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Disappearance of the established security paradigm of Kemalist state has not helped to create strong institutions and legal-bureaucratic structures that are supposed to prevent a certain political elite to dominate the political system and criminalize its adversaries by security reasons. Instead, survival concerns and political will of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has become replacement of the established paradigm. This has created a systemic crisis. On the one hand, the AKP has played the role of a regular political party, which is supposed to have equal rights and privileges with other players in the game. On the other hand, the AKP has been the tutelary actor that determines what national security is and who threatens national security. As a result of this picture, the AKP has exploited its monopoly over securitization to eliminate the criticisms of the opposition groups. Therefore, any political party or political group has not been viewed as a national security threat only if it has not threatened the political survival of the AKP. Such a crisis has also affected the AKP’s approach toward the Kurdish question. Unlike the established paradigm’s allergy toward the political demands of Kurds due to its commitment to nation-state principle, the AKP’s fluctuated policy toward the Kurds resembles to a political party’s survival strategy rather than a policy stemming from a consistent national security paradigm.

The Syrian conflict which started in March 2011 is well into its third year and its dimensions and implications are steadily moving beyond Syrian borders and the broader Middle East. Syria’s uprising has developed into a civil war between government forces and the opposition, motivated primarily by internal and external actors’ strategic and at times existential interests. This article examines the implications and dimensions of the Syrian crisis for the major actors in the region, including Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, the Gulf States, Israel and the Kurds. It argues that pitting a Shiite Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah axis against a Sunni Turkey-Gulf states axis is the most significant geo-political regional effect of the Syrian crisis. What is more devastating is not the division of the region along sectarian lines but the proxy war between the Shiite and Sunni factions.  

For at least the past 30 years, the Kurdish question has been the most urgent agenda concern for Turkey. Denial of the Kurdish question is a state narrative and an administrative strategy in Turkey that was produced by the founders of the Republic and disseminated by its leadership using the state apparatus. However, we know very little about how denial operates within lay person accounts of the Kurdish question. Learning about the narrative forms that lay people produce in their accounts on the Kurdish question is necessary to understand the micro-level appearance of the question. Denial appears to be a foundational strategy employed by lay Kurds and Turks in different forms, through numerous arguments, and from different motivations, as evidenced in their personal accounts. This study investigates the arguments, forms, and functions of this denial in the personal accounts of lay Turks and Kurds in Turkey.

This article contributes to the existing literature on the populist online communication of governments. We look at the role of the micro-blogging social media platform Twitter under the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the wider Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) during the peace process. We carried out a rhetorical analysis of the Twitter posts of four key AKP actors – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ahmet Davutoğlu, Yalçın Akdoğan, and Efkan Ala – between July 1, 2012 and November 1, 2015. First, we show that the AKP actors persistently label the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and in Syria as a threat to the national security of Turkey, reflected in their rhetoric toward the remilitarization and resecuritization of Turkey’s Kurdish question within and across its borders. Second, we argue that the AKP used the peace process and various persuasive communicative techniques not only to consolidate Kurdish electoral support, but also to reach its aim to remove the Kemalist military–bureaucratic tutelage in Turkey that was replaced with hyper-presidentialism under the strong personality cult of Erdoğan. Third, we argue that Erdoğan’s increased one-man power has been reflected in the AKP’s branding itself as the only viable choice for the Kurdish region’s stability, which has blocked more constructive dialogue toward a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question.

The Southeastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP) was initiated in the 1970s to produce energy and irrigate arid lands through constructing dams and hydroelectric power plants on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and extensive irrigation networks in southeastern Turkey. Over time, the project was expanded to achieve a wider range of goals in different fields and radically transform Southeastern Anatolia Region. It is also widely claimed that GAP was initiated to address the root causes of the Kurdish question in Turkey and that security considerations and political calculations were actually the raison d'être of GAP. However, this supposed link between GAP and the Kurdish question was often established in a simplistic manner and the question how these two have been related - or not - remained largely untangled. This article aims to fill this research gap and examine the complex and multi-dimensional nature of the interrelationship between GAP and the Kurdish question based on diverse primary and secondary data sources. Accordingly, the article identifies and discusses major narratives in which GAP was conceived as a political and strategic 'anti-Kurdish' plot; remedy for the conflict; and totally technical non-political project and presents an alternative and more accurate perspective on how to interpret this relationship.

