1) Introduction
This paper aims to critically analyze the ways in which liberal and humanitarian civil society and NGO’s in Turkey perceive, approach, and develop policy proposals about the problem concerning the internally displaced Kurdish populations. By focusing on the liberal policy proposals concerning the problems of internally displaced people, I want to analyze the ways in which Kurds are imagined and produced as subjects of liberal and multicultural rights. Here, I will show both the limits of the liberal multicultural imagination and the sites where liberal multicultural projects and proposals conceal other projects and imaginations concerning justice.
Throughout the paper I will compare the statements of the Turkish state elites and army officers towards the Kurdish uprising in the eastern and southeastern Turkey since 1984 on the one hand, and the reconsideration and reproduction of the Kurdish ‘problem’ within the context of cultural recognition especially after 2000s by the Turkish liberal and humanist intelligentsia, composed of liberal academicians, journalists, writers, human rights activists and organizations, think-tank institutions, and various NGOs, on the other.
I argue that although definition and recognition of the Kurds as an ethnic-minority by some of these liberal and humanitarian NGO’s that work on the problems of the internally displaced Kurdish people is presented as a challenge against the official discourse of the Turkish state that continually denies the political presence of the Kurds, the liberal project fails in identifying and problematizing the structural political and social reasons behind the Kurdish problem such as the ongoing armed conflict in the southeast provinces of Turkey, the current ban on the Kurdish language, and the continuing criminalization of being and claiming a Kurd. Moreover, the liberal and humanitarian proposals also fail in specifying different effects of internal displacement over particular groups such as women, children, old and young Kurdish people. Unlike the Kurdish men, who have to learn Turkish during their obligatory military service, Kurdish women, who never engaged with the Turkish language in their lives before they arrive in the big western cities of Turkey, appear today as the most silenced, suppressed and discriminated population group of the new urban terrain that is shaped by the forced migration of the Kurds. A discussion of the structural questions of the internally displaced Kurdish women whose particular problems cannot be understood and solved within the discourse of rights will compose a significant part of this paper.
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“Analar milyonlarca Mehmetçik doğurabilir ama bir Skorsky helikopter doğuramaz…”
“Turkish mothers can give birth to millions of Mehmetciks (Turkish soldiers), yet they cannot give birth to a Skorsky helicopter…”
(A Turkish military commander’s response to his injured soldiers, who asked for a Skorsky helicopter to carry them immediately to the hospital)

Introduction:
In this paper I aim to analyze the ways in which the sovereign-image of the Turkish state is formed. My basic question is: Why in Turkey the survival of the state (‘devletin bekaasi’) is always considered as more important than the survival of the citizens when there is a conflict between their interests? Furthermore, what are the conditions of possibility that allow Turkish state officials to express this fact publicly as the words of the Turkish general quoted above bear witness?
To be sure, one can rightly argue that in many other countries, too, the survival of the state cannot be risked because of individual citizens’ interests that conflict with the interests of the state. Yet, it is unusual to hear this statement explicitly from the officials of governments and armies where the public image of the government appears as the protector of its own population. Thus, in such countries it is expected that the government should be even prepared to sacrifice itself for the sake of the well being, security and survival of the population. For instance, in France, in July 2008, when it was realized that during a military exercise 17 civilians were injured by mistake because of the use of real bullets instead of fake ones, the chief of the general staff of France, General Bruno Cuche declared his resignation, and the resignation was confirmed immediately by the President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy . As a more recent example, on December 6, 2008, when a 16 year old anarchist was shot to dead by the Greek police, the Greek government declared a public apology, the Ministry of Interior decided to resign though his resignation was not approved by the Prime Minister. The two police officers who were claimed to be responsible for the death of the young anarchist were dismissed from the police department and started to be tried. When demonstrations against the government began the Greek Prime Minister stated: “Democracies aim to protect their people, and not to kill them. What the police did is an individual but a shameful act. Therefore, I understand the protests of the people.”
To be sure, both the resignation of the French chief of the general staff and the statement of the Greek Prime Minister reflects an understanding of a liberal democratic government, whose target is the survival, security, and well-being of both each member and all the population of the nation. Such kind of a power regime that takes care of the health, security, welfare and efficiency of the population is defined by Michel Foucault as bio-power or governmentality. For him, what is distinctive of bio-power/governmentality is its aim to secure the whole population. Foucault traces the roots of such kind of power regime in the western tradition of pastorship and in the image of the shepherd-king, who sacrifices himself for the sake of the survival and well-being of his flock. Similar to the image of the shepherd-king of ancient times, for Foucault, modern liberal western state appears as a mechanism of governmental management that aims to maximize the common benefits and improve the conditions of life and the possibility of the survival of the general population. According to this formulation population is the primary target of bio-politics; and government is just the institutionalized form/effect of the management of this population. Foucault claims that bio-power designates the dominant mode of power in contemporary West, and nowadays we are witnessing the progressive ‘governmentalization’ of the power relations.
However, the situation in Turkey is different.
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Turkiye’de Iktidari Yeniden Dusunmek (Rethinking Power in Turkey) is a collective work of Professors and Ph. D. students, who study on the reconfiguration and transformation of power relations in Turkey especially after the 1980 military coup. The book is the first and unique analysis of power relations in Turkey through a post-structuralist and Foucauldian theoretical framework. In that sense, Turkiye’de Iktidari Yeniden Dusunmek (Rethinking Power in Turkey) does not only provide a novel analysis of power and government in Turkey but it also presents a critique of the former liberal and Marxist approaches towards the nature of power in Turkey.

Table of Contents:
-”Preface” / by K. Murat Guney
-”Power and Reality in Turkey” / by Meltem Ahiska
-”The Fear of Archive and the Black Notebook of Nizami Bey: History, Memory and Power in Turkey” / by Meltem Ahiska
-”The Gender of Europe: The Docile Virgin, The Absorbing Female, and The Conquering Son” / by Nurdan Gurbilek
-”Patterns of Behavior, Forms of Interpretation, and Inequality in a Istanbul Courthouse” / by Dicle Kogacioglu
-”The Youth, Population and Power in Turkey” / by Ferhunde Ozbay
-”Non-Governmental Organizations in Turkey: ‘Voluntarism’ in the Age of Modernity, Nationalism and Neo-Liberalism” / by Yasemin Ipek Can
-”Different Faces of Power and the Transformation of Alevi Identity” / by Ozlem Goner
-”‘Managing’ the Kurdish Question” / by Firat Bozcali
-”A New Hegemonic Battlefield: The Formation of the Official Kurdish TV, TRT6″ / by T. Balca Arda
-”Being Mothers of the Army: Mothers of Martyrs in Turkey” / by Esra Gedik
-”AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the ‘new’ Power in Turkey” / by K. Murat Guney

The Paper Presented in the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting in 2008 in San Francisco.

1 - The Power of Death over Life
1.1 - The Life of Ikbal Yasar’s Dead Body
On 22nd of March, 2008, Ikbal Yasar, a 20 year old Kurdish man was killed by the Turkish police in Yuksekova , a Kurdish populated town in the southeast corner of Turkey on the border of Iran and Iraq. 22nd of March was the day when most of the Kurds in Turkey were celebrating Newroz that is the Kurdish New Year. Yet, since celebrating Newroz in many eastern and southeastern Kurdish populated provinces of Turkey was banned by the Turkish state, Newroz celebrations usually transformed into Kurdish people’s protest of and resistance to the Turkish state. Ikbal Yasar was shot to dead by the police during such a demonstration. A day after, at the midnight of 23rd of March at 2am, the body of Ikbal Yasar was buried hurriedly in a cemetery close to the government offices in the town. The immediate burial of Yasar was ordered by the governor of the town and the chief officer of the police. There was no funeral prayer. The burial of someone at midnight indeed violates the customary code of funeral in Islam. Nevertheless, Ikbal Yasar, whose official ID given by the Turkish State showed that he was a male human being, a believer of Islam and a citizen of Turkey when he was alive, was buried as if he was nothing but a residue of some flesh.
This treatment of Ikbal Yasar’s dead body is just an example within lots of stories about the humiliation and distortion of dead bodies of Kurdish demonstrators or guerillas during the civil war in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces which started in 1984 and still continues today.
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Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a US official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians’ fault, due to their violent nature.

The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song.

And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.

Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government’s heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.

The steps it has taken are those of a classic military war of conquest: first an intense mass bombing in order to destroy “strategic” military points (that’s how the military manuals put it) and to “soften” the resistance’s reinforcements; next a fierce control over information: everything that is heard and seen “in the outside world,” that is, outside the theater of operations, must be selected with military criteria; now intense artillery fire against the enemy infantry to protect the advance of troop to new positions; then there will be a siege to weaken the enemy garrison; then the assault that conquers the position and annihilates the enemy, then the “cleaning out” of the probable “nests of resistance.”

The military manual of modern war, with a few variations and additions, is being followed step-by-step by the invading military forces.

We don’t know a lot about this, and there are surely specialists in the so-called “conflict in the Middle East,” but from this corner we have something to say: According to the news photos, the “strategic” points destroyed by the Israeli government’s air force are houses, shacks, civilian buildings. We haven’t seen a single bunker, nor a barracks, nor a military airport, nor cannons, amongst the rubble. So–and please excuse our ignorance–we think that either the planes’ guns have bad aim, or in Gaza such “strategic” military points don’t exist.
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The Memorandum

On February 28, 1997 General Staff ordered a notice to the government on the rising reactionary and separatist activities in the monthly meeting of the National Security Council. After the notice, the coalition government led by Islamists was dissolved and a new coalition government was formed by secularist parties (the post-modern coup d’état). Then, state held activities against Kurdist and especially Islamist groups started to take place. In 2000, a deputy from the Islamist party (Virtue Party) made public the existence of a memorandum that suggests a set of activities against certain newspapers, journalists, and political parties. General Staff accepted the existence of the memorandum. On March 9, 2007, the weekly magazine Nokta brought out another memorandum which was produced within the General Staff again. The title of the document is as follows: The Reevaluation of Accredited Press Organs. Memorandum evaluates certain press organs and journalists in terms of their credibility and it classifies them as anti-TAF (Turkish Armed Forces) or pro-TAF.
According to the memorandum, journalists who do not have credibility must not be invited to any TAF press activities because of the fact that they can make disinformation campaigns, they can collect secret information on TAF and convey it to separatist groups, and finally they can attack military staff or facilities. In other words, “some” journalists can be a spy of the terrorists or even a suicide bomber. It would seem that the main criterion of the credibility is just making criticism of TAF. Because journalists criticized TAF for adopting a soft stance and journalists criticized TAF for not fully supporting Turkey’s EU membership and democratization reforms, are both labeled as anti-TAF journalists.
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Turkish Commander Requested Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister to prove his Turkishness

The leading government party in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), the Republican Turkish Party (RTP) held its party conference on March 18, 2007. The commander of the Cyprus Turkish Peace Forces Lieutenant General Hayri Kivrikoglu protested the Prime Minister and head of RTP Ferdi Sabit Soyer and refused to shake his hand in a meeting held that evening. Kivrioglu asked him why they held a party conference on the memorial day of martyrs, why they did not play the Independence Anthem (the Turkish National Anthem), or did not hang th poster of Ataturk and Turkish flags in the party conference. Finally, Kivrikoglu requested Soyer, the Prime Minister to prove his Turkishness.
The Prime Minister was shocked to hear a commander from Turkey question his Turkishness in his country. He replied that there were posters of Ataturk and Turkish flags in the conference and he underlined the fact that playing the Independence Anthem in party conferences is not compulsory. Soyer protested Kivrikoglu and stated that nobody could question their Turkishness, they do not need authorization from any circles because they are the representatives of the people of TRNC. According to TRNC Constitution, the state is to follow Ataturk’s principles and all deputies have to swear that they will follow Ataturk’s principles as well.
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by Saul Newman

