Talking to the ontological other: armed struggleand the negotiations between the Turkish stateand the PKK

Harun Ercan

Published online: 20 March 2013

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Since its inception in 1923, the Turkish state has relied on ‘‘ethno-national principles of

political legitimacy’’ in which ‘‘the state is ruled in the name of an ethnically defined

people’’ and political elites ‘‘favor co-ethnics when deciding with whom to ally and to

whom to distribute public goods’’ in order to gain legitimacy (Wimmer et al. 2009).

That is, the distribution of state power in Turkey has been carried out through ethnic

hierarchies. The owners of the state have been ethnic Turks or those who deny their

ethnic identity and agree to assimilate into officially prescribed Turkish identity. This

has paved the way for a political and economic closure in Turkish state system and the

consolidation of ethno-national hierarchies. The exclusion of Kurds from political and

economic power structures as well as the dominant cultural formation occurred with

institutional regimes of denial, assimilation, and mistruth that forbade and rendered

illegitimate any claim to collective Kurdish rights.

Due to the low state capacity of the Turkish nation-state, the consolidation of

state power in the Kurdish region has primarily relied on coercion—not consent,

unsuccessful assimilation practices and the co-optation of Kurdish elites. When the

Kurdish movement emerged in the highly repressive political climate of the 1960s,

lack of state legitimacy among the Kurds, increasing Kurdish grievances, and

economic marginalization of the Kurdish region provided the mostly left-oriented

Kurdish movement with a considerable social base for political mobilization. The

state responded to this mobilization by deploying coercive means to silence it with a

strong commitment to the idea that ‘‘assimilation through repression works’’. This

deepened the state’s legitimacy crisis among the Kurds. Still, the state was

intransigent in its policy of zero tolerance to Kurdish demands as it viewed (and still

H. Ercan (&)

KOC University, Istanbul, Turkey

e-mail: harunercan@gmail.com

H. Ercan

SUNY-Binghampton, NY, USA

123

Dialect Anthropol (2013) 37:113–122

DOI 10.1007/s10624-013-9300-7

views) the Kurds as an ontological threat to its very existence, a threat that is

capable of undermining the constructed ‘‘Turkish national’’ bond between the

Turkish state and society.

The radicalization of Kurdish movement

A few decades of total silence reigned in the Kurdish region after the brutal suppression

of the first wave of Kurdish resistance during the 1920s and 1930s. This silence was

shattered in the 1960s, when the Kurds organized under the umbrella of the Turkish Left

and restarted raising demands for recognition and an end to multiple forms of

discrimination imposed on them. In this period, the Kurds did not use violence as a

means of political struggle. Yet, the Kurdish movement became quickly radicalized in

the first half of the 1970 as a response to the Turkish state’s insistence on denying the

existence of the Kurds as a people and closing all possible spaces in the legal field for

political struggle. In the early 1970s that was marked with the revolutionary spirit of

1968 as well as the still powerful politics of national liberation in the Third World,

Kurdish demands shifted away from cultural, political, and economic rights toward

national self-determination and from peaceful protest to armed resistance.

Various Marxist Kurdish organizations emerged in this period, which claimed

that Kurdistan was an international colony of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria as well as

imperial powers. The ultimate goal of most of these anti-systemic Kurdish

movements was as a socialist revolution after which the dream of a unified and

independent Kurdistan would come true. The first wave of mobilization began in the

1970s in the form of non-violent demonstrations but with an illegal ideology. The

use of violence as a political means emerged toward the end of the 1970s in

parallelism with the closure of already limited democratic spaces in Turkey. This

wave of mobilization came to violent halt with the military coup in September 1980,

which aimed to cripple working class and Kurdish struggles, repress and

depoliticize the society and clean the path for the implementation of neoliberal

economic reforms in Turkey. Tens of thousands of members and sympathizers of

the Turkish Left and Kurdish movements were imprisoned. The military junta

increased repression, committed extensive human rights violations, and used

systematic torture to pacify the revolutionaries, particularly the Kurdish ones in the

infamous Diyarbakir military prison.1 Thus, in the first half of the 1980s, the state

practically left no room for the Turkish and Kurdish revolutionaries to maneuver.

