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All Azimuth V6, N1, Jan. 2017, 49-82
Ideology, Political Agenda, and Conflict: A Comparison of American, European, and
Turkish Legislatures’ Discourses on Kurdish Question
Akın Ünver
Kadir Has University
Abstract
Combining discourse analysis with quantitative methods, this article
compares how the legislatures of Turkey, the US, and the EU discursively
constructed Turkey’s Kurdish question. An examination of the legislative-
political discourse through 1990 to 1999 suggests that a country suffering
from a domestic secessionist conflict perceives and verbalizes the problem
differently than outside observers and external stakeholders do. Host
countries of conflicts perceive their problems through a more security-
oriented lens, and those who observe these conflicts at a distance focus more
on the humanitarian aspects. As regards Turkey, this study tests politicians’
perceptions of conflicts and the influence of these perceptions on their pre-
existing political agendas for the Kurdish question, and offers a new model for
studying political discourse on intra-state conflicts. The article suggests that a
political agenda emerges as the prevalent dynamic in conservative politicians’
approaches to the Kurdish question, whereas ideology plays a greater role for
liberal/pro-emancipation politicians. Data shows that politically conservative
politicians have greater variance in their definitions, based on material
factors such as financial, electoral, or alliance-building constraints, whereas
liberal and/or left-wing politicians choose ideologically confined discursive
frameworks such as human rights and democracy.
Keywords: Intra-state conflict, conflict discourse analysis, legislative politics, Kurdish
question
1. Introduction
In the ongoing debate on linguistic methodology, the dominant position argues that discourse
analysis is a strictly qualitative ―methodological meta-other‖ of quantitative methods such as
statistics,1 while the opposing position maintains that statistical analysis and its quantitative
results can be used as an alternative to mainstream discourse analysis.2 Attempts at combining
H. Akın Ünver, Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations, Kadir Has University, Istanbul. Email:
akin.unver@ khas.edu.tr.
1 Mats Alvesson and Dan Karreman, ―Varieties of Discourse: On the Study of Organizations through Discourse Analysis,‖
Human Relations 53, no. 9 (2000): 1125-49, doi:10.1177/0018726700539002; Linda J. Graham, ―Discourse Analysis and the
Critical Use of Foucault,‖ (paper presented in The Australian Association of Research in Education Annual Conference, Parramatta,
Sydney, November 27- December 1, 2005), http://eprints.qut.edu.au/2689/; Gale Miller and Robert Dingwall, Context and Method
in Qualitative Research (London: SAGE, 1997).
2 Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen, ―Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy Evaluating Alternative Indices,‖
Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 1 (2002): 5-34, doi:10.1177/001041400203500101; Dean Henry, ―The Numeration of Events:
Studying Political Protest in India,‖ in Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn, ed. Dvora
Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea (London: Sharpe, 2006), 187-202; Pamela Paxton, Melanie M. Hughes, and Jennifer L. Green, ―The
International Women‘s Movement and Women‘s Political Representation, 1893-2003,‖ American Sociological Review 71, no. 6 (2006): 898-
920, doi:10.1177/000312240607100602; Steve Shellman and Sean O'Brien, "An Empirical Assessment of the Role of Emotions and
Behavior in Conflict Using Automatically Generated Data," All Azimuth 2, no. 2 (2013): 31-46.
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
these approaches3 are mainly confined to the domain of linguistics; few have been carried
out in the domain of politics. This methodological gap is even deeper in the field of conflict
studies, where discourse ‒ as a tool that determines power relations in a political setting ‒
and its impact on conflict are relatively untouched.
René Lemarchand establishes one of the earlier works that connects discourse to political
violence in his manuscript on ethnocide in Burundi.4 Lene Hansen‘s work on the Bosnian War
conflict discourse,5 Richard Jackson‘s analysis on how discourse establishes state-society power
relations in Africa,6 Helle Malmvig‘s incorporation of discourse analysis into sovereignty and
intervention in Kosovo and Algeria,7 and Patrick M. Regan‘s study of how outside powers
instrumentalize discourse to justify intervention into civil wars8 establish the foundations of the
literature on discourse and armed conflict. More-detailed studies such as
Ivan Leudar et al.‘s work on otherization discourses as a form of political violence,9 or
Stathis Kalyvas‘ study on how discourse constructs action and identity in civil wars,10 can
also be offered as literary precursors of the study presented in this article.
The relationship between political discourse and the Kurdish conflict is also an
understudied area, and Turkey‘s Kurdish question offers a rich case study with ample
opportunities for diverse research agendas. This article holds the view that qualitative and
quantitative approaches to discourse analysis are complementary in conflict analysis.
Classical/mainstream discourse analysis data can be fed into appropriate statistical methods,
especially with studies on institutional discourse over extended periods. Studies of legislative
discourse are examples of the adoption of this two-tier methodological approach. The
methodology offered in this article may provide future studies with a working model in terms of
observing cognitive mechanisms and competing interests related to intra-state conflicts over
extended periods. Furthermore, by expanding the works of Mesut Yeğen,11 Cengiz Güneş,12
Jaffer Sheyholislami,13 Yusuf Çevik,14 and Serhun Al15 on Turkish state discourse on the Kurds,
this article offers discursive perspectives from all bands of the political spectrum in Turkey, the
European Union (EU), and the US Congress (USC).
My hypothesis is that we can test the connection between political agenda and political
ideology and the effect of this connection on the way a politician perceives and talks about a
3 Paul Baker et al., ―A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to
Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press,‖ Discourse & Society 19, no. 3 (2008): 273-306,
doi:10.1177/0957926508088962; Theo Van Leeuwen, Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Teun A. Van Dijk, ―Ideology and Discourse Analysis,‖ Journal of Political Ideologies 11,
no. 2 (2006): 115-40, doi:10.1080/13569310600687908.
4 René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
5 Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (Abingdon, OX: Routledge, 2006).
6 Richard Jackson, ―Violent Internal Conflict and the African State: Towards a Framework of Analysis,‖ Journal of
Contemporary African Studies 20, no. 1 (2002): 29-52, doi:10.1080/02589000120104044.
7 Helle Malmvig, State Sovereignty and Intervention: A Discourse Analysis of Interventionary and Non-Interventionary
Practices in Kosovo and Algeria, reprint (London: Routledge, 2011).
8 Patrick M. Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Outside Intervention in Intrastate Conflict (Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press, 2002).
9 Ivan Leudar, Victoria Marsland, and Jirí Nekvapil, ―On Membership Categorization: ‗Us‘, ‗Them‘and‗Doing Violence‘ in
Political Discourse,‖ Discourse & Society 15, no. 2-3 (2004): 243-66, doi:10.1177/0957926504041019.
10 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
11 Mesut Yeğen, ―The Kurdish Question in Turkish State Discourse,‖ Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 4 (1999): 555-
68.
12 Cengiz Güneş, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (Oxon, OX: Routledge, 2013).
13 Jaffer Sheyholislami, Kurdish Identity, Discourse, and New Media (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
14 Yusuf Çevik, ―The Reflections of Kurdish Islamism and Everchanging Discourse of Kurdish Nationalists Toward Islam in
Turkey,‖ Turkish Journal of Politics 3, no. 1 (2012): 87-102.
15 Serhun Al, ―Elite Discourses, Nationalism and Moderation: A Dialectical Analysis of Turkish and Kurdish Nationalisms,‖
Ethnopolitics 14, no. 1 (2015): 94-112, doi:10.1080/17449057.2014.937638.
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Ideology, Political Agenda,...
particular conflict. I argue that conservative politicians perceive intra-state conflicts
primarily as terrorism or security problems, whereas liberal politicians talk about these
conflicts within the context of democratic deficits and poor human rights standards. To test
these hypotheses, I have carried out content analysis of legislative open-floor transcripts
from the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA), European Parliament (EP), and USC
(both the Senate and the House), on the Kurdish question through the conflict‘s most
intense, violent, and ‗busy‘ period, from August 1990 to February 1999. Selection rationale
for this period is based on time-series data from the Global Terrorism Database on Turkey-
origin incident frequency perpetrated by the Kurdistan Workers‘ Party (PKK).16 On
defining conservatism and liberalism as they appear in this article, I rely on the following:
1. European Parliament hemicycle seating system – whereby left-wing/liberal groups
are seated to the left and conservative/right-wing groups are seated to the right.
Additional placement is conducted based on Simon Hix‘ works on party competition
in the European Parliament.17
2. Party self-definitions in the US Congress – as extracted from the Republican Party
Platform 201218 and Democratic Party Platform 2016,19 in addition to Hans Noel‘s
work on ideology in the US Congress.20
3. As it is harder to situate Turkish political parties of the 1990s along the conservative-
liberal axis, I relied on their discursive data on the Kurdish question, in addition to
getting expert help: Prof. Hasan Bülent Kahraman (Kadir Has University) and Prof.
Fuat Keyman (Sabancı University) aided me in better situating these parties along
the said axis.
This study is crucially significant for two reasons, one methodological and one empirical.
Methodologically, it introduces discourse analysis and quantitative methods into the
domain of conflict psychology in a mutually supportive hybrid. Empirically, it addresses a
surprisingly overlooked but central aspect of an otherwise saturated topic (the Kurdish
question), which is: If we were to introduce a set of solutions, what exactly would it entail?
I answer this question by recalling another severely overlooked truism: One cannot resolve
a poorly defined question. Thus, I argue that the reason why the Kurdish question has
remained unresolved for so long is that it has been misdefined by the Turkish state, which
exclusively looked at the problem as one of security and terrorism, omitting other
components that make up the problem. Rather than attempting to offer another subjective
definition, this study aims to offer a mirror to these discursive preferences and
constructions, prioritizing the empirical demonstration of these subjectivities in a
comparative fashion. In that, the study is analytical and critical rather than descriptive.
2. Methodology
Discourse analysis can explore all levels and aspects of language, but here, we are concerned
16 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Global Terrorism Database
[Turkey]. https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/search/Results.aspx?chart=overtime&casualties_type=&casualties_max=&country=209.
17 Simon Hix, ―Legislative Behaviour and Party Competition in the European Parliament: An Application of No minate to
the EU,‖ JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 39, no. 4 (2001): 663-88, doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00326; Simon Hix et al.,
―The Party System in the European Parliament: Collusive or Competitive?,‖ JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 41, no. 2
(2003): 309-31, doi:10.1111/1468-5965.00424; Simon Hix et al., ―Dimensions of Politics in the European Parliament,‖ American
Journal of Political Science 50, no. 2 (2006): 494-520, doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00198.x.
