This paper examines the politicization and ethnicization of the modern Kurdish identity in Turkey. It will engage into a debate with the existing literature on this subject. First, with regard to the 1960s and the affiliation between the left and the new Kurdish elite and intellectuals, it will contest the contemporary explanations. First of all, the paper will argue against the interchangeability of the "Eastern question," "Kurdish issue" and "Kurdish nationalism". Second, the existing literature on the Kurdish movement about the 1960s in general and its affiliation with the Turkish socialist and leftist movement in particular does not do justice to the complexity of that era. To regard Kurdish nationalism as starting in the early nineteenth century and defeated by the Turkish nation-state by the late 1930s, going through a revival in the 1960s due to the relatively more liberal political atmosphere, does not give a plausible explanation why politics in general and in the region in particular changed its direction during and after the 1960s. What we observe during the 1960s and the early 1970s diverges from the historicist narratives on the rise of Kurdish nationalism. During the 1960s, what prevailed was Doguculuk (Eastism) and it was only following the failure of Doguculuk that Kurdish activism opted for a nationalist solution to the Kurdish issue. In order to understand the importance of the 1960s for the future development of Kurdish activism the intra-generation conflicts need to be taken into account and the affiliation between Turkish socialist and Kurdish groups. This will allow insight into how this affiliation was constructed and how it changed the politics in Turkish Kurdistan. Thereto election results at the regional level, and interviews with the most prominent figures of the Kurdish nationalist movement, as well as journals and dailies published by Kurds during the 1960s and 1970s and mainstream Turkish newspapers and periodicals will serve as primary sources. Additionally memoirs will provide interesting perspectives on the era, combined with a literature survey of secondary sources related to the Kurds and the Turkish Left in Kurdish, Turkish and English language sources.

The paper examines Kurdish political mobilization in the 1960s by focusing on the case of Eastern Demonstrations (Dogu Mitingleri). These demonstrations were led by the "Easterners" (Dogulular) group of the Turkish Labor Party (in collaboration with the local members of KDP in Turkey) in 1967 with the aim of voicing the demands and the grievances of Kurdish regions and the Kurds in Turkey. Eastern Demonstrations stand at the crossroads of the socio-political transformation that Turkey went through during the 1950s and the 1960s and the accompanying remarkable wave of political mobilization in Turkey. A wide range of social groups engaged in collective political action and negotiated with the state elites in different forms. To these various contentious groups - peasants, workers, students - of the decade, one should add the Kurds. The paper argues that a dynamic and relational historicization of this generation of Kurdish activists and the Eastern Demonstrations reveals the multiplicity of the 1968 experience in Turkey and provides an alternative narrative to the state-centered accounts of the history of Kurdish resistance.

Kurdish nationalists have referred to the PKK as a party without a history. Though the PKK does not have its political background in Kurdish politics, it was not a party without history, but one with a very different one than Kurdish nationalist contemporaries. The PKK's founders did not have previous political relations with Kurdish nationalist political actors. Reviewing the early history of the PKK, this contribution will discuss not only that, but also how the PKK was born from the revolutionary left in Turkey. The contribution will discuss the political backgrounds of the core-group from which the PKK emerged and the convictions of this inner circle. It will trace the origins of the PKK in the history of the the Turkiye Halk Kurtuluu Ordusu, THKO (the People's Liberation Army of Turkey) and Turkiye Halk Kurtulus Parti-Cephesi, THKP-C (the People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey). Both THKO and THKP-C were politico-military organizations, in the sense that they practiced the idea that only an armed struggle, guided by a political party, could bring the necessary changes to the existing political system. Based on internal sources and interviews, it will be argued that the PKK was developed from the experiences in the organization of armed and political struggle by these revolutionary leftist organizations in Turkey during the early 1970s. Furthermore, it will also be argued that the PKK constituted itself as the ideological and political movement that both had the intention and the capability to unite the divided revolutionary left in Turkey. Though the PKK has experiences profound changes over the last decades, this paper will argue that the party's political strategy, past and present, should be analyzed against the background of radical leftist political theory.

Is the Kurdish nationalism still a leftist movement? This paper explores the recent public discourses on the Turkish "deep state," what is popularly called "Ergenekon," to investigate current transformations in Kurdish identity representations. The Gulen movement's increasing criticism of the Ergenekon, and as a result, gaining popularity in the Southeast has led to Kurdish ethno-nationalist activist narrations of the bloody history of the Turkish deep state. As rumors on the Ergenekon circulate widely and repeatedly, the very act of story-telling about the deep state has become rewarding for all social movement activists in the region. In other words, the Ergenekon case has provided a new discursive opportunity for social movement reputation work. Through an active competition to build reputation as "enemies of the state," the activists of various movements involve in narrative contests, in which stories are narrated for re-structuring authentic Kurdish identity and de-legitimize rival identities. The paper concludes that the Kurdish ethno-nationalist movement's multivocal discourse makes it further vulnerable to the leftist critiques.

Turkey's Kurdish Movement is no longer bounded by any borders, so it seems. Whereas the PKK's armed wing always found a hinterland in neighbouring countries, today the Kurdish movement is stretched beyond what has been traditionally defined as the Kurdish regions. With strong transnational relations and exchange with its European Kurdish Diaspora, as well the growing number of Kurdish satellite chains and internet sites, some have come to speak of a growing transnational political space for the Kurds. This growing transnational political space has, without doubt, created new opportunities for the internationalization of Turkey's Kurdish issue and the Kurdish cause as defended by its main propagators, the PKK and BDP. One of the means to raise public awareness about the plight of the Kurds has been the Kurdish movements' enlisting into the Anti-Globalization movement that started at the end of the 1990s. Kurdish politicians and civil society representatives have figured actively in the European Social Forums held in the 2000s. In late September 2009 the European Social Forum was invited to hold its preparatory meeting for the ESF Istanbul 2010 in Diyarbakir. Following this, the first Mesopotamia Social Forum was held in Diyarbakir. The meeting intended to bring together different groups and peoples from the Middle East in order to develop solidarity against what were called 'all forms of dominations and injustices'. This paper engages with the rationale of the Kurdish movement's engagement with the social fora. The paper will put to question if this engagement is indeed contributing to the internationalization of the cause, or if, as a closer reading of the social fora participation suggest, it might be considered as another means to put into practice the new ideological project as advocated by the PKK's leadership. If so, it can be considered a way to reinforce the local socio-political developments in the BDP-run municipalities that are inspired by it, ultimately giving shape to an alternative authority that has been developing in Turkey's Southeast. The data for this paper were collected through participatory observation in the fora and extensive interviews with the main organizers of the Mesopotamia Social Forum, both in Turkey and Europe.