The Kurdish struggle and the crisis of the Turkishness Contract

Unlu B.

PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM, cilt.42, sa.4-5, ss.397-405, 2016 (AHCI, Scopus) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 42 Sayı: 4-5
  • Basım Tarihi: 2016
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1177/0191453715625715
  • Dergi Adı: PHILOSOPHY & SOCIAL CRITICISM
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.397-405
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: privilege, Turkishness, the Turkishness Contract, whiteness, Whiteness Studies
  • Ankara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

In this article, inspired by Whiteness Studies, I propose two concepts that allow us to see the question of ethnicity as well as the history of the Turkish Republic through the lens of privilege: Turkishness and the Turkishness Contract. By Turkishness, I mean a patterned but mostly unrecognized relationship between Turkish individuals' ethnic position and their ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing - as well as not seeing, not hearing, not feeling and not knowing. These ways and states of Turkishness have been shaped by a set of written/unwritten and spoken/unspoken agreements (the Turkishness Contract) among the Muslims of Anatolia. However, during the last 40 years, the Kurdish movement, by creating a military and civilian resistance with mass support, has challenged the fundamentals of the contract and therefore caused a dramatic crisis of identity and selfhood for Turkishness.