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STATE BUILDING AND THE LIMITS OF LEGIBILITY: KINSHIP NETWORKS AND KURDISH RESISTANCE IN TURKEY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2011

Ceren Belge
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Abstract

Following the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the twin goals of centralizing state power and inscribing a uniform national identity on all citizens resulted in the proliferation of disciplinary practices that required changes in habits and everyday life as well as in the locus of faith, allegiance, and obedience. Nowhere were the repercussions felt as deeply as in the Kurdish regions, where the urge to create a new citizen sparked considerable resistance. This article suggests that alongside Kurdish nationalist movements, kinship networks and morality constituted an alternative reservoir of resistance to the new disciplinary practices that followed state building. By subverting state practices to make citizens legible, kinship networks, I argue, undermined the state's attempts to establish bureaucratic authority and create an exclusive identity.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 95 - 114
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I am grateful to Sara Pursley, Beth Baron, and four anonymous reviewers of IJMES for their critical comments. I also thank Joel S. Migdal, Reşat Kasaba, Mete Tunçay, Steven Heydemann, Adam White, and David Romano for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Finally, I thank Senem Aslan, who contributed to my thinking on Turkish state building through many conversations.

1 Şebnem Arsu, “8 Arrested in Turkish Wedding Shooting,” New York Times, 5 May 2009; and “Cumhurbaşkanının Kürt Sorunuyla İlgili Mesajı Çok Önemli,” Radikal, 9 May 2009.

2 To be sure, Kurdish responses to Turkish nationalism have not been monolithic. For a comprehensive overview of Kurdish movements during the 1960s and 1970s, see Nicole Watts, “Routes to Ethnic Resistance: Virtual Kurdistan West and the Transformation of Kurdish Politics in Turkey” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2001), 88–130; Azat Zana Gündoğan, “The Kurdish Mobilization in the 1960s: The Case of ‘The Eastern Meetings’” (PhD diss., Middle East Technical University, 2005); and Romano, David, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 39–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Departing from the Ottoman land tenure system (tımar), in which the state allocated its agricultural lands to military officials during peace time on a temporary basis, in Kurdish areas the Ottoman state recognized a degree of private property and hereditary rights to land and officeholding until the centralizing reforms of the 19th century. The recognition of certain lineages as the owners and administrators of sancaks in Kurdistan stabilized these lineages and formed the basis of large landholdings after the full recognition of private property in the republic. The establishment of a tribal army by Sultan Abdülhamit II in 1891 (Hamidiye Light Cavalry) further increased the regional clout of particular tribes while shifting the basis of that power from the control of land to the control of security and dependence on the state. See Beşikçi, İsmail, Doğu Anadolu'nun Düzeni: Sosyo-ekonomik ve Etnik Temeller (Ankara: Yurt-Kitap Yayın, 1992), 110–33Google Scholar; Aydın, Zülküf, Underdevelopment and Rural Structures in Southeastern Turkey: The Household Economy in Gilgis and Kalhana (London: Ithaca Press, 1986), 13–21Google Scholar; Van Bruinessen, Martin, Agha, Shaikh, and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London: Zed Books, 1992), 189–94Google Scholar; and Özoğlu, Hakan, Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2004), 43–67Google Scholar.

4 In particular, the Naqshbandi and Qadiri orders and, more recently, the Nurcu movement have been dominant in Kurdistan. Neither sheikhs nor landlords, however, exercised political influence independent of affiliation with a particular lineage.

5 For notable exceptions, see Bozarslan, Hamit, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish Political Life: The Situation as of 1990,” in Kurdistan in Search of an Ethnic Identity, ed. Atabaki, T. and Dorleijn, M. (Utrecht: University of Utrecht, 1990), 1–23Google Scholar; Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh, and State; Özoğlu, Kurdish Notables; Klein, Janet, “Kurdish Nationalists and Non-nationalist Kurdists: Rethinking Minority Nationalism and the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1909,” Nations and Nationalism 13 (2007): 135–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Evren Balta, “Causes and Consequences of the Village Guard System in Turkey,” unpublished paper (2004), http://web.gc.cuny.edu/dept/rbins/IUCSHA/fellows/Balta-paper.pdf (accessed 14 December 2009).

