In contrast to simple, cultural explanations of honor crimes in Turkey and the Turkish/Kurdish diaspora, my research offers an historical perspective for understanding the existence and meaning of honor crimes in Turkish popular culture and the perpetuation of honor-related gendered violence. I argue that in order to dispute claims of human rights violations in Turkey, particularly honor crimes, popular culture reflects the effects of the twentieth-century modernization and Turkish national identity formation processes by describing the persistence of honor-related gendered violence as an “eastern,” “rural,” or “Kurdish” problem, in order to maintain the secular, modern characterization of Kemalist and now liberal Islamist Turkey. Nationalists, modernists, the popular press, and mainstream culture in Turkey emphasize the “backwardness” of Kurdish culture, and, according to this discourse, religious fanaticism and medieval tribalism explain the presence of honor killing in the eastern and southern parts of Turkey. This method of defending the nation against being characterized as anti-modern and thus anti-“western” remains a sharp contrast to the Kemalist policy of denying Kurdish identity. In the case of honor-related violence Turkish media and the state affirm Kurdishness in their terms. Kurds have been systematically denied the means of producing their own version of Kurdish identity in the form of popular media; therefore, this imbalanced discourse goes on in Turkey without a counter-narrative. To demonstrate these processes I focus my analysis on a very popular 2006 television drama produced and aired in Turkey and broadcast to the diaspora via YouTube, Sila. The story revolves around a downtrodden Kurdish family that must give their young daughter away to be raised in Istanbul. Now an urban, “modern” Turkish woman, she is forced to return to her Kurdish tribe and marry a neighboring tribal lord to restore her family honor. She is raped and physically abused by her new husband. Sila producers and viewers are not alone in their thirst for reaffirmation of Turkish “modern,” secular identity vis-à-vis the rural Kurdish other. I draw from other examples in the popular press and Turkish television to support my thesis.

The proposed paper aims to explore the nexus of relations between the Kurds of Northern Iraq and Turkey as they have developed since the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003. The two US-led invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003 altered the political balance in Northern Iraq. The creation of a “safe haven” for Kurdish refugees in the early 1990s eventually led to the establishment of a de facto Kurdish entity in northern Iraq based in Suleimaniyah. The situation was further complicated after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. As Iraqi Kurds became the main local allies of the US authority in Iraq, opportunities were created for strengthening Kurdish autonomy by turning Iraq into a federal state, enlarging the area of the Kurdish-controlled Iraqi territory and potentially achieving independence. Turkey reacted with a vehement opposition to the increasing autonomy of northern Iraq’s Kurdish provinces at the diplomatic level. The inclusion of the oil-rich Kirkuk province into the Kurdish territory was rejected, while the elimination of all PKK bases and the discontinuation of all its activities in northern Iraq was demanded. Meanwhile, a countervailing trend was observed in the field of economics. Trade between Turkey and northern Iraq grew exponentially, while numerous Turkish companies invested in Northern Iraq. Despite tension at the high political level, economic cooperation flourished and added a significant dimension in the matrix of Turkish-Iraqi-Kurdish relations. This paper aims to examine the role of economy in alleviating high-politics tensions and suggesting a mutually beneficial modus vivendi, in parallel with the dynamics of Kurdish nation-building in northern Iraq and south-eastern Turkey. The role of significant parameters of the question will be also taken into account. The question of control over Kirkuk oilfields and the relations of northern Iraq with the Iraqi central government will be explored. Besides, the impact of the United States and the PKK on the dispute will also be examined. Finally, the possible impact of the new Obama administration on the status of Northern Iraq and its relations with Turkey will be evaluated.

Cultural and political rights of Kurds have long been constructed as an adversarial agenda against Turkey in the official discourse. Recent liberal policies of the pro-Islamic party in power, Justice and Development Party (AKP), however, remarkably differ from the traditional secular nationalist agenda. Specifically, the launch of Turkey’s first Kurdish language television station (TRT-6) in January 2009 exacerbated much controversy. On the one hand, Kurdish nationalist circles, led by pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), expressed their frustration due to the AKP’s hegemonic attempt to eliminate Kurdish resistance. On the other hand, secularist civil-bureaucratic elite found the channel as threatening to the Turkey’s national unity. Conducting twenty five semi-structural in-depth interviews with the AKP and the DTP officials in Ankara as well as the TRT-6 channel viewers in Diyarbakir (the largest city in the Kurdish populated region), this study aims to investigate the AKP’s reformist policies toward Kurds in general and the policy on the official recognition of Kurdish language in particular. Main thesis of the paper is that recent contestations over the the so called “Kurdish problem” does not only result in a re-definition of Turkish nationalist identity but also re-constructed the Islamist thinking. Political Islamic movements’ traditional solution of the Kurdish question has been a denial of ethnic differences for the sake of the global Islamic nation (ummah) at large. Yet, the denial itself has never been independent from the Turkish nationalist discourses. Therefore, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis had been a tool in hands of both secularist nationalists and their Islamic rivals (i.e. conservative Islamic resistance movements) until the AKP shifted from this traditional path. Through its policies toward Kurdish minority, the pro-Islamic AKP aims to give impression that it is a genuine lower-middle class people’s party that challenges the well-established secular nationalist and elitist status quo. Utilizing the concept of “identity contest,” this study shows that the Islamic identity in Turkey, which has a priori been considered as Turkish, lean to an all-encompassing “identity of resistance” to the secularist nationalism by including a strong Kurdish Islamic expressive identity. Contestations of the conventional identities (i.e. Turkish nationalist, secularist, Islamist) over the Kurdish question have ushered a new development of Kurdish-Islamic identity that is sympathetic with the new policies of the Turkish state.