Many of these revolutionaries fled to Middle Eastern countries, searching

possibilities for guerilla training to continue their struggle through armed resistance.

Kurdish guerilla warfare

Che Guevara sets forth the following pre-conditions for fostering a revolutionary

situation via guerilla warfare: ‘‘(1) A lack of legitimacy by the incumbent elite to

1 This prison constituted an ontological warfare zone between Turkish state and Kurdish revolutionaries

since it witnessed various forms of resistance including self-immolation activities, hunger strikes and riots

as a response to tortures and Turkification practices (Ustundag 2013).

114 H. Ercan

123

govern the country, (2) Existence of tensions that cannot be redressed by regular

channels, (3) All legal avenues to change the situation are perceived as closed’’

(Moreno 1970). Although the second wave of national liberation movements across

the world had mostly passed by the first half of the 1980s, the prevalence of all these

three conditions in the Kurdish region set the grounding for the Kurdistan Workers’

Party (PKK) to start its guerilla warfare in August 1984, which eventually led to

massive political mobilization among the Kurds in the early 1990s.

Brief chronology of Kurdish

armed resistance

Crucial developments

First period (1984–1990) PKK started guerilla warfare in 1984, also proving that guerilla forces

could not be eliminated easily and shortly. The state declared

emergency state rule in the Kurdish region and created local Kurdish

militias to fight against the PKK (‘‘village guards’’). It also promoted

the discourse of terrorism as a novel way of delegitimizing the

demands of the Kurdish movement

Second period (1991–1995) This is the bloodiest phase of Kurdish armed resistance. The Turkish

military and bureaucracy were restructured so as to wage a corrupt

counter-insurgency campaign (called ‘‘the dirty war’’ as in the case of

Argentina) with the help of paramilitary forces, who committed

countless human rights violations against civilians. Ten thousands of

Kurdish guerillas and Turkish soldiers were killed in this period. The

Turkish army evacuated and burnt down about 4,000 Kurdish villages

and forcibly displaced millions of rural Kurds ‘‘to finish off the social

base of terrorism’’. Despite this repression, millions of Kurds began

to publicly support the PKK. The Kurds also established a legal

political party in 1990 and entered the Turkish parliament 1 year

later. This parliamentary experience ended, when Kurdish MPs were

expelled and imprisoned in 1994. Before this, the PKK declared a

unilateral cease-fire in Spring 1993 to pave the way for negotiations

toward a peace building

Third period (1996–1999) The third phase clarified that none of the warring parties could reach

their goals through the vicious cycle of violent encounters. The PKK

could not establish an independent Kurdistan via armed struggle and

the Turkish state could not militarily defeat the PKK. Although this

stalemate created a suitable environment for serious peace talks, the

state used this period for renewing its warfare tactics and preparing

for a last blow to ruin Kurdish guerilla forces. It abducted the PKK’s

leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in early 1999 in Kenya with the help of

American and possibly other intelligence agencies

Fourth period (2000–2005) This has been the most traumatic period for the Kurdish movement due

to the imprisonment Ocalan, who, during his defense before the

court, redefined the ultimate goal of Kurdish movement as creating a

‘‘Democratic Republic’’ capable of accommodating Kurdish cultural

and political rights. Accordingly, the movement restructured its

ideological and political orientation and started more centrally

organizing in the legal field and civil society for a peaceful resolution

of the conflict. Kurdish guerillas retreated to military camps in the

Kurdish region in Iraq to ease the peace process. The army continued

its operations to eliminate the guerilla. Ideological and political

divisions within the PKK culminated in the separation of a many

high-ranking cadres from the movement in 2003 to 2004

Talking to the ontological other 115

123

Table a continued

Brief chronology of Kurdish

armed resistance

Crucial developments

Fifth period (2005-Present) In the summer of 2004, the PKK announced that unilateral cease-fire

continuing since 1998 is over and guerilla forces will be in active

defense. The movement redefined its goal as ‘‘democratic autonomy’’

in 2007. The same year there were ineffective cross-border Turkish

military operations into the PKK’s camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. The

ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) hesitantly

acknowledged the existence of a Kurdish problem in 2005 and

announced an ‘‘opening’’ to address the problem in 2009. Legal

Kurdish political parties had significant success in successive local

and general elections in 2007, 2009, and 2011. The state recognized

limited cultural rights for the Kurds starting with limited TV

broadcasts in Kurdish in 2004, but without constitutional guarantees

or a legal framework so far. The secret Oslo Negotiations between

the PKK and Turkish state started conceivably in 2007, but they came

to a halt when the AKP consolidated its monopoly over state power

with the general elections held in June 2011

Until the 1980s, the Turkish state’s deployed a strategy of containment to deal

with the Kurdish question, which included several elements: (1) denying the

existence of Kurds as a separate people and imposing severe policies of cultural

assimilation, (2) silencing Kurdish political actors advocating for collective rights,

and (3) obstructing any attempts of bringing the Kurdish question to the attention of

the Turkish public. Before the start of guerilla warfare in 1984, the state was quite

successful in containing the diffusion of ‘‘Kurdish threat’’ with various repressive

methods. With guerilla warfare, the Kurdish movement aimed to undermine this

strategy of containment, showing that state violence could not conceal the very

existence of a Kurdish problem. After the start of guerilla warfare, besides a

commitment to defeat the PKK militarily, the state deployed (1) any repressive

means at its disposal to prevent the PKK from creating liberated areas and (2) an

effective discourse of terrorism to obstruct the visibility and diffusion of Kurdish

grievances and demands—a discourse that reduces the PKK to just ‘‘a terrorist

organization’’ that has nothing to do with Kurdish rights, severing the link between

Kurdish people and the PKK’s armed struggle.

This state strategy of containment operated dialectically. On the one hand, it

involved corrupt counter-insurgency practices and indiscriminate violence against

the Kurds to defeat the PKK militarily during the 1990s. In a way, this enabled the

state to minimize the possible outcomes of Kurdish armed struggle. Yet, the

existence of ethno-national hierarchies, increasing Kurdish grievances due to state

violence and the strength of the PKK enabled the Kurdish movement to become a

legitimate actor among the majority of Kurds, a process that simultaneously and

further delegitimized Turkish state authority. On the other hand, the state could limit

the institutionalization of Kurdish movement and hamper the diffusion of Kurdish

grievances and demands among Turkish people via demonization of the Kurdish

116 H. Ercan

123

movement, misrepresenting the dynamics behind the war and preventing the

formation of a Kurdish political agency that might be legitimate in the eyes of the

Turkish majority. Thus, the state created two different regimes of truth among the

Kurds and the Turks, which later became the main impediment to a peace process.

Dialogue with the ontological other in the midst of war

As the guardian of Kemalist principles, the founding ideology of Turkish Republic,

Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) had controlled the political regime in Turkey until

very recently. Consequently, civilian politicians could hardly act autonomously

regarding the Kurdish issue. TSK also used the existence of armed conflicts as an

excuse to consolidate and legitimize its tutelage over civilian politics. Therefore, the

secret and often indirect talks between Turkish governments and the PKK between

1984 and 1998 could not engender a serious negotiation process. They largely

remained at the phase of initial dialogue and served as tactical moves of

governments, leading to immature hopes for peace. Following a relative relaxation

of military domination in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Turgut Ozal, the leader of

