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The Intimate Life of Dissent: Anthropological Perspectives, 2020
This article focuses on the court documents produced during the 1980 military court trials of Kurds charged with crimes against the Turkish state. Tracing the unauthorized movement of documents to a group of human rights advocates, Kurdish activists, and defense lawyers, it asks how an archive of criminal proceedings transformed into an alternative one bearing political aspirations of various kinds. Instead of reading the archive as a textual artifact whose hermeneutic interpretation is under the strict control of the sovereign, this piece approaches it within a framework of action and scrutinizes how the textual form and symbolic meaning of an archive was altered as Kurds defended themselves before the court, inscribed their own stories on the documents in prison, and circulated them outside for archiving. I argue that despite the kind of semantic violence inflicted by the 1980 coup d'état, the material remainders of that period disclose that Kurds stitched together their world by construing a language of struggle that promises another form of social existence in the here and now. Thus, the archive-in-making is an archive of not only state violence, but also of revolutionary struggle and aspirations for the ordinary. This article views such archiving practices as a form of making that is conducive
American Anthropologist, 2019
ABSTRACT In this article, I draw on two years of ethnographic research to explore the multiple and contradictory ways Kurdish working-class men in Istanbul imagine, narrate, and conceptualize violence. How Kurdish workers remember and publicly speak of violence, self-defense, and retribution has notably changed in the context of the resurgence of the war between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). I came to understand this storytelling of violence, omnipresent in all the social infrastructures of male Kurdish life in Istanbul, as a form of communicative labor through which a distinct historical consciousness and shared understandings of violence are created, networks for survival and dignity engendered, and moral selves crafted. These narratives refuse interpretation of the ongoing Kurdish struggle as mere terrorism or victimhood and instead recuperate Kurdish agency and counterviolence. In these narratives, “defense of the community” not only asserts peoples’ right to exist but also charges just violence with moral significance, turning those who protect their community against state violence into aspirational figures. [violence, narrative, morality, war and peace, memory, Kurds, Turkey] RESUMEN En este artículo, me baso en dos años de investigación etnográfica para explorar las formas múltiples y contradictorias en que hombres kurdos de la clase trabajadora en Estambul imaginan, narran y conceptualizan la violencia. Cómo los trabajadores kurdos recuerdan y hablan públicamente de violencia, autodefensa, y retribución ha cambiado notablemente en el contexto de la resurgencia de la guerra entre el estado turco y el Partido de los trabajadores de Kurdistán (PKK). Llegué a entender esta narración de la violencia, omnipresente en todas las infraestructuras sociales de la vida kurda masculina en Estambul, como una forma de trabajo comunicativo a través de la cual una consciencia histórica distinta y entendimientos compartidos de violencia son creados, redes para la sobrevivencia y la dignidad engendradas e individualidades morales elaboradas. Estas narrativas rechazan la interpretación de la lucha kurda en desarrollo como mero terrorismo o victimismo y en cambio recuperan la agencia kurda y la contraviolencia. En estas narrativas, la “defensa de la comunidad” no sólo afirma el derecho de los pueblos a existir sino también carga la violencia simplemente con un significado moral, convirtiendo aquellos quienes protegen la comunidad en contra de la violencia del estado en figuras aspiracionales. [violencia, narrativa, moralidad, guerra y paz, memoria, Kurdos, Turquía] KURTE Di vê gotarê de, li ser bingeha lêkolîneke etnografîk a du salan ez hewl didim lêbikolim ka ka mêrên kurd ên ji çîna karker li Stembolê bi çi awayên cihêreng û nakok li tundiyê dihizirin, wê vedibêjin û pênase dikin. Di çarçoveya jinûvedestpêkirina şerê di navbera dewleta tirk û Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) de, awayê ku karkerên kurd tundiyê, xwe-parastin û tolhildanê bi bîr tînin û di qada giştî de behsê dikin bi awayekî berçav guheriye. Di çarçoveya vê lêkolînê de ez lê serwext bûm ku ev çîrokbêjiya tundiyê, ku hemû dem û deverên civakî yên jiyana mêrên kurd li Stembolê vedigire û lê amade ye, formeke keda ragihandinî ye ku bi rêya wê hişmendiyeke dîrokî ya xweser û fehmên hevpar ên tundiyê tên afirandin, torên ji bo domandina jiyanê û parastina rûmetê pêk tînin û kesayetiyên exlaqî tên çêkirin. Ev vegotin an qisetên jiyanê wan derbirînan red dikin ku têkoşîna kurdan tenê wek teror an jî mexdûrî şîrove dikin, û li şûnê, li bikeriya kurdan û tundiya beramber xwedî derdikevin. Di van vegotinan de, “parastina gel” ne tenê doza mafê hebûnê ya gelan dike, lê herwiha qîmeteke exlaqî jî bar dike tundiya heq, û wisa jî wan kesên ku gelê xwe li hember tundiya dewletê diparêzin dike kesên pêşeng û ilhambexş. [tundî, vegotin, exlaq, şer û aştî, bîr, kurd, Tirkiye]
Torture and confession are like ‘the dark twins’ as Foucault argued. Definitions of torture from the 3rd century to the 21st century indicate confession as its primary motive. Systematic use of torture and confession has also characterised the Turkish state’s policy in Diyarbakır Military Prison against the Kurdish prisoners in the early 1980s. The detainees and the prisoners were routinely forced to repent and confess regardless of their organisational links or the crimes attributed to them. Wide, systematic and routine use of forced confessions in the prison showed that the significance of confession policy in Diyarbakır prison does not arise from their truth status or their effectiveness in intelligence gathering, but from their truth-effects. Although intelligence gathering was one of the objectives of the regime, the policy of confession was used primarily to establish dominance over the accused and to discipline and control the prisoners and the Kurdish population. Drawing upon Foucault, I will further argue that forced production of confession functioned as a ritual of truth-production and subjectification binding the prisoner to the dominant regime of power and truth and transforming him into a docile and obedient subject.
JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM, 2021
While the literature on the relations between historiography and politics is usually state-centred, literature on the relation between terrorist organisations and historiography is still being formulated. While this literature has studied terrorist organisations such as the IRA and ISIS, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has not been examined sufficiently. In this research, conducting document analysis, we see how Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, uses historical facts in his texts addressed to varying interlocutors at different times. When these facts are assessed based on their themes, it is established that such titles as ‘Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, National Pact, and Republic’ are at the forefront. It is observed that the mentioned historical facts are being used to create a perception that the PKK is the continuation of the Kurdish movement from the early twentieth century and to foster the political motivation of its cadres and audience. This paper concludes that Öcalan used historical references to create an image of the state with an unchanging character from the past in order to prove that the organisation’s recent political aims are legitimate and necessary.
A. Rubel/H.U. Voss (eds.), Experiencing the Frontier and the Frontier of Experience. Barbarian perspectives and Roman strategies to deal with new threats. Archaeopress Roman Archaeology 76, 2020
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