Written by Angèle Rougeot Subtil
Historical insight on the Kurdish question in Turkey
29th of October 1923. A new country was born. A few months after the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed. Positing itself as the legitimate heir-state of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the country entered the cogs of a modern nation-state. Along with multiple reforms, an assertive type of secularism – implying the separation of state and religion – characterized the fabric of the nation. Although there is a widespread Western assumption that secularism goes hand in hand with democracy, examining the relative success of Turkey in dealing with minority rights challenges this narrative. Oftentimes, mainstream beliefs assume that secularism is a warrantor of improvements in the socio-political realms. It supposedly echoes the furthering of human rights and proclaims the triumph of modernity. This reveals the symptoms of a wider phenomenon, mainly the ways in which Western, capitalist, and liberal ideals are associated with the norm for state conduct.
A bit more than a century after its creation, the Republic of Turkey embodies a compelling illustration of the paradox between asserted beliefs and the reality of secularism. Over the course of the 20th century, the country faced unrest regarding the variety of ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities that populate its territory. The lingering confrontation with the Kurds demonstrates the
challenges the new state had to contend with. It stresses multiple interrogations such as what does it mean for a state identity to be secular? Is secularism sufficient to achieve democracy and peaceful coexistence amongst minorities – or namely, to be a modern nation? What effect did it have on populations which, contrary to the state, were not coined in 1923? Let us unravel the historical process through which the Kurds problematized the assumed triumph of secularism.
The Fabric of a nation state
The fall of the Ottoman Empire led to the creation of the country under the ideological endeavors supervised by former president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. To fabricate a modern nation-state, traditional Islamic culture was disavowed, promoting instead the incorporation of Western and modern attitudes. This process was culturally underpinned by the intentional removal of certain layers of identities, and the willingness to replace them with new homogeneous ones, thus pretending to create a unified Turkish nation. In practice though, Atatürk had to contend with the plethora of differences present in its territory. The most prominent case of the effort to essentialize belonging was exemplified by the rising tensions with the Kurds. As the largest, stateless, ethnic group in the Middle East, Kurds represent thirty million people, spread over Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. It is however, in Turkey that their presence is deemed particularly troublesome.
Why assertive secularism cannot solve everything: the ordeal of forging identity based on ideals
To assure the transition from the Caliphate to the Republic, an assertive type of secularism was employed. The extent to which this contributed to a progressive state-making process is, however, mitigated. First, it is crucial to understand that secularism is neither a teleological principle nor a fixed concept. Additionally, the assertive dimension of Atatürk’s initiatives sheds light on the performative dimension through which the notion of secularism itself had to be understood. In an attempt to exclude religion from state matters, the Directorate for Religious Affairs – Diyanet – was created in 1924. This demonstrates how the lines between politics and religion became blurry. If indeed the state controlled religion, it also implied that the latter became an integral part of the state identity despite being an insufficient one to guarantee unity. Making Islam an obsolete force and thus relaying religion to a peripheral social cement by converging toward ethnic absolutism, the experimentation with republican life arose consequential anxiety.
The Kurdish question tests case this hypothesis. The Treaty of Lausanne used a rhetoric stipulating an inherited common Islamic identity, referring to non-Muslims as ‘minorities’. The momentum of this integrative glue for the state was standardized as a way to inherit the legitimacy and authority of the former Islamic conception of the community. Contradiction arose when opposition to the deemed ‘backwardness’ of Islam was advanced by secularists under Atatürk. As
such, the Kurds were ‘made’ a minority via the rise of a new paradigms – namely an ethno-national one – that ostracized them despite their worship of the dominant Sunni Muslim tradition. The lingering unrest of the Kurds implies that the practice of difference-making was reconfigured.