18 ―Republican Platform,‖ GOP, https://www.gop.com/platform/.
19 The Democratic Platform, https://www.demconvention.com/platform/.
20 Hans Noel, Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
with semantics and lexicon. Lexicalization is a major domain of ideological expression and
persuasion, as the well-known terrorist versus freedom fighter pairing suggests. When
referring to particular persons, groups, social relations, or social issues, language users
generally have a choice of several words, depending on discourse genre, personal context,
social context, and socio-cultural context. This study adds to the field of discourse analysis
by introducing the dimensions of time and frequency to examine how (whether) those
discourses have changed over time in terms of context and rate of recurrence. These
findings will help us examine the particular events chosen for debate in parliaments. Thus,
discourse, as defined for the purposes of this study, is
a) strategic function (argument) and
b) a context within which an argument is constructed.
Within this framework, parts and phrases of a parliamentary speech are considered
discourse if they are arguments (criticism-defense/support-opposition) and/or if those
arguments are made within a specific context (human rights, democracy, ethnicity, etc.).
Speech-act theory introduces the concepts of illocutionary or performative acts, which
regard communication as a factor affecting belief and construction of personal reality.
Developed by John L. Austin, the illocutionary act concept asserts that speech is actually a
performance, undertaken towards what Austin calls ―conventional consequences‖ such as
arguments, commitments, or obligations.21 From this perspective, speech-act theory
diverges from discourse theory, as the latter takes speech as a dependent variable – affected
by structure – and the former takes it as an independent variable – affecting structure.
Speech acts, therefore, distinguish between two types of communication: speech in order to
express reality and speech in order to affect or alter it.
Austin identifies three processes of action beyond speech itself. The first is the act of
utterance, which has three additional qualities: locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary
acts. For example, when a Turkish parliamentarian utters the words: ―There is no such thing as a
Kurdish problem (A1). This is a problem of terrorism (A2),‖ he informs the audience that the
assertion A1 is – in his view –empirically not true, whereas the A2 assertion – again, in his view
– should replace the initial assertion since it carries a greater truth value. Of course (because of
his/her subjective immersion into the context), the parliamentarian does not recognize that the
truth-value being asserted is not reality but perception. Maybe less directly
– given the appropriate context – his/her statements may also be inferred as telling other
parliamentarians to vote in favor of a security measure. With an inferential and contextual
reading, parliamentarians must infer that given A2 is true, they are asked to support a bill or
resolution in favor of increasing troop count in the emergency-measure provinces. The
A2 assertion also aims to knock down other definitions of the ―problem in the south-east‖
(since within this context, it is not defined as the Kurdish problem) such as human rights,
democratization, or excessive force, and establish the supremacy of one verbal construction
of a conflict‘s nature over other constructions.
Different from discourse theory, which deals with macro-level communication, speech-act
theory looks at micro-level communication (speech, dialogue). In that respect, speech-act theory
is more technical than discourse theory, since the former looks into lexical, syntactic, and
grammatical structures of communication. The importance of speech-act theory for the purposes
of this study comes from its exploration of the three levels of speech: directness-
21 J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1975), 107.
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Ideology, Political Agenda,...
indirectness, literal-nonliteral meaning, and explicitness-inexplicitness based on the context
of communication. For example, when a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) says:
―It is in the Turkish army where real power lies,‖ that statement can be regarded as a direct,
literal, and explicit observation: the Turkish military has the real power. But from the
perspective of democratic standards, the statement becomes an indirect, nonliteral, and
inexplicit criticism, where an accusation of the Turkish democratic system is made about
the excessive weight the armed forces exert on the functioning of a representative system
and party politics. From that perspective, indirectness, nonliterality, and inexplicitness
become important illocutionary tools in a communicative setting where restraints on speech
are heavier. Such comments have been an important pattern in Turkish Parliament debates,
especially where construction of the ‗Kurdish question as the Kurdish question‘ was
immediately inferred as recognizing Kurds as a separate entity within Turkey; a threat
against the unitary character of the nation and against territorial integrity.
Previous literature on political linguistics looks at language either in terms of time
(short-term event: speech act; versus longer-term phenomenon: discursive structures)22 or
power relations23 (structure-agency debate). Moreover, even in the literature on belief and
language, a body of beliefs or images is taken either as a dependent or an independent
variable, without sufficient discussion of the relationship between speech act and discourse.
This study, therefore, attempts to establish the link between speech and discourse, arguing
that they are mutually dependent structures. Moreover, I argue that although speech acts do
not immediately lead to policies, they affect discourses and linguistic constructions of
images over an extended period of time and create belief systems and norms out of which
decisions arise in the long run. From this perspective, a speech act ‒ during the time and
space of its utterance – contains three versions of subjective time: past (affected by
discourse), present (competing against other discourse candidates), and future (affecting
discourse). Although a particular speech does not become policy in the long run, it becomes
part of a discursive structure, and that discursive structure will either become the
hegemonic discourse out of which policies arise or become a counter-hegemonic discourse,
trying to overthrow the hegemonic discourse. In the latter case, the speech act will still
affect policy by causing the hegemonic discourse to define itself along the lines of what the
counter-hegemonic discourse is not, leading to policies in reaction to it.
2.1. Methodology step 1: data collection
Given the definition of discourse above, I assembled entire debate records from
parliamentary sittings between January 1990 and December 1999. Most search results were
read and sorted according to relevance. Debate sessions were considered relevant if they
conformed to the following criteria:
1. The topic of the debate was the situation of the Kurds in Turkey.
2. The topic of the debate was human rights and/or democratization in Turkey but with
references to the situation of the Kurds in Turkey.
22 Philip R. Cohen et al., Intentions in Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990); Herman Cappelen and Ernest
Lepore, Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism (Oxford, OX: John Wiley & Sons,
2008); Emanuel A. Schegloff, ―Presequences and Indirection,‖ Journal of Pragmatics 12, no. 1 (1988): 55-62, doi:10.1016/0378-
2166(88)90019-7.
23 Scott A. Reid and Sik Hung Ng, ―Language, Power, and Intergroup Relations,‖ Journal of Social Issues 55, no. 1 (1999): 119-39,
doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00108; Margaret Wetherell et al. eds., Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader (London: SAGE, 2001); Pierre
Bourdieu and John B. Thompson, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
3. The topic of the debate was Iraqi Kurds, but references were made to Turkish Kurds
or the Turkish state.
4. The debate was on an internal matter, but at least one legislator made at least one
extended intervention directed toward the situation of the Kurds in Turkey.
2.2. Methodology step 2: data evaluation
The selected material was subjected to a second round of evaluation in which sentences and
phrases were evaluated according to their discursive value, comprising
1. strategic function (argument, assertion, proposal),
2. evaluation of a strategic function (criticism-defense or support-opposition), and
3. context and theme (frequently recurring subjects, contexts, and argumentative
positions).
The content analysis carried out on all legislative open-floor deliberations on the Kurdish
question in the three legislatures revealed ten major discursive contexts within which intra-state
conflict was debated. These discursive contexts, made up of recurring speech acts that defined
the essence of the Kurdish question and their corresponding ‗solutions,‘ defined
Turkey‘s Kurdish question as one of the following:
1. A human rights (HR) problem that would be solved by building awareness within
the police and military forces about approaching non-combatants in a non-violent
manner.
2. A democratization (Dem) problem that exposes Turkey‘s lack of democratic checks
and balances, to be solved by improving institutions and undertaking reform.
3. An excessive force (ExF) problem stemming from disproportionate responses by
Turkish security forces against the Kurdish population, which would be solved if
such forces could exercise restraint and caution.
4. An ethnic-identity (Ethn) conflict that stems from the ‗Kurdishness‘ of the Kurds
and their separateness from Turkey, which could be solved by granting ethnic and
cultural rights to the Kurds and allowing autonomy to their region.
5. A conflict intensified by the Turkish military (TRmil), its self-imposed role as the
guarantor of democracy, and its involvement in politics. The problem would be
solved if the Turkish military could take a step back from politics and leave the
domain to democratically elected representatives.
6. A conflict intensified by PKK terrorism (PKK-t) in the Kurdish region. The conflict
would be solved if the PKK laid down its weapons.
The above six contexts were frequently used within all three legislatures. Four
additional contexts were exclusive to the TGNA:
1. An artificially created problem fueled by ―dark foreign powers‖ (For) aiming at the
partition and destruction of Turkey through support of the PKK. The conflict would
be solved if foreign countries stopped aiding the PKK.
2. A problem emerging from the poor application of and non-adherence to
constitutional principles (Law), which creates an environment of lawlessness that
hurts the region‘s Kurds. Conducting proper legal reforms and strengthening their
enforcement would solve the problem.
3. An issue originating in a lack of security or mismanagement of the security forces
(Sec) in the region, which would be solved by putting more financial, material, and
human resources at the disposal of the armed forces.
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Ideology, Political Agenda,...
4. A problem arising from a lack of education and development (Ed-Dev) in the region,
which could only be solved through the allocation of more money for schools,
infrastructure, jobs, and living standards for the region‘s inhabitants.
Figure 1 shows how such evaluations were made using German MEP Claudia Roth‘s
statement during the EP debate of March 10, 1994, in response to the arrest of Kurdish
members of the Turkish Parliament.
Figure 1: Evaluation of EP speech by Claudia Roth (Germany - Green Party), March 10, 1994
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
These discursive contexts were then sorted according to:
a. Party affiliation of the legislators: Who adopts HR arguments the most? Which political
parties choose to talk about the Kurdish question within the context of terrorism and
security? Is there an ideological bent to how a politician perceives and talks about the
Kurdish question? Table 1 is a discourse activity chart for the Motherland Party
(ANAP) of the Turkish parliament from June 27, 1995, to April 22, 1996.
Table 1- Sample discourse activity table showing Motherland Party distribution (June 27,
1995 to April 22, 1996)
HR
Dem
Ethn
Law
Sec
Ed-Dev
For.
iTRc
27-Jun-95
5
2
4
8
11-Jul-95
1
1
2
2
1-Oct-95
V
3-Oct-95
10-Oct-95
13-Oct-95
3
2
27-Oct-95
1
1
1
2
28-Oct-95
1
3
1
6
6
11-Mar-95
13-Nov-95
16-Apr-96
17-Apr-96
1
18-Apr-96
1
1
1
1
20-Apr-96
3
21-Apr-96
1
22-Apr-96
My hypothesis is that party affiliation and ideology matter most among leftist and/or liberal
politicians. We can hypothesize that liberals and/or leftists express their ideological priorities ‒
human rights, democratization, etc. ‒ more readily than right-wing or conservative politicians,
who mainly operate within the domain of agenda politics rather than ideology.
b. Political agenda: In the three legislatures, politicians‘ interest and stakes in the Kurdish
question differ. To identify agenda items that contributed to politicians‘ interests, I
carried out a series of interviews with the politicians themselves, legislative experts, and
academic experts on the history of the legislatures. As a result, the primary agenda fault
lines in these legislatures as they relate to the Kurdish question are as follows:
i. Country affiliation and the Kurdish Diaspora in the EP. European MEPs generally
express the national interests of their respective countries vis-à-vis Turkey when it comes
to debates on the Kurdish question. Greece, whose political relations with Turkey have
been tense because of a number of diplomatic issues, has chosen to internationalize these
disputes via EP debates on the Kurds. Germany, on the other hand, has been a significant
arms supplier to the Turkish military, and the excessive force practiced by the latter has
led German MEPs to protest Turkish-German military agreements. Other countries
approach the issue within the context of their NATO
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Ideology, Political Agenda,...
commitments; the post-Gulf War context necessitated an air force buildup at the
NATO base in southern Turkey. In addition, the presence of a significant Kurdish
Diaspora in Germany, Austria, and France has led these countries to express in the
EP the concerns of their highly politicized Kurdish constituencies.
ii. Caucus and interest group membership in the USC. The ideological differences between
Republican and Democratic legislators in the USC have less of an effect on agenda and
discourse when it comes to the Kurdish question. The main determinant of a
congressperson‘s discourse on the Kurdish question appears to be his/her caucus
memberships. Therefore, I propose that if a member of Congress belongs to a legislative
group or special interest caucus whose agenda overlaps with Kurdish interests, she/he
constructs the Kurdish question within the context of liberties and emancipation. If a
member of Congress does not belong to any such group, she/he will construct the
Kurdish question increasingly on par with state discourse. These groups, identified after
a long expert-interview process, are the Human Rights Caucus, the
Hellenic Caucus, and the Armenian Caucus.
iii. Constituency and voter pressure in the TGNA. Representing a Kurdish-majority
constituency or coming from a predominantly Kurdish city are the main factors affecting
agenda in the TGNA. The 13 predominantly Kurdish cities that have seen the most
intense bursts of violence were under the jurisdiction of the Emergency Super-
governorate, a special enforcement mechanism with expanded powers, from 1987 to
2002. The Super-governorate became synonymous with suppression, human rights
violations, and security excesses. Ideology and agenda also play some role in TGNA
discourses on the Kurdish question, but I propose that if a legislator represents cities
under the jurisdiction of the Emergency Super-governorate, she/he will construct the
Kurdish question within the context of liberties and emancipation. If, however, a
legislator comes from outside that jurisdiction, she/he will construct the Kurdish question
within the context of terrorism, state security, and territorial integrity.
Following the content analysis findings, quantitative operationalization was necessary.
The primary operationalization method involved counting and sorting the aggregate
number of discourses according to their type. Another re-sorting was necessary, this time
according to legislator, to analyze the discourse type and frequency of reference to the
Kurdish question by party affiliation, caucus affiliation, and constituency. The rest of the
article discusses these variances in quantitative terms.
3. Results
3.1. The European Parliament (EP)
In analyzing the EP discourse on the Kurdish question, we will first look at how agenda
(country affiliation: which country an MEP represents) affects legislative discourse. Later,
we will test whether party (ideology) affiliation has any effect.
3.1.1. Agenda: country affiliation
In the EP in the time period studied, there have been 563 references to the Kurdish question
(total number of n = discourse; see Table 1). Agenda, as defined by country activity in the EP,
can be measured in two ways. First, one can look at the total number of discourses adopted by
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
each country, and second, at the total number of discourses in ratio to the country‘s number
of MEPs. The most active countries in terms of total number of n are shown in Table 2.
Table 2- Top five most active countries in the EP on the Kurdish question, January 1990 to
December 1999
Aggregate discourses
Activity in percentage
Germany
112
19.89%
Greece
111
19.71%
United Kingdom
71
12.61%
France
63
11.19%
Netherlands
60
10.65%
Others
146
25.95%
These countries are followed by Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Ireland, and
Denmark in descending order of n.
Two hypotheses may help explain the frequency for an EU country with regard to its
MEPs‘ speech activity on the Kurdish issue. The first is:
MEPs of a country with a large Kurdish population speak more on the Kurdish issue. The
size of Diaspora membership is strongly linked to electoral interest in constituencies;
as MEPs are primarily representative of their constituents, the Kurdish population (Diaspora
strength) is the most relevant data to be tested. To test this, the relationship between the
dependent variable (aggregate number of discourses) and the independent variable (Kurdish
population) must be measured. This finding will provide us with a general pattern within the EP
with regard to this hypothesis, as well as outliers that render this hypothesis insignificant.
The estimated numbers of the Kurdish population are collected from the Paris Kurdish
Institute, and shown in Table 3.
Table 3- Kurdish diaspora strength and MEP activity per EP country*
Estimated Kurdish
Number of MEP
Kurdish Population represented per
population
24
as of 1995
discourses
discourse
Germany
600,000
112
5357.14
France
100,000
66
1515.15
Netherlands
70,000
60
1166.66
Belgium
50,000
35
1428.57
Austria
50,000
14
3571.42
Sweden
25,000
21
1190.47
United Kingdom
20,000
71
281.69
Greece
20,000
111
180.18
Denmark
8,000
7
1142.85
Italy
3,000
40
75.00
Finland
2,000
1
2000
*European countries not mentioned in this graph do not have statistically substantial Kurdish populations and are
not listed in the Paris Kurdish Institute figures.
24 These figures are taken from the Paris Kurdish Institute webpage on the Kurdish Diaspora. Estimates are as of October 2008:
―The Kurdish Diaspora,‖ Fondation Institut Kurde de Paris, http://www.institutkurde.org/en/kurdorama/.
58
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
In terms of ―Kurdish population represented per discourse‖ measurements, German
MEPs (most notably Claudia Roth of the Green group) have produced most of the
discourse on the Kurdish question, with their country hosting the largest Kurdish Diaspora
in Europe. However, a hypothesis asserting that MEPs of countries with a large Kurdish
population produce more discourses on the Kurdish question appears not to be true for the
rest of the EU countries. Two of the countries that follow Germany in terms of MEP
activity on the Kurdish question (Greece and United Kingdom) host two of the smallest
Kurdish Diasporas in Europe, an estimated 22,000 Kurds each. These two countries are
also runners-up in the ―Kurdish population represented per discourse‖ measurements;
however counterintuitively, Italian MEPs stand out as being the most representative of their
country‘s Kurdish Diaspora, representing 87.5 Kurds per discourse.
Therefore, the first hypothesis seems to be flawed: the size of the Kurdish Diaspora in
an EU country does not necessarily affect its MEPs‘ activities in the EP. Germany seems to
support our hypothesis in the sense that German MEPs have produced the most discourses
on the Kurdish question and is the country with the largest Kurdish Diaspora in Europe.
However, the fact that Greek, British, and Italian MEPs have represented the smallest group of
Kurds in their country per discourse they have uttered is evidence against this hypothesis.
The second hypothesis that may explain an EU country‘s activity in the EP relates to the
number of MEPs a country has:
Countries with more seats in the EP produce more discourses on the Kurdish question.
Put simply, more MEPs mean more speeches. To measure this hypothesis, we have to
measure discourse per MEP, which will tell us how many discourses relating to the Kurdish
question a country uttered divided by its seats in the EP. To do this, we look at the ratio of the
total number of discourses (n) to the arithmetic mean (AM) of the number of the MEPs for each
country in two EP election terms. The higher the discourse-per-MEP number, the more active
that particular country‘s MEPs have been, which will imply outlying special interests with
regard to that country‘s relation to the Kurdish question. According to this measurement,
Greece tops the list (Table 4).
Table 4- Number of discourses related to the Kurdish question and the number of MEPs per
country
No. of discourses
Average mean of MEPs in 1989 and 1994 EP elections
Discourse per MEP
Greece
111
24
4.62
Netherlands
60
27
2.22
Belgium
35
24
1.46
Germany
112
99
1.13
Sweden
21
19
1.10
Greece has been the most active country in the EP on Turkey‘s Kurdish question, just
behind Germany on aggregate discourses (19.71% of total discourses) but way ahead on the
discourse-per-MEP measurement (4.62 discourses per MEP).
Curve statistics in Figure 2 also verify that Greek MEPs have been significant outliers
of the trend and the most active members of the EP on a discourse-per-MEP measurement.
The Greeks are followed by the Dutch, whereas Italian and Finnish MEPs stand out as the
least active, based on the same measurement. Our second hypothesis is thus not perfectly
59
All Azimuth A. Ünver
valid either. While Greek MEPs again top the list in terms of discourses, Greece is one of
the countries with fewer seats in the EP. This also applies to the Netherlands. Countries
with more seats in the EP (France, the United Kingdom, and Italy) have been less interested
in the Kurdish question compared to Greece and the Netherlands.
Figure 2: Discourse number per MEP activity: trends and outliers
A country-based analysis of EP discourses on the Kurdish issue provides us with few
recurring patterns from which to derive a successful hypothesis, and thus supports our claim
that agenda (as defined by country) does play some role in the EP. Among EU member
countries, however, Greece is the outlier with regard to the Kurdish question in Turkey,
topping country activity lists both in terms of ―Kurdish population represented per
discourse‖ and ―discourse per MEP‖ measurements. It is safe to argue, then, that in the
1990s the EP became a forum in which Greece could internationalize its problems with
Turkey by hijacking debates on the Kurdish question, aiming perhaps not so much to
improve the situation of the Kurds, as to portray the Turkish state as an excessively
militaristic and undemocratic entity. To conclude, Greek MEPs‘ perceptions of the Kurdish
question come out primarily as agenda-oriented.
