The purpose of this paper is to analyze the future of the U.S. support for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq in light of the increasing U.S. support for Turkey and the Baghdad Government in Iraq. How will this challenge the future development of Kurdish nationalism? Previously, the United States had encouraged Kurdish nationalism by encouraging the Iraqi Kurds to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and also then found the Kurds to be valuable assets in fighting against the Arab insurgents. Recently, however, the United States has tried to manipulate the KRG when it came under Turkish pressure to expel the PKK from the Qandil Mountain. Since their own forces were fighting insurgents in the center and south of Iraq, the United States and Iraq pressed the KRG to meet Turkey’s demands to oppose the PKK. KRG officials, however, feared that Turkey was more interested in opposing the further development of the KRG than in pursuing the PKK. After receiving the green light from Washington, Turkey sent 50 jets on December 6, 2007, to bomb suspected PKK targets, killing three people and displacing 1,800 villagers in the KRG area. The KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told reporters that it was unacceptable for “the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, to authorize Turkey to bomb our villages.” KRG officials were also upset by the U.S. military decision to create Sunni Arab militia (al-Sahwa) in Arabized Kurdish territories, fearing that would hamper the KRG’s efforts to implement Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution for a referendum on the future of Kirkuk. U.S. officials appeared to be appeasing Turkey and the Sunni Arabs by preventing the Kurds from reclaiming oil-rich Kirkuk, which Saddam Hussein earlier had “Arabized.” Indeed, since the Arabs established the al-Sahwa movement, the United States has been distancing itself from the KRG and allowing the Turkish and Iraqi governments to curtail the KRG’s nationalist goals. This paper will employ KRG documents as well as scholarly and media articles from all the various actors as sources. The paper’s methodology will employ objective criteria as a means of content analysis of the sources to develop its thesis and reach its conclusions.

Democratic solutions to Turkey’s Kurdish question require some kind of a cooperation and compromise between Turkish and Kurdish actors who hold different variants of Turkish and Kurdish, and explicit and “banal” nationalist beliefs and identities. Turkish nationalism of all variations has been diversity-averse for historical reasons, and official state policies dismissed even the existence of a Kurdish question until the 1990s. Within this context, until the 2000s, it was secular-leftist Turkish political actors who were relatively more open to explicitly Kurdish demands and cooperation with secular Kurdish nationalist actors in pursuit of more democratic and inclusive policies. This situation changed, however, during the last decade. Religious-conservative Turkish nationalists represented by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have drawn significant support from Kurdish constituencies and taken important yet limited steps to meet Kurdish cultural and political demands. The goal of this paper is to explore religious and secular Turkish nationalist values in pursuit of three questions. First, to what extent can changes in the religious Turkish nationalist beliefs explain both the opportunities and limits of the AKP’s approach toward the Kurdish question, in comparison to alternative explanations based in domestic and external political considerations? Second, how do these beliefs compare to secular nationalist and pre-AKP religious nationalist beliefs? Third, how sustainable is the AKP’s ability to cooperate with Kurdish actors considering the potential conflicts between the AKP’s nationalism and Kurdish nationalist demands, and to what extent can we expect more cooperation among Turkish and Kurdish secular actors in the future? In order to address these questions, the paper conceptualizes different types of nationalist beliefs and strategies, distinguishing between explicit-banal, religious-secular, and instrumental-formative beliefs and strategies. It will then employ these analytical tools to better explain the Turkish-Kurdish case in light of domestic and external political constraints on and empirical evidence regarding religious and secular Turkish nationalist beliefs. Empirical support is drawn from, among other sources, a comprehensive content analysis of religious and secular newspapers and political party documents.

The construction and politicization of Kurdish ethno-nationalism in Turkey has evolved through numerous different stages. The state’s policies are the determinant factors in the evolution and modulation of Kurdish ethno-nationalism. The major reason for the politicization of Kurdish cultural identity is the shift from the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural realities of the Ottoman Empire to the nation-state model. The old sources of legitimacy, i.e. Islam and the caliphate, were destroyed. The new order of forced homogenizing nationalism has been the major source of conflict in Turkey. The current waves of identity claims are the reflection of a deeper search for legitimacy and meaning in the post-Ottoman system. The relatively successful modernization project of Mustafa Kemal in education, urbanization, and communication not only created regional differences, but also helped to create a conscious Kurdish ethnic elite. The interpretation of this regional difference and the formation of the new Kurdish elite are the very reasons for the mobilization of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. After considering the construction and politicization of Kurdish ethno-nationalsim in Turkey this paper will examine the impact of the European Union on the Kurdish question in terms of the Europeanization of the Kurdish question in Turkey and the existing and potential reasons for and against Kurdish autonomy in Turkey. The EU might function as an intermediary between the Kurdish aspirations and the Turkish state. Turkish Kurds are divided on the question of Europe's role. The extreme Kurdish nationalists regard European integration as an obstacle to the achievement of its goal of a united pan-Kurdistan. The material used to write this paper has largely been gathered through field work in Turkey. The paper’s methodology will employ objective criteria as a means of content analysis of the sources to develop its thesis and reach its conclusions.

