Turkey's Perilous Dilemma between Coopting and Integrating Kurds, 1984-2015

• In Event: In-Group/Out-Group Politics

Abstract

Description:
My project probes the relationship between ethnic exclusion in the military and violent and non-violent ethnic mobilization. It seeks to understand how Kurdish representation in the Turkish officer corps and the Turkish state's local cooptation strategies have affected local Kurds' motivation to join in insurgency or support pro-Kurdish parties. Why have some Kurds joined in the insurgency, while others have preferred to fight against their coethnics by signing up for the military and local village guards? I argue that the Turkish state has crafted an innovative yet counterproductive strategy to co-opt the local Kurds without integrating them into the military. My subnational-level spatial and temporal analysis of officer and village guard recruitment patterns versus insurgent recruitment, conflict-led fatalities, and pro-Kurdish-party vote in each Kurdish-populated province from 1980 to 2015 preliminarily suggests that Kurds' persistent exclusion from the officer corps has contributed to the onset and durability of the PKK-led insurgency.

Data and Research Design:
In investigating the social representation in the armed forces, the paper primarily draws on original historical demographic data of close to 25,000 officers, including the entire senior leadership of the Turkish army, navy, and air force from 1923 until 2015. The demographic data in the Turkish Armed Forces Officer Corps (TAFOC) dataset was collected by the author from military archives and libraries, court-martial records, and national newspapers in Turkey. 2-year ethnographic research between 2016 and 2019 in Ankara and Istanbul including 102 in-depth interviews with active duty and retired officers, politicians, scholars, and associations complement the quantitative research. Additionally, the paper employs the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) to develop a location-based armed conflict and fatalities dataset, the Turkish Statistical Institute database to compile a historical election dataset at the province level, Tezcur’s KIM dataset for insurgent recruitment data (2016), Belge and Balta’s data on village guard recruitment patterns (Belge 2016, Balta 2019).

Claims and Preliminary Findings:
A preliminary analysis of the original TAFOC dataset demonstrates that Kurds have been persistently excluded from state power since the early days of the republic. Based on the temporal comparison of regional recruitment rates and insurgent fatalities as an indicator conflict, my research shows that in contrast to the common view the socioeconomic deprivation and ongoing conflict have had a limited effect on Kurdish underrepresentation and that the exclusion of Kurds in Turkish armed forces is path-dependent and predates the foundation of the republic. The paper shows how the state’s cooptationist instead of integrationist strategies have contributed to the reproduction of the regional autonomy of Kurds and their tendency to rebel since the late nineteenth century and the durability of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict since 1984.

The paper also offers an empirical analysis of the relationship between minority representation in the military and ethnic conflict. A spatial and temporal analysis of military recruitment patterns compared to rebel recruitment patterns in the Kurdish-majority provinces between 1984 and 2015 suggests a strong relationship between ethnic exclusion from state power and Kurdish ethno-mobilization. In localities where access to positions of power in security forces has been lower, the rates of rebel recruitment have been considerably higher. Considering also that the underrepresentation of Kurds predates the onset of the armed conflict, I suggest that exclusion from state power has been indeed an important factor that has contributed to both the outbreak and resilience of the PKK-led armed rebellion of Kurds.

Literature:
My project contributes to the literature by revealing the state’s alternative strategies to undermine the saliency of ethnic conflict. It also contributes to the scholarship examining the motivation of individuals to join insurgency (Horowitz, 2000; Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Kalyvas, 2008; Tezcur, 2016) by identifying the determinants of “ethnic loyalty” and “ethnic defection. Scholars have widely emphasized the consequences of the composition of the military on political stability and democracy (Decalo 1990; Gutteridge, 1962, 1969; Enloe 1980; Horowitz 1980, 1985; Harkness 2013). Existing literature, especially about post-colonial societies, shows that ethnic balance or imbalance in the military significantly affect the onset, durability, and outcomes of civil wars and rebellions (Cederman and Girardin 2007; Cederman, Wimmer and Min 2010, Chandra & Wilkinson 2009; Fearon, Kasara and Laitin 2007; Tezcur & Gurses 2016, Wilkinson 2016). My findings confirm both the cross-country and area-based scholarship suggesting a strong link between ethnic exclusion and ethnic mobilization.

Author

• Ozgur Ozkan, University of Washington