This finding is supported by looking at a breakdown of country discourses by discourse
types, as shown in Table 5.
Table 5- Breakdown of EP country activity per discourse type
HR
Dem
ExF
Trmil
PKK-t
iEUc
Country
total
Austria
7
7
1
-
2
-
17
Belgium
11
9
5
-
5
3
33
Denmark
4
3
-
-
-
-
7
Finland
-
1
-
-
-
-
1
France
23
20
9
-
10
1
63
Germany
32
32
21
5
13
9
112
Greece
35
30
30
1
1
14
111
Ireland
5
-
1
-
2
-
8
Italy
18
9
3
3
5
2
40
60
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
HR
Dem
ExF
Trmil
PKK-t
iEUc
Country
total
Netherlands
18
19
14
3
5
1
60
Portugal
2
1
1
-
1
-
5
Spain
8
5
-
1
-
-
14
Sweden
8
4
4
1
2
1
20
UK
26
22
15
1
6
1
71
Discourse total
197
163
104
15
52
32
563
25
Key to terms: HR = Human Rights; Dem = Democracy/democratization; ExF = Criticism of excessive use of
force; TrMil = Criticism of the Turkish military; PKK-t = Criticism of PKK/reference to terrorism; iEUc =
Criticism of EU policy on the Kurdish question
This overview shows that Greece was the most frequent critic of Turkey on the Kurdish
question, especially within the HR and ExF discourses. In addition, Greek MEPs have
criticized PKK violence less than other MEPs, while they are the most frequent critics of
EU policy with regard to Turkey‘s Kurdish question. Overall, the most frequently adopted
discourse in the EP has been the HR discourse, followed by the Dem and ExF discourses.
Although the ExF discourses are more frequent than the PKK-t discourses, the EP focused
less on the Turkish military as the source of this excessive force and generally used
arguments that were directed toward all the security forces involved. Greece emerges as the
only country whose criticisms of the Turkish military overwhelmingly surpassed its
criticisms of the PKK; the remaining EU countries appear to criticize the PKK more than
they do the Turkish military. While Greece has been the most frequent critic of Turkey‘s
human rights practices, Germany was the predominant country in constructing the Kurdish
issue within the context of democratization. Greece was the most frequent critic of Turkey‘s
security activities against the Kurds, criticizing the PKK only once in the 1990s. Germany
and France, by contrast, were the most frequent critics of the PKK as a terrorist
organization. Germany also criticized the Turkish army as the source of the Kurdish
problem more frequently than any other country, perhaps because the Turkish military used
German-sourced weaponry in the predominantly Kurdish southeast. A general view of the
human rights- and democratization-focused EP discourses is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Radar graph showing comparative discourse type preference in the EP
25 Includes European Commission and Council of Europe discourses.
61
All Azimuth A. Ünver
No clear correlation exists between a particular MEP‘s discourse activity on the Kurdish
question and the number of Kurds living in the MEP‘s country or the number of seats that a
country has in the EP. Therefore, we will only analyze the legislature according to party
affiliation (ideology), with the main finding of this section being that agenda played an
important role in Greek MEPs‘ perception and vocalization of the Kurdish question. While
we cannot use the findings from our country-based analysis, this method is very valuable in
terms of identifying outliers; that is, countries that either over- or under-performed on the
basis of the main trends in the EP.
3.1.2. Ideology: group activity
One of the primary hypotheses of this study is that party affiliation (an indicator of ideology for
the purposes of this study) determines a parliamentarian‘s discourse on the Kurdish issue.
To test party activity within this context, a similar calculation to that used in the first section
must be undertaken. Overall party activity in the EP, based on the total number of discourses
(n) for all the groups (555), is presented in Table 6.26
Table 6- EP party groups‘ performance on the Kurdish question
Group
Aggregate number (n)
Percentage
Socialist Group, PSE
175
31.53%
Confederal Group of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left, GUE-NGL
129
23.24%
Group of the Greens
76
13.69%
Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ALDE
70
12.61%
Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European
63
11.35%
Democrats, EPP-ED
Independence-Democracy Group, I-D
42
7.56%
To complement this list of party/group aggregate activity, it is important to look at the
discourse-per-MEP measurement again, this time according to party affiliation. Member of
European Parliament figures used in these calculations are the average mean of a group‘s
number of seats after the parliamentary elections in 1989 and 1994 (Table 7).
Table 7- Party groups‘ average MEP numbers, based on 1989 and 1994 election results
1989 seats27
1994 seats28
Average MEPs
Discourses per MEP
GUE-NGL
42
28
35
3.68
Greens
30
23
26.5
2.81
I-D
27
27
27
1.59
ALDE
49
43
46
1.52
PSE
180
198
189
0.92
EPP-ED
155
184
169.5
0.37
Members of the European Parliament from the European United Left-Nordic Green Left
(GUE-NGL) group have engaged in an average of 3.68 discourses on the Kurdish question,
making them the most active on the Kurdish question in Turkey. When we compare EP‘s
aggregate party output on the Kurdish question, Figure 4 gives us a clear dominance of PSE
and GUE-NGL groups.
26 Excluding Council and Commission discourses, because these are technocratic bodies where party affiliation cannot be
observed.
27 For a breakdown of European Parliament seats based on party affiliation (1989-1994), see the Europe Politique website
(www.europe-politique.eu/).
28 For a breakdown of European Parliament seats based on party affiliation (1994-1999) see the Europe Politique website
(www.europe-politique.eu/).
62
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
Figure 4: Radar graph showing comparative party group activity (number of references to the Kurdish question) in
the EP.
I stated earlier that the relationship between a country‘s number of seats in the EP and
that country‘s activity on the Kurdish question was weak. A similar analysis can be made
about the relationship between the number of MEPs in a group and that group‘s
corresponding aggregate discourse.
An initial hypothesis may be derived as follows; this hypothesis is tested in Figure 5 and
Table 8:
Figure 5: Trends and outliers in discourse-per-MEP measurement
Table 8- Discursive performance of EP political parties and European Council and
Commission activity
HR
Dem
ExF
Trmil
PKK-t
iEUc
PSE
61
58
33
4
16
3
175
EPP-ED
22
14
7
4
12
4
63
ALDE
25
22
11
5
7
0
70
GUE-NGL
38
35
30
4
7
15
129
Greens
15
25
19
6
6
5
76
I-D
18
9
7
0
5
3
42
Council-Commission
19
12
3
1
18
0
53
63
All Azimuth A. Ünver
As the number of a group’s MEPs increases, so do the group’s aggregate discourses on
the Kurdish question.
This hypothesis appears to be weak, but the groups that meet it are the European Socialist
Group and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, whose discourses on the Kurdish
question appear to be on par with their seats in the EP. The curve estimation is valuable because
it allows us to see the outliers to the main trend: the Independence-Democracy and the Christian
Democrat-European Democrat groups appear to be ―uninterested‖ in the Kurdish question,
whereas the Greens and Nordic Left have been the most active groups. The curve estimation
analysis thus confirms our findings in the cross-tabulation.
The above overview shows that the European Socialists have constructed the Kurdish
question within the context of HR, Dem, and ExF discourses more than any other group.
It is also the group in the EP most critical of PKK violence. The Greens have identified the
Turkish military as the cause of the Kurdish problem more often than any other group,
whereas the United Left-Nordic Green Left has been overwhelmingly the group most
critical of EU policies and the stance of European institutions on the Kurdish question.
While all other EP groups have constructed the Kurdish question within the context of the
HR discourse, the Green group has primarily referred to the Kurdish problem as a Dem
issue. The Nordic Green Left also constructed the Kurdish question as an ExF problem far
more than any other group in the EP as a percentage of total discourses adopted per group.
Council and Commission members have also constructed this problem as an issue primarily
of HR and then Dem. These bureaucratic bodies seldom referred to the ExF dimension,
however, and regarded the Kurdish question essentially as a PKK-t problem, the second
most common type of discourse adopted by the Council and Commission.
The European Parliament attempted to be careful not to condemn the PKK more than it did
Turkish security practices. In general, the European Parliament adopted critical discourses
towards Turkish security forces (without distinguishing between the police, military or
gendarmerie) 103 times, making it the third most frequent discourse adopted, at 19.3%. This
may at first appear higher than cases where Parliament criticized the PKK (referring to it as a
―terrorist organization‖ or condemning its methods), which constitute 9.4% of the discourses.
However, discourses that criticized the Turkish military directly for its human rights abuses
or excessive use of force are much lower (1.5%) than those criticizing the PKK.
Compared to the MEPs, the Commission and Council can generally be seen as favoring
Turkey on the Kurdish issue. While they criticized PKK terrorism (18 in total) much more
than Turkish army abuses (three in total), they were less critical and more encouraging in
their human rights-democracy discourses. Moreover, although the Council and Commission
adopted discourses that condemned PKK terrorism (eight and 10 times respectively, they
did not specifically target the Turkish military and conveyed their worries on excessive
force in general wording.
The difference in discourses between the Parliament and the Council-Commission stems
from the age-old tension between elected representatives and the executive bureaucracy; the
Roman Senate and the Consul. Although an apparent reason for this difference is the raison
d’être of parliaments and bureaucracies – where parliaments emphasize liberties, freedom
of speech, and individualism, and bureaucracies emphasize state security, manageability,
and realpolitik – another, less explicit reason for this difference is the essence of politics:
the struggle against power in order to assume power. The difference between the European
64
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
Parliament and the Council-Commission in the Turkish debate is not because Parliament
was more sensitive towards ethnicity, but because Parliament had been in a constant push
for more say over European external affairs. Therefore, by adopting a different discourse
than the bureaucratic branches, Parliament attempted to gain a foothold on arguably the
most important item regarding the EU‘s external relations – Turkey – and arguably the
most critical issue in Turkey – the Kurdish question.
