Hostname: page-component-77c78cf97d-kmjgn Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2026-04-26T00:33:25.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is Islam a Cure for Ethnic Conflict? Evidence from Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Mehmet Gurses
Mehmet Gurses*
Affiliation:
Florida Atlantic University
*
Address correspondence and reprint request to: Mehmet Gurses, Department of Political Science, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Social Science 391E, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991. E-mail: gurses@fau.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Turkish Islamists have long attributed the root causes of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey to the anti-religious Turkish nationalism promulgated by the secular Kemalist republican elite in the 1920s. As a result, they lay emphasis on “Islamic brotherhood” as the glue that holds numerous ethnic nationalities together. This article examines this claim and argues that Islam's role as a peacemaker has been overstated. The data from in-depth interviews with dozens of Kurdish Islamists in Turkey conducted in the summer of 2013 indicate that Kurdish Islamists in principle agree with the peacemaking potential of Islam. Distrustful of the “Islamic brotherhood” discourse however, they describe this allegedly new policy as yet another tactic to undermine the Kurdish struggle for equal rights

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 135 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Aspinall, Edward. 2009. Islam and nation: Separatist Rebellion in Aceh, Indonesia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Atacan, Fulya. 2001. “A Kurdish Islamist Group in Modern Turkey: Shifting Identities.” Middle Eastern Studies 37:111–144.Google Scholar
Ataman, Muhittin. 2003. “Islamic Perspective on Ethnicity and Nationalism: Diversity or Uniformity?” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 23:89–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayata, Bilgin, and Yukseker, Deniz. 2005. “A Belated Awakening: National and International Responses to Internal Displacement of Kurds in Turkey.” New Perspectives on Turkey 32:5–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baran, Zeyno. 2008. “Turkey Divided.” Journal of Democracy 19: 55–69.Google Scholar
Barkey, Henri J., and Fuller, Graham E.. 1998. Turkey's Kurdish Question. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Basedau, Matthias, Struver, Georg, and Vullers, Johannes. 2011. “Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa.” Terrorism and Political Violence 23:752–779.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beriker-Atiyas, Nimet. 1997. “The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey: Issues, Parties, and Prospects.” Security Dialogue 28:439–452.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 2009. “Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism.” Annual Review of Sociology 35:21–42.Google Scholar
Bruinessen, van Martin. 1992. Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Cavdar, Gamze. 2006. “Islamist New Thinking in Turkey: A Model for Political Learning?” Political Science Quarterly 121:477–497.Google Scholar
Driessen, D. Michael. 2010. “Religion, State, and Democracy: Analyzing Two Dimensions of Church-State Arrangements.” Politics and Religion 3:55–80.Google Scholar
Driessen, D. Michael. 2014. Religion and Democratization: Framing Religious and Political Identities in Muslim and Catholic Societies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entessar, Nader. 2014. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Kurdish Dilemma in Iran.” In Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, eds. Romano, David, and Gurses, Mehmet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 211–224.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David D.. 2000. “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.” International Organization 54:845–877.Google Scholar
Fox, Jonathan. 2004. “Religion and State Failure: An Examination of the Extent an Magnitude of Religious Conflict from 1950 to 1996.” International Political Science Review 25:55–76.Google Scholar
Fox, Jonathan, James, Patrick, and Li, Yitan. 2009. “State Religion and Discrimination Against Ethnic Minorities.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 15:189–210.Google Scholar
Gunter, Michael M. “The Kurdish Question in Perspective.” World Affairs 166:197–205.Google Scholar
Gurses, Mehmet. 2010. “Partition, Democracy, and Turkey's Kurdish Minority.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 16:337–353.Google Scholar
