Solidarity Among Strangers:A Problem of Coexistence in Turkey

Abstract

That the absence of democratic inclusion usually leads to the disruption of the social fabric and renders trust and peaceful coexistence increasingly difficult needs no argument. In the absence of comprehensive solidarity, coexistence is bought at the expense of a new regime of exclusion. In this paper, we discuss this as a problem of solidarity and illustrate our argument with reference to the Kurdish issue in Turkey. We find it fruitful to approach the Kurdish issue from the perspective of solidarity especially at a time when an Islamic model of social integration presents itself as an alternative to genuine democratic inclusion. Turkey left behind one of the most difficult summers of its history as the Constitutional Court was seeking to close down its ruling party, which received 47% of the votes in the 2007 general elections. When the case of closing the AKP (the Justice and Development Party) came to the Court, and the Court’s decision to not close it down generated sighs of relief. Some commentators such as Andrew Arato saw in the decision of the Court a refashioning of its role in Turkey’s political life, i.e., its search for elevating itself to the role of initiating deliberation and consensus-seeking among the conflicting parties (as the European Constitutional Courts have traditionally been doing). During the same time frame, there was another case to close down the DTP (the Democratic Society Party), the last Kurdish party to come into being after its successors were systematically closed down by the Court. This second court case remains unnoticed and the DTP’s very possible closure does not seem to stir anything that comes close to the storms that were unleashed by the possibility of the AKP’s closure. While this selective treatment of party closure cases definitely requires attention, the context in which the closure of the DTP is being sought deserves special attention. Until the 2007 election, the DTP used to earn the votes of an overwhelming majority of Kurds who reside in the southeastern region of Anatolia. Due to the carefully planned, tremendously expensive and sustained campaign by the AKP, for the first time in Turkish history, a Kurdish party faced a serious challenge in getting the votes of Kurds in the region for the first time in the recent history of Turkey. Currently, the Islamic solidarity model is portraying itself as the only viable option for a peaceful resolution to ethnic conflict within Turkey. If Turkishness and Kurdishness create problems of integration, then being Sunni Muslims would be the grounds for membership, as the reasoning goes. As more and more disillusioned Kurds become eager to be co-opted by the Sunni-based Islamic solidarity, the more likely it is for Islamic solidarity to consolidate itself as a model of social cohesion, not merely for southeastern Anatolia where a majority of Kurdish citizens reside, but also for Turkey as a whole. While such a shift from ethnicitybased political representation to an all-embracing, catch-all type representation could be seen as a welcome development especially in its potential to end a long lasting ethnic conflict, the reasons for the shift, the assumption of an encompassing Sunni Islamic identity it relies on, and the outcomes it is likely to generate should also be investigated.