkey, and providing around two to three thousand PKK fighters with a refuge and base. The thaw in intra-Kurdish party relations, the more relaxed atmosphere in the southeast, and the KRG’s sour relations with Ankara all encouraged the development of important new formal and informal networks between the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq. Initially the most important were the new cultural and business relationships that developed as thousands of Kurdish students, workers, and businesses moved into Iraqi Kurdistan. Pro-Kurdish mayors and party administrators were forced to be more cautious and focused on developing cultural links between local communities and Iraqi Kurdish artists, writers, and musicians (i.e., inviting them regularly to fairs, workshops, and panel discussions). They also sent low-profile delegations to visit Iraqi Kurdish cities in a form of political tourism, and pro-Kurdish mayors and officials with the PUK and KDP would meet periodically outside the region in cities such as Paris and Washington, DC. By 2007 and 2008, however, higher-level contacts began to be made public. In early 2007 the pro-Kurdish DTP invited Massoud Barzani, president of the Regional Kurdish Government in northern Iraq, and Iraqi president and PUK leader Jalal Talabani to attend Kurdish new year festivities organized in Diyarbakır. This made waves in the Turkish and Kurdish medias despite the fact that the two were invited as “heads of state” along with dozens of other leaders. In May 2008 DTP parliamentarian Ahmet Türk, then the party’s parliamentary group chair, met with Talabani and other highlevel PUK representatives in Suleymaniye, Iraqi Kurdistan. CO N C LU S I O N S

173

It is possible to say, then, that pro-Kurdish control of municipalities in southeastern Turkey in conjunction with a virtually independent Iraqi Kurdistan has gradually facilitated the emergence of a transnational, territorially demarcated Kurdish cultural and economic zone. The development of a new political community that encompasses the Kurdishmajority provinces of southeastern Turkey and the territory controlled by the KRG is, however, a much more difficult and uncertain process. This is not just because pro-Kurdish politicians in southeast Turkey are operating within a unitary central state that is determined to retain its authority and to prevent the formation of a transnational Kurdish political entity. It is also because of the many deep differences between Kurdish communities from Turkey and those in Iraqi Kurdistan. Along with the millions of Kurds in Turkey who do not support pro-Kurdish politics and probably do not desire independence, the pro-Kurdish parties themselves are still deeply embedded in social and political networks that emphasize leftist programs of economic and social redistribution, in sharp contrast to the economic conservatism and patrimonialism of the KRG.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE STU DY

For analysts interested in ethnopolitical and social movements, the case of pro-Kurdish party participation in the Turkish political system between 1990 and 2008 is instructive in several main ways. First, movement integration into the system does not necessarily bring institutionalization and moderation, especially in semi-democratic or authoritarian frameworks. Because of state coercion and PKK-imposed constraints, pro-Kurdish party participation in the formal political system was not a conventional process that worked like typical movement incorporation. Contrary to models of movement integration and institutionalization that posit a reduction in risk and a moderation in tone and tactics, pro-Kurdish participation in the system expanded the field of conflict, taking it beyond the geographic terrain of the rural and urban southeast and into the halls and offices of mainstream local and national political institutions. It is possible therefore to sketch the outlines of a kind of “anti-model” to the usual process of movement integration: a model of challenger participation in electoral politics that produces new forms of conflict, empowers and emboldens contenders, produces greater, not less, 174

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unity between “radicals” and “moderates” in the movement, and both furthers and impedes the pursuit of movement goals. Second, attending to the historical origins of challenger parties (particularly when armed groups are involved), the political sympathies of their support base, the sociopolitical capital of their leadership, the fluctuating capacities of the movement’s armed wing, and the level and type of coercion provides important insights into how party identities are constructed and why challenger parties behave the way they do. How this identity is constructed, and its maintenance or transformation over time and space, can have profound effects on party choices about how to deploy political resources and how best to use the electoral system for contentious purposes. Third, ethnopolitical parties and movements pursue multiple aims that are not necessarily complementary. Using resources for particular activities may further one set of goals (e.g., nation building) but undermine others (e.g., extracting concessions from authorities). Pro-Kurdish party mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people during Newroz, for instance, served simultaneously to assert a collective Kurdish “we,” but it also made alliances within the Turkish liberal and left-wing establishment difficult to maintain. The pro-Kurdish party imperative to maintain an identity as a challenger party likewise compromised its exploitation of state-derived resources (and potentially other movement goals). Not only does this help us understand the sometimes paradoxical or even seemingly self-defeating behavior of challenger parties, but it also offers a fruitful line of analysis for exploring how and why particular sets of internally and externally oriented party interests take precedence over others at particular moments in time. In cases of ethnopolitical mobilization involving both political and armed organizations, scholars tend to view contenders working through routine political processes as playing the part of an “alternative” or moderate wing. The pro-Kurdish case, however, highlights the problems in assuming that an expansion of movement repertoires into systemic contention necessarily will produce an alternative party that can serve as an alternative voice or even as a possible negotiating partner in lieu of the movement’s militant wing. Many domestic and international analysts, journalists, and politicians called on pro-Kurdish parties such as HEP and, later, pro-Kurdish mayors such as Osman Baydemir to serve as alternative Kurdish representatives to the PKK and were dismayed when they CO N C LU S I O N S

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did (or could) not do so. This was most commonly articulated as criticism of the parties and their elected representatives for not condemning the PKK or sufficiently distancing themselves from it. Pro-Kurdish parties from HEP to DTP were not able to play this role of “moderate alternative,” and their presence in the Turkish polity did not divide the movement into radical and moderate wings. This was not because authorities had no moderate allies: there were elements in both the pro-Kurdish and Turkish mainstream parties willing to work together, if only for mutually beneficial electoral purposes. However, the presence of very substantial forces that maintained a powerful coercive and ideological grip on the hearts and minds of the Kurdish and Turkish populations (the PKK, on the one hand, and the Turkish military and hardline nationalist elite, on the other) meant that potential peacemakers within the parties did not have the political allies, societal backing, or internal resources to negotiate. In Weberian terms, pro-Kurdish mayors and parliamentarians could not find alterative sources of legitimacy and continued to rely heavily on the charismatic authority of Öcalan and the PKK. Ironically, the fact that the first pro-Kurdish party evolved from within the Turkish party system and out of cleavages within the Turkish left, and not because of strategic decision making by key PKK leaders, compounded their problems: they did not have the sociopolitical capital or “wartime” credentials to formally challenge the PKK. This sets the Kurdish case in Turkey apart from cases such as the Irish Republican movement and the Albanian movement in Macedonia, in which state authorities provided real incentives for paramilitary leaders to reinvent themselves as “tamed” politicians. The alternative to negotiating with “terrorists” is to take steps to strengthen civilian organizations within the movement. At least until 2009 this was precisely opposite to the approach taken by Turkish authorities. Although it is clear that the PKK did not want to see the development of a competing legal party organization, the continued persecution and prosecution of pro-Kurdish politicians and parties by various branches of the state maintained a premium on PKK-derived legitimacy resources, giving them an incentive to maintain party identity as a challenger organization and marginalizing those elements within the parties most inclined to compromise. In short, very high levels of coercion by Turkish state forces played a key role in preventing the pro-Kurdish parties from

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developing a kind of alternative “legitimacy by deed” (see, e.g., Jarbawi and Pearlman 2007). If we use electoral returns as a rough guide, it is plausible to suggest that anywhere from 20 to 60 percent of the electorate in about fifteen provinces of the east and southeast of Turkey would support considerable administrative devolution and the construction of an explicitly Kurdish (national) public culture in the southeast. Given the high numbers of Kurds who choose to vote for other parties (especially AKP), even in the southeast, it is unlikely that support for the pro-Kurdish candidates in an election would translate into a majority vote for independence. Many voters in the Kurdish-majority regions of the southeast are sympathetic to demands for democratization and economic development but do not want independence or a political arrangement that would impede their ability to work and live in other parts of Turkey. An open and secure discussion among the communities that would be most affected by such matters as well as a dialogue concerning the causes and meaning of the PKK-state war in the southeast are essential steps toward ascertaining local preferences. However, continuing restrictions on freedom of expression, especially on the topic of administrative reforms, has made such conversations very difficult to initiate in formal political arenas. In the meantime, the absence of local and national-level dialogue means not only central Turkish authorities but pro-Kurdish parties tend to resort to top-down policies, deciding for themselves which national vision to promote among the populations they seek to govern.

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NOTES

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1 Kurds were long described as being “tribal,” a characteristic that was for many years viewed as an obstacle to the formation of a Kurdish national movement. It is true that many Kurds have been affiliated with settled and nomadic tribes and clans that have sometimes competed and fought with one another. Nonetheless, many Kurds in the southeast, especially in the cities, have not belonged to tribes. Tribes also sometimes played important roles in Kurdish challenges to the state.

179

INTRODUCTION

1 An exception is a growing body of literature on Islamist parties’ participation in electoral contests in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Indonesia. See, for instance, Langohr 2001 and Wiktorowicz 2001. 2 In his theoretically informed examination of the Kurdish nationalist movement, which primarily focuses on Turkey, Romano (2006) relegates his discussion of the parties to a footnote. Partial exceptions to this general tendency to ignore the parties and their impact are Kirişci and Winrow (1997, see especially 136–40) and Barkey and Fuller (1998) as well as a handful of scholarly articles that discuss the parties and their history in more detail, most notably Güney (2002), Barkey (1998), and Yavuz (2001). 3 I recognize that this term is vague and not very satisfactory. Because of shifting movement goals, furthermore, to be “pro-Kurdish” in one time period might not necessarily mean the same thing as to be “pro-Kurdish” in another period. 4 In Rochon’s terminology (1985), the parties would be classified as mobilizing parties or parties that mobilize new political identities (421). He uses the term challenger party to refer to parties that challenge the legitimacy of preexisting parties by claiming that they “no longer properly represent the interests of their support base” (ibid.). (This is something the pro-Kurdish parties did as well.) When describing pro-Kurdish parties, I prefer the term challenger party, with a modified definition, because it seems to best encapsulate the function and identity of the parties in the Turkish political context. 5 Good English-language sources on the PKK include Marcus (2007), Romano (2006), and White (2000).

1 EARLY ROUTES

Some of the material on the 1960s in this chapter was originally presented in “Silence and Voice: Turkish Policies and Kurdish Resistance in the mid-20th Century,” published by the author in The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, ed. Mohammed Ahmed and Michael Gunter (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 2007): 52-77. Some of the material on Mehdi Zana’s election and politics in the southeast in the 1970s was originally published in “Towards Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics: The 1977 Elections in Diyarbakır,” pub-

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lished by the author and Gilles Dorronsoro in International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (2009): 457-78.

1

2 3

4

Epigraph: “Arkadaşlar, ben yurtsever bir aday olarak ortaya çıktım. Destekleyip desteklememek sizin bileceğiniz bir şey. Hiçbir fraksıyonun adamı değilim. . . . Ben yurtseverlerin çıkarı için burayı kullanıp, belediyeyi yurtseverliğin kalesi haline getirmek istiyorum.” Zana 1991, 194. Fifty-four of the Kurdish leaders were supporters of the ousted DP. In 1962 they were allowed to return to their lands. See Yön, December 10, 1961, 4–5, and January 10, 1962, 8–13. Also see Christian Science Monitor, December 5, 1960, 12; and Cumhuriyet, December 5, 1960, 1. For studies on TİP and Kurdish activism, see Ekinci 2004; Gündoğan 2005; Mello 2006; Watts 2007. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was not active in Diyarbakır until 1979 and does not appear to have played a role in Mehdi Zana’s 1977 mayoral campaign. For more on Zana, his election, and the political climate of the 1970s in Diyarbakır, see Dorronsoro and Watts 2009; Bildirici 2008; Zana 1991.

2 NEW COLLECTIVE CHALLENGERS

1 They were: Fehmi Işıklar, İbrahim Aksoy, Ahmet Türk, Abdullah Baştürk, Kenan Sönmez, Mehmet Ali Eren, Arif Sağ, Adnan Ekmen, İsmail Hakkı Önal, Cüneyt Canver, and Salih Sümer. Former SHP deputy Mahmut Alınak joined HEP in September 1990. 2 Anticipating the court closure of HEP, pro-Kurdish deputies also founded two other parties, the Özgürlük ve Eşitlik Partisi (ÖZEP, or the Freedom and Equality Party), on 25 June 1992, and the Özgürlük ve Demokrasi Partisi (ÖZDEP, or the Freedom and Democracy Party), on 19 October 1992. Court cases were opened against both parties. Both because of this and because of internal fighting, pro-Kurdish politicians dissolved both parties, eventually settling on DEP as HEP’s successor. 3 In December 2009, the Constitutional Court closed the DTP. It was replaced by the Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, or BDP). 4 Biographical data on recently elected deputies is available on the official Web site of the Turkish parliament, at http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/.

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3 RESOURCES OF THE SYSTEM

Epigraph: Migdal 2001, 54. 1 Provinces included in this area are Ağrı, Batman, Bingöl, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Iğdır, Kars, Mardin, Muş, Siirt, Şanlıurfa, Şırnak, and Tunceli (Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü, 2004).

4 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF COERCION

1 Information on the lifting of the parliamentarians’ immunity and its aftermath is drawn from Watts 1999; Demir 2005; Ölmez 1995; and a review of Cumhuriyet, Milliyet, Turkish Daily News, and Nokta from March 1994. 2 For a good summary of the trial, see Amnesty International 1997. 3 Details of many of these cases were compiled from local press reports and court documents by the Diyarbakır branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (İHD) and by staff at the Diyarbakır metropolitan municipality. I am grateful to both for supplying me with their reports. See İnsan Hakları Derneği 2007 and Democratic Society Party 2006.

5 PRODUCING COMPETING TRUTHS

Some of the empirical material in this section was initially presented in “Allies and enemies: Pro-Kurdish parties in Turkish politics, 1990–1994,” published by the author in International Journal of Middle East Studies 31, no. 4 (1999): 631–56. 1 “Merkezi idare küçültülürken, yerel yönetimlerin, belediye, il ve ilçe meclisleri yerel parlamentolar statüsüne kavuşturulacaktır. Bu anlayışa uygun olarak Vali, Emniyet Müdürleri ve Kaymakamların seçimle iş başına getirilmeleri sağlanacak, eğitim, sağlık ve iç güvenlik yerel yönetimlerin yetki alanına alınacaktır.” 2 Some inquiries, though, were relatively trivial (although symbolic): in October 1992, for instance, HEP deputy Mahmut Alınak accused the assistant

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speaker, Yılmaz Hocaoğlu, and the parliamentary library of blocking the library’s subscription to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem; the Parliament’s speaker, Hüsamettin Cindoruk, told Alınak that they had arranged a subscription (Meclis Tutanaklar, June 10, 1992, 279).

6 CREATING A NEW KURDISH SUBJECT

1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

Some of the material in this chapter was originally presented in “Activists in office: Pro-Kurdish contentious politics in Turkey,” published by the author in Ethnopolitics 5, no. 2 (2006): 125–44. Wedeen uses “as-if politics” to explain compliance in an authoritarian setting. I borrow her term and her description of its processual elements and productive power without implying any necessary resemblance in context. The law forbade the expression of ideas in any language that was not the “first language of any state recognized by Turkey.” This effectively permitted languages such as French and English, and banned Kurdish without specifying it by name. The term is used by those advocating a shift to a multicultural and federated governance framework. Its emphasis on “Turkey-ism” distinguishes it from the terms Turk or Turkish, which are perceived by some as highly ethnicized. “Çok dilli belediyecilik çerçevesinde bir diğer öneri ise her dil grubunun kendi ‘Halk Meclisi’ ni kurması olmalıdır. Bu halk meclisi kendi toplantılarında kendi dil ve lehçeleri ile konuşabilmeli ve uzlaştıkları konular belediyeye tavsiye niteliğinde olmalıdır.” Anıt means “monument” and is a word often used to invoke commemorative memories of Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. For various newspaper accounts, see Simon Tidsall, “What’s in a name? Too much in Turkey,” Guardian, January 25, 2001; Associated Press, “Turkish court bans Gandhi Street in Kurdish area,” January 22, 2001; “Gandi senin neyine . . . ,” Radikal, January 22, 2001. The poor quality of parts of the restoration, however, made it controversial, and in 2006 the municipality sponsored a photo exhibition titled “When we said restoration . . . ?” that contrasted the original state of the walls with the low-quality restoration. See, e.g., the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality’s 2004 booklet The city of stones and dreams: Diyarbakır.

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9 The quotation is from an announcement of a April 2006 symposium on cultural heritage and sustainable development in Diyarbakır organized by the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality and sponsored by the EU.

CONCLUSIONS

1 I do not have ethnic data on Iğdır because it was classified as an administrative province only after Mutlu’s 1996 study.

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PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS

Briefing Bugün Cumhuriyet Diyarbakır Sesi Diyarbakır Söz Güneydoğu Ekspres Hürriyet Milliyet New York Times Nokta Öz Diyar Özgür Gündem Özgürlük Yolu Radikal TBMM Tutanak Dergisi Turkish Daily News

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Turkish Probe Yeni Ülke Yeni Yurt (Diyarbakır) Yenişehir Belediye Bülteni Yön Zaman 2000’e Doğru

PARTY PROGRAMS

HEP Program 1990, 1992 DEP Program 1993 HADEP Program 1994 DEHAP Program 1997, 2003 DTP Program 2005 Türkiye İşçi Partisi Program 1964

R EFER EN C E S

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INDEX

Abdil, Songül Erol, 115 Aburaiya, Issam, 90, 153 Adana, 56, 108 Agamben, Giorgio, xiv Ağrı, xi, 40, 41, 86, 116, 167, 168, 169, 171, 182n1 (ch. 3) Ahmad, Bedia Turgay, 37 Ahmad, Feroz, 33, 37 Akcan, Faysan, 129 Akın, Abdullah, 154 Aksoy, İbrahim, 61, 181n1 (ch. 2) Albanian movement, 176 Alevi, xii, xiv, 40, 59 Alınak, Mahmut, 64, 66, 134; on HEP’s mission, 64; joins HEP, 181n1

(ch. 2); memoirs concerning HEP and SHP, 92–93; in Parliament, 132, 135–36, 182n2 (ch. 5); removal of parliamentary immunity and jail sentence, 111–12; report on 1992 Newroz events, 132 Amenta, Edwin, viii, 10 Amnesty International, 99, 182n2 (ch. 4) Andrews, Peter Alford, xii Ankara, 12, 20, 26, 30, 33, 34, 41, 42, 44, 63, 65, 79, 80, 84, 98, 99, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 117, 124, 129, 137, 143, 172, 173 Anlı, Fırat, 152, 154

201

anocracies, definition and number of, 19. See also semi-democratic systems Anter, Musa, 32, 33, 36, 39, 41, 64, 100, 101, 150, 154, 155 Anthologie of Dengbêj, 156 Arar, İsmail, 34 Aren, Sadun, 39, 40 Arif, Ahmet, 154, 155 Armenian, xiv, 146, 152, 155 Army. See military, Turkish “as-if” politics, 143, 159, 165, 183n1 (ch. 6) Aslan, Senem, 12 Atalay, Fuat, 125 Ataman, Muhittin, 54, 58 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 154, 183n5 (ch. 6). See also Kemalism authoritarian regimes, contention in, 6, 7, 9, 19, 75–76, 174, 183n1 (ch. 6) autonomy: as political goal or status, xiii, 22, 23, 46, 61, 83, 84, 86, 118, 119, 128, 143, 160; of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, 119, 172; of organizations and parties, 41–42, 88. See also devolution; federalism; indirect rule Aydar, Zübeyir, 112 Aydın, A. Halik, 37 Aydın, Vedat, 65, 96, 100, 101, 137, 154 Aydınoğlu, Ergün, 35 Ayhan Işık öldi, 156 Azizoğlu, İskan, 45 Azizoğlu, Yusuf, 37–38 Bağlar, 79, 81, 109, 120, 142, 145, 146 Balık, Uğur, 100 Balta, Evren, 56, 102 Barkey, Henri J., xi, 5, 20, 29, 62, 172, 180n2 (intro.) Barth, Frederik, xii Barzani, Massoud, 158, 173 Barzani, Mustafa, 35–36 Basque model, 107 Basque nationalism, 5, 9, 71 Batman, xi, 41, 46, 66, 89, 97, 99, 100, 101, 109, 120, 132, 136, 144, 154, 156, 202

INDEX

166–67, 182n1 (ch. 3); city budget, 79 Baydemir, Osman, 83, 88, 115–16, 120, 145, 146, 151, 154, 175 Bayraktar, S. Ulaş, 84, 85 Belge, Ceren, 20 Belge, Murat, 63 Ben Eliezer, Uri, 18 Ben-Ze’ev, Efrat, 153 Beşikçi, İsmail, 41 Bingöl, xi, xii, 37, 89, 113, 167, 168, 169, 171, 182n1 (ch. 3) Bitlis, xi, 89, 116, 167 Bolkan, Aydın, 101, 110, 150 boomerang effect, 123 Bourdieu, Pierre, 21, 148 Bozarslan, Hamit, xi, 29, 30, 35, 56, 102 Bozlak, Murat, 62, 69, 108 Brass, Paul, 29 Briefing, 105, 139 Brubaker, Rogers, 11, 21, 148 Brysk, Alison, 147 Bucak, Faik, 36 Budak, Aydın, 118 Bugün, 146 Burkay, Kemal, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 48 Çakır, Ruşen, 93 Çek Çek, 156 Çelik, Feridun, 83, 88, 113, 154, 155, 172 Cemal, Hasan, 125 census, xi, 32, 86. See also population, Kurdish Çevik, İlnur, 61 challenger parties, 12, 13–16; definition, 16–17, 180n4 (intro.); of the 1960s, 38; and resources, 78, 90–93; study of, 174–77. See also pro-Kurdish parties Çiller, Tansu, 105–7, 110 Cindoruk, Husamettin, 105, 183n2 (ch. 5) cinema, 156. See also films; media civilianization, of governance, 54, 88, 89, 102, 128 Cizre, 56, 72, 92, 118 Cizre, Ümit, 18

