Description
The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey has a deep and violent history consisting of cycle upon cycle of conflict. The current armed conflict between Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK) and Turkish Republic has been ongoing since mid-1970s. On the one hand, the political, human and economic cost of war have been staggering with a price tag over $300 million, an increasing social/death toll, and the sheer number of displaced people, resulting in a deeply-divided and polarized society. On the other hand, despite the impact of the violence and the conflict on everyday life, the Republic of Turkey has systematically back-grounded the political dimension of the conflict and actively prevented the public/political contestation by maintaining a prevailing discourse: “There is no Kurdish Conflict”. As such the conflict – that had become a Gordian knot - has remained unresolved. The paper argues that understanding the nature, form and dynamics of this de-politisation strategy can cast a different light upon the resistance towards the peace and the resolution/transformation of this intractable political conflict and account for the resistance towards its resolution. The paper accordingly raises the following questions: How does non-recognition of the political character of the Kurdish Conflict work? What does this de-politisation/contestation exactly consist of? and How does the decontestation of the Kurdish Conflict become possible? By advancing a critical inquiry into the conditions of the de-politisation, the paper draws on the work of scholars such as Foucault (1980), Agamben (1998), Freeden (1996), Laclau and Mouffe (1985), Derrida (1970), Lacan (1977) and Glynos and Howarth (2007) and argues that the political dimension of the Kurdish Conflict has been kept at bay with a hegemonic assemblage of biopolitical practices and ideological/fantasmatic articulations.
