Imagining peace in a conflict environment: Kurdish youths' framing of the Kurdish issue in Turkey, 2014 (original) (raw)
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Imagining peace in a conflict environment: Kurdish youths' framing of the Kurdish issue in Turkey
Drawn from focus groups composed of fifty-five Kurdish young people in Diyarbakır, Başer and Çelik’s article concerns the young Kurds’ description of the Kurdish issue in Turkey and their visions of peace. In recognition of their social and political agency, the article focuses on the Kurdish young people’s framing of both the conflict and peace, based on their individual everyday observations and experiences, and seeks to understand how they frame the Kurdish issue by defining the root causes of the conflict and imagining solutions for its resolution, particularly vis-à-vis the dominant frames regarding the Kurdish issue in Turkey.
2011
This study is an attempt to give voice to the Kurdish children and young people in Diyarbakır, and to explore their peace images and conflict perceptions. The research is motivated by the assumption that peace in Southeastern Turkey would have to involve both the willingness of the youth in the region, and their abilities to imagine peace and to act as peace-builders at grassroots. The aim of research, therefore, is to understand their perceptions and interpretations of the current conflict based on their everyday experiences and observations and to highlight their expectations from a future peace process through the use of focus group methodology. In this respect, the research also aims to highlight and guide further research and initiatives that needs to be undertaken about and with youth in Turkey.
Conflict understandings of lay people mirror society in miniature. Although lay people and their conflict understandings in society may shape the course of an ongoing conflict, little scholarly attention is so far given to the understandings of everyday discourse in Turkey’s ongoing Kurdish conflict. The present research aims to examine the views of lay Kurds and Turks in two politically polarized cities in Turkey, Mersin and Diyarbakır. Design/methodology/approach To examine these views, the authors used focus group discussions and open-ended questionnaires with a total of 64 lay people from Mersin and Diyarbakır. Findings Qualitative content analysis revealed more conflict understandings than presented in the existing academic literature. Furthermore, multiple correspondence analysis suggested that both ethnic identity and the city in which people live are important factors influencing how people perceive the conflict. Originality/value The meaning of novel themes, differences and similarities within and between ethnic groups and two cities, and the usefulness of qualitative methods to examine lay people’s viewpoints are discussed.
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.
An Exploration of Lay People's Kurdish Conflict Frames in Turkey
Lay people play a central role in conflict resolution and peace processes. However, relatively little scholarly attention is given to the frames that lay people use to make sense of conflict and conflict resolution. As conflict frames of lay people at the local level might provide us a way to grasp the nature of the conflict and the frames of lay people reflect society in miniature, exploring the conflict frames of lay people can provide us information about the whole society. The current study explores the conflict frames of lay people in the Kurdish conflict context in Turkey. Entman's (1993) systematic frame analysis is used to approach the conflict frames and modified to comprise 5 domains: (a) problem definition, (b) source of the problem, (c) moral evaluation, (d) solution to the problem, and (e) barrier to the solution of the problem. Q methodology, which is suitable to uncover socially shared viewpoints, is used to explore socially shared frames among 71 lay persons with different ethnic backgrounds. The analysis reveals 4 distinct frames toward the Kurdish conflict. The meanings of these frames, their differences and similarities, the importance of conflict frames for conflict resolution and peace building, and the usefulness of systematic frame analysis of Entman (1993) in the conflict context are discussed.
The Kurdish Movement in Turkey: Understanding Everyday Perceptions and Experiences
Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics, 2021
The prolonged conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), spanning four decades, has resulted in 4,000 evacuated villages, and more than 3 million displaced people. Despite this profound impact on people's everyday lives, studies on people's perceptions of the Kurdish movement are still limited. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Kurdish participants in Turkey, I explore how Kurds from different backgrounds, of different ages, and politicized to different degrees, perceive the Kurdish movement, and what motivates their commitment to it. Guided by an interpretivist methodology, and drawing on findings from fieldwork, I propose that everyday experiences and understandings of the Kurdish movement are embedded and salient in a political sense. I conclude that by mobilizing people's everyday perceptions and experiences, and translating them into political engagement, the Kurdish movement shifts the scale of politics from a national, to transnational and local levels. This shift implies that conducting extensive qualitative research among ordinary people brings a novel understanding of political movements and ethnic conflict in terms of both people's motivations and movement's strategic choices.
DIALOGUE AND SUSTAINABLE CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN THE KURDISH QUESTION AND POLARIZATION IN TURKEY
Turkish democracy has faced significant challenges in recent years. The failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016 has resulted in the restriction of civilian space and the securitization of a number of issues. Coupled with Turkey’s response to developments within its region, particularly the ongoing Syrian crisis, a process of securitization and militarization has marked Turkish politics over the last few years. Consequently, the state of emergency, which was declared shortly after the failed coup attempt in July 2016, has been extended for the seventh time in a row amid both Turkey’s military intervention in Syria and preparations to head to the polls for the sixth time in the last five years. It is, therefore, a timely endeavour to create platforms and opportunities for objective and inclusive debates. Such goals have thus constituted the basis for the Dialogue and Sustainable Conflict Resolution in the Kurdish Question and Polarization in Turkey Project. The project aimed to support enhanced political dialogue and conflict resolution through research and transformative mediation techniques in order to be able to help contain the Kurdish question and polarization as the two main hurdles for stability and democracy in Turkey. The report, therefore, investigated polarization and social cohesion in Turkey with a focus on crosscutting issues such as the domestic and regional dimensions of the Kurdish issue, inclusive economic growth, the role of women in building societal consensus, and the role of arts and sports in overcoming polarization in Turkey.
Societies in conflicts develop an 'ethos of conflict', a set of socially shared beliefs about the conflict. We argue that the ethos of conflict can be based on different representations of the conflict, and exploring such representations helps to analyze similarities and differences between and within conflict parties. We explored representations of the Kurdish conflict among 45 laypeople in a multi-ethnic city in Turkey based on comprehensive models of conflict analysis using an approach based on Q-methodology, which is suitable for uncovering socially shared viewpoints. Representations of conflict were conceptualized along three domains: causes and issues; relationships between the groups, processes and dynamics; and possible solutions. An integrated analysis across these domains revealed five qualitatively distinct viewpoints toward the conflict. The meaning of these viewpoints, their possible links to the ethos of conflict, differences and commonalities within and between conflict parties, the usefulness of our methodological approach to explore conflict viewpoints, and implications for conflict resolution are discussed.
Quest for Peace in Turkey in the Light of International Experiences
DISA Publications, 2018
In this study, Turkey’s Kurdish conflict is discussed from a comprehensive historical and comparative perspective. In the light of world experiences, the past, present, and future of the Kurdish conflict are examined in a cross-border context. Focusing on conflict resolution and the construction of social peace, this research, in fact, discusses the possibilities of a return to negotiations in the Kurdish conflict. In this sense, this study hopes to fill an essential gap in the field.