clans, xii, 19–20, 179n1 (preface) coercion, xiv–xv, 13; after 1960, 31; through bureaucratic means, 101–2; changes in forms of, 102, 112–13, 121; characteristics and impact of, 34, 42, 65, 94–121, 143, 162–63, 165, 174–76; detentions of activists in 1960s, 33; extralegal, 99–101, 113; as generalized and targeted repression (1960s), 32–33; juridical-legal, 9, 43, 47, 97–99, 103, 105, 106, 107, 109–21, 153, 161, 170, 176; main phases after 1990, 95, 102; and 1994 local elections, 107–9; through policing, 96–97, 118, 136, 137; and radicalization of pro-Kurdish parties, 65, 103–4, 175; raids and physical attacks on Kurdish activists and property, 99–101, 107–9, 118. See also legal prosecution, of Kurdish activists; murders, of Kurdish activists; unknown assailant murders Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 139 constitution: of 1961, 31; of 1982, 54, 88, 105, 126, 127, 135; and proposed changes to, 127, 153 Constitutional Court, 6, 31, 51, 69, 98, 105, 106, 110, 112, 114, 181n3 (ch. 2) contentious politics, 9, 13, 14, 78, 101, 102, 122, 127, 134, 175. See also information politics; protest and protest events; symbolic politics conventional politics, x, 4, 5, 7; problems with term and conditions for, 9, 174; transformation of, 13, 150 Council of State, 115, 117 counter-elite, Kurdish, 29–30 coups. See military coups. culture, Kurdish: as basis for political reform, 143; as basis for transnational Kurdish relations, 173–74; diversity within, xii; and Europe, 57, 79, 88–89; expressions of, xiii, 3, 4, 21, 118, 129, 147–60; and Mehdi Zana, 46; promoted by associations

and parties, 21–23 passim, 39, 42, 49, 55, 57, 60, 61, 114, 119, 139, 147–60, 165; reconstruction of, 30, 142–60, 177; reforms to policies concerning, 88–89, 118–19, 160, 165, 172; state repression of, 19, 31, 51, 52, 58, 101, 151. See also Kurdish language Cumhuriyet, 33, 42, 51, 62, 66, 96, 97, 105, 106, 130, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 181n1 (ch.1), 182n1 (ch. 4) Cyprus dispute, 42 Dahl, Robert, 165 Demir, Eyyüp, xviii, 5, 64, 65, 79, 88, 101, 106, 109, 113, 129, 134, 144, 150, 182n1 (ch. 4) Demiral, Nusret, 104–5 Demirbaş, Abdullah, 116, 117, 152–53 Demirel, Süleyman, 33, 84, 105–7 Democracy Party (DEP): activities in Parliament, 133–34, 136; attacks on offices and membership, 100, 101, 103, 107–9, 131; closure, 69, 70, 98, 109–13; deputies’ expulsion from Parliament, 109–13, 162–63; and effects of coercion, 103–4; establishment, 69, 181n2 (ch. 2); funding for, 79; legal prosecution of membership, 98, 99, 105, 109–13, 131; and 1994 local elections, 93, 95, 107–9, 131; and the PKK, 69, 91, 126; program, 70; protest events, 135–38; relations with NGOs and foreign representatives, 138–40; and types of resources, 91–92, 95. See also proKurdish parties Democrat Party (DP), 29, 31, 37, 181n1 (ch.1) Democratic Mass Party (DKP), 72 Democratic People Party (DEHAP), 70, 71, 88, 128, 144; electoral performance, 166–68. See also pro-Kurdish parties Democratic Society Party (DTP), 70, 176; banning, 171, 181n3 (ch. 2); formation, 70; mayors and municipal INDEX

203

Democratic Society Party (DTP) (continued) activism, 156, 161–62, 173; prosecution of leadership, 116–18; social profiles of leadership, 71; and 2007 elections, 161–62, 166–72; and 2009 elections, 144, 167. See also proKurdish parties Deng, 30 Dersim, xii, 33. See also Tunceli Dersim uprising (of 1937–38), 29 development, of the Kurdish regions, 22, 26, 30, 37, 44, 70, 156, 177, 184n9 (ch. 6); promoted by TİP, 38, 41 devolution, 21, 22, 119, 127, 159, 177. See also autonomy; federalism Diamond, Larry Jay, 17, 18 Dicle, Hatip, 69, 92, 109–12 passim, 131, 134, 135, 137, 141 Dicle-Firat, 30 Diken, Şeymus, 38, 43 discourse, xiv, 14, 35, 38, 40, 42, 56, 58, 69, 70, 76, 91, 113, 114, 122–41 passim, 146, 163; concerning the PKK, 124–27; pro-Kurdish, 42, 43, 65, 122–41 Diyarbakır: and detentions of mayors, 113–14; fairs and festivals, 157–59; French gift to city, 47; and Kurdish associations, 49, 88; and legal investigations and prosecution of mayors, 115–21; literacy in, 34–35, 37, 38, 41; martial law in, 34; Mehdi Zana as mayor of, 47–48; and modernist projects, 145–46; municipal budgets and aid to, 79–80; municipal debt and strikes, 47–48; municipal personnel, 80; municipality as platform for Kurdish activism, 143–44, 155–58, 159, 184n9 (ch. 6); municipality as resource, 47–49, 79, 144–60; 1977 elections in, 46–47; and 1994 local elections, 108; and 1999–2009 electoral returns, 166–72; in October 1991 elections,

204

INDEX

66; as “Paris of the East,” 145–46; parliamentary deputies in SHP, 61; PKK activity in, 48, 56; population, 34, 86; and pro-Kurdish party meetings and protest events, 65, 130, 136, 137; protests and clashes of 2006, 120–21; receives greater municipality status, 85; and restoration of city walls, 155, 183n7 (ch. 6); as site of attacks on activists, 96, 108; voters, 86–87 Diyarbakır Söz, 59, 101, 106, 108, 109, 131, 138, 152 Doğan, Orhan, 111, 112 Doğubeyazıt, 116 Dorronsoro, Gilles, xv, 18, 35, 42, 46, 47 Duchacek, Ivo D., 140 dynamic mobilization model, 10–13 Eastern Meetings (Doğu Mitingleri), 41, 46 Ecevit, Bülent, 44, 45 Ekinci, Tarık Ziya, 33, 38, 41, 43, 181n2 (ch. 1) Ekmen, Adnan, 132, 181n1 (ch. 2) Elazığ, xii, 39, 89 Elçi, Şerafettin, 26, 44, 72 elections, 17, 43, 84, 90, 91, 98, 147, 177; in Iraq, 172; and the New Turkey Party, 37–38; of 1977, 45–47; of 1983, 84; of 1987, 60–61; of 1991, 65–66, 82, 86, 131, 134; of 1994, 93, 95, 107–10, 130, 131; of 1995, 150; of 1999, 79, 106, 113, 142–45, 147, 166; pro-Kurdish participation in, 52, 71, 106–9, 142, 144–45, 166–72; and pro-Kurdish party campaigns, 130–31, 140, 144–45; and pro-Kurdish performance in, 166–72; of 2004, 71, 79, 88, 114, 115, 142, 144, 147, 154, 166; of 2007, 81, 161–62, 166–72; of 2009, 167, 170–72; and threshold (hurdle), 60, 78, 130, 150, 167; and TİP, 38, 41. See also electoral activism

electoral activism: encouraged by social and cultural changes, 56–59; and local politics, 45–48; in 1960s and 1970s, 36–50; providing access to resources, 79–86, 122, 130–41; within TİP, 39–43 electoral system and laws: after 1960, 31; reforms to, 42, 60 Elias, Norbert, 11 emergency rule law (OHAL), 61, 72, 89, 101, 111, 125, 127, 132, 133, 135, 136, 149 Erbil, ix, x Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 85 Eren, Mehmet Ali, 61, 125 Ergüder, Üstün, 84 Esman, Milton J., 21 ethnic identity, xii, xiii, xiv, 11–12, 13, 16, 17, 27, 44, 58, 59, 61, 76, 118, 120; building politicized version of, 15, 21, 25, 30, 41–43, 48–49, 59–60, 65, 129, 142–60, 163–64, 175–77 ethnopolitical contention: and mobilization, 4, 8, 9, 11, 18, 21, 27–32 passim, 52, 54, 71, 75, 148, 174–77. See also contentious politics; ethnic identity; nationalism European Community, 54, 55 European Convention on Human Rights, 31, 58 European Court of Human Rights, and Kurdish activism, 57–58 European Parliament, 83, 139 European Social Forum, 117 European Union, 54, 170; resources and support for Kurdish activities from, 57–60, 73, 77, 79–80, 83, 87–89, 101, 112, 139–40, 156, 184n9 (ch. 6); and Turkey’s application for membership, 55, 83, 87, 88–89, 95, 102, 114, 118, 119, 139, 163, 170, 172 Evin, Ahmet, 54 fairs and festivals, 15, 25, 81, 101, 118, 119, 129, 148, 149–52 passim,

