This paper explains why states carry out “enforced disappearances” through a comparative study of two repressive periods in Turkey. The frequency of enforced disappearances varies dramatically across time in the country. After the 1980 coup the Turkish state carried out violent repression, arresting, imprisoning, and torturing thousands of regime dissidents and yet disappearing few. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of disappearances was only 33. In the 1990s, the number of disappearances reached over a thousand citizens. What explains this dramatic variation in enforced disappearances in these two turbulent decades of Turkish history that were marked by extensive state violence? We argue that the differences in the characteristics of the political opposition, particularly the subsequent legibility of the opposition for the state, account for the variation in the state’s use of disappearances. States use disappearances when two interrelated conditions exist; they see their opponents as having wide but shallow support (“soft” support) and this makes it difficult to identify who is in the opposition or could join the opposition in the future. In the 1980s the Turkish state could effectively repress its political opposition through more typical forms of state violence, such as arrests and torture. The political opposition that the military attacked in the 1980s was small, composed of autonomous groups based in cities that had little support in the society. It could direct repression against these discrete, limited networks with the knowledge that there was not a large pool of soft supporters in society. In contrast, the state in the 1990s faced a Kurdish movement whose contours of support in the society were unclear, though clearly extensive, and its rural base made discerning its support even more difficult. In other words, the transformation of the Kurdish insurgency, PKK, into a mass movement created problems of legibility for the Turkish state. We argue that the difficulties associated with gathering information and identifying supporters of the PKK, particularly those who act as intermediaries between society and the PKK (the middlemen), led the state to use more subtle means of violence like disappearances. The research for this paper is based on interviews, human rights reports, memoirs of military officers and opposition activists as well as a recent database in Turkey on enforced disappearances.

Legitimacy of state is largely grounded on sovereignty it incurs over its citizens and hence the authority it exercises. In certain cases of intrastate violence, armed guerilla forces may supersede the power of the state in some regions of the state territory, and claim authority. Loss of recognition as an authority in the eyes of the public bear strong implications for state legitimacy, and this is an oft-encountered phenomena in the ‘liberated zones’. Turkey, for one, has undergone a three-decade long armed conflict between the state forces and the PKK, which seems to be at halt since the ceasefire in April 2013. Autonomy being the ultimate desire of the Kurdish movement has been at the heart of negotiations and it, indeed, seems to be de facto in place in many Kurdish cities in Turkey, yet still under authority of Turkish state. What are the implications of this practice of autonomy on recognition of Turkish state? How do identities of citizens and legitimacy interact? This paper intends to examine the legitimacy of the state as well as changing dynamics of the state-society relationship in the Kurdish region throughout the course of the armed struggle with a historical perspective. Broadly speaking, it is, an investigation on the consequences of state’s denial to recognize the ethnic diversities on state’s legitimacy and democracy. The interplay between the macro and micro factors as in the form of collective and individual memory as well as the repercussions of institutional acts on lives of people is at the heart of this paper’s analysis. Subordination of Kurdish citizens and culture of fear induced by the strong hand of Turkish state against any threat to the unity of the nation are the two both overlapping and yet distinct factors shaping attitudes and behavior of Kurdish people in Turkey. There is considerable variation among cities and individuals. The policies of the state—i.e. the assimilation strategies—, the individual memory and the collective memory people chose to subscribe to, seem to be some powerful determinants of state perception and their identity formation. Empirical ground of this study comes from dissertation fieldwork conducted in Turkey. The original data is composed of 46 expert interviews, 82 in-depth interviews and 14 focus groups with ordinary people across 8 different cities with varying proximity to the hot zone of the conflict.

On November 3, 2012, a group of pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) members from Diyarbakır jumped over a police barricade and broke into the garden of the Governor’s office. Despite their demands to speak with the governor when they reached the gates of his office, the seven Parliament members of the pro-Kurdish party, along with the pro-Kurdish party’s mayor of Diyarbakır, were rejected by the governor on the grounds they failed to make an appointment. The gates of the building remained locked. Pounding on the doors of the governor’s building, Parliament member said, “If he does not open the door, this door will be broken. He should open the door and confront us. Only elected representatives are here. There is no need for an appointment; here are the parliament members of Diyarbakır.” The incident marks the conflict and duality of this administrative system in Turkey. In this paper, I analyze the conflict between the governorship and the pro-Kurdish municipalities, and through case studies, I demonstrate how the pro-Kurdish party turned this condition of contestation into another opportunity for Kurdish mobilization in the city. With a focus on four Kurdish cities—Diyarbakır, Batman, Hakkari, and Şırnak—this paper critically analyzes the following questions: How did pro-Kurdish municipalities appropriate urban space to transmit a narrative that challenged the State’s discourse on security, violence, and identity? How did pro-Kurdish elements establish an articulating logic to create a collective sense of Kurdish nationhood in the city despite diverse forms of coercion such as arrests of mayors, municipality officers, local authors, and activists; banning park names; and prohibiting festivals and workshops? How did pro-Kurdish municipalities creatively turn this condition of coercion into another opportunity for the mobilization of Kurds the strengthening of their popular base in the city? Based on more than twelve months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork in Turkey, the paper provides a rich account of contested forms of local governance in Kurdish cities as well as spatial settings of Kurdish nationhood.

This study offers the first systematic analysis of ethnic and regional dimensions of state and political power in contemporary Turkey. It builds on an original dataset to measure ethnic and regional imbalance in the executive, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy. The dataset contains biographical information (i.e., birth province and district, birth year, gender, education, previous appointments, etc.) collected from a variety of online and printed sources about ministers, governors, high court judges, and high-ranking generals since 1950 with a focus on the post-1980. In total, around 2,000 individuals who occupied such powerful positions in Turkey are included in the dataset. On the basis of this dataset, this study examines the access of the ethnic Kurds to state and political power. It uses birth provinces as proxies of ethnic identity. Using birth provinces as a proxy of ethnicity is justified for two reasons. Birth province is a reliable indicator of Kurdish ethnicity because, as stated earlier, Kurds are geographically concentrated in southeastern Turkey. Second, around two-thirds of the Kurds continue to live in this area despite a sizeable Kurdish population that has migrated to large cities in the last decades. As the dataset covers civil servants and politicians who were all born before 1970, it is very unlikely that it includes a considerable number of ethnic Kurds who were born outside of eastern provinces. The study reaches several findings with significant implications. First, Kurds are severely underrepresented in echelons of power. This finding challenges the conventional wisdom suggesting that Kurds reach higher echelons of power as long as they do not openly express their ethnic identity. While the state rhetoric distinguishes between the “law-abiding” Kurds and those “terrorists” rebelling against the state, Kurds regardless of their political attitudes and behavior seem to be excluded from power. This exclusion persists despite a series of reforms in the recent years and a relatively democratic process which has provided room for upward mobility for groups who were underrepresented in the past. Next, this ethnic imbalance or discrimination has politicized and strengthened ethnic identity. Provinces with markedly low access to political power provide higher level of support for ethnic insurgency and vote for ethnic parties. State policies turn ethnic structure into a politicized ethnic identity and thus so laying the ground for conflict.