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8 For a similar analysis of nonnationalist forms of Kurdish resistance against Turkish nationalism, see Yeğen, Mesut, “The Turkish State Discourse and the Exclusion of Kurdish Identity,” in Turkey, Identity, Democracy, Politics, ed. Kedourie, S. (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 216–29Google Scholar.

9 Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Brown, Nathan, Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt: The Struggle against the State (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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12 Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 5Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 2.

14 One can include here numerous other studies inspired by Foucault that have probed the ways in which new disciplinary logics of the nation–state have transformed political order in non-Western societies. See Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995)Google Scholar and “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect, ed. G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Shamir, Ronen, “Suspended in Space: Bedouins under the Law of Israel,” Law and Society Review 30 (1996): 231–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ferguson, James and Gupta, Akhil, “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality,” in American Ethnologist 29 (2002): 981–1002CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kemp, Adriana, “‘Dangerous Populations,’ State Territoriality and the Constitution of National Minorities,” in Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices, ed. Migdal, J. S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 73–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Foucault, “Governmentality,” 96–97.

16 Mitchell, Timothy, “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics,” American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 95Google Scholar. See also Ferguson and Gupta, “Spatializing States,” for a similar analysis of how the state is made “socially effective” in the minds of citizens through routine bureaucratic practices.

17 Moore, Sally Falk, Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 1Google Scholar.

18 For a more society-centered approach to the question of order, see Reşat Kasaba's analysis of the relationship between tribes and the Ottoman state, in which he argues that although nomadic tribes posed numerous challenges for the imperial bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire also thrived on the mobility and flexibility supplied by tribes in its border regions. Kasaba, “Do States Always Favor Stasis? The Changing Status of Tribes in the Ottoman Empire,” in Boundaries and Belonging, 27–48.

19 Joel S. Migdal, “Mental Maps and Virtual Checkpoints: Struggles to Construct and Maintain State and Social Boundaries,” in Boundaries and Belonging, 3–23.

20 Yeğen, Mesut, Müstakbel Türk'ten Sözde Vatandaşa: Cumhuriyet ve Kürtler (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006)Google Scholar.

21 For an analysis of the Sheikh Said rebellion, see Olson, Robert, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1989)Google Scholar. For an overview of Kurdish revolts during the early republic, see Bozarslan, Hamit, “Kürd Milliyetçiliği ve Kürd Hareketi (1898–2000),” in Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce: Milliyetçilik, ed. Bora, T. and Gültekingil, M., vol. 4 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları: 2002), 841–70Google Scholar.

22 I have not been able to locate the original of this report in the Turkish state archives. The report is reprinted in Bayrak, Mehmet, Kürtler ve Ulusal Demokratik Mücadeleleri (Ankara: Öz-Ge Yayınları, 1993), 481–89Google Scholar; and idem, Açık-Gizli / Resmi-Gayriresmi Kürdoloji Belgeleri (Ankara: Öz-Ge Yayınları, 1994)Google Scholar.

23 For an analysis of the use of settlement policy to transform the demographic makeup of Kurdish populated areas in eastern Turkey, see Tekeli, İlhan, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'ndan Günümüze Nüfusun Zorunlu Yer Değiştirmesi ve İskan Sorunu,” Toplum ve Bilim 50 (1990): 49–71Google Scholar; Dündar, Fuat, İttihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanları İskân Politikası, 1913–1918 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001)Google Scholar; Soner Çağaptay, “Crafting the Turkish Nation: Kemalism and Turkish Nationalism in the 1930s” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2003); Erol Ülker, “Assimilation of the Muslim Communities in the First Decade of the Turkish Republic, 1923–1934,” European Journal of Turkish Studies (2007), http://www.ejts.org/document822.html (accessed 4 April 2010); and idem, “Assimilation, Security and Geographical Nationalization in Interwar Turkey: The Settlement Law of 1934,” European Journal of Turkish Studies 7 (2008)Google Scholar, http://www.ejts.org/document2123.html (accessed 4 April 2010).

24 Mann, Michael, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 25 (1984): 185–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 For most of the 20th century, eastern Turkey has remained under some sort of military rule. Apart from nationwide declarations of martial law, eastern Turkey has experienced region-specific instances of “extraordinary” rule between 1925 and 1927, from 1927 to 1950, and from 1987 to 2002. For a history of emergency rule in Turkey, see Üskül, Zafer, “Türkiye'de Sıkıyönetim Uygulamaları Üzerine Notlar,” Toplum ve Bilim 42 (1988): 86Google Scholar.

26 For cultural propaganda on Turkish nationalism, see Beşikçi, İsmail, “Türk-Tarih Tezi,” “Güneş Dil Teorisi” ve Kürt Sorunu (Ankara: Komal Yayınları, 1977)Google Scholar; and Çağaptay, Soner, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Turkey: Who is a Turk? (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar; for the suppression of Kurdish revolts, see Başkanlığı, Genelkurmay, Türkiye Cumhuriyetinde Ayaklanmalar, 1924–1938 (Ankara: Genelkurmay, 1972)Google Scholar; Dersimi, M. Nuri, Dersim Tarihi (Istanbul: Türkiye Yayını, 1979)Google Scholar; Olson, Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism; and Nicole Watts, “Routes to Ethnic Resistance.”

27 Quoted in Aybars, Ergün, İstiklal Mahkemeleri (Izmir, Turkey: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1988), 326Google Scholar.

28 “Report on the robbery incidents in the Karaköprü area of Diyarbakır and the measures that need to be taken in the areas under the First General Inspectorate,” 15 April 1937, Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi (hereafter BCA) Başbakanlık Muamelat Genel Müdürlüğü Kataloğu (hereafter BMGMK) 030.10; 128.923.19.

29 Yeğen, Mesut, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish State Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary History 34 (1999): 562Google Scholar.

30 Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (hereafter TBMM) Zabıt Ceridesi, 18 November 1935, 80–82.

31 “The views of the First General Inspector on the changes envisioned on the judicial law,” 12 February 1931, BCA, BMGMK, 030.10, 69.455.2.

32 Tekeli, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'ndan Günümüze,” 64. A total of 2,774 Kurdish families were exiled to western Turkey by a special law in 1927 authorizing the government to relocate the families of individuals connected with the Sheikh Said revolt. See Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism, 86; idem, “Crafting the Turkish Nation,” 174; and Ülker, “Assimilation of Muslim Communities.” See also recently published memoirs by Diken, Şeyhmus, İsyan Sürgünleri (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2005)Google Scholar and Kaya, Ferzende, Mezopotamya Sürgünü: Abdülmelik Fırat’ın Yaşamöyküsü (Istanbul: Anka Yayınları, 2003)Google Scholar for the life stories of influential families exiled during these years.

33 This law was repealed by the Constitutional Court of Turkey in 1964 on the grounds that it constituted collective punishment and breached the principle of presumption of innocence.

34 See Yeğen, “Turkish State Discourse,” for an interpretation of smuggling as reflexive resistance to the imposition of a national project on an a-national space.

35 “Report on the robbery incidents in the Karaköprü area.”

36 TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 7 April 1937, 17–25.

37 Brown, Peasant Politics, 77, 98.

38 “The views of the First General Inspector on the changes envisioned on the judicial law.”

39 “Report on the robbery incidents in the Karaköprü area.”

40 Bayrak, Kürtler ve Ulusal Demokratik Mücadeleleri.

41 Ceren Belge, “Whose Law?: Clans, Honor Killings, and State–Minority Relations in Turkey and Israel” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2008), 58, 73, 93.

42 “The report of the Ağrı representative to the Ministry of Justice,” 10 November 1943 [1 September 1945], BCA, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Kataloğu (hereafter CHPK), 490.01, 614.09.01.

43 “Report of the Elazığ Inspector on Tunceli,” 29 January 1945, BCA, CHPK, 490.01, 513.2060.2.

44 Zülküf Aydın, Underdevelopment and Rural Structures, 59.

45 “Problems arising from gendarmerie officials staying too long in the areas under the First General Inspectorate,” 4 January 1930, BCA, BMGMK, 030.10, 69.454.36.

46 “Circular on the abolishment from the Eastern region of the institution of kirvelik which frequently causes incidents,” 19 August 1939, BCA BMGMK, 030.10, 65.435.10.

47 “The reports on Muş, Bitlis, Van and Diyarbakır to the General Secretariat,” 25 May 1945, BCA, CHPK, 490.01, 612.128.3.

48 “The complaints and demands received from the Republican People's Party's Provincial Administrative Council in Urfa,” 13 June 1951, BCA, CHPK, 490.01, 490.1975.01.

49 Scott, Seeing Like a State.

50 Mamdani, Mahmood, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. For a similar analysis of traditional authority in Kurdistan, see Beşikçi, Doğu Anadolu'nun Düzeni.

51 Öcalan, Abdullah, Kürdistan Devriminin Yolu: Manifesto, 5th ed. (Köln, Germany: Weşanên Serxwebûn 24, 1993), 145, 183–84Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., 145.

53 İmset, İsmet, PKK: Ayrılıkçı Şiddetin 20 Yılı, 1973–1992 (Ankara: Turkish Daily News Yayınları, 1993), 59–64Google Scholar; and Marcus, Aliza, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 44–46Google Scholar.

54 “Siverek'ten 6 ayda 1500 aile göç etti,” Milliyet, 27 April 1980. According to Sedat Bucak, 140 to 150 of his men were killed in these clashes between 1978 and 1980. See TBMM Susurluk Araştırma Komisyonu, İfade Tutanakları Susurluk Belgeleri, ed. Özdemir, Veli (Istanbul: Scala Yayıncılık, 1997)Google Scholar.

55 Beşe, Ertan, “Geçici Köy Korucuları,” in Almanak Türkiye 2005: Güvenlik Sektörü ve Demokratik Gözetim (Istanbul: TESEV yayınları, 2006), 134–43Google Scholar; and Balta, “Causes and Consequences,” 8–9.

56 TBMM Faili Meçhul Cinayetler Araştırma Komisyonu Raporu (Taslak) (Istanbul: Birleşik Sosyalist Parti İstanbul İl Örgütü Yayınları, 1995), 100.

57 Aşiretler Raporu (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 1998).

58 Interview with Ceren Belge in Urfa, 12 August 2006.

59 Others put the number closer to 10,000. TBMM Susurluk Araştırma Komisyonu, İfade Tutanakları, 315, 328.

60 McDowall, David, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 422Google Scholar.

61 See Balta, “Causes and Consequences”; Beşe, “Geçici Köy Korucuları,” 136; and Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu, Ulusal Hesaplar, İller İtibariyle Kişi Başına Gayri Safi Yurtiçi Hasıla; 1987–2001, http://www.tuik.gov.tr/VeriBilgi.do?tb_id=56&ust_id=16 (accessed 1 April 2010).

62 “PKK Vahşeti: 14 Ölü,” Milliyet, 24 February 1987.

63 “Korku Göçü: Şırnak ve Uludere'de Aşiretler Yurtlarını Terkediyor,” Milliyet, 16 October 1987.

64 “Direniş Eylemlerimiz Gelişerek Sürüyor,” Serxwebun 60 (December 1986): 3.

65 “Botan ve Serhed Eyaletleri I. Konferans Kararları Yeni Dönem Pratiğimizin Sorunlarına Işık Tutuyor,” Serxwebun 80 (August 1988): 20.

66 TBMM Faili Meçhul Cinayetler, 102.

67 Pamukoğlu, Osman, Unutulanlar Dışında Yeni Birşey Yok: Hakkari ve Kuzey Irak Dağlarında Askerler (Istanbul: Harmoni, 2003)Google Scholar, cited in Balta, “Causes and Consequences,” 12–13.

68 “Bucak’ın Korucularına 1.2 Milyar,” Milliyet, 14 January 1997.

69 İmset, PKK, 110.

70 Interview with Ceren Belge in Ankara, 10 August 2007.

71 McDowall, David, Kurds: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 421Google Scholar.

72 Field notes, 13 June 2006.

73 “Botan ve Serhed Eyaletleri Konferans Kararları,” 20.

74 Interview with Ceren Belge in Diyarbakır, 9 March 2006.

75 For an analysis of the state's encroachments into daily life in eastern Turkey, see Senem Aslan, “Governing Areas of Dissidence: Nation-Building and Ethnic Movements in Turkey and Morocco” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2008).

76 For an overview and critique of the statist literature see Mitchell, “Limits of the State”; and Migdal, Joel S., “Studying the State,” in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, ed. Lichbach, M. I. and Zuckerman, A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 208–36Google Scholar.

77 Gupta, Akhil, “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State,” American Ethnologist 22 (1995): 375–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.