Protest over end of the Peace Process, Istanbul, 2015. Demotix/erhan demirtaş. All rights reserved.Though often depicted
as a relatively stable exception in a turbulent region, the Republic of Turkey
has also wrestled with burdens of the Ottoman Empire. Arguably, the most
troublesome legacy has been the multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of
post-Ottoman society, because even after the transition from Kemalist
authoritarianism to multi-party democracy in 1950, the Republican regime has
not adapted itself to the nature of society but continuously sought to mould it
instead.

The willingness of
decision-makers in Ankara to create a homogenous society out of highly
heterogeneous communities is one of the few characteristics shared by all
successive governments—regardless of their radical differences in ideological
outlook.

While the Kemalists
aimed to form a westernised, secular, exclusively Turkish nation; social
conservative or centre-right administrations such as the incumbent AKP (Justice
and Development Party) have been less dedicated to the idea of state-imposed
secularism. Yet the maxim of ‘one nation, one state and one flag’—recently ‘one
religion’ can be argued to have been added by the AKP to this list—has remained
intact. The harrowing yet unsurprising side-effects of this vision of
homogeneity has been seen in the form of assimilation campaigns, mass
deportations and massacres against those who have refused to conform. Just as
Islamists challenged Kemalist rule, minority groups such as Kurds and Alevis
have also resisted top-down impositions of identity. As a result, contemporary
Turkey is inhabited by a deeply polarised society and the state has been
engaged in a violent conflict with an armed Kurdish organisation, the PKK
(Kurdistan Workers’ Party), since the 1980s. Let us look at Turkey’s recent
travails in dealing with its society before discussing its current predicament
in an ever more unstable Middle East.     

The rise and
fall of ‘the Human Security Moment’

The so-called ‘Peace
Process’, launched by the AKP administration in 2013 for the purpose of
developing a peaceful resolution to the conflict with the PKK, was
unprecedented in the history of Turkey in terms of its underlying rationale.
The main idea behind the entire enterprise was publicly and strongly voiced by
both the spokespeople of the government such as Beşir Atalay and the
representatives of the Kurdish political movement such as the HDP (Peoples’
Democratic Party) co-chairperson Selahattin Demirtaş, namely their shared
belief that this conflict could not possibly be resolved via the conventional
approach of the Turkish state which securitised the issue and resorted
to measures such as launching military operations against the PKK, arresting
its sympathisers, imposing martial law in predominantly Kurdish provinces and
banning successive pro-Kurdish political parties on charges of supporting
terrorism.

In contrast with these
earlier methods, the AKP ceased military operations as a response to the public
declaration of ceasefire by the PKK on 23 March 2013, leading to a protracted
negotiation process between the government, Abdullah Öcalan—the imprisoned
leader of the PKK—the BDP/HDP and the PKK.

As part of the Peace
Process, a committee that consisted of various well-known intellectuals,
artists and journalists (Akil İnsanlar Heyeti) was established to inform
the public about the negotiations and gain the support of the citizenry. A
widely publicised slogan was ‘Let’s not allow mothers to cry any more!’. This
succinct yet effective sentiment was utilised to help the public understand the
main objective of the initiative: to prevent more people from becoming the
victims of the 30-year old civil conflict that has caused immeasurable pain and
suffering since 1984.

The mentality of the
Peace Process and the approach of both sides of political negotiations at the time
was derived from or at least influenced by an understanding of security
that diverged from the hitherto pre-dominant narrative of governments, military
and mainstream media. Conventionally, the concept of security had been invoked
as a dedication to ensuring the salvation of the Turkish nation-state at all
costs, a practice of governance based on a top-down organisation of
state-society relations, exclusive nationalism and the frequent repression of
minorities. Hence, the term almost entirely referred to national security,
commonly used by government officials and newspaper columnists from the 1980s
onwards to identify threats against the integrity of the idealised
nation-state, the most commonly cited of these threats being the PKK—the
so-called internal enemy—and its supposed external sponsors such as the USA,
Israel, Syria, Iran or various EU countries.

The Peace Process
represented a radical departure from the national security narrative, putting
forward a human-centric imagination that prioritised the well-being of
individual citizens over that of an abstract entity such as the state or the
nation – arguably much more difficult to grasp and relate to. The
aforementioned emphasis on the pain felt by mothers who lost their children to
the conflict and various activities initiated as part of the process such as
the ‘Peace and Fraternity Picnics’—which sought to bring Turkish and Kurdish
youth together to foster empathy and solidarity between communities—were all
indicative of a mind-set that stressed the value of human individuals and the
need for mutual understanding to ultimately ensure the security of all
peoples of Turkey.

This short-lived age of
‘the human security moment’ in Turkey seems to be over today. In the run-up to
the June 7 parliamentary elections of 2015, the discourse used by the AKP
during its campaign displayed numerous signals of a change in attitude, with
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declaring that there was no ‘Kurdish question’
in Turkey any more and that ‘all possible rights had already been granted’. In
the aftermath of the elections—the 20 July Suruç bombing that resulted in the
deaths of 34 socialist/pro-Kurdish activists and the ensueing assassination of
two policemen rapidly increased the tensions between the government and the
Kurdish political movement—the Peace Process came to an end and intense waves
of violent clashes between state forces and the PKK began.

The entire country has
been swept up in renewed conflict since then, as curfew has been imposed in
hundreds of predominantly Kurdish districts, several mayors have declared
‘self-rule’ and got arrested for their pains and many HDP buildings have been
attacked by Turkish nationalist groups seeking revenge for the PKK attacks on
Turkish military and police.

As of September 2015,
the human tragedy and overall death toll have already reached catastrophic
levels. From June 2015 onwards, the socio-political life in the country has
once again been heavily dominated by the national security oriented discourse
as mainstream newspapers and television channels—regardless of their stance
towards the AKP administration itself—have heavily utilised a jingoist language
in an attempt to mobilise the Turkish public behind the so-called ‘war
effort’.  In this respect the HDP’s human security oriented discourse and
mediator role needs to be perceived by both antagonistic actors.
                   

Salvaging
Turkey’s Middle Eastern role beyond the conflict?

Until the last few
years, Turkey has been portrayed in international media and scholarly
literature alike as a ‘role model’ of democratisation, Islamic moderation and
pluralism for the Middle East and the broader Muslim world beyond the region.
In this regard, the Peace Process and the AKP-led political reforms undertaken
during the EU accession process had gained particular acclaim among numerous
observers. However, the stalling of the EU accession talks, the collapse of the
Peace Process and the dramatic return to the national security oriented
discourse have completely changed the game in town. Currently, Turkey’s
endeavours to develop a new social contract with its Kurdish citizens have
failed and the country has once again entered a vicious cycle of violent
conflict with the PKK, basically a ‘tit for tat war’ that breeds endless civil
strife with the potential to spiral out of the control of all relevant actors
at any point—as seen in conflicts that have arisen in post-revolutionary Middle
Eastern countries since 2011 such as Libya and
Syria.             
  

Since the American
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the regional balance of power has oscillated between
Kurds and Arabs as well as Shias and Sunnis. The Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) has gained de facto independence in northern Iraq after the fall
of Saddam Hussein. However, peace and stability has neither been established in
Iraq nor in its neighbour, Syria, which has also plunged into chaos following
the uprisings of 2011 and the rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and
ash-Sham). Consequently, violence has escalated and expanded in the entire
southern border of Turkey, while a new Kurdish political unit—the Kurdish
Democratic Union Party (PYD)—has strongly established itself in the form of
autonomous cantons in Rojava, northern Syria. The rapid expansion of the
military power and influence of ISIS in both of the post-Ottoman ‘failed
states’ has meant that fear, torture, rape, kidnappings, and mass killings have
all become part of daily life in the region, unleashing millions of refugees
across the world. 

Apart from becoming the
main destination of refugees, Turkey’s role in the ongoing humanitarian crisis
of the Levant has been relatively limited as the issue of Turkish foreign
policy towards Syria and Iraq has been over-shadowed by domestic troubles.
While the conflict with the PKK continues at full throttle, lynching campaigns
and pogrom-like mass attacks have been launched by ultra-nationalist mobs
against Kurds, further straining already problematic relations between the
state and Kurdish citizens as well as resulting in new deep wounds in the
psyche of Turkish and Kurdish communities.

The economy has been
heavily damaged by political uncertainty and security concerns since the
beginning of the summer as foreign direct investment levels have fallen, the
number of tourists has dramatically decreased and the Turkish lira has rapidly
devalued vis-à-vis the US dollar, reaching a record low. It is clear that the
PKK-focused, national security oriented ‘new politics’ is the main factor that
consumes Turkey’s energy, resources and it also constrains its role in the
Middle East and beyond.   

Not so long ago, when
the Peace Process was ongoing and Turkey was strictly adhering to Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s ‘zero problems with neighbours foreign policy’ in
the early 2010s, the country possessed significant influence in terms of
determining the course of events in its region. Today, a different Turkey and
an AKP administration that constantly evaluates domestic and international
issues through the lens of a narrow national securitisation perspective can be
expected to remain occupied in a vicious domestic struggle for the foreseeable
future—boding a grim future for all the peoples of the region and for the world
that must face the consequences of events in some form or another, including the
inflow of refugees.