The first hypothesis I proposed for the EP is somewhat valid here. Ideology (measured
by party affiliation) does play an important role in terms of the discursive construction of
the Kurdish question. Two of the leftist groups in the EP (Nordic Greens and Greens) share
the discursive pattern of emphasizing Turkish security force violations and playing down
PKK terrorism, whereas the center-right European People‘s Party referred less to Turkish
military excesses and constructed this issue more within the domain of PKK terrorism. The
data thus validates my hypothesis: As an MEP‘s position approaches the political right,
she/he constructs the Kurdish question increasingly within the state discourse (terrorism,
territorial integrity, perpetuation of the state, and security). If an MEP‘s position
approaches the political left, on the other hand, she/he constructs the Kurdish question
increasingly within the context of liberties and emancipation (human rights, democracy,
state violence, and identity recognition).
That said, there is no clear pattern on data that can validate the hypothesis regarding
country affiliation and the Kurdish discourse. We can nevertheless infer much from looking
at outliers to test our hypothesis. Although Germany produced the most discourses on the
Kurdish question in Turkey, this accords with our test hypothesis because Germany has the
largest Kurdish Diaspora in Europe and the largest number of MEPs in the EP. It must be
acknowledged, however, that Claudia Roth, the chairperson of the Green group, produced a
great majority of German discourses on the Kurdish question in Turkey, so Germany‘s
dominance in the EP on this topic owes more to Roth‘s activism and her constituency than
to Germany‘s sensitivity to the Kurdish question.
We can infer from this analysis that Kurdish discourse in the EP as well as criticism of
Turkey in the 1990s was shaped by the statements of Greek MEPs of the Nordic Green Left and
German MEPs (most specifically Claudia Roth) of the Green group. To conclude, it was mostly
ideology and party affiliation that determined how an MEP ‗talked about‘ the Kurdish question
in Turkey in the EP, while country affiliation had a lesser influence on the discourse
(with the slight exception of Greece). Later in this study, I will compare the EP‘s discourse
on the Kurdish question with that of the USC and TGNA.
3.2. The United States’ Congress
In this section, we will look at how the discourse on the Kurdish question in Turkey was
shaped in the USC between 1990 and 1999 by separately analyzing three lines of
demarcation: membership in the Senate or the House of Representatives, party affiliation,
and caucus membership.
3.2.1. Ideology: Democrats vs. Republicans
The primary fault line of analysis in the USC is party affiliation. For our analysis, I have
adopted a discourse count-and-sort methodology similar to that in the above section on the
EP (Table 9).
65
All Azimuth A. Ünver
Table 9- Senate and House Republicans‘ and Democrats‘ activity and discursive preferences
HR
Dem
ExF
Trmil
iUSC
PKK-t
Party total
Senate-Dem
57
40
34
16
3
36
186
Senate-Rep
4
4
6
3
0
0
17
House-Dem
74
40
62
12
12
7
207
House-Rep
53
29
52
13
10
16
173
Discourse total
188
113
154
44
25
59
583
As Table 8 shows, the House of Representatives was the most active floor for the Kurdish
question in Turkey, with an aggregate 380 discourses, as opposed to 203 for the Senate. We can
see that Democrats dominate in the Senate, with 186 of aggregate discourses to the
Republicans‘ 17. Just as Claudia Roth single-handedly produced the majority of German
discourses in the EP, Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) generated the overwhelming
majority of Senate Democrats‘ discourses. One can argue that through the 1990s, Senator
DeConcini shaped the Senate narrative on the Kurdish question in Turkey. Although
Democrats have also been active in the House of Representatives, party activity is more
balanced there than in the Senate; House Democrats generated 207 of the discourses to the
Republicans‘ 173. Figure 6 shows the discursive priorities of the USC through 1990-1999:
Figure 6: Radar graph showing aggregate Congressional discursive preferences in defining the Kurdish question
The USC constructed the Kurdish problem primarily within the context of the HR discourse,
both within the Senate and the House. Democrat members of the House and Senate have been
the most dominant advocates on HR; the topic was also the most frequently adopted discourse of
Republican representatives in the House. The second most frequently adopted discourse type
was ExF, which deviates from the pattern in the EP, where Dem discourses were the second
most frequently adopted. Republican representatives took the ExF position almost as often as
HR discourses; ExF was the most frequently used argument of the generally inactive senators of
the Republican Party. One can infer from this pattern that Republican members of Congress
were more concerned about the ExF aspect of the Kurdish question, seeing it primarily as an
issue of unnecessary violence. While constructing the Kurdish question within the context of
Dem discourse was the third most frequent tendency in Congress, it was the second choice of
discourse for Democratic senators, behind HR. Democratic senators
66
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
were the most critical of the PKK as a terrorist organization, and Republican senators did
not refer to the organization at all. After Republican senators, Democratic representatives
were the least critical of the PKK and the most critical of Turkey‘s military approach.
Democratic representatives of the House were also the most critical group of US policy, the
president, and the executive branch on the Kurdish question; Republican senators refrained
from any such criticism.
United States‘ Congress discourse on the Kurdish question is shaped not by party
affiliation but by individual interest, as we shall see in the following section. There was a
considerable amount of discourse concentration among certain members of Congress, more
so than in the EP and, as we shall also see later, than in the TGNA, to the extent that a
handful of members of Congress were the primary sources of Congressional discourse on
the Kurdish question. This finding renders a party-based discourse analysis unimportant
and raises the need to focus on individuals, narrowing the level of analysis down to agency.
In the US Senate, the most active figure on Turkey‘s Kurdish question was Dennis
DeConcini, the Democratic senator from Arizona, who served between 1977 and January
1995. DeConcini produced half (50.2%) of the discourses in the Senate and 17.49% of the
entire Congressional output on the Kurdish question. Other prolific senators on the Kurdish
issue were Claiborne Pell (D–RI) and Patrick Leahy (D–VT) (Table 10).29
Table 10- The three most active Senators on the Kurdish question in Turkey
Dennis DeConcini (S-D-Az)
Claiborne Pell (S-D-RI)
Supportive/Critical
Supportive/Critical
11-Apr-91
0/1
05-Sep-95
5/6
13-Nov-91
2/0
15-Sep-95
2/8
02-Mar-94
4/21
17-May-94
3/14
Patrick Leahy (SS-D-VT)
23-Jun-94
2/18
Supportive/Critical
04-Aug-94
1/8
29-Jun-94
1/12
11-Aug-94
6/5
22-Sep-95
2/6
30-Nov-94
2/15
As we can see observe from Table 9, the most active senators produced ―pro-Turkish‖
discourses often to encourage or praise a reform process. On the basis of the aggregate
number of discourses, DeConcini was the most approving senator of Turkey as well as
being its most frequent critic. However, Claiborne Pell generated the highest proportion of
approving discourses (one-third of her total discourses).
While the Democrats dominated the Senate and House discussions on Turkey‘s Kurdish
question, two Republican members were the most active individual figures in the House.
Table 11 shows that Edward Porter (R–IL) emerged as the most active representative in the
House (58 discourses) and Christopher Smith (R–NJ) was almost equally as active (57
discourses). They are followed by two Democratic representatives: Frank Pallone (NJ) and
Lee Hamilton (IN).
29 S = Senate, H = House of Representatives, D = Democrat, R = Republican. Final acronyms indicate legislators‘ states.
67
All Azimuth A. Ünver
Table 11- The four most active members of the House on Turkey‘s Kurdish question
(Supportive/Critical)
Edward Porter
Christopher Smith
(H-R-IL)
(H-R-NJ)
28-Mar-95
0/4
28-Jun-95
1/6
05-Oct-92
0/3
26-Jul-95
4/1
05-Jan-93
0/7
09-Nov-95
2/11
02-May-95
0/10
12-Dec-95
2/19
22-Jun-95
0/2
26-Mar-96
0/1
28-Jun-95
0/20
05-Jun-96
0/6
17-Nov-95
0/3
Lee Hamilton
26-Mar-96
1/1
(H-D-IN)
10-Nov-97
0/8
06-May-92
0/2
11-Mar-99
0/3
03-Oct-92
2/6
10-Feb-94
2/2
Frank Pallone
(H-D-NJ)
07-Sep-95
0/3
01-May-97
0/12
25-Mar-99
0/11
11-May-99
0/3
08-Jun-99
0/13
Table 11 shows that while the most active senators used a combination of discursive
‗carrots and sticks,‘ the representatives‘ statements tended more toward criticism. The most
critical senator was Edward Porter (R-IL), who was also the most frequent participant in
debates on the Kurdish issue. Porter produced 33.52% of Republican statements on the
Kurdish issue in the House of Representatives. The Republican runner-up, Christopher Smith
(NJ), adopted slightly more supportive positions than Porter did, which formed 15.78% of his
discourses. The third most active representative of the House (also the most active Democratic
representative) was Frank Pallone (NJ), who was also the only representative in the list to make
no positive reference to Turkey‘s policies on the Kurdish question. Another active
representative, Lee Hamilton (D–IN), was the most pro-Turkish among the most anti-Turkish,
whose approving discourses constituted 23.52% of his total references.
Our hypothesis that party and ideology are the primary determinants of parliamentary
discourse appears to be invalid for the USC because criticism and praise were bi-partisan
and equally present in the Senate and the House. Given that party affiliation is not a
statistically significant way of explaining Congress members‘ activity on the Kurdish issue,
we need to seek a different connection between the various members of the Senate and the
House and the Democratic and Republican parties.
3.2.2. Agenda: caucus affiliation
As primary political identity (party affiliation) does not yield a conclusive pattern to explain
discursive preferences, a second layer of identity (caucus affiliation = political agenda) should
be introduced. Our second hypothesis thus states that Congressional caucus memberships
(agenda) are the main influence on a congressperson‘s approach to the Kurdish question. Based
on suggestions received during the interview phase of this research, we test
68
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
the Congressional membership of three caucuses: Human Rights, Hellenic, and Armenian.
We examine in Table 12, whether (how) membership in these caucuses corresponds to the
percentage of a congressperson‘s critical discourses, based on a list of members who have
spoken on the Kurdish question more than once in the 1990-1999 period.
