The Prose of Turkish Counterinsurgency: Misinformation as Truth

• In Event: Poster Session: LGBTQI+ Power and Politics & Human Rights
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Human Rights

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Turkish counterinsurgency practices in the Kurdish provinces during the years 1984 – 1999. I specifically framed this time period as a case study because misinformation is utilized as state policy in order to construct truth. The state’s goal is to prevent the protection of human rights by way of preventing the holding of culpable persons accountable, since state agents enjoy immunity in exchange for doing violent work for the government. As such, misinformation is strategically used to grant impunity to state agents involved in the counterinsurgency operations. My essay examines this strategy occurring alongside a period where Turkish operatives consistently deployed the politicization of the dead to send a message to Kurdish communities about the state sanctioned violence. A part of this policy entailed leaving mass graves of slain insurgents, a consistent practice throughout the 1984 – 1999 period. Building on my ethnographic research on one of these three hundred and forty-three mass graves, my paper shows how Turkish state agents utilize misinformation as a strategy to grant impunity to counterinsurgency operatives who engage in the politicization of the dead. While killing insurgents is a state sanctioned violent activity, the mistreatment of their corpses and deprivation of these individuals from a dignified burial are illegal and amoral behaviors. As these are illegal activities, they were clearly condoned by higher government officials. As such, they must be understood as the prose of Turkish counterinsurgency where misinformation is the main element used in the construction of truth. In conclusion, the prose of Turkish counterinsurgency both utilizes dead human parts to send messages, and erases the evidence of such behavior from media, public, and state records. Human rights protections rely on the construction of the truth in a credible manner and misinformation stands as a major obstacle to holding violators accountable for their crimes.

Author

• Bilgesu Sumer, New Mexico Highlands University