The role of conflict has been integral to the state and nation formation in Turkey since the inception of the Republic in 1923. Faced with the twin tasks of democratic legitimacy and maintaining control, or security and civil-centered politics, the state has historically opted for authority and control. Ironically enough, while Republican politics has emphasized unity and uniformity to limit diversity and conflict caused by class, ethnicity and Islam, the result has been the opposite. So much so that the present conflict between the state and the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which has cost nearly fourteen thousand lives since 1984, has reached an abysmal point: “in the end Turkey's victory may be a Pyrrhic one. If the conflict continues without exploration of other avenues, it will most likely jeopardize Turkey's relations with Europe and the United States” (Brown 1995, p. 128). Moreover, it has become increasingly clear that Kurdish nationalism is not just a simple expression of discontent and opposition but also a challenge to the very premises on which the Turkish nation-state has been built. In that sense, the resolution of the Kurdish “problem” is of concern not only to the Kurdish population of the Republic, but involves the future shape and substance of the Turkish state and society in their entirety as well.

No ideology needs history so much as nationalism. History is indispensable to its romantic narrative, essentialist conceptual structure and apocalyptic claim to truth. Nationalist discourse is historicist; it relies on genealogy for the legitimation of the nationalist cause, on the historicization of the national origin for the affirmation of the self and the denial of the other. But history is also the Achilles heel of nationalism. Nationalist historical discourse is repeatedly denounced by historians for distorting the truth, misrepresenting the historical reality of the formation of nations and nation-states. Nationalist historians are criticized for being subjective, partisan and ideological by “objective” and seemingly non-ideological historians who likewise construct historical narratives by selecting and at times inventing historical subjects and historicizing their thoughts and actions. Many of the charges levelled against nationalist historiography concern the epistemology of empiricist historiography in general, and all historiography which is concerned with extracting the truth from given facts on the assumption that they are identical with the real signified by them is by definition empiricist. This is as true as the errors of nationalist historiography.

The purpose of the research on which the present article is based was to collect and analyze socio-economic and cultural data on seasonal and permanent migration within the South-eastern Anatolian Project (GAP) Region and between that region and the Metropolitan areas of Turkey. The absence of social scientific knowledge on intra- and interregional migration in this particular context has already been emphasized in the GAP Master Plan Study Report (SPO, 1989). In addition, the region is interesting for social scientists not only because of radical transformations taking place due to the construction of large dams and irrigation projects but also because of the ethnic identity questions that are raised by some Kurdish speaking groups in the region. The present article presents the framework of the research, carried out in 1993, and some of its findings. The findings reported here do not shed direct light on the so-called “ethnic question” or “Kurdish question”; but they help in understanding the transformation and continuity of socio-economic and cultural structures that shape social and political action in the region.

In order to secure the necessary evidence for bringing offenders to justice, law enforcement officers are given powers to invade the freedom of individuals in the process of criminal investigations. These powers are not, however, unlimited; in modern democratic states the relationship between the public authorities and individuals is governed not by the arbitrary exercise of power but by power exercised within the constraints of law. Having said that, law enforcement officers do not always exercise their powers within the permitted limits. Where law enforcement officers exceed their powers, evidence may be obtained to incriminate the suspect in trial. The question of whether such evidence can be taken as a basis for judgement in Turkish law is the main concern of this article.

In the discourse of the history textbooks used since 1931, the relationship between identity and otherness often tends towards the necessity of proving both the value and greatness of Turkish history and culture. Consequently, the whole historical narrative, and also the discourse on identity and the nationalist discourse, which very often make use of history in their argumentation, always present the Turks in a favorable light and in an emphasized role. This appears in several forms, particularly during a kind of reconstruction of the past using tenses expressing the unreal condition (“If the Turks had not existed… Islam could not have been saved”, or “… the European Renaissance could not have taken place”, etc.). Another noticeable form is the use of the word hizmet, (“service”, “utility”, helpfulness”, “function”) provided by the Turks. The word itself is helpful to fit the Turks in with “otherness”, in the way of showing them in a good light in history. With regard to this notion, according to the narrative, wide groups of “others” often take advantage of the existence of the Turks: the whole mankind, the “free world”, or the Muslim world, according to the time when the discourse was formulated.