Ontological insecurity in asymmetric conflicts: Reflections on agonistic peace in Turkey’s Kurdish issue

Abstract

This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes. Over time, all conflicts become embroiled in a set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, the maintenance of which becomes critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions and narratives also intersect with a fundamental ontological asymmetry, because such conflicts often pit state parties with secure existence against ethnic groups with contested status and illegitimate standing. We argue that peace processes are easier to initiate but harder to conclude in ontologically asymmetric conflicts. Accordingly, we find that during the 2009–2015 peace process in Turkey, ontological (in)security-induced dynamics presented themselves in cyclical patterns of ambitious peace initiatives receiving greater support among the Kurdish public but giving way, at the first sign of crisis, to a rapid and dramatic return to violence, which neither side acted to stem. Moreover, we underscore that ontologically asymmetric conflicts, such as Turkey’s Kurdish issue, are often characterized by a societal security dilemma, where the conditions of ontological security for one party undermine those of the other. Therefore, building consensus around a new shared peace narrative may not be possible or desirable, and a lasting solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue depends on the development of an agonistic peace around coexisting, multiple and contestatory narratives.

Keywords

Agonistic peace conflict resolution ethnic conflict Kurdish issue ontological security

Introduction

Ethnic conflicts are often impregnated with myriad security concerns. Apart from multiple forms of violence, concerns about the maintenance of distinct collective identities (Roe, 2004) intensify ethnic conflicts and hamper peace efforts. These concerns make ontological security theory, which focuses on the security that individuals and collectives derive from the continuity and stability of their being (Giddens, 1991; Kinnvall, 2004; Mitzen, 2006; Steele, 2008; Zarakol, 2010; Mälksoo, 2015), a valuable starting point in the analysis of such conflicts. All conflicts, over time, become increasingly entrenched in narratives and conceptions of Self and the Other, and the maintenance of these narratives becomes critical for ontological security. However, in ethnic conflicts these conceptions and narratives also often intersect with a fundamental ontological asymmetry. Ethnic conflicts often occur between ontologically more secure state parties and less secure minority ethnic groups. This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies (Mitzen, 2006; Kay, 2012; Rumelili, 2015a) by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processes.

Turkey’s Kurdish issue provides an interesting case through which to study how state parties and ethnic groups confront concerns for ontological (in)security during peace processes. Since 1984, the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has claimed more than 40,000 lives and has led to economic disruption, evacuations of villages and the internal displacement of approximately one million Kurds (Çelik, 2010), and a broad range of human rights violations including disappearances, torture and killings, and the limitation of political liberties in Kurdish-populated eastern and southeastern Turkey. It has also led to increasing societal polarization (Çelik and Blum, 2007), with Kurds and Turks developing mutually negative images of each other (Bilali et al., 2014). From 2009 to 2015, the conflict was marked by successive initiatives aiming to end the violence, which we refer to as the peace process.¹ However, following the June 2015 elections in Turkey, the peace process abruptly came to a halt, and the conflict, including in some urban settings, escalated on an almost daily basis, with armed confrontations between the Turkish security forces and the PKK.

We argue that one of the notable shortcomings of the 2009–2015 peace process has been its inattentiveness to the concerns of ontological security and its failure to facilitate opportunities for an agonistic peace. While promising to end physical security concerns, the process challenged – on the part of both Turkish and Kurdish actors – existing identity narratives, perceptions of Self and Other, and established practices and routines, and as a result has unleashed a variety of anxieties and ontological insecurity. The process remained exclusively focused on the talks between the PKK and the Turkish state, but failed to include measures to promote the construction of new narratives and routines around which an altered sense of ontological security could develop. As a result, the process has remained highly vulnerable to spoilers on both sides, who saw in the resumption of conflict opportunities for greater political and strategic gain. While ontological insecurity was not a direct cause of the disruption in 2015, it played a critical role in enabling the spoilers. The failure to construct alternative narratives and routines during the peace process facilitated a sharp and largely uncontested return to conflict narratives and practices when the parties left the negotiation table.

