Hamal Kürt: Türk Islamı ve Kürt Sorunu by Mücahit Bilici (review)

412 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 4.2 utilizing diverse sources and a critical approach to the subject, is a valuable contribution to the historiography of the early Republican period and to literature on antagonist groups in Anatolia. Fasih Dinç Hacettepe University doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.4.2.12 Mücahit Bilici. Hamal Kürt: Türk İslamı ve Kürt Sorunu. Istanbul: Avesta Yayınları, 2017. 248 pp. 19 TL. ISBN: 978-6059082846. It is not uncommon to see a porter in the streets of Istanbul. Most of these porters are Kurds and they carry loads all day without having any knowledge about what they transport. It might be a golden bowl or a rusty bar but that does not matter for porters as long as they are not the owner of the goods they haul. That is to say, a porter’s function remains the same regardless of the value of the goods. The Kurds do not only serve as porters in Istanbul streets but they are also regarded as the porters by nationalist and Islamist circles of Turkey in social and political realms. Kurd the Porter: Turkish Islam and the Kurdish Question starts with the analogy above and with this gives a hint about the novel contribution of the book to the literature. The literature on the Kurdish question heavily centers on criticism of Kemalism and its paradigm based on militant secularism and the nation-state. Until recently, many scholars have argued that Kemalism’s ideological stance ignored the ethnic diversity of Turkey and excluded the Kurdish identity from the legal framework. According to these scholars, Kemalism frustrated the Kurds and caused the Kurdish question to turn into a bloody conflict. Such criticism of Kemalism has been quiescently watched by the Islamists, who also suffered from the secularist character of Kemalism. That is why the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) struggle to undermine the Kemalist paradigm and institutions gave hope for the solution to the Kurdish question. The AKP, which was formed by ex-Islamist figures and took over the government in 2002, was expected to re-define the nation-state dimension of Kemalism as well as secularism. Nevertheless, the Kurdish question has not been dealt with in a liberal and institutional way as anticipated by the critics of Kemalism. As the AKP has consolidated its power base and pushed the Kemalist military out of the political space, it has adopted Islamist and nationalist discourse in order to keep its popularity and proposed a “brotherhood” based on Islamic values as the only strategy to settle the Kurdish question. In other words, “being a good Muslim,” which demands support of the AKP Book Reviews    413 government, is presented as a necessary condition for a Kurd to be a legitimate citizen. Bilici’s analogy becomes meaningful at his point. He argues that “Turkishness” (Türklük) had been the “load” (yük) of the Kurdish porters. However, the Kurds have a new load, which is Islam. Nevertheless, the Islam that is loaded on the shoulders of the Kurds does not refer to the Islam which is supposed to be universal, because it is monopolized by the Turkish state. That is to say, the Islam that is offered by the Turkish state rejects the Kurds, as a Muslim nation, to have the right over Islam as a partner. After all, the Kurds continue to carry the load that they do not own. Building on this argument, Bilici raises the question of how Kurdish identity is defined in Turkey. In order to respond to this query Bilici resorts to constructivism and argues that objective reality is the product of subjective perceptions. In other words, the master-slave dialectic between the Turks and the Kurds is a constructed hierarchy that stems from the perceptions of both. Accordingly, the Turks identify themselves as the masters of the Kurds because the Kurds instinctively accept this role. Therefore, this hierarchy could disappear only if the Turks and the Kurds change their self-perceptions. According to Bilici, the Kurds suffer from not being recognized by the Turks as equal counterparts to make a social contract. This seems very compatible with...