Ethnic Boundaries in Turkish Politics. Zeki Sarigil

      Introduction

      In March 2011, Kurdish meles1 led “civilian Friday prayers” as part of a larger civil disobedience campaign (sivil itaatsizlik) in the main public square of Diyarbakır, Turkey. Organized and sponsored by the secular Kurdish movement, which was represented in Parliament at that time by the Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, BDP), civilian Friday prayers aimed to boycott regular Friday prayers at state-controlled mosques. Party officials stated that they did not want to stand behind state-appointed imams arguing that state imams propagate prostate and progovernment views as well as Turkishness among Kurds in the region. Party coleader Selahattin Demirtaş, for instance, claimed the following: “Imams are selected by the National Security Council [Milli Güvenlik Kurulu, MGK] and then sent here [the Kurdish regions]. We ask our people not to pray behind those state imams who are sent here with a special mission.… We know that some of the state imams in the region are working for the government [run by the conservative Justice and Development Party]. They are here to impose Turkishness and statism on the people.”2

      Such an unexpected initiative by a secular, left-oriented political movement sparked huge controversy and heated debates in Turkish politics. The government, run by the conservative Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), harshly criticized this initiative. Highly disturbed by the BDP-promoted civilian Friday prayers, then–prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan condemned them on several occasions. He asserted that the pro-Kurdish party was exploiting religion to gain votes. To degrade the secular Kurdish movement in the eyes of conservative Kurds, Erdoğan further claimed that Kurdish ethnonationalists consider Abdullah Öcalan (the imprisoned Kurdish leader) as a prophet.3 On one occasion, Erdoğan gratingly reacted to this initiative as follows: “Now, they organize alternative Friday prayers. But they do not really respect our sacred, religious values. For instance, there are females among those who participate in their Friday prayers.… They also consider Apo [Abdullah Öcalan] as a Prophet.… They still follow Marxist-Leninist understandings, which do not have anything to do with Islam and Islamic values.”4

      Civilian Friday prayers were part of a broader transformation in the secular Kurdish movement in Turkey in the past decades: the rise of a friendlier approach and attitude toward Islam. As this book’s empirical chapters present in detail, we see many other similar initiatives by the Kurdish ethnonationalist movement, such as welcoming and co-opting conservative political figures and civil society organizations; assembling the Democratic Islam Congress in Diyarbakır and Istanbul; organizing mass meetings to celebrate the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (mawlid meetings) and public iftar5 dinners during Ramadan; and increasing references to Islamic ideas, principles, and practices (e.g., frequently citing verses from the Koran and proposing the Charter of Medina as a social model for contemporary Turkey).

      These unprecedented initiatives constitute a conundrum because it is widely acknowledged that one of the fault lines of Turkish politics is the divide between religious and secular (e.g., see Göle 1997; Cizre 2008; Yavuz 1997, 2003, and 2009). While most rightist political formations have been associated with the religious camp and advocate and promote conservative or Islamic ideas and values in society and politics, most leftist circles have sided with the secular camp, generally skeptical toward the role of religion and religious actors and movements in sociopolitical life. This observation is also valid for the PKK-led Kurdish ethnonationalist movement, which emerged in the second half of the 1970s. As chapter 2 depicts, the Kurdish ethnonationalist movement in Turkey, rooted in strong secularism and socialist, Marxist ideology, initially adopted a strongly antireligious stance (see also van Bruinessen 2000b, 54–55; Romano 2006, 134). However, the movement has taken a much more moderate and lenient attitude in regard to Islam and Islamic actors over the past few decades, particularly since the early 2000s. As a result, Islam has become part of the movement’s political discourse, strategies, and actions. I define such a transformation or evolution in leftist, secular Kurdish ethnopolitics as the Islamic opening. The term Islamic opening in this study, however, does not mean that a secular ethononationalist movement is turning into an Islamic one. Instead, it refers to the approval and endorsement of Islam and Islamic actors by the secular, leftist Kurdish ethnonationalist movement, which is a novel phenomenon in modern Kurdish ethnopolitics in the Turkish setting.

      From a broader perspective, the increasing role of religion in sociopolitical life in the Middle East and across the world in the post–Cold War context is a widely acknowledged phenomenon (e.g., see Almond, Appleby, and Sivan 2003; Roy 2004; Emerson and Hartman 2006; Meijer 2009). In line with this religious revival or resurgence (i.e., the rise of Islamic movements and political parties), several nationalist groups or movements in the region, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), have accommodated Islam.6 As a result, we see the entanglement of nationalist and religious identifications and attachments in various nationalist movements (see also Juergensmeyer 1993, 2006, 2008; Rieffer