Motherland Party (ANAP) and Prime Minister of Turkey, sent journalists and his

consultants to the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon to meet the PKK’s leadership.2 After

some initial dialogues in which the parties weighed each other’s approaches and

intentions, Ozal asked Jalal Talabani, current president of Iraq, to mediate a process

that culminated in the PKK’s announcing the first unilateral cease-fire in March

1993 to generate a political climate conducive for building peace. This opportunity,

however, could not be translated into concrete practices in the political realm, and

pro-dialogue figures in Turkish politics were eliminated or neutralized one after the

other (Aslan 2010; Guler 2011). The first cease-fire practically ended when Ozal

suddenly died in April 1993, which is still debated in Turkey as a suspicious

incident. The PKK leadership evaluated the first cease-fire as a sincere attempt that

was sabotaged by pro-war actors on both sides.

The Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller also involved in indirect dialogue with

the PKK, who declared a second unilateral cease-fire in December 1995. Yet,

elements of the so-called ‘‘deep state’’ organized the Guclukonak massacre3 in

January 1996, which destroyed the hopes for peace. The next Turkish government

led by Mesut Yılmaz also tried to find ways of dialogue, but a failed attempt to

assassinate Ocalan in May 1996 in Syria fueled up distrust within the PKK toward

the government. The next pro-Islamic Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan also tried

dialogue, asking Syrian authorities to convince the PKK for a new cease-fire toward

peace. The PKK leadership received this as a well-intentioned and sincere attempt.

But these efforts were obstructed with the involvement of Turkish army, who later

2 In these years, Turkish state never used direct official channels to communicate with the PKK, not

recognizing the PKK as an equivalent party due in part to worries about public reactions in case of a leak

to the media.3 Eleven Kurdish civilians were killed in Sırnak by JITEM, a special unit also composed of paramilitary

forces within the Turkish Armed Forces. Despite the state’s claims that the PKK was the perpetrator,

Adnan Ekmen, a Turkish minister, stated that it was JITEM who committed to this massacre.

Talking to the ontological other 117

123

gave an ultimatum forcing Erbakan to resign. Interestingly, in this process, the

Turkish Chief of Staff allegedly communicated with the PKK through intermedi-

aries and asked for chance to resolve the issue peacefully (Aslan 2010).4 But there

were no signs regarding a decrease in the Turkish army’s aggressive military

operations against the PKK in this period. The PKK retrospectively evaluated these

initiatives as rather tactical means to break the motivation of the guerilla and create

ungrounded hopes for peace as part of a bigger plan targeting the PKK leadership

(Karayılan 2011).

Witnessing the fact that armed conflicts were not changing the balance of power

between warring parties, the PKK leadership declared the third cease-fire in

September 1998—albeit with reasonable doubts in mind. The state responded by

first increasing military operations and then, with the support of the US, pressuring

the Syrian government to make Ocalan leave Syria in October 1998. After traveling

back and forth between several European countries none of which dared to provide

him with asylum, Ocalan went to Kenya, where, with the help of American

intelligence agents, he was handed over to Turkish authorities in February 1999.

This incident, which Ocalan called an ‘‘international conspiracy,’’ changed the

whole dynamics of the Kurdish conflict. Emboldened by the capture of Ocalan, the

state resorted to a strategy of total war to eliminate the PKK.

Almost all Turkish governments since the start of PKK’s guerilla warfare

involved in some sort of dialogue with the PKK leadership to ease or end the

political turmoil. All of these attempts failed. There are at least three major reasons

behind these failures to foster a genuine peace process. First, Turkish civilian

politicians lacked a realistic political plan to initiate a transitional justice process, as

they prioritized the security aspect of the issue. They mainly looked for short-term

relaxation periods free of PKK attacks. Second, the tutelage of Turkish military over

governments created a serious deterring effect on civilian actors, while military

operations ceaselessly continued even during cease-fire periods.5 The army used

these cease-fires on a tactical basis as relative advantage in war, viewing them as

signs of the PKK’s military weakness. Third, the war itself engendered interests

groups within the state security bureaucracy, who profited from the war and tried to

undermine any efforts toward negotiations and peace building.