155, 157–60, 164, 165, 173. See also Newroz (New Year); symbolic politics federalism, 21, 128. See also autonomy; devolution field, of Kurdish resistance, 21; expansion of, 22–23, 28, 55–56, 73, 174 films, 101, 156, 160. See also cinema; media Finkel, Andrew, 84, 85 Fırat, Abdülmelik, 72 flags, ix, x, 65, 150, 158; at HADEP convention, 129–30. See also symbolic politics Forty-niner event (of 1959), 32, 44 Forum, 30 Foucault, Michel, 13, 95, 119, 143 Foundation France-Liberté, 62 frames and framing, xiii, 7, 11, 13, 19, 27, 35, 36, 41, 44, 49, 75, 119–20, 124–27, 136, 139, 147, 155, 156. See also discourse; human rights, and Turkey’s policies Franklin, James C., 9, 19 Fraser, Nancy, 70 Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP), 98, 181n2 (ch. 2). See also pro-Kurdish parties Freedom and Equality Party (ÖZEP), 181n2 (ch. 2). See also pro-Kurdish parties Freedom House, 18 Fuller, Graham E., xi, 20, 29, 180n2 (intro.) Gambetti, Zeynep, 144, 150 Gaziantep, 39 Geertz, Clifford, 85 Gençkaya, Ömer Faruk, 78, 79 gendarmerie, 33, 100 Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism Center (JİTEM), 100 Germany, 47, 57, 58, 139 Gerth, H. H., 145 Giddens, Anthony, 77, 95

INDEX

205

Giugni, Marco, 10 Glover, Troy D., 77 governmentality, Kurdish efforts to produce competing form of, 13 25, 142–47, 159, 163–64 Greek Christians, xiv Gulf War (of 1991), 54, 136 Gündoğan, Azat Zana, 39 Güneş, Naif, 112 Güney, Aylin, 5, 180n2 (intro.) Güney, Yılmaz, 155 Güneydoğu Ekspres, 115 Gunter, Michael, 5 Gurani, xii. See also Kurdish language Güreş, Doğan, 110 Gürkan, Adyın Güven, 60–63 passim Gurr, Ted Robert, 4, 18 HABITAT II conference, 150 Hafez, Mohammad, 15, 77 Hakkari, xi, 45, 89, 118, 144, 149, 166, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3); provincial budget, 79 Hale, William, 31 Hasankeyf, 156–57 Haşimi, Haşim, 72 Hassanpour, Amir, 59 Hechter, Michael, 29 Helsinki Citizens Assembly, 139 Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 139 Heper, Metin, 84, 85 Herri Batasuna, 71. See also Basque nationalism High Election Commission, 45, 108 Hirschler, Konrad, 150, Hirschman, Albert O., 76 human rights, and Turkey’s policies, 51, 55, 58, 64, 69, 89, 116, 128, 132, 135, 139–40, 150 Human Rights Association (İHD), 58, 71, 96, 100, 182n3 (ch. 4) Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT), xv, 58, 97, 100, 101 Human Rights Watch, 87

206

INDEX

hunger strikes, 102, 123, 136–37, 140 Hürriyet, 27, 44, 45, 47, 54, 125 Hussein, Saddam, 172 identity. See ethnic identity; Kurds Ikibin’e Doğru (2000’e Doğru), 61, 63, 137 İdil, 56 Iğdır, xi, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3), 184n1 (concl.) Ilısu Dam, 156–57 Imset, Ismet G., 56 İncioğlu, Nihal, 84 indirect rule, 29–30. See also autonomy; devolution; federalism information politics, 13, 15, 44, 58, 122–41, 163; and formal politics as a broadcasting system for, 122, 140, 163. See also discourse; frames and framing; narratives Ingram, Helen, 7 İnönü, Erdal, 60, 61, 66, 111, 132 İnönü, İsmet, 60 İnönü government, 37 Interior Ministry, Turkish, 51, 97, 98, 99, 113, 114, 134, 140 Iran, 23, 45, 49 Iranian Revolution, 45 Iraq, 3, 5, 23, 35–36, 49, 114, 119, 158; invasion of, 87, 172; relations with Turkey, 162, 172–74. See also Gulf War (of 1991); Hussein, Saddam; Iraqi Kurds Iraqi Kurds, 35–36, 125; in Gulf War and creation of Safe Haven, 54–55, 172; leaders’ meetings with Elçi, 44; and the PKK, 23, 59, 158, 173; relations with pro-Kurdish parties, 172–74 Irish Republican movement, 5, 11, 176 Irvin, Cynthia, 5, 71 Işıklar, Fehmi, 51, 64, 66, 132, 136, 181n1 (ch. 2) Islam: and Kurds, xii; and activism, 18, 54, 59

Islamic parties, 12, 16, 60, 70, 72, 109, 111, 133, 180n1 (intro.). See also Welfare (Refah) Party Israel: Islamist movement in, 90; rePalestinianization of space in, 153 Istanbul, 12, 30, 42, 65, 84, 85, 86, 98, 130, 136; PKK attack in, 110; population growth, 34, 56 Istanbul University, 37 Italy, 139 Izmir, 85, 86, 99; population growth, 34 Jarbawi, Ali, 177 Jenkins, J. Craig, 77 Jenness, Valerie, 7 Jongerden, Joost, 56 Justice and Development Party (AKP), 16–17, 114, 119, 144, 169–72, 177 Justice Party (AP), 44, 45, 46, 72 Kanakis, Yiannis, 149 Karaaslan, Feyzullah, 113 Karahan, Edip, 33 Karayalçın, Murat, 111 Kars, 38, 86, 135, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3) Kartal, Remzi, 112, 135 Kaya, Abdullah, 99 Kaya, Dalhan, 116 Kaya, Ferzende, 72 Kaya, Yaşar, 99 Keck, Margaret E., 57, 58, 123, 131 Kemalism, xiii, 30. See also Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal Khomeini, Ayatollah, 45 Kılınc, Mahmut, 112 Kırca, Coşkun, 111 Kirişci, Kemal, 170, 180n2 (intro.) Koçan, Gürcan, 81 Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), 58 Kurdish Institute of Paris, 23, 57, 62 Kurdish language, ix; bans on publications, 42, 183n2 (ch. 6); bans

in schools, xiv, 22, 89; books and radio, 36, 116, 156, 157; dialects, xii; in Eastern Meetings, 41; films, 101, 156, 160; in identity construction, xii; pragmatic use of, 20; promoted by municipalities, 116–17, 146, 148, 151–53; promotion as movement goal, 22; relaxation of legal restrictions on, 54, 88–89, 172; use as protest and resistance, 12, 32, 116–17, 130, 148–49; use on television, 59, 172. See also Gurani; Kurmanji; Zazaki Kurdish movement. See Kurdish national movement (of Turkey) Kurdish national movement (of Turkey), 3, 5, 15, 14, 44, 47, 50, 53, 59, 63, 71, 73, 75, 91, 115, 122, 139, 158, 164, 179n1 (preface); and base of authority, 145, 176; composition and structure of, 22–23, 34, 42, 48, 50; definition of, 21–22, 82; diversification and thickening of, 55–60; early rebellions, 29; expansion of, 22–23, 64; goals, 3, 21–22, 127–28; relations with Kurdish movements in Iraq and Iran, 23, 172–74 Kurdism, 32, 38, 44 Kurdistan, x, 160; definition and concept, xi–xii; “as-if,” 142–60; as distinctive cultural space, 143; Diyarbakir seen as capital of, 47; in Iraq, ix, x, xi, 36, 159, 172–74 passim; question of, x; in slogans, 130 Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), 23, 36, 173 Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (KDP-Turkey), 36, 44 Kurdistan National Assembly (Iraq), ix Kurdistan National Liberators (KUK), 43 Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), 55, 114, 172–74. See also Iraqi Kurds

