Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Process from a Conflict Resolution Perspective Summer 2016 Vol. 18 No.3- (original) (raw)

Review of J. Brewer ‘The Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach’ Review Symposium, Sociology 46 (1) 159-166

The second half of the 20th century was characterized by a firm, almost entrenched, disciplinary division of labour whereby sociologists were meant to study social stratification, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, education, health and other 'internal' social phenomena while war, peace, organized violence, nationalism, ethnic conflict and other 'external' processes were seen as a prerogative of political scientists and international relations (IR) specialists. This unfortunate division of labour, underpinned in part by the pervasive methodological nationalism in sociology and in part by the peculiar blend of positivism and normativism that characterized much of political science literature, had profoundly negative consequences for both disciplines. While, by downplaying the social foundations of violence, many political science and IR analyses remained reductionist and often unable to explain the unpredictable and changing social trajectories of war and peace, much of the mainstream sociology simply tended to ignore the impact war, organized violence and coercion have had and still have on the constitution of human sociality and the formation of modern social orders.

Peace and Conflict Studies: Evolution, Relevance, and Approaches for Change

2021

Originally emerging from the amalgamation of varied disciplines, the field of Peace and Conflict Studies has evolved and transformed throughout the years. In its current configuration, it boasts a plethora of analytical tools, theories, and formal as well as informal processes for achieving lasting peace. The following paper details the different historical phases making up the field. It also explores international war, deconstructs conflict, examines theories of Peace and Conflict Studies, and distinguishes between conflict management, resolution, and transformation. It additionally elaborates on informal methods for conflict resolution while making the case for multileveled and collective efforts to transform societal structures, cultures, and mindsets, and to instill transformative peace

PARADOXES OF POST-CONFLICT PEACEBUILDING: THE DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

The paper mainly looks at the two-edged saw nature of peace building measures that are usually introduced and implemented in post-conflict societies. It makes the point that if the implementation of such measures are not than with the most care, they can produce unintended negative results as much as they present a good opportunity for sustainable peace in post-conflict areas. It ends with some recommendations.

What kind of peace? The case of the Turkish and Kurdish peace process

2015

Past experience suggests that this unclarity about the peace process may once again open the door for brutal conflict. Turkey and the Kurds share the aim of ending their long-standing conflict. So what of the so-called peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK, especially their imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan? And what is the potential role of Kurdish diaspora groups in ‘peace-making’, ‘peacebuilding’ and ‘reconciliation’ processes with Turkey? I have been exploring the experiences of Kurdish individuals and families in the diaspora, specifically looking at involvement in homeland politics, conflict and peace between April 2014 and May 2015 for my research, facilitating five focus groups and securing interviews with those from different parts of Kurdistan now living in the UK and Germany. In total, my research involved 60 Kurdish adults, of whom 29 were women, and 31 were men, building on work on the Kurdish diaspora in the UK and Germany since 2008.

Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Engaging Paradox, Paradigm, & Potential

During war and conflict, violence often becomes a frequent and thereby normal individual and group experience. To survive, individuals subjectively engage with the violently normal through appraisal processes and (re) conceptualizations of the self, others, and contextual determinations (Das et al. 2000). On the other hand, subjectivity also plays a role in the initial path to war and violence. For example, war generally results from political, economic, and institutional power enacted over individuals and groups by powerful individuals in leadership positions, followed by individuals and groups reacting in response. Whether individuals living through war and violence fall into the by-stander, elite, or opposition categories, the injuries, deprivations, and inequities caused by policy and social action can link personal, political, and societal problems. This interpersonal sharing of negative, often violent, experience moves suffering from an individual to a social experience . The idea of social suffering blurs the boundaries between the individual and the group and opens the door to the consideration of political, economic, institutional, and socio-cultural factors as dimensions of the suffering, as well as the healing, dynamic.

The Making of Peace: Processes and Agreements

Armed Conflict Survey, 2018

The term 'peace process' captures a wide range of different phenomena primarily related to the (mostly) international management of intra-state conflicts. As a label, it has been applied to processes at the end of which some form of peace had actually been achieved (such as in Northern Ireland), as well as to processes that are outright failures, including extreme cases like Rwanda where a peace agreement in 1993 became the precursor of a genocide in 1994. Between these extremes, however, a third type of peace process can be identified that would be better described as protracted, and which can take the form either of a serial failure to make a negotiated agreement last (such as the situation in South Sudan since late 2013), or of processes that are caught in more or less stable ceasefires without achieving a sustainable conflict settlement (such as Ukraine). This categorisation is admittedly crude: the great variety of actors involved, the relationships they have with each other and the types of agreements that they achieve (or not) speak to the uniqueness of each such process, but underneath the specifics of each situation, there are important commonalities that many peace processes share and that are worth exploring in an effort to understand the causes of both success and failure. Broadly defined, a peace process might be understood as the process towards a non-military solution sought by the respective parties to a conflict, often supported by international involvement. Yet the local and international commitments that are necessary to achieve durable peace are not always sincere or sustained; they can be undermined by domestic and/or third parties; and they may suffer from unrealistic expectations that, if unfulfilled, cause peace processes to stall or collapse back into violent conflict. Given the human and material costs of conflict and its

FROM Practical Approaches to Peacebuilding : Putting Theory to Work

2016

Peacebuilding is a term that spans a wide array of activities influencing sustainable peace in different phases of conflict. It can be found at all points on the war to peace continuum, but it attends primarily to the requirements of conflict-affected communities. This includes concerns related to development, security, legal and institutional reform, peace education, and indigenous peacemaking efforts. Because the term is so broad, it can also be easily co-opted and used by local and international actors to promote programs that do not build peace. In this regard, there are examples, such as the Iraq war, where conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes have been used to win over factions in violent conflicts in an attempt to build a bigger coalition to militarily defeat a targeted enemy. In instances like these, conflict resolution and peacebuilding knowledge and skills can be nefariously coopted into functions of warfare, transforming them into instruments of war efforts and skewing their original intentions to work for sustainable peace. Yet, many communities have benefited from international peacebuilding efforts and studies have found that multilateral, United Nations peace operations have made a positive difference on sustainable peace (Doyle and Sambanis 2000), but many others have become political pawns or, worse, have borne the brunt of harmful policies that were carried out thoughtlessly or, worse yet, imposed on communities without their inclusion. With these communities in mind, we developed this book about peacebuilding. We believe that the path to peace is paved with good intentions, but can be perilous to maneuver. Therefore, reflection on experience and the rigorous study of the components of peace must be a fundamental part of any discussions on peacebuilding. Most conflicts around the world share some similar general features. Scholars in peace and conflict studies have studied the dynamics of conflict escalation and the ensuing alienation between rival parties that result in the construction of divergent narratives, which often portray mutually exclusive worldviews and become a part of the collective memory, precipitating