Our analyses of Turkey’s Kurdish issue and the currently disrupted peace process develop the theorization of the nexus between conflict resolution and ontological security (Kay, 2012; Rumelili, 2015a) in two main ways. First, our detailed empirical analysis allows us to move beyond the general claim that ontological security concerns impact conflicts and peace processes to underline the specific ontological security challenges posed by ethnic conflicts characterized by ontological asymmetry. Second, we note the absence in the existing literature of any specific discussion on how identity narratives should be reconstructed in order to reinstate ontological security during peace processes, and we offer the notion of agonistic peacebuilding as a basis to develop such discussions.

The following section of the article develops the existing literature on conflict resolution and ontological security by underscoring the effects of ontological asymmetry on peace processes and linking it with the literature on agonistic peace. The third section analyzes Turkey’s Kurdish issue from an ontological security perspective by identifying dominant narratives and the ontological asymmetry, tracing the disruptions of these narratives and their effects on the 2009–2015 peace process, discussing the various attempts to formulate new narratives, and assessing the implications of these attempts for agonistic peacebuilding. The conclusion summarizes key arguments and findings and offers further avenues for research.

Ontological (in)security and peace processes

In recent years, a fledgling literature in political science has developed around the notion of ontological security, mainly building on Giddens (1991). Giddens stresses the importance of developing a framework of ontological security that is based ‘on routines of various forms’, which enable individuals to ‘bracket out questions about themselves, others and the object world, which have to be taken for granted in order to keep on with everyday activity’ and maintain a consistent biographical narrative (Giddens, 1991: 37). Thus, at issue in ontological security is not the security of a particular ontology. Without essentializing any particular narrative or routine, ontological security stresses the importance of the security that stems from their maintenance. Ontological insecurity, in turn, refers to the rupture of this formed framework and its established meanings, practices and routines. Ontological insecurity generates profound anxiety because it forces the individual to confront existential questions that were previously bracketed out, and compromises his or her inability to sustain a coherent narrative about doing, acting, and being (Kinnvall, 2004).

Recently there have been efforts to link ontological security theory with critical security studies (Rumelili, 2015c; Mälksoo, 2015) and the literature on conflict resolution (Rumelili, 2015a; Kay, 2012). Supporting the previous literature about how individuals and societies develop a sociopsychological attachment to conflicts and conflict-supporting narratives (Bar-Tal, 2013; Bar-Tal et al., 2014), ontological security scholars have argued that conflicts provide a framework of ontological security (Mitzen, 2006), and conflict narratives contain existential anxieties ‘by establishing definite objects of fear, producing systems of meaning that clearly differentiate friends from enemies, and setting unequivocal moral standards premised on the necessity for survival’ (Rumelili, 2015b: 13). These ontological security-producing functions of conflicts may generate trade-offs between ontological and physical security. Despite potential physical and economic harm, parties may remain attached to conflicts because of the ontological security they provide (Mitzen, 2006). Conversely, the physical security promised by peace processes has as a consequence ontological insecurity generated by undermining established conflict narratives (Rumelili, 2015b; Kay, 2012).

In addition, ontological insecurity and dissonance have been identified as factors preventing the successful culmination of peace processes (Rumelili, 2015b; Lupovici, 2012). Because ontological insecurity undermines trust and accentuates the perception of a general threat from the outside world, it creates a setting conducive to the manipulation of this distrust by political actors who act to shape identity narratives in ways that serve their interests (Loizides, 2015). Consequently, ontological insecurity may hamper the peace process by leading parties to circumvent mediation formulas and to elevate minor outstanding aspects of the deal to existential issues, generating new issues of discord beyond the ones addressed. It may also empower spoilers of the peace processes, because the state of anxiety and uncertainty increases the attractiveness of the ideas, identities, and practices associated with conflict.

While ontological insecurity complicates and undermines peace processes in this fashion, Rumelili (2015b) and Çelik (2015) find that the disruption of established narratives and routines is also necessary for parties to accept the changes that are required by peace processes. Thus, contrary to the critique recently posed by Rossdale (2015) that ontological security scholarship normatively privileges aspirations of stability and continuity of Self, by drawing on existentialist philosophy, Rumelili (2015b; see also Steele, 2008) highlights that ontological insecurity may serve a positive normative purpose in creating the necessary space for agency and change. Building on existentialists’ link between anxiety and freedom and the realization of full human potential, Rumelili (2015b) argues that anxiety is an integral part of conflict resolution and peace processes and serves a dual purpose of, on the one hand, generating a longing for a return to the certainty of conflict and thereby empowering spoilers, and on the other, unsettling the established systems of meaning and thereby creating space for change.² However, the conditions under which this dual role of anxiety manifests itself in favor of peace remain unspecified.

Ontological security scholars also echo the claims widely made in the peace studies literature about the necessity of societal reconciliation (Lederach, 1998; Schaap, 2005). While warning that peace processes remain vulnerable to being overturned if they fail to ultimately reinstitute ontological security, Rumelili (2015b) argues that conflict interventions should seek to reinstate a new framework of ontological security based on new constructions of identity and routines. Similarly, Kay emphasizes the necessity of addressing ‘the ontological foundations of the conflict requiring reconciliation at the micro-level’ (Kay, 2012: 238). Browning and Joenniemi (2015) suggest changing the ontological basis of the conflict altogether through narratives that renegotiate the relationship among identity, territory, and sovereignty. What remains unclear, however, is how new identity narratives can be introduced without generating further ontological insecurity and what types of new narratives would be most conducive to the reinstatement of ontological security.

The effects of ontological asymmetry

While providing a powerful account of how ontological security concerns impact peace processes in general, the extant literature has not delved much into how such concerns may present themselves differently in different types of conflicts (for an exception, see Çelik, 2015). In the general framework provided by Rumelili (2015b), it is assumed that parties are equally endowed with the capacity to narrate a stable conception of self. Therefore, they start the conflict resolution process jointly at a state of ontological security, and transition – again jointly – to one of ontological insecurity. However, many conflicts are characterized by an ontological asymmetry, pitting parties with stable and coherent self-narratives that are validated internally and externally against actors who are ontologically less secure to begin with, as a result of dissonance stemming from a multiplicity of narratives (Lupovici, 2012) and/or insufficient validation.³

Ontological asymmetry is especially common in ethnic and minority conflicts, where there is often a fundamental asymmetry stemming from the non-recognition of the identity narratives of minority groups and the delegitimization of their political strategies as ‘terrorist’ (Toros, 2008). Thus, minority groups remain in a continuous state of ontological insecurity, while majority group members enjoy a more privileged status (Bilali et al., 2014) in terms of a stable state of ontological security. This ontological asymmetry affects how majority and minority groups approach the conflict in terms of their openness to the pursuit of change. On the one hand, ontological insecurity leaves minority groups much more vulnerable to spoilers of peace processes. On the other hand, because they lack recognition of their established narratives, the ontologically insecure minority groups become freer in their pursuit of change and peace. In contrast, as long as the majority groups are able to maintain relatively stable and coherent self-narratives that are validated internally and externally, the conflict is relatively less central to their pursuit of ontological security. However, this does not by itself lead to majority groups being more open to resolving the conflict. Because majority groups are ontologically more secure, they are overall less willing to pursue a change that would activate their anxieties. In asymmetric ethnic conflicts, ‘the risks and costs for the high-power group are generally greater, because by definition, rectification of the injustice involves upsetting a status quo’ (Rouhana, 2004: 38).

Conflicts characterized by ontological asymmetry are never fully stable. As a result, in comparison to Rumelili (2015b)’s ideal type of ontologically symmetric stable conflict, peace processes are mostly easier to initiate but harder to conclude. This is because, in ontologically asymmetric conflicts, one of the parties is in a state of ontological insecurity. And although this ontological insecurity may foster greater attachment to conflict, it also bestows greater agency to pursue change because of the hope that change would bring recognition, especially through negotiation or dialogue. On the other hand, peace processes are more difficult to conclude in ontologically asymmetric conflicts because interventions must be tailored for ontologically secure and insecure parties separately. For example, interventions should aim to render the majority groups ontologically more insecure in order to make them more open to pursuing peace and change (Çelik, 2015).

