Mehmet Gurses. Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey

Abstract

Reviewed by: Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey by Mehmet Gurses Vera Eccarius-Kelly Mehmet Gurses. Anatomy of a Civil War: Sociopolitical Impacts of the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018. xi + 179 pp. Cloth, $65. ISBN 978-0472131006. Anatomy of a Civil War, an empirically rich, methodologically rigorous, and politically relevant study, successfully evaluates the decades-long Kurdish struggle for equality by placing the armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish state at the center of its analysis of social change. Mehmet Gurses convincingly posits that Kurds in Turkey have experienced a full-fledged civil war, and he rejects the use of terminology that is frequently used to marginalize and criminalize Kurdish resistance to state repression. Gurses concludes that opportunities for peace will not emerge as long as the Turkish state apparatus circumvents fundamental and meaningful sociopolitical and cultural reforms for Kurdish communities. While some may disagree, Gurses persuasively argues that the formation of a separate Kurdish state entity may be one of the only logical and remaining options for Kurds to create lasting (positive) peace. Gurses offers a straightforward organizational structure to enhance the use of his data, which is embedded in the larger theoretical analysis. His book provides four interwoven segments to guide the reader through a complex set of questions. Focusing on the impact of violence committed against noncombatants, Gurses explores the sociopolitical consequences of the decades-long civil war in Turkey. He pursues several essential and frequently interconnected questions to identify patterns of collective change that have reshaped Kurdish values and norms and contributed to organizational capacities for protest and direct action. The central questions around which the book is organized are related to (1) whether war can engender more positive attitudes towards women; (2) if exposure to war can create a deeply engaged and democratically-oriented citizenry; (3) how civil war contributes to forging a national identity; (4) if war between two same-faith groups can reshape the minority’s relationship with particular faith traditions; and (5) if civil war conditions can encourage secularization. The first part of the book is dominated by an impressive discussion of the existing body of literature related to civil wars and ethnic conflict. Here Gurses connects the specifics of the Kurdish conflict to numerous other global examples ranging from Latin to African case studies. Part two examines a wide variety of existing theories that link the democratizing potential of wars to micro-level experiences with civil wars. The third segment, a particularly compelling part of the book, contextualizes how war dynamics shape gender relations within Kurdish communities. Gurses demonstrates that Kurdish women have become visible in all areas of public life over the past three [End Page 188] decades through their involvement in activism, their roles as elected officials, and their contributions as armed combatants. Furthermore this section proposes that civil war experiences have created essential conditions for change, which in predominantly Kurdish provinces have advanced democratization and secularization movements. The final part of the book scrutinizes the literatures of ethnic conflict and peace to examine salient obstacles to achieving peace in the Turkish-Kurdish conflict (among them are linguistic and cultural patterns of repression and social prejudices held by Turks against Kurds). In an effort to test for all five questions, Gurses relies on a mixed methodological approach that allows for an examination of the underlying causes for social and political changes that appear to manifest within Kurdish cities. He relies on a large data set of 2,100 interviews carried out in three Kurdish majority provinces in Turkey, namely Diyarbakır, Van, and Sanlıurfa. Both Diyarbakır and Van provinces were selected for the study because they have been at the center of the armed conflict between PKK combatants and the Turkish government. Tens of thousands of internally displaced people from the countryside arrived in the major regional cities resulting in a precarious economic situation for the predominantly Kurdish population. As a result, pro-Kurdish parties have risen to an influential political position in both provinces. In contrast, Sanlıurfa, is a more ethnically diverse province with a sizeable...