Table 12- Members of Congress active in debates on the Kurdish question and their
affiliation with Human Rights, Armenian, and Hellenic caucuses
HR30
Armenian31
Hellenic32
% of critical discourses
Edward Porter
+
-
-
98.20%
Christopher Smith
+
+
-
84.20%
Frank Pallone
+
+
+
100%
Lee Hamilton
-
-
-
76.40%
Carolyn B. Maloney
+
+
+
100%
Elizabeth Furse
-
-
-
100%
George Gekas
+
+
+
100%
James Bunn
-
-
-
0%
Michael Bilirakis
+
+
+
100%
Peter John Visclosky
+
+
+
100%
Richard A. Zimmer
-
-
-
100%
Steny Hoyer
+
+
-
100%
The list shows that while appraisal/criticism dynamics were more fluid in the Senate,
discourse within the House of Representatives was rigid, either entirely critical or entirely
supportive. Moreover, with the exception of Lee Hamilton, all three senators were members
of the Human Rights, Hellenic, and/or Armenian caucuses. In the House of
Representatives, five of the seven representatives whose discourses were entirely critical
were members of one or more of the three caucuses analyzed here; four of these
representatives were members of all three caucuses. James ―Jim‖ Bunn is the only non-
critical representative, and he was not a member of any of these caucuses.
The human rights discourse in Congress had two dimensions; one focused on the situation of
Kurds in Iraq, and the other focused on Kurdish rights in Turkey. Congress was overwhelmingly
critical of Turkish practices on both fronts, and not even Turkish contributions to Operation
Provide Comfort (OPC)33 could disperse a strictly critical stance in either the House or the
Senate. In terms of Kurds in Iraq, Congress was critical of what they perceived as a lack of
willingness by Turkey to aid Kurdish refugees fleeing Saddam
Hussein‘s army at the end of the Gulf War. After the Gulf War, Congress was critical on what
they thought to be Turkey‘s restriction of international aid and the access of the Red Cross into
northern Iraq, as well as reports on Turkish army misconducts during cross-border operations,
such as burning and evacuating Iraqi villages. With respect to Kurds in Turkey, Congress
emphasized illegal killings, torture, and disappearances under detention. Village burnings and
evacuations were also a part of the human rights discourse in Congress, and in
30 Founded in 1983.
31 Founded in 1995.
32 Founded in 1996.
33 OPC was the name of the no-fly zone enforcement operation run by the United States Air Force through 1991-1996 to
prevent Iraqi jets from harassing Kurdish refugees trapped close to the Iraqi-Turkish border.
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
some instances certain congresspersons referred to such misconducts as ―ethnic cleansing‖ and
―genocide.‖ Human rights discourses were frequently adopted to back up arguments in favor of
cutting or restricting aid to Turkey, as well as the sale of military hardware. The general sense in
Congress was that Turkey had been undertaking human rights abuses in a systematic manner
and such approaches were pursued as state policy. Some congresspersons (such as Bob Filner)
even initiated off-Congress efforts, such as fasting protests in front of the
Capitol in order to attract Congress attention to the abuses in Turkey and Iraq. In many
ways, Congress discourses varied little since most representatives were usually critical of
Turkey, almost never voicing praise or encouragement about constitutional changes, human
rights trainings within the military, or other positive steps taken. Such almost non-existent
mobility in discourses suggests that congressional positions on human rights were
predetermined through lobbying efforts and other affiliations; an overwhelming majority of
the members of the Congress were either rigidly ‗anti-Turkish‘ or staunchly ‗pro-Turkish,‘
with extremely rare cases of cross-argumentation.
In terms of the democracy-democratization discourse, congressional statements were
somewhat more fluid than those made on human rights. For example, while certain
congresspersons were rigidly anti-Turkish, some (such as DeConcini) actually praised Turkish
democracy in rare instances, such as after fair elections or amendments made to Turkey‘s
notorious Article 8 of the anti-terror law.34 One possible reason for these statements could be
Turkey‘s role as a uniquely democratic (although troubled) country in an overwhelmingly
authoritarian and fundamentalist neighborhood. Indeed, DeConcini himself conveyed his hope
that ―Turkish democracy [...] can serve as a model for its less democratically inclined neighbors
[...].‖35 However, with the intensification of the insurgency and the democratic restrictions that
followed, Congressional discourses turned completely critical. By the mid-
1990s, Turkey, once a success story of American foreign democratization policies, was
increasingly compared to the repressive Soviet regime in terms of restrictions on free speech.
This critical tone heightened after the arrest of Kurdish parliamentarians of the Turkish
Assembly, which led Congress to question whether democracy existed at all in Turkey,
rather than arguing on its quality. Still, it is possible to frame such ‗negative‘ discourses as
inclusionist because Turkey‘s democracy was debated within the context of Turkish
obligations to the treaties and conventions that are part of the Western system, as opposed
to certain exclusionist discourses in the European Parliament that regarded Turkey outside
of the Western system of beliefs and conducts. By 1997, however, Turkish democracy was
already being likened to that of ‗non-Western‘ countries such as China, and the fact that the
executive branch of the US government was still cooperating very closely with Turkey
elicited Congressional statements that the executive branch was encouraging Turkey in its
repressive policies.
The excessive-force discourse was one of the most frequent discourses adopted in
Congress in the time period analyzed. Such discourses focused on perceived Turkish security
heavy-handedness and the inability (or unwillingness) to distinguish between terrorists and non-
combatants in cross-border operations, as well as police measures within Turkey. The biggest
criticism of the Turkish military in this respect was its usage of heavy weaponry,
34 This refers to a revoked article, which used to allow prosecution of statements that are deemed ‗propaganda against the
indivisibility of the state‘. Due to a very broad and unclear definition of what specific statements were prosecuted, this article was
used as a way of restricting opposition or criticism of state practices on the Kurdish question.
35 137 Cong. Rec. S,31551 (November 13, 1991) (statement of Sen. DeConcini).
70
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
such as cluster bombs and napalm against PKK bases surrounded by villages, which
resulted in more civilian casualties than destroyed PKK targets. As the US and Turkey were
major security partners and the US had provided almost 80% of Turkish arms,36 Congress
was extremely critical of President Clinton and the executive branch for authorizing the
sale of advanced weaponry to Turkey. The second line of criticism of the Turkish army was
not distinguishing between civilians and PKK operatives. Most congresspersons believed
that by burning villages and expelling their inhabitants (who then became potential recruits
for the PKK), the Turkish army was creating conflicts that could have been avoided. The
‗ethnic cleansing‘ and ‗genocide‘ arguments were also frequently tied to this discourse, and
the arguments cited many similarities between the events of 1915 against the Armenians
and the invasion of Cyprus.
To conclude, although party and ideology were the primary predictors of how legislators
spoke about the Kurdish question in the European Parliament, neither party membership nor
membership in the House or Senate had any correlation with legislators‘ approach to the
Kurdish question in the US Congress. I believe that the primary influence over legislative
discourse in the USC was legislators‘ agenda (reflected by their caucus membership,
constituency, or origin of campaign contributions), and within this context, Greek and
Armenian interest groups (rather than Kurdish ones) were hugely influential in USC discourse
on the Kurdish question. In many ways, one can argue that Greek and Armenian interests
exerted heavy influence on US-Turkish relations in the 1990s by hijacking the topic of the
Kurdish question and creating connections between apparently unrelated issues, such as the
Kurdish question, the invasion of Cyprus, the Armenian genocide, US support for Turkey‘s
EU membership, and US arms sales to Turkey. Congressional discourse thus had a heavier
Greek-Armenian bias than a genuine Kurdish or HR perspective, which reflects the
influence that donations have in shaping political agenda. In arguing so, however, I am not
dismissing the effect of ideology on a congressperson‘s choice of agenda and the source of
his/her donations. The findings I report here are merely what we can observe through
available data on Congressional activity on the Kurdish question.
3.3. Turkish Grand National Assembly
As the political body for the host country of the conflict in question, the TGNA is critical to
the study of conflict perception and discourse. Analyzing the TGNA allows us to identify
similarities and differences in perception between the host of the conflict and those of
outside observers. Does the country experiencing domestic conflict see the problem
differently than outside observers do, or are there similarities? Here, we deal with how
Turkish political-legislative discourse contextualized its internal problem and whether
ideology or agenda exerted a more influential weight on discursive construction. I will test
whether and (how) party affiliation (ideology), constituency (agenda), and membership of a
governing or opposition party affected a legislator‘s discourse on the Kurdish question in
Turkey. We expect a similar trend to those observed in the two previous legislatures;
namely, that conservative politicians define the question as a security and terrorism
problem, and liberal politicians focus on the humanitarian and emancipatory aspects.
36 For a yearly breakdown of US military sales to Turkey, see the Federation of American Scientists webpage on Turkish
arms acquisitions, accessed May 4, 2009, http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/turkey.htm.
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
3.3.1. Ideology: party affiliation
Ideology in the Turkish National Assembly through the 1990s can be summed up as follows:37
• Motherland Party (ANAP): Center-right, moderate nationalism, economic
liberalism, populism
• True Path Party (DYP): Center-right, moderate nationalism, economic liberalism,
populism
• Social Democratic People‘s Party (SHP): Social democracy, center-left, secularism
and Republican People‘s Party (CHP): Kemalism, center-left, social democracy
(SHP joined CHP in 1995)
• Welfare Party (RP): Conservative, right-wing, Islamism, economic isolationism
• Nationalist Action Party (MHP): Right-wing, nationalism
• Democratic Left Party (DSP): Center-left, Kemalism, moderate nationalism
Within this context, I show in Table 13 and Figure 7 whether our previous finding on the
effect of party ideology on legislative discourse in the EP is also valid for the TGNA.
Table 13- Political parties‘ performance and discursive preferences in the TGNA
HR
Dem
Ethn38
Law
Sec
Ed-Dev
Foreign
iTRc
SF/VG
ExF
Total
ANAP
15
15
8
2
10
36
13
48
53
12
212
DSP
9
5
1
1
11
16
25
0
6
0
74
S-C/HP
25
22
13
20
18
20
20
12
25
44
219
RP
16
15
14
8
36
23
91
31
22
17
273
DYP
8
6
7
4
22
22
32
14
5
0
120
MHP
2
1
3
0
5
2
10
5
1
0
29
State
13
14
5
17
50
28
45
1
8
0
181
Total
88
71
51
52
152
147
236
111
120
74
1108
Figure 7: Radar graph showing TGNA discursive preferences on the Kurdish question
37 As Turkish political party ideologies are often fluid and difficult to determine fully from their manifestos, these
ideological definitions were made by the author, with the help of Prof. Hasan Bülent Kahraman (Kadir Has University) and Prof.
Fuat Keyman (Sabancı University).