Like most other ethnic and minority conflicts, Turkey’s Kurdish issue is characterized by an ontological asymmetry, whereby Turkish societal and political actors can rely on narratives that are reproduced in multiple institutional contexts and a social existence that is recognized and legitimate, while Kurdish societal and political actors have to actively claim distinctness and produce themselves into existence. This asymmetry is by no means absolute, however. In the last two decades, the homogenizing Turkish nationalist narrative has been progressively undermined through internal and external criticism, whereas Kurdish claims to a distinct ethnicity have begun to receive wider recognition. Still, the above discussion of how ontological asymmetry intersects with the pursuit of ontological security underscores the need to further challenge the dominant narratives through which Turks achieve a sense of ontological security. In order for the conflict to become ripe for resolution, both parties need to experience some degree of ontological insecurity so as to be ready for change.

Promise of agonistic peace

Ontological security theory underlines the importance of coupling conflict resolution efforts with the construction of new narratives around which an altered sense of ontological security may develop. This echoes the aspirations of reconciliation-based approaches to move members of a society away from the divisive and antagonistic identities that have previously defined them. However, just as the type of relational transformation that undergirds reconciliation remains unspecified, ontological security theory does not offer much guidance as to how identity narratives need to be reconstructed.

Ontological security-based approaches are in general skeptical about the replacement of conflict narratives with a singular grand peace narrative that brings together Self and Other under a new shared identity. Mälksoo (2015) warns that oppositional narratives about the past cannot be desecuritized through the imposition of a consensus, and advocates the promotion of pluralism. Similarly, Rumelili (2015b) contends that because identity is dependent on difference, the imposition of a shared identity that suppresses articulations of difference may generate ontological insecurity. Lupovici (2013) warns about the legitimization of extreme measures in the name of peace. In many respects, therefore, ontological security theory shares the concerns of critical reconciliation theories that reconciliation ‘can potentially create more conflict than [it] resolves’ if its implications have not been thoroughly considered (Little, 2012: 85).

Rather than the imposition of a singular grand peace narrative, the pursuit of an agonistic peace may provide a more sustainable basis for ontological security. In recent years, some scholars have sought to theorize how Mouffe’s (2000) conception of agonistic democracy may be extended to conflict resolution and what an alternative ‘agonistic’ peace may have to offer (Shinko, 2008; Maddison, 2014; Nagle, 2014; Peterson, 2013; Aggestam et al., 2015). Basically, Mouffe and other agonistic democracy theorists argue that the primary task of democracy is to convert antagonism into agonism and enemies into adversaries through contestatory, but respectful, engagement of adversaries across profound differences. In contrast to deliberative democracy theorists, who see the ultimate aim of democracy as reaching a reasoned consensus through rational dialogue, Mouffe and others insist on the non-negotiability of identity differences and the value of conflict and dissensus in promoting positive change.

Applying these ideas, scholars have developed a normative vision of agonistic peace marked by the peaceful and pluralistic coexistence of multiple, contestatory narratives. What has justified this normative vision is the realization that the dominant narratives, symbols, and rituals of parties in intractable conflicts often prove resistant to conflict transformation (Ramsbotham, 2011), retain their capacity for expediting antagonistic conflict even after peace agreements (Nagle, 2014), and continue to compete for dominance. Building an agonistic peace requires the acceptance of the complex and open-ended nature of conflicts (Maddison, 2014) and the challenging of the liberal association of peace with consensus (Peterson, 2013) and politics of recognition (Nagle, 2014). Although this normative vision is yet to be concretized with policy proposals, scholars note the importance of institutions that provide outlets for articulations of difference (Peterson, 2013) and facilitate encounters based on mutual respect, and which are regulated by democratic norms and procedures (Aggestam et al., 2015) with the aim of understanding and accommodation (Maddison, 2014).