The fate of that – big – minority was sealed in the 1920s and 1930s. Counting for one-fifth of the Turkish population, Kurds soon became constrained by the fabricated invisible borders of the new state system in the region. By then, their ‘Kurdishness‘ started to be perceived as problematic for the state. The issue stemmed from the changing nature of the labeling of identities. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Millet system granted autonomy for the different religious communities. Albeit a hierarchical one, each Millet (or religious community) had a certain agency within the structure of government. A level of self-governance and protection was conceded by the empire. But after 1923, the dividing line between individuals was invested with a new politic of giving meaning to what it was ‘to be Turk’. It was no longer along religious lines that populations were characterized,
but rather through ethnic ones. The ethno-nationalist momentum of the young republic problematized Kurdish relative position, making them the threatening ‘other within’. But how could that happen since Kurds had been populating the area for centuries?
Back to the origins of the Kurdish question in Turkey, being different or being ‘made’ different?
The pivotal stakes concerning the Kurdish question in relation to the nation-state of Turkey was the fact that the mechanism of marginalization of minorities was unchanged – hierarchical power relations lingered – however, the target of those structures evolved. Religious distinctions were defining mechanisms under Ottoman rule; by contrast, the Republic promoted ethnic and cultural roots of belonging. The Kurds, attached to their ideal of common origins, had seen with the 1916 Sykes Picot agreements, the hopes of achieving an independent country. However, the ratification of the Treaty of Lausanne some seven years later omitted any such option. An impressive tour de force had reframed the fate of Kurds amidst the international system. Formerly taken alongside religious lines, defining identities based on beliefs orientation had been depoliticized. Subsequently, with instruments such as international agreements, the constitution, and other political tools, normative binds among people were adjusted. In that sense, identities were re-politicized, resulting in new norms and hierarchies. This maneuver arguably provides an optimal description of what is minority making. (Fig.1)
Figure 1: Minority Making
Hence, long before the creation of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in 1978 and its subsequent radicalization, Kurds were deemed transcendentally dangerous. Defying the proclaimed unity of the Turkish state, the location of the dissent was ascribed to the resistance to the intensive assimilationist and homogenizing policies of Atatürk. Interestingly, this process simultaneously constructed a mutually exclusive identity for both Turks and Kurds: a cognitive bias
of threat perception became mainstream in Turkish understanding of Kurdish nationalist and independentist claims. While Kurds themselves faced an existential threat propelled by Turkish reforms.
One of the cornerstones of such examples was the ‘Vatandas, Türkçe konuş!’ – ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish’- policy of 1928. A new Latin alphabet was adopted, replacing the profusion of linguistic systems, heirs of the Ottoman era. Underpinning the program was the promulgation of the ‘privilege’ associated with the idea of ‘being Turk’ and speaking Turk. Notwithstanding, this was received as a constrain over the expression of one’s identity. Imposing normative structures over the Kurds and repressing language, culture and means to convey power and agency hindered the eventual achievement of a civic belonging to the nation-state. Ways of expression were embedded in structural ways of making difference, contributing to furthering the alienation of the Kurds from the Turkish state.
When western models are not enough
Retrospectively, the making of secular Turkey redrew the agency of minorities by confronting them to new structures of power. The history of the country in the 20 th century showcases how a simultaneous pattern of inclusion and exclusion was born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. It relocated hierarchies according to new norms and patterns, unfolding the intricate links between state agency, identity making and legitimate beholders of rights.
The exploration of the almost theatrical marginalization process of Kurds at the premise of Turkish existence presented above allow us to foresee the consequences and stakes present in today’s attempts to grapple with the question of identities. Kurds are by no means the only minority whose unrest is concerning. Christians, Alevis, and many others are confronted to the mechanism of minority making. Looking forward, the grips of ethno-nationalism and population politics remain more at stake than ever, considering the amount of ‘others within’ that the Turkish nation state perceives.
Ultimately, if secularism facilitated the performance of certain identities, it constrained others and fomented common tropes to politicize perceived differences. Despite the intent of assertive secularism to forge a nation, it merely resulted in a displacement of deemed inadequate innate features – whether ethnic, cultural, or linguistic. Crucially, within a state hierarchy, one is made; not born, thus condemning identities to be disciplined and institutionalized.
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State secularism, identity & Rights. Image generated with AI: Bing (https://www.bing.com/images/create)
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