Gurses, Mehmet. 2012. “Environmental Consequences of Civil War: Evidence from the Kurdish Conflict in Turkey.” Civil Wars 14:254–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurses, Mehmet. 2014. “Islamists, Democracy and Turkey: A Test of the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis.” Party Politics 20:646–653.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L. 2004. “Does Truth Lead to Reconciliation? Testing the Causal Assumptions of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process.” American Journal of Political Science 48:201–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houston, Christopher. 1999. “Civilizing Islam, Islamist Civilizing? Turkey's Islamist Movement and the Problem of Ethnic Difference.” Thesis Eleven 58:83–98.Google Scholar
Houston, Christopher. 2001. Islam, Kurds and the Turkish Nation State. New York, NY: Berg.Google Scholar
International Crisis Group. 2008. “Turkey and Iraqi Kurds: Conflict or Cooperation?” Middle East Report 81:xx-xx.Google Scholar
McAdam, Dough, Tarrow, Sidney, and Tilly, Charles. 1996. “To Map Contentious Politics.” Mobilization: An International Journal 1:17–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCharty, John D., and Zald, Mayer N.. 1977. “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 82:1212–1241.Google Scholar
McDowall, David. 1997. A Modern History of the Kurds. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Olson, W. Robert. 1989. The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Olson, W. Robert. 1996. The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990's. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Philpott, Daniel. 2007. “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion.” American Political Science Review 101:505–525.Google Scholar
Romano, David. 2006. The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Romano, David. 2008. “Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish Rapprochement Ominous for the PKK.” Terrorism Focus 5:19.Google Scholar
Romano, David, and Gurses, Mehmet. 2014. Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sakallioglu, Umit Cizre. 1998. “Kurdish Nationalism from an Islamist Perspective: The Discourse of Turkish Islamist Writers.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18:73–89.Google Scholar
Sarigil, Zeki. 2008. “Curbing Ethno-nationalism in Turkey: An Empirical Assessment of Pro-Islamic and Socio-economic Approaches.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 33: 533–553.Google Scholar
Sarigil, Zeki, and Fazlioglu, Omer. 2013. “Religion and Ethno-nationalism: Turkey's Kurdish Issue.” Nations and Nationalism 19:551–571.Google Scholar
Sarigil, Zeki, and Fazlioglu, Omer. 2014. “Exploring the Roots and Dynamics of Kurdish Ethno-nationalism in Turkey.” Nations and Nationalism 20:436–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somer, Murat. 2004. “Failures of the Discourse of Ethnicity: Turkey, Kurds, and the Emerging Iraq.” Security Dialogue 36:109–128.Google Scholar
Stansfield, Gareth. 2014. “Kurds, Persian Nationalism, and Shi'i Rule: Surviving Dominant Nationhood in Iran.” In Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, eds. Romano, David, and Gurses, Mehmet. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 58–84.Google Scholar
Sevensson, Isak. 2007. “Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 15:930–949.Google Scholar
Tansey, Oisin. 2007. “Process Tracing and Elite Interviewing: A Case for Non-Probability Sampling.” PS: Political Science and Politics 40:765–772.Google Scholar
Tezcür, M. Gunes. 2010. “When Democratization Radicalizes: The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey.” Journal of Peace Research 47:775–789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tezcür, M. Gunes. 2013. “Prospects for Resolution of the Kurdish Question: A Realist Perspective.” Insight Turkey 15:69–84.Google Scholar
Toft, Monica D. 2007. “Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War.” International Security 31:97–131.Google Scholar
Toft, Monica D., Philpott, Daniel, and Shah, Timothy Samuel. 2011. God's Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Harvey M., and Halpern, Jodi. 2004. “Rehumanizing the Other: Empathy and Reconciliation.” Human Rights Quarterly 26:561–583.Google Scholar
Yavuz, M. Hakan, and Esposito, John L.. 2003. Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gulen Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Yavuz, M. Hakan. 2003. Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yavuz, M. Hakan, and Ozcan, Nihat A.. 2006. “The Kurdish Question and Turkey's Justice and Development Party.” Middle East Policy XIII:102–119.Google Scholar
Yavuz, M. Yavuz. 2009. Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yildiz, Kerim. 2005. The Kurds in Turkey: EU Accession and Human Rights. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar