The Extended Version of the Paper Presented in the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting in November 2010, New Orleans

After 25 years long armed conflict between the Kurdish guerilla, the PKK and the Turkish army in the southeastern provinces of Turkey, in 2008 the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party (the AKP) government introduced the first concrete governmental proposal in Turkey to solve the Kurdish question. The liberal proposals for the solution of the Kurdish question were named by the AKP government as the “democratic opening process”. The “democratic opening process” intends to solve the Kurdish question through the means of the cultural recognition and economic development. On January 1st 2009 as the first step of the “democratic opening process” the first official Kurdish TV channel in Turkey namely the “the TRT Ses (The Turkish Radio and Television Six”) started to broadcast. After the years long bloody conflict that left behind 40.000 deaths and about 3 million internally displaced people, and after the years long official denial of the Kurdish presence in Turkey, the recognition of the Kurdish culture through the introduction of an official TV channel that broadcasts in Kurdish appeared at the first glance as a revolutionary step in the Turkish political history.

However, just like any other liberal democratic “opening” for the cultural recognition and inclusion, the democratic opening process of the AKP government, too, had its limits: About one month after the first official Kurdish TV started to broadcast, the leader of the pro-Kurdish party at that time, Ahmet Turk, disclosed the limits of the “democratic opening” through his speech on the international mother language day, February 21st, 2009. When Ahmet Turk started to speak in the parliament in his mother language, namely in Kurdish, the live broadcast of the official television of the parliament was immediately cut, and an official warning was read: “The constitution and the law on political parties prohibit the usage of any language other than Turkish in the parliament. Therefore we had to cut the live broadcast and we apologize for this!” Following this incident the parliament speaker of that time and a former member of the AKP, Koksal Toptan released a statement declaring that “in the parliament the use of any language except Turkish means an open violation of the constitution.”

Here, the hypocrisy of the AKP government is based on a clear separation between the cultural and the political dimensions of the Kurdish problem. According to the new liberal democratic opening policy of the AKP, one can legally sing in Kurdish or talk about “cultural” issues in Kurdish only in the official Kurdish TV channel, but it is illegal to speak in Kurdish to express “political” demands in the parliament.
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Photo: Hundreds of Kurdish politicians including mayors of major cities and towns who were elected by majority vote were arrested and handcuffed by the Turkish police in December 2009.

Paper Presented in the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting in December 2009, Philadelphia

During the civil war in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces between the Turkish army and the Kurdish guerilla, the PKK, state’s sovereignty operated in the zone of indistinction between the citizen and the terrorist, between the loyal ones and the betrayers, between the human and non-human. What is distinctive of Turkish state’s approach is its insistence on the inclusion of the Kurdish people into the rule of law as Turkish citizens who are considered belonging to the sphere of protection by the state, and state’s simultaneous persistence on the exclusion of the Kurds as active or potential terrorists that should be eliminated for the sake of the survival of the state. Even when the civil war is at its peak in 90s and when hundreds of people died from each side every month; and the majority of the Kurdish population in the region turned their back on the state, the Turkish state never gave up on its instance on including the population of the eastern and southeastern provinces into its rule of law. Thus, continue to exercise its sovereign power through the management of the ambiguous separation between the citizens of Turkey in the region and some ‘monstrous terrorist who are inveigled by foreign forces that dedicated themselves to divide Turkey’. Even though a certain part of the PKK guerilla who fight on the mountains at night are the tradesmen in the streets during the day; and although the guerilla are sons, daughters, fathers or mothers of the ‘Kurdish civilians in the streets’, the formation of the so-called ‘civillian’-‘terrorist’ distinction within Kurds allowed the Turkish state to continue its military interventions ‘on account of the security of the population in this region’. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan often repeated this so-called distinction between civilians and terrorists, by arguing that “the Turkish state is the protector of the civilians in the region against the PKK” .
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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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Opposition leader Baykal criticizes TRT6, saying “the state shall remain blind to ethnic identities”. Professor Cankaya reacts: “Public TV should benefit all citizens.” Reactions from Kurdish activists divided, suggesting lack of legal base shows government’s insincerety.
(Source) Bia news center - İstanbul

Scholars and activists welcome the new Kurdish channel in state television and ask for improved rights to private channels amid reactions from main opposition party and some circles of the Kurdish movement.

Republican People’s Party (CHP) president Deniz Baykal criticized the incentive, saying, “the state shall remain blind to ethnic identities of citizens” and spending public money to that end.

“Public broadcasting should benefit all citizens. Politicians must review their approach to notions like state of law and rights of citizens, plurality and equality,” professors Özden Cankaya of Galatasaray University, told bianet. “This channel could provide an opportunity to bring education services to Kurdish speaking population in Turkey, who are deprived of such for a long time. I would also contribute to efforts of peace.”

Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) begin broadcasting in Kurdish on January 1st, through the newly established TRT 6. Consisting of programs aimed at children and women as well as cultural and news bulletins, the new channel is on air 12 hours a day. Renowned Kurdish artists such as musician Rojin take part in the broadcast.

While the government promotes TRT 6 as a part of its plans to recognize cultural plurality in the country, some criticize the move as insincere and as a political trick to win Kurdish votes before the upcoming local elections in March.

Lack of a sound lawful base for the broadcast provides grounds for this argument. A procedure for TV and radio broadcasts in “languages other than Turkish that are traditionally used by Turkish citizens were established in 2006.

On the other hand, the foreseen broadcasts were limited to 45 minutes a day, subtitles in Turkish were mandatory and programs aimed at children were banned. Local TV stations like Gün TV faced pressures and prosecutions upon claims of violating this code. “Without a new law, introduction of TRT 6 won’t benefit us” said Ahmet Birsen of Gün TV. “Our channel was closed for a year for airing Şivan Perwer’s song Xalo. Now, it was on TRT 6 on its opening day. Implementation of the law remains arbitrary.”

Reiterating the argument, pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) MP Gültan Kışanak insisted that without recognizing the same rights for private channels, TRT 6 would remain a hoax to undermine their struggle for cultural rights.

On the other hand, president of the Women’s Center (KA-MER) in Diyarbakır, Nebahat Akkoç, welcomed the incentive as an important step. “We’ll intervene to influence the content of the broadcast. Women in could benefit from TRT 6 if they could learn their rights in their own language.”(EÜ)

Pro-Kurdish DTP leader Ahmet Türk has been condemned to six months in prison for referring ex-guerilla leader Öcalan in a respectable manner. Three other local party administrators have been arrested for “making propaganda of the terrorist organization.

Source: BIA Nerws Center
08/03/2007 Erol ONDEROGLU
(Ankara) - Legal cases and convictions curb administrators and members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).
Lastly, DTP chair Ahmet Türk has been condemned to six months imprisonment on allegations of “praising a crime or a criminal” in a speech.
“In the current situation where we try hard to silence the weapons, increasing isolation of Mr. Öcalan further deepens social concerns” said Türk, addressing a local crowd in Diyarbakır. Referring the late Kurdish guerilla group PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan as “Mister” constituted the above-defined crime, according to the court.
The decision disclosed was given “considering the repeating referrals of Türk to Öcalan with a respectable appellation and his potential as a party leader to influence public”.
The speech in question was made on January 18, 2006 as a press conference at the end of a meeting of all local mayors adhering to DTP.
On another account, three district administrators of the party have been arrested by court order following Batman Public Prosecutor’s complaint. They face allegations of “making the propaganda of the terrorist organization”.
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The Destruction and Reconstruction of Hope

In order to watch a video about this event on youtube please click the link below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y0TWmPj_UI

On November 9, 2005, a stranger approached the ‘Umut’ (which means ‘Hope’) Bookstore in Semdinli, a small town in southeastern Turkey populated mostly by Kurds. He took out two grenades from his pockets, threw them on the floor and fled. Seconds later, the little shop exploded. Seferi Yilmaz, the shop’s owner, -a former Kurdish rebel and political prisoner-, and the apparent target of the attack, saw the stranger and the bombs before the explosion and run after the suspect as the explosion took the life of his neighbor Mehmet Zahir Korkmaz. Following the bombing of the bookstore, townspeople, alerted by Seferi Yilmaz, witnessed that the suspect got into a car which was escaping from the place of incident. People ran after it and caught the car with the perpetrators in it. The suspect got frightened, opened the back of the car, took out a gun, and shouted: “I am a security personal, don’t touch me!” (Report of the Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Commission on Semdinli Incident - Statements of the witnesses 2005 : 5)
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