The dilemma of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 2013, after two years of Öcalan’s isolation and revelations of secretive Oslo meetings between the Turkish state and the PKK; the state agreed to open a new series of meetings with the Kurdish movement. Due to this relatively peaceful atmosphere, the Kurdish movement has started various activities to promote cultural nationalism and nation building. Yet, the Kurdish spring did not last long. Suddenly, the state has ended meetings with Öcalan. Thousands of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, HDP members are detained under the allegedly KCK operations. Guerrilla warfare started again, this time in the cities even. Part of the cities were destroyed and about a million civilians were displaced. This paper seeks to make sense of this policy revanchism: why after acknowledging that the military approach to the Kurdish question would never work and moving relations towards peaceful resolution instead has the Turkish state returned to the failed policy models of the past? I try to elaborate why the Kurdish movement found it hard to resist the Turkish state’s entreaty to join the so-called peace process. In addressing these questions, the paper sheds much-needed light on the complicated contemporary relations between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement.