Activists in Office: Kurdish Politics and Protest in Turkey

Notes

179 Preface and Acknowledgments 1 Kurds were long described as being “tribal,” a characteristic that was for many years viewed as an obstacle to the formation of a Kurdish national movement. It is true that many Kurds have been affiliated with settled and nomadic tribes and clans that have sometimes competed and fought with one another. Nonetheless, many Kurds in the southeast, especially in the cities, have not belonged to tribes. Tribes also sometimes played important roles in Kurdish challenges to the state. NOTES 180 notes Introduction 1 An exception is a growing body of literature on Islamist parties’ participation in electoral contests in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Indonesia. See, for instance, Langohr 2001 and Wiktorowicz 2001. 2 In his theoretically informed examination of the Kurdish nationalist movement , which primarily focuses on Turkey, Romano (2006) relegates his discussion of the parties to a footnote. Partial exceptions to this general tendency to ignore the parties and their impact are Kirişci and Winrow (1997, see especially 136–40) and Barkey and Fuller (1998) as well as a handful of scholarly articles that discuss the parties and their history in more detail, most notably Güney (2002), Barkey (1998), and Yavuz (2001). 3 I recognize that this term is vague and not very satisfactory. Because of shifting movement goals, furthermore, to be “pro-Kurdish” in one time period might not necessarily mean the same thing as to be “pro-Kurdish” in another period. 4 In Rochon’s terminology (1985), the parties would be classified as mobilizing parties or parties that mobilize new political identities (421). He uses the term challenger party to refer to parties that challenge the legitimacy of preexisting parties by claiming that they “no longer properly represent the interests of their support base” (ibid.). (This is something the pro-Kurdish parties did as well.) When describing pro-Kurdish parties, I prefer the term challenger party, with a modified definition, because it seems to best encapsulate the function and identity of the parties in the Turkish political context. 5 Good English-language sources on the PKK include Marcus (2007), Romano (2006), and White (2000). 1 Early Routes Some of the material on the 1960s in this chapter was originally presented in “Silence and Voice: Turkish Policies and Kurdish Resistance in the mid-20th Century,” published by the author in The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, ed. Mohammed Ahmed and Michael Gunter (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press, 2007): 52-77. Some of the material on Mehdi Zana’s election and politics in the southeast in the 1970s was originally published in “Towards Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics: The 1977 Elections in Diyarbakır,” pub- notes 181 lished by the author and Gilles Dorronsoro in International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (2009): 457-78. Epigraph: “Arkadaşlar, ben yurtsever bir aday olarak ortaya çıktım. Destekleyip desteklememek sizin bileceğiniz bir şey. Hiçbir fraksıyonun adamı değilim. . . . Ben yurtseverlerin çıkarı için burayı kullanıp, belediyeyi yurtseverliğin kalesi haline getirmek istiyorum.” Zana 1991, 194. 1 Fifty-four of the Kurdish leaders were supporters of the ousted DP. In 1962 they were allowed to return to their lands. See Yön, December 10, 1961, 4–5, and January 10, 1962, 8–13. Also see Christian Science Monitor, December 5, 1960, 12; and Cumhuriyet, December 5, 1960, 1. 2 For studies on TİP and Kurdish activism, see Ekinci 2004; Gündoğan 2005; Mello 2006; Watts 2007. 3 The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was not active in Diyarbakır until 1979 and does not appear to have played a role in Mehdi Zana’s 1977 mayoral campaign. 4 For more on Zana, his election, and the political climate of the 1970s in Diyarbakır, see Dorronsoro and Watts 2009; Bildirici 2008; Zana 1991. 2 New Collective Challengers 1 They were: Fehmi Işıklar, İbrahim Aksoy, Ahmet Türk, Abdullah Baştürk, Kenan Sönmez, Mehmet Ali Eren, Arif Sağ, Adnan Ekmen, İsmail Hakkı Önal, Cüneyt Canver, and Salih Sümer. Former SHP deputy Mahmut Alınak joined HEP in September 1990. 2 Anticipating the court closure of HEP, pro-Kurdish deputies also founded two other parties, the Özgürlük ve Eşitlik Partisi (ÖZEP, or the Freedom and Equality Party), on 25 June 1992, and the Özgürlük ve Demokrasi Partisi (ÖZDEP, or the Freedom and Democracy Party), on 19...