Ethnic Incorporation Policies and Peripheral Reactions: How Turkey’s Kurds are Treated by the State and How They Perceive Their Treatment

Abstract

This paper examines the policies adopted by the consecutive Justice and Development Party governments toward the Kurdish population in Turkey since 2002. These policies are called ethnic incorporation policies in the paper and take inclusive or exclusive forms. The paper distinguishes between the ethnic incorporation policies adopted and implemented by the political center and their perception in the Kurdish periphery. The paper investigates these policies in four overlapping and intersecting, but conceptually distinct domains: security, socio-culture, economy, and politics. It concludes that while ethnic incorporation policies take increasingly inclusive forms in the socio-cultural and economic domains, the increasing exclusiveness in the security domain infringes the political domain and invalidates the moves toward further inclusion in this domain which have been gained as a result of a slow and painstaking process

Keywords

• Ethnic conflict, ethnic incorporation, ethnic politics, Kurds, Turkey

References

1. Ethnic incorporation is often used to refer the processes whereby ethnicity becomes increasingly central for group mobilization in anthropological studies (Handelman, ; Eriksen, 1993). This paper uses the concept in a different context as the set of policies adopted and implemented by the state toward an ethnic group residing in the country. For a similar use of the concept, see: Kopstein and Wittenberg, 2010.
2. (interview with Adil Kurt on 14.2.2012). (The election data are calculated based on the election results at , last access on 12.2.2012).
3. (interview with Adil Kurt on 14.2.2012). (The election data are calculated based on the election results at , last access on 12.2.2012).
4. For an insightful discussion of the evolution of the state discourse on Kurds, see Yegen (2007).
5. Cevdet Aşkın’s column in daily Radikal on December 14th, 2011 is an exception in the mainstream Turkish media in this respect (available at:
6. A%DEKIN&Date=14.12.2011&CategoryID=98>, last access on 11.2.2012). 34 people from Roboski Village were confused with PKK militia and died in an airstrike on December 28th, 2011 when they were returning with smuggled products from across the Iraqi border. Smuggling products such as tea, tobacco, and fuel oil is a common source of income in the region, and is called ‘cross-border trade’ by many local residents.
7. The Güngen family is one of the many examples. Heybet Güngen joined the PKK at the age of 13 and died at the age of 15 in a conflict with the state security forces in Heybet’s brother Salih was serving in the Turkish army when he heard of his sister’s death (source: last access on 12.2.2012).
8. Pierson (2000, p.252) defines path-dependency as a situation “in which preceding steps in a particular direction induce further movement in the same direction” with a particular reference to historical institutionalism.

9. Author’s interview in Diyarbakır on 21.12.2011
10. The respondent names are kept confidential in cases when it is asked for by the respondent. The respondent requested his name to be kept confidential. Given that the respondent has not made any statement that could be criminalized, even this request is an evidence of fears in peripheral Kurdish circles. Author’s interview in Ankara on 8.2.2012. Doing ‘politics on plains’ rather than going up to the (Kandil) Mountain was a phrase first used by Mehmet Ağar, former
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12. Chandra (2006, p.398) defines ethnic identities as “a subset of identity categories in which eligibility for membership is determined by attributes associated with, or believed to be associated with, descent”, or simply as ‘descent-based attributes’. This definition seems to capture the idea of ethnicity better than purely objectivist or subjectivist definitions of the term.
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