Ethnic Boundaries in Turkish Politics. Zeki Sarigil
global, national, and regional levels encouraged and/or forced Kurdish ethnopolitical leaders to redraw symbolic and social boundaries of the movement. First, the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s undermined support for Marxist ideas in Turkey in general, and as a result, the PKK-led movement began to distance itself from Marxism (for instance, in 1995 it removed the hammer and sickle from its flag). Ideological shift (i.e., the declining influence of Marxism) created more favorable conditions for the rise of a more positive approach toward religion within the movement. In other words, the declining influence of Marxism facilitated the Islamic opening of the Kurdish movement in the post-1990 period.
We should also take into account of the role of movement’s need to expand its social basis and increase its popularity in Kurdish society. As is well known, the Kurdish movement, led and dominated by the PKK, emerged as a small-scale armed struggle in the late 1970s. However, the movement’s survival and success in its struggle against the central state necessitated expanding its popularity and support among the Kurdish masses. This effort required developing a friendlier approach to the traditions, values, and norms of Kurdish society, such as Islamic beliefs, values, and attachments. Indeed, by the early 1990s, the Kurdish struggle had gained mass character (i.e., turned into a mass movement). Such a transformation prompted the movement to expand its activities into the legal political arena. As a result, the People’s Labor Party (Halkın Emek Partisi, HEP), established in June 1990, became the first legal pro-Kurdish party. Kurdish ethnopolitical leadership expected that such lawful formations would give new voice to the movement and so expand its legitimacy and influence among the Kurdish masses. The expansion of the movement’s social basis further incited the ethnopolitical leadership to be more accommodative vis-à-vis the values, beliefs, and norms of Kurdish society. In other words, as the PKK-led Kurdish movement diffused into Kurdish society, Islamic ideas, values, and circles gradually made their way into the movement. In brief, the need to expand the group’s popular support base forced the secular Kurdish leadership to have more respect for Kurdish culture, which has been characterized by a religious, traditional, and conservative lifestyle.
Another factor that facilitated the adoption of a more positive stance toward Islam and Islamic actors was electoral pressures (i.e., the rise in popularity among Kurds of pro-Islamic political parties). In the 1990s, pro-Islamic National Outlook Movement parties (i.e., the Welfare Party, Refah Partisi [RP], and the Virtue Party, Fazilet Partisi [FP]), and in the 2000s, the AKP gained substantial electoral popularity in the Kurdish region. As chapter 3 shows, the main political rivals of the secular Kurdish movement in regional electoral politics have been conservative or Islamic political formations. Electoral competition with Islamic or conservative political actors further urged the Kurdish ethnopolitical leadership to accommodate Islam and Islamic actors.
Related to electoral pressures and dynamics, we should also acknowledge the distinct role of legitimacy struggles between Kurdish ethnopolitical elites and their rivals. Both legal and illegal Islamic or conservative groups (e.g., the AKP and Kurdish Hezbollah) and the Turkish state have constantly attempted to delegitimize the secular Kurdish movement in the eyes of the Kurdish masses, particularly among conservative Kurds, by calling Kurdish ethnopolitical actors “Marxist,” “atheist,” “infidels,” “heretical,” or “un-Islamic” and therefore “illegitimate.” In other words, conservative political circles and the state have attempted to contract religious boundaries with an intention to delegitimize the secular Kurdish movement and marginalize pro-Kurdish parties in the electoral contest. My in-depth analysis of the Kurdish case indicates that such boundary-making efforts and boundary struggles or contestations can become intense and antagonistic especially during electoral periods. Facing such labels and accusations, the Kurdish ethnopolitical leadership felt the need to substantially shift its attitude toward religion. Put differently, such boundary work by Kurdish ethnopolitical leadership was also a counterstrategy against its political opponents’ efforts to contract Islamic religious boundaries.
The boundary expansion in the Kurdish case was not without any tension, however. This study shows that the boundary work by Kurdish ethnopolitical elites involved both internal and external tensions and contestations. Internally, Alevi Kurds, who are relatively more liberal and secular than Sunni Kurds, raised some concerns and attempted to contest the rise of the movement’s Islam-friendly approach. Alevi Kurds’ contestation of the boundary work by the Kurdish ethnopolitical leadership suggests that an ethnic group’s internal heterogeneity increases the likelihood of internal boundary contestations. In this case, the Alevi Kurds’ contestation of the Islamic opening failed due to the highly centralized and hierarchical structure of the Kurdish movement. As the book’s empirical chapters show, one notable feature of the Kurdish movement has been its centralized and hierarchical organizational structure, led and dominated by its unchallenged leader and theoretician, Abdullah Öcalan. This situation suggests that although intragroup heterogeneity increases the likelihood of boundary contestation by coethnics, such internal contestations may have limited impact in hierarchically organized ethnonationalist movements. Externally, conservative, Islamic, and nationalist rival political actors (e.g., the ruling AKP) have tried to delegitimize the movement’s efforts by claiming that it still subscribes to Marxist-Leninist and atheist ideas and understandings. In other words, as a response to the Kurdish movement’s boundary expansion, they attempted to shrink religious boundaries. Thus, the Kurdish case provides us a rich laboratory in which to conduct an in-depth analysis of the processes of boundary contestations (internal and external) that are likely to arise when such major boundary work takes place.
This particular case has major theoretical and practical implications for ethnicity and nationalism studies in general and for Kurdish ethnonationalism and Turkish politics in particular. The ramifications of the study will be discussed in detail in the conclusion. Briefly, this study will add to the several theoretical debates within ethnicity and nationalism studies. First, by examining the role of ethnopolitical elites in ethnonationalist processes (e.g., boundary making), this study sheds light on the basic theoretical rivalry between primordialist and circumstantialist/constructionist/instrumentalist perspectives. The in-depth analysis of the case of the Islamic opening of the secular Kurdish ethnonationalist movement suggests that we need to transcend such dichotomous understandings and instead give due attention to both structural and agential and given/durable/fixed and flexible/contingent/constructed aspects of ethnicity and nationalism.
Second, by analyzing the shifting attitude of the secular Kurdish movement toward Islam from the perspective of the boundary approach, this study shows that the theory has much to offer in enhancing our understanding of ethnicity and nationalism phenomena. The book contributes to the research on ethnic boundary making in several ways. By investigating boundary processes in the Kurdish case, the book illuminates how ethnopolitical elites make and remake symbolic and social boundaries of an ethnic movement, what strategies boundary makers follow, and how boundary contestations (internal or external) take place. The Kurdish case particularly helps us generate or extract some specific hypotheses about the processes of boundary contestation. Unfortunately the existing studies of ethnic boundary making offer us little insights about boundary contestation, and so it remains an undertheorized issue in the existing literature. This study suggests that boundary making is inherently a political process, which might involve both internal and external struggles or contestations over symbolic and social boundaries. Regarding when and under what conditions boundary contestation is more likely to take place, this study shows that electoral periods increase the likelihood of external boundary contestation; in relatively more heterogeneous ethnic groups or movements, internal boundary contestation (i.e., struggle over symbolic and social boundaries among coethnics) becomes more likely; and in the case of ethnonationalist movements characterized by a hierarchical organizational structure and unified leadership (i.e., the absence or weakness of elite competition or rivalry), internal boundary contestations is less likely to succeed.
This study also enhances our understanding of the interplay between religion and ethnicity and nationalism in the context of a Muslim society. From that perspective, the study enhances our knowledge and understanding of the role of religion in Kurdish ethnopolitics. For instance, assuming a mutually exclusive relationship between religious and ethnic identifications and attachments, many people within conservative or pro-Islamic circles claim that promoting Islam and