The AKP, ‘‘democratic opening’’ and Oslo negotiations

The ten-year rule of Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey (2002-Present)

has witnessed a fierce competition for power between the AKP-led neoliberal

Islamists and the Kemalist establishment, which ended up with the clear victory of

the former in 2010. In the Kurdish scene, after having overcome its internal crisis

due to the imprisonment Ocalan in 1999, the PKK initiated an ‘‘active defense

4 In February 1997, the so-called post-modern military coup took place. Rather than taking total control

over politics and abrogating the parliament, the miliatary establishment enforced the enactment of new

pro-secularism laws to pacify the Islamists and reinstate Kemalist principles.5 The presence of ‘‘deep state’’ in Turkey had also been a crucial impediment to possible peace processes

by not letting any other actors from Turkish side to politically involve in the solution of the conflict.

118 H. Ercan

123

strategy’’ in April 2005. A few months later, a new legal Kurdish political party,

Democratic Society Party (DTP), was established. What has driven the AKP to

establish dialogue and negotiate with the Kurdish movement in recent years can be

explained by two important dynamics: (1) The inability of Turkish government to

resist a new wave of political mobilization led by the PKK that has effectively used

both armed struggle and peaceful protest since 2005, (2) the AKP government’s

willingness to control the field of Kurdish politics and prevent further instability that

would undermine its political power—particularly in the course of its fierce fight

with the Kemalists to control state power.

After Ocalan’s capture, the PKK clearly renounced the goal of an independent

Kurdish nation-state. It gradually redefined its goal as ‘‘democratic autonomy’’ and

without following a secessionist path (Kapmaz 2011). In the meantime, the Turkish

state became aware that sheer repression would not only further Kurdish political

mobilization but also deepen division within the Turkish ruling bloc and so there

was an urgent need for more refined policies to manage Kurdish dissent.6 Still, the

Turkish army launched several military operations both in Turkey and Iraqi

Kurdistan. The PKK retaliated with deadly attacks. After the last cross-border

ground military operation into Iraqi Kurdistan in 2008, the state elites’ belief in

destroying the PKK militarily considerably weakened, as the PKK proved its strong

capacity for armed resistance during the operation. On the legal side of the struggle,

the Kurdish movement managed to have a linear success in successive elections

from 2004 to 2011. It increased the number of its representatives in the Turkish

parliament and won the majority of municipalities in the Kurdish region.

Although Turkish liberal intellectuals depict it as the agent of genuine democratic

change in the field of Kurdish politics, the AKP has been pragmatic, cautious, and

risk-averse in its dealings with the Kurds. The AKP’s ‘‘democratization’’ project

regarding the Kurdish has a twofold strategy. First, it granted the Kurds with limited

cultural and linguistic rights (see Derince in this issue)—although without

constitutional or legal recognition of Kurdish identity. The so-called ‘‘Kurdish

opening’’ that the AKP initiated in 2009, however, was not carried out in dialogue

with the Kurdish movement. Quite the contrary, the AKP used this limited opening

to delegitimize and undermine the Kurdish movement, particularly in legal politics,

claiming that AKP was the only genuine representative of the Kurds in Turkey.

Moreover, this ‘‘opening’’ was accompanied by a systematic wave of repression to

destroy both the PKK and the BDP or at least to limit their institutionalization and

damage their organizational structure. In short, the ‘‘opening’’ has been an integral

part of a violent strategy to paralyze the Kurdish movement by closing the political

system to it. Just 2 weeks after the victory of the Kurdish movement in municipal

elections in 2009, the Turkish police started ‘‘the KCK operations’’. This repression

campaign started with the arrest of over fifty Kurdish politicians and activists—all

in the legal field. Then, it turned into a total politicide. Since April 2009, more than

8,000 members of the BDP-led Kurdish legal political movement have been jailed.