INDEX

207

Kurdistan Socialist Party of Turkey (TKSP), 43 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), 180n5 (intro.); alleged support for pro-Kurdish candidates, 60; and amnesty proposals, 22, 119, 132; attacks on tribal leaders, 45; changing levels of activity in the southeast, 55, 87–88, 102; clashes with KUK, 43; conflict with Turkish state, xv, 5, 22, 45, 56, 48, 72, 87–88, 102, 107, 108, 114, 119, 161–63, 173, 177; disavowal of by some pro-Kurdish leaders, 72–73; fighters’ burial and Kurdish mayors, 116, 119–21; growing power of, 55–57; history and role in Kurdish national movement, 22–23, 50, 55–57, 103; media coverage of, 45, 59, 104, 118; and 1994 local elections, 107–9; in official and pro-Kurdish discourse, 124–27; parallel systems of governance, 56; as political project, x, 143–44; politics of polarization, 95, 102–3; protesting Paris conference, 62; relations with Iraqi Kurdish parties, 173; relations with pro-Kurdish parties and activists, 14–15, 24, 52, 57, 60, 64, 65, 67, 69, 74, 82, 88, 91–93, 98, 103, 105, 107–21 passim, 123–41, 143; 163, 164, 176–77; suppression of opposition to, 56 Kurds, ix, xi, 11; as collective subject, 13, 25, 39, 142–60, 162; definitions and characteristics, xi–xii; as depicted in TİP, 40; inclusion in political system, xiii–xiv, 20, 26, 29, 35; international perceptions of, x, 54–55; numbers in Parliament, 20; perceived as threat, xiii; in political parties, 17, 35. See also culture; ethnic identity; Kurdish language; population, Kurdish Kurmanji, xii, 21; development of written form, 30; -language films, 156; on Med-TV, 59; promoted by 208

INDEX

mayors, 116–17, 151–52. See also Kurdish language Kutschera, Chris, 110 labor unions, 31, 35, 47, 48, 70, 71 Laipson, Ellen, 172, Landau, Jacob, 40 Langohr, Vickie, 180n1 (intro.) language, Kurdish. See Kurdish language Lawrence-Zuniga, Denise, 151 legal prosecution, of Kurdish activists, 9, 43, 47, 87, 97–99, 103, 105, 106, 107, 109–21, 153, 161, 170, 176, 182n1 (ch. 4). See also coercion legitimacy, and resources, 14, 17, 74, 78, 85–86, 90–91, 103, 122, 124–26, 138, 140, 162, 166, 176–77 Leygara, Cebbar, 92, 145, 146 literacy, 30, 34–35, 145 local government. See municipalities Low, Setha M., 151 Maraş, clash of 1978, 34 Marcus, Aliza, 56, 57, 65, 180n5 (intro.) Mardin, xi, 44, 45, 60, 66, 89, 101, 103, 116, 131, 132, 134, 144, 166, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3) Marshall, Monty G., 4, 18, 19 martial law, xv, 34, 45, 89, 90. See also emergency rule law (OHAL) Marxism, 35 Massicard, Elise, xii mayors, pro-Kurdish, xvi, 4, 9, 46, 47, 48, 64, 67, 71, 72, 95, 98, 99, 101, 107, 109, 113–21, 123, 131; projects and activism, 142–60; relations with Iraqi Kurds, 172–74; and resources, 79–93. See also municipalities McAdam, Doug, 9, 10 McCarthy, John D., 77 McDowall, David, 5, 27, 30, 42, 52 media: audience preferences, 147; and coverage of the Kurdish issue, x, 58–59, 105, 111, 124, 125, 137–38, 156; journals of the 1960s, 30; Kurdish-

language internet sites, 152; privatization and expansion of, 58–59; pro-Kurdish outlets, 80, 98, 104, 134, 183n2 (ch. 5); state television, 172 Med-TV, 59 Mello, Brian Jason, 35, 39, 181n2 (ch. 1) Mersin, 86 Meyer, David S., 7, 21 Mezarcı, Hasan, 111 Migdal, Joel S., x, 19 migration, 12, 34, 56, 72, 84; to Europe, 57; from villages to Diyarbakir, 146, 147. See also population, Kurdish military, Turkish, xv, 3, 17, 18, 19, 47, 54, 56, 59, 107, 109, 110, 114, 119, 123, 138, 140, 161, 162, 163, 170, 171, 176. See also military coups military coups: of 1960, xiv, 28, 30–31, 37; of 1971 (coup by memorandum), 33–34, 36, 42, 43, 49; of 1980, 18, 22, 47, 48, 50, 54–56, 60, 67, 84, 89, 126, 127 Milliyet, 33, 44, 59, 111, 135, 182 Mills, C. Wright, 145 Mitchell, Timothy, 4 Mitterrand, François, 112 modernist project, 30, 143–46, 159–60, 164 Motherland Party (ANAP), 60, 61, 65, 66, 72, 108, 111, 125; and municipal reforms, 84 movement impact, analysis of, 10; 15–16; 162, 164–74 multiculturalism, 22, 57, 127, 130, 145, 155, 183n3 (ch. 6). See also Turkeyism (Türkiyelilik) municipalities: and budgetary difficulties, 47, 101; and expanding powers of mayors, 84–85; and expansion of role-related resources, 79–87, 89, 90; legal action against, 114–17; as site of resistance and platform for mobilization, 26, 37, 46–49, 113, 116–21, 124, 142–60 murders, of Kurdish activists, 4, 65, 96, 99–101, 103, 107–10, 126, 131, 137.

See also coercion; unknown assailant murders Muş, xi, 66, 67, 89, 166, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3) Mutlu, Servet, xi, 184n1 (concl.) names, Kurdish, xiv, 12, 116. See also places, naming and re-naming of; symbolic politics narratives, xiv, xviii, 13, 56, 119, 122–41, 143, 147, 149, 155–58 passim, 165. See also discourse; frames and framing; information politics Natali, Denise, 5, 165 National Intelligence Organization (MİT), 31 National Security Council, 31, 45, 54, 88 nationalism, 12; Kurdish, xviii, 22, 27, 30, 36, 47, 56, 145, 150, 159, 167; Turkish, xiii–xiv, 56, 107, 114, 119, 125–27 passim, 140, 150, 154, 163. See also ethnic identity New Democratic Formation, 63–64 New Turkey Party (YTP), 37–38 New York Times, 34, 117 Newroz (New Year): events of 1992, 92, 132, 137; legal controversies concerning, 116, 118; as protest and symbolic politics, 65, 92–93, 136, 148, 150, 152, 157–58, 173, 175. See also fairs and festivals Nokta, 110, 112, 125, 182n1 (ch. 4) nongovernmental organizations, and Kurdish activism, 58, 71, 88, 123, 149, 150, 164 nonviolence, x, 4 notables, 29, 37, 38, 47 Nusaybin, 56, 57, 92 Öcalan, Abdullah: capture by Turkish forces, 22, 87, 158; charismatic authority of, 176; interview with, 59; and pro-Kurdish parties, 65, 88, 92; and prosecution of pro-Kurdish