38 Please note new discursive contexts exclusive to the TGNA: Ethn = the argument that the Kurdish issue is essentially an
ethnic identity question; Law = legalistic discourses; Sec = security discourse; Ed-dev = the argument that the Kurdish question
emerges from a lack of education and development in the region; For = emphasis on ―foreign dark powers‖ or foreign instigatio n;
iTRc = criticism of Turkish policy on the Kurdish question; SF-VG = criticism of security forces or paramilitary village guards‘
brutality toward the Kurds.
72
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
From Table 13, we see that in aggregate discourses the RP was the most active party on the
Kurdish question (273), followed by the SHP-CHP (219) and the ANAP (212). However,
because the 1990s witnessed one of Turkey‘s most politically fragmented periods, when the
TGNA‘s composition frequently changed due to collapsing coalition governments, we must
verify this activity using a ‗discourse-per-MP‘ measurement. Moreover, while the total number
of MPs was 450 until 1995, it was raised to 550 MPs thereafter.
Based on the average MP numbers,39 in Tables and 14 and 15 I show a discourse-per-MP
measurement, as I did for the EP.
Table 14- MP numbers of the main political parties in the TGNA across three general elections
1991
1995
1999
Average
DYP
178
135
85
132.6
ANAP
115
132
86
111
SHP-CHP
88
49
0
45.6
RP
62
158
111
40
110.3
DSP
7
76
136
73
MHP
0
0
129
43
Table 15- Number of discourses in proportion to average number of MPs in the TGNA to
determine party activity on the Kurdish issue
Number of discourses
Average number of MPs
Discourse per MP
DYP
120
132.6
0.905
ANAP
212
111
1.909
SHP-CHP
219
45.6
4.802
RP
273
110.3
2.475
DSP
74
73
1.013
MHP
29
43
0.674
When we level out party discourses according to their average number of seats in the
TGNA through 1991-1999, we find that MPs of the left,41 particularly the SHP (whose ranks
joined the CHP after 1995), were the most active on the Kurdish question in Turkey. They were
followed by members of the RP and the ANAP. Thus, our hypothesis on ideology and discourse
appears to be partially valid for the TGNA. It is true that the most active MPs belonged to the
SHP-CHP, which are both center-left parties, but the runner-up was the right-wing/conservative
RP, followed by the center-right ANAP. The TGNA also conformed to the trend in the EP (as
you go left-liberal in the political continuum, there is more interest in the Kurdish question, and
if you go right-conservative, there is less interest), as shown by the disinterest of the right-wing
MHP, the least active party, measured both by aggregate discourses and discourse-per-MP
measurements. However, the political left-right pattern was
39 Data derived from the TGNA webpage (https://global.tbmm.gov.tr/) on parliamentary composition by year.
40 The Welfare Party was closed down in January 1998, after the military intervention in February 1997, which accused the
party of anti-secular activities. After its closure, most party members switched over to the Virtue Party in December 1998, and then
split between the Felicity Party and the Justice and Development Party in June 2001. The Felicity Party was closed down in 2001
for the same reason. The figure here refers to the Felicity Party.
41 In our case, the center-left. The military coup of 1980 eradicated far-left groups and outlawed such ideologies, requiring
any leftist party to redefine its ideology along Kemalist lines. Thus, all the center-left parties had to adopt a certain level of
Kemalist discourse to function within the political system so as not to be marginalized by the establishment. Center-left parties
were thus as left as Turkey could go in the 1990s.
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
not clear in the TGNA. Although the most active party belonged to the center-left and the least
active party belonged to the right, this does not necessarily validate the claim that as one goes
left in the political continuum, there is more interest in the Kurdish question, or vice versa.
Another party of the center-left, the DSP, was among the least active parties in the
TGNA according to the discourse-per-MP measurement, while the right-wing RP was
among the most active.
In the following section, I present and test another hypothesis, which will enable us to
better see these discursive fault lines.
3.3.2. Agenda: constituency
In the previous section, I discussed how ideology and party affiliation shaped MPs‘
discourses in the TGNA through the 1990s. Here, I will introduce a second hypothesis with
regard to a legislator‘s agenda, shaped by constituency:
If a legislator represents a district (city) that is under emergency law, she/he will
construct the Kurdish question within the context of emancipation and rights, whereas if
a legislator does not represent such a district, she/he will define the Kurdish question as
a security and territorial integrity problem.
Cities in south-eastern Turkey (Diyarbakır, Mardin, Siirt, Batman, Şırnak, Van, Hakkari,
Bingöl, Muş, Tunceli, Bitlis, and Elazığ) were brought under emergency law and the jurisdiction
of the Emergency Super-governorate in 1987 by a decision of the Council of
Ministers. Here, I compare discourse preferences of the parliamentarians representing these
cities with representatives from the rest of Turkey. Table 16 and Figure 8 show discourse
types classified according to whether the representative comes from the emergency region
(ER) or not (Non-ER).
Table 16- Aggregate discursive output and preference among emergency region and non-
emergency region MPs
HR
Dem
Ethn
Law
Sec
Ed-Dev
For
iTRc
SF-VG
ExF
Total
ER
28
7
3
11
21
29
30
18
24
31
202
Non-ER
66
62
37
52
222
99
240
94
45
51
968
74
Figure 8: Radar graph comparing emergency region MPs‘ discursive preferences with those of MPs from the rest
of the Turkey
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
We can see that ER representatives provided 17.26% of the discourses in the TGNA on
the Kurdish question. While ER representatives understandably focused on ExF, SF-VG,
and HR, they were critical of foreign countries (For) and pointed to the underdevelopment
of their region (Ed-Dev) with the same degree of frequency. Non-ER representatives, on the
other hand, focused mainly on For and Sec discourses, paying no more attention to the
Ethn, ExF, and SF-VG aspects than they did to Dem and Law.
In terms of the human rights discourse, the TGNA was divided. On the one hand, there
was a sub-discourse in which parliamentarians argued that Turkey respected human rights,
even of the Iraqis across the border, and on the other hand, a sub-discourse that converged
with the critical discourses of the EU Parliament and US Congress. One conservative sub-
discourse on human rights focused on the safeguards in the Turkish legal system that
prevent torture and other abuses, arguing that it was impossible for such abuses to exist in
Turkey. The second conservative sub-discourse pointed to human rights abuses in other
countries, asserting that there was nothing wrong with the Turkish approach to the Kurdish
question. Further, human rights monitors or organizations were constructed as ‗separatists‘
within the conservative discourse, who helped the propaganda activities of the PKK. The
primary liberal discourse on human rights criticized the conservative argument that pointed
to the legal safeguards in the constitution and argued such that an easy escape prevented
any conclusive settlement on identifying the torturers. The second line of liberal discourse
argued that torture was systematic and now an everyday occurrence with prisoners and
convicts. The third line of liberal discourse criticized the security force‘s excuses about
torture (either that it was necessary because of security concerns, or a tool to maintain
order), arguing for the necessity of establishing governmental institutions that could provide
an alternative channel of observation.
Discourses on the democracy aspect of the Kurdish question also showed variance.
The first line of liberal discourse focused on the danger of granting electoral rights to the
constituents of evacuated villages, arguing in favor of adding them to the constituencies of
the cities they had migrated to. A conflict between the liberal and conservative definitions
on democracy was also explicit in terms of recognizing Kurds as Kurds. While the liberal
line constructed democracy within the context of free expression and recognizing
minorities, the conservative discourse on democracy focused on the equality and
Turkishness of all citizens. The first line of distinctly conservative arguments favored
limiting democracy, since too much of it would lead to the disintegration of the country.
The liberal variant of this argument favored debate and free discussion of all ideas (even
separatist ones) even though one might not identify with them. The crux of this distinction
appears to be the acceptance of two different versions of democracy, one favoring the
early-twentieth-century European version, which emphasizes equality and citizenship, and
the second adopting the post-modern definition, which emphasizes recognition, political
identity, and free expression. Based on this difference, the Emergency Measures or
Emergency Super-governorships were constructed as ‗democratic‘ within the conservative
discourse (since they tried to establish security equally to all citizens), whereas within the
liberal discourse they were considered exceedingly ‗undemocratic‘ (since they had
bypassed Constitutional rights and engaged in a wide array of counter-terrorism methods,
from limiting freedom of expression to authorizing arrests without indictment).
Liberal parliamentarians generally adopted excessive-force discourses. While some
parliamentarians constructed security force abuses as ‗state terrorism,‘ others constructed it
within the context of ‗government incompetence.‘ Village burnings were an important topic
75
All Azimuth A. Ünver
of excessive force arguments. In terms of such burnings, the liberal argument pointed to the
utility of villages for PKK needs such as supplies or accommodation, arguing that the PKK
would not want villages to be burned, an argument sharply contrasting with the
conservative argument that if a village was burned, it was the doing of the PKK. In
parliamentarians‘ reports on excessive force, quoting or mentioning meetings with regional
administrators was an observable trend. While this tendency indirectly showed
parliamentarians‘ lack of trust in official statements that explained village burnings through
PKK violence, it also became a discursive tactic, in which liberal parliamentarians defended
their arguments against conservative politicians, who adopted the official state discourse.
Liberal parliamentarians generally explained the practice of excessive force by pointing to a
lack of communication between super-governors and military branches, as well as within
the military branch itself. Moreover, such reports of misconduct generally ended with a
statement criticizing decision-making bodies for their disregard of these abuses. While
parliamentarians in the liberal line argued that village evacuations benefited the PKK in the
long run, they also complained about security forces‘ lack of accountability.
The security discourse was another multi-partisan discourse, albeit used more by
conservative parliamentarians. One type of argument constructed security within the
context of parliamentarians‘ obligations towards their constituencies, highlighting the
state‘s responsibility in providing security. Within this parent-type discourse, military and
police chiefs were criticized for their lack of awareness and preparedness, and governing
coalitions were told to ‗step down‘ if they could not provide security. In defense of
security-deficit criticisms, governmental discourses, regardless of the political group,
focused on the difficulty of combatting the PKK even in violent incidents. To highlight the
difficulties in fighting terrorism, security discourses were also generally supported by
statistical data, such as villages or hospitals destroyed by the PKK.
4. Discussion
A comparative analysis of the legislative discourses on an intra-state conflict enables us to
see the difference in priorities within each setting with regard to that conflict, as well as
each legislature‘s culture and tradition with regard to intra-state conflict in general. With
regard to the Kurdish question in Turkey, we see from Figure 9 how such priorities
compare for five of the most frequent themes: HR, Dem, ExF, Sec, and SF-VG.
