The burden of Sisyphus: a sociological inventory of the Kurdish question in Turkey

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the contradictory transformation process the Kurdish movement has been experiencing over the last two decades and discusses its structural paradoxes and political shortcomings from a critical sociological perspective. Based on participant observation and interviews with activist researchers, the paper argues that the moral and ideological unity of the movement is challenged by ever-increasing social and mental divisions that are in turn prompted by forced displacement, rapid urbanization and diversified forms of social and symbolic inequalities within the Kurdish society. The fundamental division is between the emerging educated middle-class subjectivity, which has become the prime intellectual force leading the democratic political institutions, and the socially impoverished and radicalized urban youth, who have been active in contentious politics. This social division manifests within the dual organizational structures of the movement as twin and frequently contradictory dispositions. This schism also prevents the movement from building a much broader popular subjectivity to decolonize the social and political life.