6 As a consequence of the strife among the AKP and Kemalist forces, the discourse of democratization in

Turkey gained relative strength between 2006 and 2010, until the AKP took under control the Turkish

Armed Forces.

Talking to the ontological other 119

123

Among these are three vice-chairs of the DTP, of which the BDP is the political

heir, six parliamentarians, over thirty mayors and ex-mayors, many provincial chairs

and executives of the BDP, Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals, some seventy

journalists, hundreds of students, and thousands of children.

The second strategy of in the AKP was to minimize the political cost of PKK’s

armed attacks during its struggle against the army, hence its public support for

military operations and appeal to conventional security measures. The AKP did

something else, though. It reorganized the police and intelligence departments to

replace or decenter the army in its ‘‘fights against terrorism’’. Interestingly, the

AKP’s democratization discourse and dialogue with the PKK continued until it took

the army and other elements of Kemalist bureaucracy under its tight control in 2011.

Although Turkish liberals hoped that the control of the army would help to solve the

Kurdish issue peacefully, the AKP disappointed them by resorting to an increasingly

authoritarian Kurdish policy after it won its fight with the army.

Things become more complicated when one also considers the AKP’s initiation

of a secret and open-ended dialogue with the PKK in Oslo—conceivably in 2007,

which culminated in some negotiations in 2009 and 2010, but then came to a halt in

2011. Oslo Negotiations refer to five secret meetings between the PKK and Turkish

state authorities—the first official negotiations in the history of the Kurdish conflict.

These negotiations were deciphered when a tape record of the fifth meeting was

leaked to the media in September 2011. Evidently, the PKK and Turkish

intelligence were negotiating confidence-building measures, the control of armed

conflicts, and a possible cease-fire toward a final settlement of the issue. The most

important confidence-building effort was the Xabur incident. In October 2009,

Ocalan asked the PKK to send a group of guerilla from its camps in Iraqi Kurdistan

to Turkey as ‘‘peace groups’’—a gesture to show the sincerity of the Kurdish

movement for peace building and also to measure the state’s reactions. Peace groups

entered Turkey through the Xabur gate on the Turkish/Iraqi border. Turkish

authorities did not arrest them, which was taken by the PKK as a good sign. Things

became complicated, however, when hundred of thousands of Kurds went to the

border to meet and celebrate the guerillas. This celebration alarmed Turkish

nationalists, politicians, and media, who started provoking the Turkish public by

depicting the incidents as an insult to Turkish national identity, attracting particular

attention to how people embraced ‘‘terrorists’’ as if they were ‘‘heroes’’. The idea of

peace groups did not serve the purpose well. Almost all of the members of these

groups were later tried in Turkish courts and many returned to Iraqi Kurdistan to

rejoin the guerilla.

The most crucial item of the Oslo negotiations was Ocalan’s three protocols on

the principles to be followed and actions to be taken toward ultimate peace. The first

protocol detailed principles for a democratic constitution. The second was

concerned with the reorganization of state-society relations toward a fair peace.

And the third included an urgent action plan. Some of the specific suggestions

included in the protocol were the formation of a peace council, truth commissions, a

democratic constitution, mutual forgiveness, political decentralization, and recog-

nition of Kurdish collective rights. The Turkish authorities in the negotiation table

reportedly said they would bring to the next meeting the government’s decision on

120 H. Ercan

123

the protocols after the general election in June 2011. But the government did not

respond to the protocols, at least not positively. The expected meeting did not take

place and Oslo negotiations practically ended. The government became increasingly

repressive after its electoral victory by winning 50 % of total votes. Armed conflicts

increased in 2011 and peaked in 2012. There are signs that it will be worse in 2013,

if there is no progress toward restarting the negotiations.