76
Figure 9: Radar graph comparing EP, USC, and TGNA aggregate discursive output over five of the most
frequently adopted contexts
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
The HR dimension of the conflict is the primary context of choice within the USC and
EP; according to both of these legislatures, the Kurdish question in Turkey was essentially an
HR problem, which could be solved by providing special status and rights to Turkey‘s Kurdish
population. These two legislatures parted ways when it came to their second most frequent
discursive context; for the USC, the Kurdish problem had an ExF secondary dimension, whereas
for the EP it was secondarily a Dem issue. Predictably, the TGNA had a very different agenda
and perception of the issue. There, the Kurdish problem was primarily a Sec problem, which
could only be solved by military and security forces, specifically by increasing military presence
in the ERs and by increasing pressure on the PKK though cross-border raids and airstrikes.
Moreover, although not presented in the radar graph above (since this discourse type is not valid
for the USC or EP), the Kurdish problem according to the
TGNA was primarily caused by foreign countries (For), instigated and financed deliberately to
partition and destroy Turkey. However, rather counterintuitively, the TGNA also emerged as the
most frequent critic of security force and village guard abuses (SF-VG) in the south-east. We
observe that the EP was quite reluctant to put the blame on Turkish security forces directly,
instead implying criticism of security institutions. In this respect, the USC was more
confrontational with such institutions, mostly because an overwhelming majority of the materiel
used by these institutions was American in origin, the export of which depended upon
Congressional consent. This finding also explains the second discursive context of choice in the
USC, the ExF dimension. The EP‘s second choice of discursive context (Dem) was strongly
connected to Turkey‘s EU membership process, which is greatly affected by the EU accession
(Copenhagen) criteria, requiring the improvement of democratic institutions and practices in a
candidate country. It must also be noted that the EP emerged as more sensitive toward Turkey‘s
right to defend its citizens against the PKK, highlighting the security dimension (Sec) more
often than criticizing Turkish security forces (SF-VG). The
USC, by contrast, highlighted the security aspect of the conflict but also criticized Turkish
security forces and village guards more frequently than the EP did.
As mentioned earlier, ideology and party affiliation were important factors in
legislators‘ approaches to the Kurdish question, both in the EP and the TGNA; we also saw
that ideology and party affiliation played a very minor role within the USC. A tri-
legislatorial comparative analysis of how ideology shaped legislators‘ discourses on the
Kurdish question reveals the differences of degree between them. Table 17 and Figure 10A
show the discursive context used by liberal parties in each legislature as a percentage of
their respective aggregate discursive outputs.
Table 17- Discursive preferences of parties/groups taking a liberal-emancipatory position
on the Kurdish question
HR
Dem
ExF
SF/VG
Sec
PSE
34.46%
33.72%
19.18%
2.32%
9.30%
GUE-NGL
33.33%
30.70%
26.31%
3.50%
6.14%
Greens
21.12%
35.21%
26.76%
8.45%
8.45%
SHP-CHP
18.65%
16.41%
32.83%
18.65%
13.43%
Senate-D
31.15%
21.85%
18.57%
8.74%
19.67%
House-D
37.95%
20.51%
31.79%
6.15%
3.59%
77
A. Ünver
Liberal Parties' discourses
Conservative Parties' discourses
HR
HR
70,00%
40,00%
35,00%
60,00%
30,00%
50,00%
EPP-ED
25,00%
PSE
40,00%
20,00%
30,00%
Council-Commission
Sec
15,00%
Dem
GUE-NGL Sec
20,00%
Dem
10,00%
House-R
10,00%
Greens
5,00%
ANAP
0,00%
0,00%
SHP-CHP
RP
Senate-D
DYP
House-D
TR State
SF-VG
ExF
SF/VG
ExF
Figure 10: Radar graph comparing (A) liberal-emancipatory parties‘/groups‘ discursive preferences and (B) discursive priorities of conservative and security-oriented political parties
All Azimuth
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Ideology, Political Agenda,...
Perhaps the most important convergence of liberal party discourses within all three
legislatures was the low use of the Sec discourse. Indeed, with the exception of US Senate
Democrats, the security and terrorism aspect of the Kurdish question was not highlighted
by liberal parties. It is interesting to see that the GUE-NGL discourses on the Kurdish
question accorded almost exactly with Democrats from the US House in terms of HR and
ExF dimensions, whereas the Nordic Left converged with the Green group and the European
Socialist group in the EP in terms of the Dem dimension. Turkish Social Democrats, by
contrast, converged with the Democrats in the US House and, to a lesser extent, with the
European Green group and the Nordic Left in terms of ExF. With regard to the HR aspect, a
significant convergence exists between the European Socialists, the Green group, the Nordic
Left, and Democrats in both House and the Senate. It is also interesting to see that the Senate
Democrats emerged as the most frequent adopter of the Sec discourse, followed by Turkish
Social Democrats, whereas Democrats in the House used this discourse least.
With regard to conservative/right-wing parties, the trend changes greatly. We can see in
Table 18 and Figure 10B that ideology plays a much lesser role in explaining right-wing
discourses on the Kurdish question (I have included Turkish state discourse here to
compare against other conservative discourses).
Table 18- Discursive preferences of parties/groups that took a conservative and security-
oriented stance toward the Kurdish question
HR
Dem
ExF
SF-VG
Sec
EPP-ED
37.28%
23.72%
11.86%
6.78%
20.34%
Council-Commission
35.85%
22.64%
5.66%
1.89%
33.96%
House-R
32.52%
17.79%
31.90%
7.98%
9.82%
ANAP
14.29%
14.29%
11.43%
50.48%
9.52%
RP
15.09%
14.15%
16.03%
20.75%
33.96%
DYP
19.51%
14.63%
0
12.19%
53.66%
TR State
16.88%
18.18%
0
0
64.94%
Importantly, we find that conservative party performances have very little convergence and
each highlights a different aspect of the Kurdish question. Predictably, the Turkish state made
greater use of the Sec discourse than any conservative source in the TGNA, EP, or USC, with
the DYP the most security-oriented political party within Turkey‘s political-conservative
continuum. It is also worth highlighting that another of Turkey‘s center-right parties, the ANAP,
emerges as one of the least security-oriented, adopting the SF-VG discourse more than other
conservative parties did. By contrast, the EPP-ED and European Council and
Commission representatives opted for HR and Dem discourses from a conservative position,
while House Republicans emerged as the most vocal critics of Turkey‘s excessive-force
practices (ExF). The RP is perhaps the most ‗balanced‘ of Turkey‘s conservative parties;
although it prioritized Sec, it gave voice to HR, Dem, and ExF concerns in equal measure.
Interestingly, House Republicans did not appear to have adopted a conservative discourse at all;
their emphasis on HR, Dem, and ExF placed them closer to the European Nordic Left.
Therefore, while we can observe a particular discursive trend within liberal politics with
regard to the Kurdish question, we cannot observe a similar trend within conservative
politics. Most notably in the TGNA, right-wing party discourse accorded less with ideology
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All Azimuth A. Ünver
than with whether or not the party is in government or opposition. In the EP, conservatives
made equal reference to Sec, HR, and Dem issues. We can thus argue that political ideology
was a more important variable in left-wing/liberal legislative discourse on conflict because
it does not play a clear role in right-wing/conservative discourse; for right-wing parties,
agenda was a more important factor in their members‘ discourses on the Kurdish question.
5. Conclusion
This study proposes that countries that suffer from intra-state conflicts perceive such
conflicts differently than outside observers do. An intra-state conflict is essentially a
security or terrorism problem for the country that experiences it. Outside stakeholders, by
contrast, tend to view such conflicts within the context of emancipation, including human
rights, democratization, and the use of excessive force. In our example, the Kurdish
question was defined primarily as a Sec issue by the TGNA, an HR and Dem problem by
the EP, and an HR and ExF problem by the USC.
Conspiracy and export of responsibility emerge as interesting features of host-country
discourses. Host countries that operate semi-democratic or non-democratic political systems,
where dissent and opposition cannot find channels of expression, tend to fail to grasp the full
extent and demand of their internal conflicts. This situation leads to state failure on a smaller
scale, where the state is able to maintain security and authority occasionally but fails to
conclusively settle its domestic problem and incorporate its demands into its political system.
Such conflicts, when violent, generate a fog of war, in which the host country‘s government
fails to address the measure necessary to end the conflict and turns to conspiracy instead.
The ―dark foreign powers‖ argument used in this case represents the Turkish equivalent of
such conspiracy and an export of responsibility. Inability to politically or militarily address
the full extent of such conflicts forces host countries to blame an indeterminate number of
vague outsiders and leads to the emergence of a new political sense of inferiority as the
host country diverts public opinion away from blaming the government and toward a cloud
of external influences.
The transnational comparison of political ideologies yields some insights into the ‗order
versus emancipation‘ debate on conflicts: political conservatism tends to define domestic
conflicts within the Sec realm, whereas political liberalism chooses emancipatory frameworks
such as HR and Dem. The argument made here is that agenda rather than political ideology
explains why politicians view intra-state conflicts differently. Agenda items differ across
political systems and affect how politicians are connected to a particular intra-state conflict.
In our case, Turkish politicians were linked to the Kurdish question by their constituent city
and based on whether they were representing Kurds or not. In the EP, an MEP‘s country
affiliation and that country‘s relations with Turkey, together with whether that country has
a large Kurdish Diaspora, comprised the MEP‘s agenda considerations. In the USC,
membership in the Human Rights, Armenian, or Hellenic caucus mainly determined a
congressperson‘s approach to the Kurdish question.
Methodologically, this study adds to the existing attempts at bridging quantitative and
discourse realms in conflict analysis and attempts to make the case for the higher explanatory
value of long-term quantitative discourse analysis. While the existing literature bridges this
methodological gap in the field of linguistics and political philosophy, a working model is
offered here for the study of long-term conflict perception/expression dynamics and data
80
Ideology, Political Agenda,...
collection, evaluation, and synthesis. The same model could be used to explore conflict
discourse dynamics in other protracted conflicts, such as the Israel-Palestine or Russia-
Chechnya cases, where legislatures reveal much about the political culture within which
they operate.
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