Kurdish Conflict in Turkey

Causes, Actors, and Means of Struggle

Geography of conflict

Kurds of Turkey Kurds make up about

15% of Turkey’s population

About two-thirds of Turkey’s Kurds live in the country’s southeastern provinces; about one-third live in western Turkey

Kurds are distinguished primarily from Turks by the fact that they speak Kurdish, but are physically indistinguishable from ethnic Turks

Why is there a conflict?

State-building nationalism in Turkey 1923: foundation of

Turkish Republic Turkish nationalism

& integration of Kurds

Repression of those who resisted

Response: Kurdish peripheral nationalism

Early uprisings Rise of a new

counter-elite and the re-creation of Kurdish identity, 1960s

PKK guerrilla activism, 1984-1999, and 2005-present

Kurds

I can't talk because I don't know my languageI'd like to tell you about my self but I don't know my historyI have no education because there are no schoolsI don't have a brother, he was a politician, he got killed

No I'm sorry, no friends either, they are all in prison

I don't have a village because it's burned downI don't have a house because tanks destroyed itI couldn't stay in my land because mines cover itI have no sister, she was a journalist, she just disappeared

No I'm sorry, no relatives either, they fled from the war

I don't know any songs, they are bannedI can't dance, it's forbiddenI can't tell you any stories because no one ever told me anyI don't have parents, they were hanged

No, I'm sorry, no country either, it has been stolen

S.W.Z

Boys at a Kurdish New Year celebration in the early 1990s. Photo: Kevin McKiernan.

PKK guerrillas, early 1990s.

Who is involved? Turkish Armed Forces Kurdistan Workers

Party (PKK) Pro-Kurdish politicians

in various political parties

Liberal Turkish media and civil society organizations

Kurdish diaspora community and other transnational actors

Ordinary people

Modes of Conflict Guerrilla war

Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)

Conventional politics Pro-Kurdish political

parties Civil contention and

protest Kurdish newspapers,

cultural organizations Human rights

organizations

Effects of the conflict 35,000 dead New attention to

status of Kurds in Turkey on domestic and international agenda

Some political gains

Human rights abuses

Pro-Kurdish newspapers such as this one are often closed down for expressing support for PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Current status: stalemate & new conflict 1999 capture of PKK

leader Abdullah Öcalan; PKK guerrillas lay down arms

PKK guerrillas in northern Iraqi mountains

Some democratic reforms BUT…

Spring 2005-2006: new sets of attacks, and new anti-terror bill? PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan being returned

to Turkey for trial, Feb. 1999.