Conflicts are often characterized by antagonistic encounters between competing narratives, where the articulation of one party’s dominant narrative entails the construction of the other party’s as illegitimate and threatening. Rather than a repetition of antagonistic encounters, agonistic peacebuilding aims at a gradual reconstruction of the dominant narratives of parties such that they come to accommodate one another. In other words, agonistic peacebuilding maintains the us/them dichotomy, but aims to transform the relationship from other-as-enemy to other-as-rival. Yet the literature does not specify how agonistic as opposed to antagonistic encounters are to be facilitated in practice.

We can also infer that agonistic peacebuilding is more compatible with the pursuit of ontological security than are various forms of liberal peace (see also Richmond, 2015), because it does not undermine the dominant narratives of conflict parties, but reconstructs the us/them binary they embody to change their mode of interaction. Thereby, agonistic peacebuilding allows actors in a conflict to maintain some degree of continuity in their self-narratives, while providing institutional outlets where opposing narratives are continuously encountered and competed with. New narratives are not imposed, but are allowed to emerge in repeated agonistic encounters with opposing narratives, which then pave the way for accommodation, understanding, and possibly recognition.⁴ Therefore, agonistic encounters are generative of a productive mix of ontological security derived from the continuity of self-narratives and ontological insecurity resulting from exposure to opposing narratives based on mutual understanding but not acceptance. This mix allows for the pursuit of change within continuity, both enhancing the resilience of peace processes to spoiler attempts and opening space for the emergence of new narratives. Thus, in the context of the previously noted dual role of anxiety in conflict transformation processes, agonistic encounters are more likely to mobilize the positive functions of anxiety.

As will be discussed at length in the following section, Turkey’s Kurdish issue has been characterized by conflicting narratives: albeit with some variation, the Turkish state and Turks have dominantly pursued ontological security by reproducing a narrative of national unity that defines Kurds as Turkish citizens, downplaying the Kurdish narratives based on ethnic distinction, and delegitimizing Kurdish ethnic demands as manipulations orchestrated by external actors. In contrast, Kurdish political and societal actors pursue ontological security through a narrative of ethnic and cultural distinction. Thus, the two sides find themselves locked in a societal security dilemma (Roe, 1999; Kardaş and Balcı, 2015) where the narratives produced by one party to pursue ontological security undermine the narratives of and generate ontological insecurity for the other party. The societal security dilemma has created a vicious cycle in which one party can maintain its ontological security only by rendering the other ontologically insecure. We contend that under such conditions, a lasting solution can neither be based on a formula through which the conditions of ontological security of one party – whether Turkish or Kurdish – prevail over those of the other, nor can it entail the imposition of a shared identity narrative that reproduces ontological insecurity on both sides and hence renders the parties more vulnerable to spoilers. Rather, the aim should be to foster the construction of plural, separate, but mutually respectful narratives that entail an understanding of each other’s distinct positions and needs, but which coexist without requiring the validation of the other. We argue that such narratives are more likely to emerge in agonistic encounters between the dominant Turkish and Kurdish narratives.

Turkey’s Kurdish issue from an ontological security perspective

While ontological security theory advises us to pay attention to how self-narratives and routines⁵ evolve in the conflict resolution process, there is no one specific methodological template for how narratives should be studied and the degree of disruption assessed. Narratives are the sequential ordering of events and experiences in a meaningful and coherent manner (Bar-Tal et al., 2014; Hammack, 2011) and are intimately linked with language, power, and social practice. More than with individual representations or broader discursive structures, narrative analysis concerns itself with identifying patterns in the ways in which events are ordered and causally linked and tracing how these patterns and causal links are maintained over time in relation to new events and experiences. One key challenge is the identification of dominant narratives in the context of the multiple narratives that exist at the individual and collective levels.