The Turkish government, media, and liberal intellectuals claim that the main

reason behind the termination of Oslo negotiations was the lack of determination

and sincerity on the part of the Kurdish movement. They attract attention to the

PKK’s launching attacks on Turkish security forces at critical times—although they

never mention the never-ending military operations against the PKK. More

importantly, they reduce negotiations to a technical matter and blame the ‘‘radical

nature’’ of the PKK, while simultaneously concealing the structural/ontological

factors that halted the peace process. The PKK, however, evaluated the negotiations

as a tactical diversion that the government designed and used in two ways. The

diversion helped the AKP to win its fight against the Kemalist establishment. It also

allowed the AKP to have a successful election campaign during which the PKK

practiced a de facto cease-fire—which was one demand of the Turkish side on the

negotiation table.

Peace requires a structural transformation of the Turkish political system that was

founded on the very exclusion of the Kurds. That is, peace is a foundational question

of political ontology—not a technical matter. The crucial questions beg answers

here are: Was the government really willing and ready to transform the ethno-

national hierarchies that favor Turks at the expense of Kurds—the main reason why

Turkey has a Kurdish conflict in the first place? Was it really willing and ready for a

structural change in the redistribution of political power and sovereignty on an equal

basis? I argue that the Oslo negotiations stopped when the moment for the AKP to

take practical steps arrived, that is, when it had to make a radical decision on

whether to proceed with a risky process that would require accepting Ocalan’s

protocols and transforming the country’s ideological and political structures that are

based on foundational ethno-national hierarchies. Peace is a particularly risky

political matter in a country where populist nationalism is the best electoral

currency for all political parties. I mean the cost of making peace with the PKK can

be devastating in elections. AKP’s unwillingness to pay the cost of peace also

coincided with its middle-run political plans to consolidate its power and Erdogan’s

ambition to become the next president in 2014. For both of these, the AKP needs

Turkish nationalist votes. It is not difficult to see from a cold realist perspective that

a genuine peace politics may not serve to this end.

Overcoming these structural/ontological impediments to peace either is beyond

the power of political actors in short run or requires long-term and risky

preparations and investments. The resolution of the Kurdish conflict requires a

political order without any ethno-national hierarchies. The creation of such an order

would require at least the following: (1) restarting negotiations and taking

immediate measures to create a non-violent political environment, (2) explicitly

denouncing the oppressive character of Turkish national identity and making

necessary constitutional changes to provide all ethno-national groups with equal

Talking to the ontological other 121

123

rights, (3) coming to terms with past wrongdoings of the state and the Kurdish

movement and revealing truths of the war in accordance with transitional justice

procedures, (4) designing nationwide political campaigns to disseminate these truths

and restore justice, and (5) dismantling centralized political structures by designing

a decentralized political and administrative model open to accommodating Kurdish

demands for autonomous rule.

References

Aslan, Gunay TC. 2010. nin PKK ile Gorusmeleri. Taraf 10: 07.

Kapmaz, Cengiz. 2011. Ocalan’ın Imralı Gunleri. Istanbul: Ithaki.

Guler, Mehmet Ali. 2011. Hukumet—PKK Gorusmeleri (1986–2011). Istanbul: Kaynak Yayınları.Moreno, Jose A. 1970. Che Guevara on Guerrilla warfare: Doctrine, practice and evaluation. Comparative

Studies in Society and History 12: 114–133.

Karayılan, Murat. 2011. Bir Savasın Anatomisi: Kurdistan’da Askeri Cizgi. NA: Mezopotamya Yayınları.Ustundag. 2013. Interview with Nazan Ustundag on Diyarbakır Military-Prison, Toplum ve Kuram

Dergisi 8: (n.a.) (Forthcoming).

Wimmer, Andreas, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Brian Min. 2009. Ethnic politics and armed conflict: A

configurational analysis of a new global data set. American Sociological Review 74: 316–337.

122 H. Ercan

123