INDEX

209

Öcalan, Abdullah (continued) party leaders, 88, 117–18; support shown for, 120, 129, 150, 158–59 Öktem, Kerem, xiv, 32, 153, 155 Ölmez, A. Osman, 60, 61, 64, 96, 107, 108, 113, 182n1 (ch. 4) Olson, Robert, 55 Öncü, Ayse, 58 opportunity structures, 28, 30 Öz Diyar, 146 Özal, Turgut, 54, 60, 79, 106; and more open discussion of Kurdish issue, 125 Özalp, M. Selim, 113 Özbudun, Ergun, 54 Özcan, Ali Kemal, 57 Özdemir, Metin, 101 Özgür Gündem, 59, 98, 103, 107, 134, 136, 137, 183n2 (ch. 5) Özgürlük Yolu, 43, 46 Özoğlu, Hakan, xii Parliament, Turkish, 4, 9, 20, 25, 29, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 39, 42, 45, 54, 60, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 78, 81, 82, 86, 87, 88, 93, 97, 103, 104, 114, 162, 166, 167, 170; and activities of pro-Kurdish deputies, 44, 45, 49, 51, 60–62, 83, 92, 122–41, 181n4 (ch. 2); conflict with judiciary, 104–7; expulsion of pro-Kurdish deputies, 95, 98, 107–9, 121, 163; and Kurdish deputies elected in 2007, 161–62 parliamentary immunity, 81–81, 95, 97, 104–7, 109–13 Parry, Diana C., 77 Participatory Democracy Party (KADEP), 72 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), 23, 62, 173 Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), 181n3 (ch. 2) Pearlman, Wendy, 177 People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), 70, 72, 128, 150, 166; arrests and detention of members, 97, 114; clo210

INDEX

sure, 98, 114; conventions, 129–30; establishment of, 69, 72; legal cases concerning, 99, 106; and local elections, 79, 106, 144–45, 166; violence against members, 100. See also proKurdish parties People’s Labor Party (HEP), 51–74; banning and closure, 51, 67, 181n2 (ch. 2); court cases against, 97–98; created institutional footprint, 69; deputies’ activities in Parliament, 122–41; founding leaders, 64, 181n1 (ch.2); funding for, 79; internal differences, 126–27; murders of leadership and supporters, 51–52, 65; as new kind of Kurdish party, 52–53; 1991 election performance, 66; origins and establishment, 24, 51, 53, 62–64, 73; and parliamentarians’ relations with NGOs and foreign representatives, 138–40; police harassment of, 97; potential voters, 86; profiles of parliamentary deputies, 67; program, 127–28; protest events, 135–38; relations with the PKK, 52–53, 64, 67, 74, 91–92, 124–28, 175–76; relations with SHP, 65–67, 79, 86, 91–93, 140; self-definitions, 64–65; shift towards more explicit pro-Kurdish politics, 65; and types of resources, 91–93. See also pro-Kurdish parties places: naming and re-naming of, xiv, 32, 114, 153–55, 183n6 (ch. 6). See also public space; symbolic politics political parties, Turkish, 47, 52; ethnification of discourse, 42; inability to incorporate Kurdish demands, 36; Kurdish ethnopolitics within, 71–73; Kurdish participation in, xiv, 20, 26, 29, 35–50; legal requirements of, 127–28; new possibilities and problems for, 52, 59–60; role of, 20; and support for HEP activities, 132–33. See also names of individual parties

politics of polarization, 65, 84, 92, 95, 121, 144 population, Kurdish: and assessing electoral returns, 166–72, 177; debates concerning, xi; distribution and demographics, xi, 34, 57; migration, 12, 34, 56, 57; in Turkish census, xi. See also migration pro-Kurdish parties, 6; and activities in local office, 142–60; biographies of leadership, 70–71; composition, programs, and ideology, 69–71; electoral performance, 20, 166–72; funding for, 78–79; impacts, 15–16; new possibilities for, 55–60; as part of Kurdish national movement, 21–23; and party offices, 80–81; relations with Iraqi Kurds, 172–74; relations with PKK, 14–15, 24, 88, 98, 109–21, 140, 163, 164; similarities between, 70. See also names of individual parties pro-Kurdish, definition, 12, 180n3 (intro.) protest and protest events, x, 4, 6, 7, 9, 15, 19, 41, 57, 65, 92, 120–21, 127, 129, 135–38, 140. See also contentious politics public space, 85, 96, 136, 144, 151, 151–60, 164, 165. See also places; spaces

as field of dissent, 21; organizational expansion of, 22–23. See also field, of Kurdish resistance resources: of armed contenders, 13; changing levels of and access to, 87–90; definitions and types of systemic resources, 76–87, 162; and deployment of, 163–64; of the formal political system, 13–14, 75–93; increased after 1960s, 28; legal resources, 81–82; legitimacy resources, 14, 17, 74, 78, 85–86, 90–91, 103, 122, 124–26, 138, 140, 162, 166, 176–77; in local politics in the 1960s and 1970s, 45–50; material and human resources, 78–81; official access, 82–83; and the PKK, 91–93, 176; role resources, 83–85; in the southeast, xi, xiii, 7, 8, 10, 13 Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations (DDKD), 43, 47 Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths (DDKO), 42–43, 64 Rights and Freedoms Party (HAKPAR), 72, 73, 117 Rızgari, 43 Rochon, Thomas R., 180n4 (intro.) Roj TV, 118, 147 Roja Newe, 30 Romano, David, 5, 180n2 (intro.) Royal, Segolène, 112 Rucht, Dieter, 77

Qasim, Abdulah Karim, 36 Radikal, 158, 183n6 (ch. 6) repertoires of contention, 4, 10, 16, 27, 77, 123, 135–38, 175. See also contentious politics; protest and protest events representative contention, 9, 15–16 repression. See coercion Republican People’s Party (CHP), 29, 44, 46, 64, 111; attacks on offices, 108; divisions within, 45; in elections of 1977, 46 resistance, everyday forms of, 12, 149;

Sadak, Cevahir, 119, 160 Sadak, Selim, 68, 105, 106, 111, 112 Şahan, Timur, 100, Sakharov Prize, 139 Sakık, Şemdin, 67 Sakık, Sırrı, 67, 111, 112, 113, 135 Şanlıurfa (Urfa), 38, 46, 64, 86, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3) Savaş, Vural, 106 Scott, James, 12, 148, 149 secularism, and pro-Kurdish parties, 53, 70–71, 159 INDEX

211

security imperative, 18, 55. See also security regime security regime, 17–18 Selahaddini Eyyubi (Saladin), 155 self-determination. See autonomy; devolution; federalism Semerci Fesih, 156 semi-democratic systems, contention in, 6–13, 174–75; definition, 17–18; movement incorporation in, 18; numbers of, 18–19; Turkey classified as, 17–18; resources in, 75–76 separatism, Kurdish, 18, 34, 44, 45, 97, 124–25, 135, 161 serhildan protests, 57, 65 Sewell, William H., Jr., 80 Sezer, Mehmet Emin, 67 Sezgin, İsmet, 133, 135 Sheikh Said, 72 Sheikh Said Rebellion (1925), 29 Siirt, xi, 89, 113, 166, 182 Sikkink, Kathryn, 57, 58, 123, 131 Silvan, 37, 41, 46, 109 Sincar, Cihan, 131 Sincar, Mehmet, 101, 103, 110, 131, 134, 150 Sinn Fein, 71 Şırnak, xi, 66, 68, 89, 92, 118, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3) Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP), 53, 60–66, 84, 99, 105, 125, 126, 130; attacks on offices, 108; expulsion of pro-Kurdish deputies, 62; and lifting of DEP deputies’ parliamentary immunity, 107, 111; and Newroz events of 1992, 92–93; 1991 alliance with HEP, 65–67, 79, 86, 91–93, 131–34; and Mahmut Alınak, 92–93, 135, 181n1 (ch. 2); as platform for development of pro-Kurdish leadership, 61, 73, 82, 131–35, 138, 140; tensions within, 61–62; 125; and 2004 election alliance with DEHAP, 71, 144, 166–67 social movements, 4, 6, 36, 76, 123, 135; definitions of, 10–11, 21; fragmenta212

INDEX

tion, 8; and institutionalization/ incorporation, 7–14, 174–75; organizations, 27–28, 35, 37, 46, 48. See also Kurdish national movement socialism, 16, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 38–42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 70 Somer, Murat, 125 Sorani, xii southeast (as region of Turkey), x, 3, 13, 17, 22, 26, 32, 37, 39, 41, 43, 50, 55, 56, 57, 58, 65, 67, 83, 89, 90, 124, 125, 130, 132, 133, 135, 140, 142, 150, 151, 153, 157, 159, 163, 173, 174; armed forces deployed there, xv; demographics and social structure, xi, 34, 35, 72; and development, 30, 34, 35; distinctive conditions in, xiv, 33, 34, 41, 42, 87, 108, 123; martial and emergency law in, 34, 45, 72, 89, 102, 111, 127, 136; media tours to, 44, 137–38; officials working in, 19, 20; remembering the war in, 119; voters and voting in, 59, 65, 66, 86–87, 109, 124, 144, 169–72, 177 spaces, xi, xiv, 14,15, 28, 31, 50, 71, 73, 76, 77, 84, 85, 88, 96, 106, 119, 136, 143, 144, 148, 170, 175; as physical infrastructure for resistance, 80–81, 162, public, 85, 96, 136, 144, 151, 151–60, 164, 165; re-Kurdification of, 151–60, 164–65; re-Palestinianization of in Israel, 153; of silence, 118–21. See also places; public space state of exception, xiv. See also coercion; emergency rule law (OHAL) State Institute of Statistics (DİE), 34, 35, 37, 61, 66, 86, 87, 109, 182n1 (ch. 3) State Planning Organization (DPT), 101 state policies: and Kurds, xiii–xv; challenged by Kurdish activists, 15–16; circumscribing of pro-Kurdish mayors, 160; compromises and complications of, 19–20, 95, 104–6, 122–41; and criticism by politicians, 72, 122–23; as depicted by TİP,

40, 41; reforms to, 88–90, 171–72; strategies of coercion, xiv–xv, 19, 24; 31–32, 94–121, 136–37; strategies of opportunity, xiii–xiv; strategies of social reconstruction, xiv, 153–54; Turkification of, 32, 153–54. See also coercion; legal prosecution, of Kurdsh activists; nationalism; statesociety relations (in Turkey) state security courts, xiv, 88, 90, 97–99, 104, 114 state-society relations (in Turkey): conceptions of, 19–20, 27, 29–30, 35, 36, 49, 143; and symbolic politics, 148–60 Sümer, Salih, 132, 181n1 (ch. 2) Sur Municipality, 79, 116–17, 142, 146 surveys, by pro-Kurdish municipalities, 146–47 Susurluk scandal, 100 symbolic politics, 65, 78, 92–93, 114–15, 116–17, 129, 136–37, 143–44, 147–60, 164–65, 175; definition of, 147–48; and 1991 swearing-in ceremony, 92, 104, 131–32, 134–35, 150 Talabani, Jalal, 62, 158, 173 Tarrow, Sidney, 7, 9, 10, 21, 30 TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 111, 134, 135 Tekçe, Metin, 118 Tilly, Charles, 7, 9, 10, 21, 77, 85, 103 Toğuç, Nizamettin, 101, 112 Toprak, Metin, 108 torture, xv, 4, 33, 48, 55, 99, 100, 103, 133, 156. See also coercion transnational activism: Mehdi Zana, 47; of pro-Kurdish parties, 69, 73, 138–40; and SHP, 62; of Diyarbakir mayors, 83; advocacy networks and Kurdish politics, 56–69, 138–40; and zone of Kurdish cultural and economic life, 174 tribes, Kurdish, xii, 19–20, 36, 47, 179n1 (preface); PKK attacks on, 45; state removal of leaders in 1960, 32,

37; and street names, 154. See also clans True Path Party (DYP), 66, 72, 84, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 131, 133 Türk, Ahmet, 60, 69, 79, 111, 112, 118, 132, 137, 139, 173, 181n1 (ch. 2) Tuğluk, Aysel, 118 Tunceli, xi, xii, 33, 41, 45, 86, 89, 115, 167, 182n1 (ch. 3). See also Dersim Turkey-European Joint Parliamentary Commission, 61 Turkey-ism (Türkiyelilik), 153, 183n3 (ch. 6). See also multiculturalism Turkification, 32, 153. See also nationalism, Turkish Turkish Armed Forces. See military Turkish Daily News, 64, 110, 182n1 (ch. 4) Turkish Probe, 109 2000’e Doğru. See İkibin’e Doğru Union of Municipalities of Turkey, 82 Union of Southeast Anatolia Region Municipalities (GABB), 82, 157 United Nations General Secretary, 139 United States, xv, 87, 139, 172 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 135 unknown assailant murders, 96, 99, 100–101, 108, 126, 131. See also coercion; murders, of Kurdish activists Ünlü, Hasan, 37 Urfa. See Şanlıurfa Van, xi, 37, 66, 89, 118, 144, 167 village guard system, 56, 100, 109, 126, 133, 134, 135, 139 villages: and elections, 42, 166–67; emptying and attacks on, xv, 33, 56, 89, 133, 134, 146, 150; new names, 32, 153; and support for PKK, 138. See also village guard system Wahlbeck, Osten, 57 Watts, Nicole F., 5, 41, 46, 47, 57, 58, 62, 105, 181n2 (ch. 1) INDEX

213

Wedeen, Lisa, 119, 143, 149, 183n1 (ch. 6) Welfare (Refah) Party, 16, 60, 72, 108, 109, 111, 133 White, Paul, 5, 27, 180n5 (intro.) Wigley, Simon, 81 Wiktorowicz, Quintan, 6, 180n1 (intro.) Winrow, Gareth M., 180n2 (intro.) Workers Party of Turkey (TİP), 37–50, 61, 181n2 (ch. 1); campaigning and activism, 40–41; establishment and policies, 38; Kurdish representation in, 38–39; and Mehdi Zana, 46–47; membership, 38; role in facilitating Kurdish electoral activism, 39–41, 49 World Federation of United Cities (FMCU-UTO), 83 Xeyalên ji bêrf, 156 Yanik, Lerna K., 150 Yavuz, M. Hakkan, 5, 56, 180n2 (intro.) Yazar, Feridun, 64, 130 Yeğen, Mesut, xiii Yeni Ülke, 59, 97 Yeni Yurt, 46 Yenişehir (Diyarbakır), 142, 147, 152, 154 Yenişehir Belediye Bülteni, 154 Yiğit, Ali, 112 Yılmaz, Nurettin, 45 Yön, 30, 181n1 (ch. 1) Young, Michael P., 10 Yugoslavia, xiii Yurtdaş, Sedat, 67, 105, 112, 118

214

INDEX

Zakaria, Fareed, 17 Zald, Mayer N., 77 Zaman, 117, 159 Zana, Leyla, 67, 92, 110–13 passim, 129, 131, 134, 137, 139, 158 Zana, Mehdi, 43; arrest and torture after 1980 coup, 48; biography, 46; as candidate and mayor of Diyarbakir, 45–48; 1977 election campaign of, 46–47; and Leyla Zana, 67; tenure in office, 47–49; transnational network and European visits, 47 Zariski, Raphael, 16, 91 Zazaki, xii, 151–53 Zurcher, Erik J., 34, 55