Ever since the beginning of the guerrilla war of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, the PKK has been labelled as ‘terrorist’ by the Turkish security forces, politics and media. Despite this, and in part due to the disproportionate use of violence and repression by the Turkish Armed Forces, its police, gendarmerie and state security, the PKK has become the main Kurdish organization in Turkey. As a result, it could count upon the long time understanding and sometimes even sympathy of various international political actors. For example, many European countries proved to be a safe haven for political refugees, so the PKK could thrive upon the support and solidarity networks that were built up abroad. However, the PKK has not been able to escape “the global war on terror” that was launched following the 9/11 attacks. Since 2002 the PKK has been labelled a ‘terrorist organization’ by the United States and the European Union too. This labelling has affected the PKK seriously. It forced its representatives in Europe into a permanent struggle to regain and sustain its legitimacy as well as that of its imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan. This paper will analyze the consequences of the terrorist label and its challenges to Kurdish nationalism by analyzing the different strategies PKK militants and supporters have used in order to clear the negative image of their movement and to reclaim what they consider to be their rights as a people. The material used to write this paper has been gathered by a considerable amount of field work in Europe and Turkey. The paper’s methodology will employ objective criteria as a means of content analysis of the sources to develop its thesis and reach its conclusions.

The religious and nationalist nature of the Shaikh Said Rebellion in 1925 has been debated by the scholars for decades. For the Kurdish nationalists the rebellion symbolized the Kurdish struggle for an independent state. For the Turkish state, it was another deception by Great Britain to stir up the region for its colonialist interests. Newly available sources in the US diplomatic archives (especially in the collection titled "Records of the Department of State relating to Internal Affairs of Turkey") raise the question of the Turkish government's fomentation and/or manipulation of the Shaikh Said Rebellion. In addition, some of the Turkish oppositional leaders of the time (such as Kazim Karabekir) suggested that this rebellion was allowed to happen to suppress the political opposition in Turkey. This paper will examine the validity of these claims, and in so doing throw new light on an old question concerning the challenges of Kurdish nationalism. More specifically, this paper will seek answers to the following questions: Was the Shaikh Said Rebellion fomented by the Turkish government to eliminate the political opposition? How was this rebellion manipulated to accomplish this aim? Do Shaikh Said's relations with the Turkish government via the Independence Tribunal in Diyarbakir, in which he was prosecuted, pose a challenge to Kurdish nationalism? Finally, the paper will conclude in discussing the way in which the Shaikh Said Rebellion poses a challenge to and provides an asset for Kurdish Nationalism.

The demand for recognition and accommodation of Kurdish nationalist political aspirations in Turkey is a pressing challenge for Turkey's ruling AK Party. Prior to the 2007 elections, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party government seemed ready to concede to some of these demands. After the headscarf debacle of 2008, the AK Party policy regarding these Kurdish demands has swung back to a less accommodating one. Within this context, I will compare the AK Party performance in the March 2009 by-election with the DTP, its most significant competition for the Kurdish vote. I will compare the performance of these two parties to see how voting patterns differ. Among the many factors that may affect voter party preference, I will focus on how the AK Party, with its stress on patronage politics, performed during the economic expansion year of 2007 and the recession of 2009. I will also analyze the DTP performance as its stress on ethnic politics has been increasingly radicalized from 2007 to 2009. In this dynamics mix of the pull of economic slowdown, which curtails patronage, and the push of increased demand for ethnic based politics by an increasingly more educated and youthful population, the AK Party government faces one of its most difficult challenges. The AK Party to date, while making certain concessions, such as broadcasting in Kurdish, has been unable to deal with the demands of Kurdish nationalism. It has sought to substitute economic development for political development. As long as the AK Party continues to believe that these two factors are fungible, the AK Party government will not be able to manage the challenge of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey successfully.