Max Stirner’s impact on contemporary political theory is often neglected. However in Stirner’s political thinking there can be found a surprising convergence with poststructuralist theory, particularly with regard to the function of power. Andrew Koch, for instance, sees Stirner as a thinker who transcends the Hegelian tradition he is usually placed in, arguing that his work is a precursor poststructuralist ideas about the foundations of knowledge and truth (Koch 1997). Koch argues that Stirner’s individualistic challenge to the philosophical bases of the State goes beyond the limits of traditional Western philosophy, presenting a challenge to its transcendentalist epistemology. In light of this connection established by Koch between Stirner and poststructuralist epistemology, I shall look at Stirner’s convergence with a certain poststructuralist thinker, Gilles Deleuze, on the question of the State and political power. There are many important parallels between these two thinkers, and they may be viewed, in different ways, as anti-State, anti-authoritarian philosophers. I want to show the way in which Stirner’s critique of the State anticipates Deleuze’s poststructuralist rejection of State thought, and more importantly, the ways in which their anti-essentialist, post-humanist anarchism transcends and, thus, reflects upon, the limits of classical anarchism. The paper looks at the links between human essence, desire and power that form the bases of State authority. So while Koch focuses on Stirner’s rejection of the epistemological foundations of the State, the emphasis of this paper is on Stirner’s radical ontology – his unmasking of the subtle connections between humanism, desire and power. I will also argue that this critique of humanist power that both Stirner and Deleuze are engaged in can provide us with contemporary strategies of resistance to State domination.
It must be understood, however, that while there are important similarities between Stirner and Deleuze, there are also many differences, and, in many ways, it may seem an unusual approach to bring these two thinkers together. For instance, Stirner was, along with Marx, one of the Young Hegelians, whose work emerged as a supremely individualistic critique of German Idealism, particularly of the Feuerbachian and Hegelian kind. Deleuze, on the other hand, was a twentieth century philosopher who, along with Foucault and Derrida, is regarded as one of the chief ‘poststructuralist’ thinkers. While Deleuze’s work can also be seen as an attack on Hegelianism, it follows different and more diverse paths, from politics and psychoanalysis, to literature and film theory. Stirner is not generally regarded as a ‘poststructuralist’, and, apart from Koch’s groundbreaking article (Koch 1997) and Derrida’s work on Marx (Derrida 1994), he has received virtually no attention in the light of contemporary theory. However, and this is perhaps the problem with labels like ‘poststructuralism’, there are several crucial planes of convergence between these two thinkers – particularly in their critique of political domination and authority - that one can tease out, and which would be denied if one stuck to such labels. It is precisely in this rejection of the tyranny of ‘labels’, essential identities, abstractions and ‘fixed ideas’ - this attack on authoritarian concepts which limit thought - that Stirner and Deleuze achieve some sort of common ground. This is not to ignore the differences between them, but on the contrary, to show how these differences to resonate together in unpredictable and contingent ways to form, in Deleuze’s words, ‘planes of consistency’ from which new political concepts can be formed.
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“You left your loved ones, your children, your grand children. You left these people who salute you here; you left my arms. You didn’t leave your country” -Rakel Dink

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Şişli this morning for Hrant Dink, ethnic Armenian writer who was assassinated on January 19, 2007.
The first ceremony took place in front of the offices of Agos,the newspaper Dink founded and where he was murdered by a young extremist. Mourners, dressed in black and carrying signs reading “We are all Armenians”, crammed the square outside the offices.
Many roads have been shut to allow the mourners to proceed.
The funeral then left for the Armenian Orthodox Church Santa Maria, where Patriarch of the Anatolian Armenians, Mesrob II conducts the religious ceremony. On the other hand, the funeral march reached to the Balıklı Armenian Cemetery where Dink will be laid to rest. Thousands walked the 8 km. road chanting “We’re all Hrant”.

“You’re torn apart from your loved ones, from your children, from me but not from your country” said his wife Rakel Dink addressing to the crowd. Here is Rakel Dink’s complete speech:

Hrant’s companion was given to me. Today I’m here with great sorrow and dignity. Me, my kids, my family and you; we’re all in deep sorrow. This silent love holds us, gives us a aggrieved joy. John 15:13, the Bible says nobody has a greater love than the one who gives one’s life for one’s friends.
Dear friends, today we mourn and salute my other half, my love, father of my children, your brother. We’ll be marching silently without disturbing those near us, without chanting slogans, without banners. With this silence, we’ll cry aloud today. Today is the day when deep darkness would reach out to light.
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The last article of Hrant Dink, Turkish-Armenian writer, that appeared on his newspaper Agos the day he was assassinated.
by Hrant Dink
Source: Agos Newspaper
January 19, 2007

In the beginning I was not concerned about the investigation initiated by Şişli Public Prosecutor under the pretext “insulting Turkish identity”.
This was not for the first time. I was familiar with a similar case from Urfa. I was being prosecuted since three years because of my statement at a conference in Urfa in 2002 where I said that “I was not Turk but an Armenian and a citizen of Turkey” and there was again the accusation of “insulting Turkish identity”. I was completely unaware of the trials, I was not interested at all. Some of my lawyer friends from Urfa were dealing with the case in my absence.
I was completely indifferent too when I gave my interrogation to Public Prosecutor in Şişli. In the end I was trusting to my article and my good will. If Public Prosecutor evaluated the whole of the series of my articles and not this single sentence which alone did not make any sense at all, then he would easily understand that I had not an intention of “insulting Turkish identity” and this comedy would end, I thought.
I was completely sure that after the interrogation I would be not be sued at all.
I was sure of myself
But to my surprise, the case came up in court.
Still I didn’t lose my optimism. So I even told to lawyer Kerinçsiz who accused me during a live Tv program that “he should not be so eager that I would not be punished due to this case and that in case of punishment I would leave the country.” I was sure of myself, I really did not have the will or intention to “insult the Turkish identity”. Everyone reading the whole of the series of my articles would understand this.
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