Kurds of Modern Turkey

Kurds of Modern Turkey

Cenk Saraçoğlu

It was not until the convoy of the Democratic Society Party, the major Kurdish nationalist party in Turkey, was stoned in İzmir in November 2009 that the increasing anti-Kurdish sentiments in Turkey were openly discussed in Turkish media and academia. This incident happened when the ruling AKP party (Justice and Development Party) was in the process of initiating a reform package that intended to expand the political and cultural rights of Kurds. This intention of the government, also known as the ‘Kurdish initiative’, sparked deep political controversies in Turkey, as both the opposition parties and large sections of Turkish society took a dim view of it. In this context, the incident in İzmir was typically interpreted as proof of the fact that the AKP government’s reform package was leading to the development and popularisation of hitherto absent (or marginal) anti-Kurdish sentiments...