The role of Kurdish media in the resistance against Turkification: a case study of an online Kurdish news platform

Abstract

ABSTRACT Kurds are the largest minority group in Turkey and their position is one of conflict with the ‘Turkishness Contract,’ a concept that describes the unspoken convention ensuring the ethnic privilege of Sunni-Turks and the exclusion or assimilation of those who resist Turkification. Kurds have thus experienced oppression since late Ottoman times and throughout the Republican years, up to the present day. This article suggests that the Kurdish media in Turkey have always had to negotiate state oppression by articulating a strategy of resistance to the hegemonic knowledge imposed by the state and reproduced by the mainstream media. They thus reject the Turkification that would be required to abide by the Turkishness Contract. This article's investigation of the Kurdish media takes place through an exploration of an online news platform, a self-proclaimed ‘voice of the weak.’ The data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with journalists and editors of the platform.