Introduction. The article deals with the U.S. Middle East Policy of the Eisenhower Administration in 1958–1960 and determines the part the Kurdish Question played in it. Methods and materials. The study is based on the latest U.S. declassified documents, interviews, memoirs, etc. The author does the problem-chronological analysis to describe the stages of the U.S. Policy toward Iraqi Kurds during the period specified. Analysis. The article is focused on the U.S. diplomatic and intelligence activities aimed at developing approaches to the “communist crisis” and disagreements that arose in the expert community regarding policy decisions. The author considers the U.S. relations with their regional partners (Turkey, Israel, Iran, etc.) on the issues of the “Iraqi crisis” and the Kurdish liberation movement. The paper describes Washington’s attitude to Mullah Mustafa Barzani – the Kurdish movement leader – and the KDP activities during Iraq’s post-Revolution instability. The author analyzes and summarizes the reasons why the U.S. was reluctant to involve in the domestic conflict between Qasim’s followers, Nationalists, Nasserites, Communists and Kurds. Results. The article shows that the CIA and the State Department often misjudged Qasim’s relationship with the Iraqi Communist Party and the national Kurdish movement and, as a result, did not have enough time to respond to the rapidly changing political situation, thus adopting the policy of benevolent neutrality.

Cultural and linguistic repression of Kurdish ethnic identity rests at the heart of the conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement in Turkey's Kurdish region, also known as Northern Kurdistan. Inspired by Peet and Hartwick's conceptualisation of alternative development, combined with Gandhi's idea of the constructive programme and Galtung's conceptualisation of positive peace, this article investigates intersections between peace, development and resistance. The discussion is informed and developed by illuminating two empirical cases of what will be argued should be seen as 'constructive resistance' conducted by the Kurdish movement. Both cases seek to undermine repressive Turkish assimilation policies. This article shows how social movements, through constructive resistance practices, can be understood as central actors in processes of social and political transformation, termed 'self-organised development'.

Este artículo analiza la evolución del movimiento político kurdo durante la Guerra Civil Siria, así como los factores que han permitido su consolidación y los desafíos que enfrenta en la reconfiguración política del país. A través de un enfoque cualitativo basado en el análisis documental de artículos científicos, informes de organizaciones internacionales y medios regionales, se examina la transformación del movimiento kurdo, desde su marginación histórica hasta su papel central en la lucha contra el Estado Islámico y la administración territorial en el norte de Siria. A pesar de haber consolidado estructuras de autogobierno, la estabilidad del movimiento kurdo en Siria sigue amenazada por la presión de Turquía, la fragmentación interna y la incertidumbre tras la caída de Bashar al-Assad. Finalmente, se evalúa el impacto de la nueva configuración del poder en Siria y las perspectivas de una solución negociada para la cuestión kurda en la región. This article analyzes the evolution of the Kurdish political movement during the Syrian Civil War, as well as the factors that have enabled its consolidation and the challenges it faces in the political reconfiguration of the country. Using a qualitative approach based on documentary analysis of scientific articles, reports from international organizations, and regional media, the study examines the transformation of the Kurdish movement from its historical marginalization to its central role in the fight against the Islamic State and territorial administration in northern Syria. Despite having consolidated self-governing structures, the stability of the Kurdish movement in Syria remains threatened by pressure from Turkey, internal fragmentation, and uncertainty following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Finally, the impact of the new power configuration in Syria is assessed, along with the prospects for a negotiated solution to the Kurdish issue in the region.

Will pro-Kurdish reforms decrease ethnic violence in Turkey? Conventional wisdom would suggest that elimination of the root causes will heal past wounds. In bitter ethno-political conflicts, however, the issue becomes much larger than its components: deep mistrust between parties overshadow specific issue reforms. Turkey's Kurdish issue is a case in point where ethnic reforms would not bring stability unless they are coupled with steps to eliminate mistrust. This article pays a specific attention to public framing of reforms. We argue that the actual content of reforms is not so significant; what really matters, instead, is the public perception of reforms on both sides, Turkish and Kurdish. The AKP's claim of \"democratic opening\" loses credibility in recent years as the PKK's alternative narrative gains prominence.

Combining discourse analysis with quantitative methods, this article compares how the legislatures of Turkey, the US, and the EU discursively constructed Turkey 's Kurdish question. An examination of the legislative-political discourse through 1990 to 1999 suggests that a country suffering from a domestic secessionist conflict perceives and verbalizes the problem differently than outside observers and external stakeholders do. Host countries of conflicts perceive their problems through a more security-oriented lens, and those who observe these conflicts at a distance focus more on the humanitarian aspects. As regards Turkey, this study tests politicians 'perceptions of conflicts and the influence of these perceptions on their pre-existing political agendas for the Kurdish question, and offers a new model for studying political discourse on intra-state conflicts. The article suggests that a political agenda emerges as the prevalent dynamic in conservative politicians' approaches to the Kurdish question, whereas ideology plays a greater role for liberal/pro-emancipation politicians. Data shows that politically conservative politicians have greater variance in their definitions, based on material factors such as financial, electoral, or alliance-building constraints, whereas liberal and/or left-wing politicians choose ideologically confined discursive frameworks such as human rights and democracy.