Has Turkey Finally Solved Its Kurdish Problem?

Comments · 491

• JA

  @JamesKerLindsay · 1 month ago · pinned

  This isn’t the first time Turkey and the PKK have tried for peace. Previous ceasefires and initiatives have ultimately collapsed. So, will this process be different? Do you think this really marks the end of the conflict? Or will the underlying issues remain unresolved and the two sides eventually plunge back into war? And, will Ocalan be released? As always, I look forward to your thoughts and comments below.

  32

• YS

  @ysn6806 · 1 month ago

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Erdoğan over the past 25 years, it’s that if he believed it would help him win an election, he’d sit down with the devil himself and make a deal.

  130

• EV

  @evrimyueksel3243 · 1 month ago

  Manu thanks for Your Information

  7

• WB

  @wbell539 · 1 month ago

  Let us all hope that this works. Whether it cynical politics or not.

  4

• BR

  @brandonlee3381 · 1 month ago

  Keep them coming very informative 🎉🎉😊😊

  3

• HA

  @harriskats1977 · 1 month ago

  Erdo needs Kurds to change the numbers in the parliament in order to change the constitution and stay President until he dies

  32

• KA

  @kahin7997 · 1 month ago

  ❤

  2

• PI

  @PipeBP85 · 3 weeks ago

  great video, thanks!

  1

• AR

  @armagankaratosun · 1 month ago (edited)

  Hello, dear Prof. Ker-Lindsay, I would like to challenge your premise that this issue began immediately after the founding of the newly established Turkish Republic. History disagrees. The Kurdish groups have repeatedly rebelled against the Ottomans (e.g., 1874 or 1880) and the early TBMM Government during the War of Independence (1921); this is roughly a 200-year-old process, albeit not a continuous Kurdish nationalist conflict, but one that combines religious, tribal, socioeconomic, and anti-centralization grievances with an increasingly explicit Kurdish political consciousness. Sheik Said's rebellion is an excellent example of the problem. He is a Kurd, a religious leader, and a political actor. How much weight to assign to Kurdish nationalism vs religion or other factors is debatable. Therefore, I found explaining the entire history of Kurdish resistance as a reaction to "Turkification" or  "Assimilation" policies of the early republic to be a bit simplistic. In addition, both Turkish and Kurdish nationalism emerged relatively late as modern political projects. This is also very apparent in the Lausanne Treaty and the population exchange agreements that followed afterward. Lausanne reflected a conception of nationhood in which religious identity played a major role in determining minority status: the treaty's formal minority protections were primarily extended to non-Muslim communities, while Muslim populations (such as Kurds) were generally incorporated into the Turkish national polity regardless of their ethnic origins. This helps explain the historical basis of the Turkish state's reluctance to recognize Kurds as a separate national minority, which I must say was a position that was also consistent with the broader nation-state paradigm of that historical time period. Notably, as you also rightly pointed out,  the PKK's original ethos was significantly different from today's and was mostly Marxist-Leninist and Kurdish nationalism-focused. Later, both Ocalan and the PKK (to some extent) rejected Stalinist/Marxist-Leninist state socialism and the nation-state, and the ethos became more in line with democratic confederalism. TL;DR, I understand this is a 10-minute video, but I thought this might add some deeper and, hopefully, more accurate historical context to the debate. Thank you.

  10

• WA

  @WalterBurton · 1 month ago

  👍👍👍

  2

• EM

  @emamsaid9728 · 1 month ago

  شكرا جدا

  4

• GI

  @givemefivetv8435 · 1 month ago

  That conflict been going on for 500 years...

  2