Analyzing a conflict from an ontological security perspective entails, first of all, empirically identifying dominant narratives at the individual and collective levels and analyzing whether and how certain events in conflict and peace processes disrupt these narratives and thereby generate ontological insecurity or security. As Mitchell (2015) warns, such a focus on dominant narratives is problematic because it suppresses the marginalized narratives within groups. However, in another respect, it is justified because, even when contested, the dominant narratives function as stable reference points that provide a degree of continuity also to those who contest them. Second, analyzing a conflict from an ontological security perspective also necessitates paying attention to the effects of ontological asymmetry by looking into whether and how one group’s narratives are marginalized and delegitimized while another’s are backed by power and enjoy broader societal appeal.

The Kurdish issue embodies at the same time the armed conflict between the Turkish state and the insurgent PKK, political conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish minority over issues of cultural and political rights, and the social tensions between Turks and Kurds throughout Turkey (Çelik and Blum, 2007). Therefore, at the individual, societal, and political actor (the Turkish state, the PKK, and Kurdish political parties) levels, the issue has generated and reproduced a set of narratives, practices, and routines. These narratives and routines are situated within a ‘discourse of ethnicity’, yet the fact that they are socially constructed and sustained by ‘identity-related beliefs’ (Somer, 2005) does not undermine their capacity to function as ‘formed frameworks’ that provide ontological security or insecurity. Although these dominant narratives are not fixed and have, as we will note later, experienced some shifts,⁶ they have also proven quite resilient in functioning as focal points to which actors return in moments of ontological insecurity.

In the following, we first identify the dominant Turkish and Kurdish narratives at these three levels by analyzing the proceedings of civil society workshops convened during the 2009–2015 peace process, public speeches made by key political actors, the Wise People’s Committee reports and relevant public opinion data, and secondary literature. In our analysis of relevant texts, we pay specific attention to how various aspects of the conflict are ordered and causally linked. While we do not deny either the actual plurality within Kurdish and Turkish narratives or the presence of non-ethnicized narratives, our focus on dominant narratives gives us greater analytical purchase in identifying continuities and disruptions. Then we analyse how specific developments in the 2009–2015 peace process have affected and disrupted these dominant narratives and how those disruptions in turn affected the peace process.

Dominant narratives

Historically, the dominant narrative of the Turkish state has centered on the characterization of the PKK as the cause of conflict and their delegitimization as a terrorist group that, in collaboration with foreign enemies, poses an existential threat to territorial integrity. This narrative of existential threat justifies state violence in the Kurdish-dominated regions of the country and is also employed in the excuse and denial of past wrongs. This understanding also manifests itself in the criminalization of Kurdish politics⁷ and in the refusal to recognize the PKK and political actors that are considered to be associated with the PKK as representative of Kurds and as legitimate political counterparts. The Turkish political elite also frequently employs the representation of ‘Turks and Kurds are brothers’ to condemn the PKK for its allegedly ‘separationist ideology’ (Saraçoğlu, 2009). As will be discussed in later sections, some deviations were made from this narrative during the 2009–2015 peace process, in the form of government actors periodically noting historical injustices. However, these deviations did not develop into a coherent and consistent alternative narrative.

These state narratives and practices have been grafted at the societal level onto ‘Sèvres syndrome’, a fear, held by nationalist Turks, that foreign powers harbor a hidden agenda of trying to territorially partition Turkey along ethnic lines, as was attempted by the Sèvres Treaty of 1920. In recounting the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish national historiography establishes an unquestionable causal link among ethnic demands, foreign intervention, and territorial disintegration. This link is deeply ingrained in the minds of all Turkish citizens through national education. Turkish nationalism rests on the inclusive nationalist assumption that all Turkish citizens, regardless of their ethnic origins, are Turks (Kirişçi and Winrow, 1997) and that an emphasis on ethnic origin is divisive of national unity. Despite improvements in the recognition of Kurdish cultural rights in Turkey over the years, ethnic-based rights demands, such as native-language education, are still considered challenges that must be contained in order to secure the unity of the state.⁸ The dominant Turkish nationalist narratives represent Kurds primarily as Turkish citizens, disregarding their ethnic differences; as underdeveloped subjects who are to be modernized and eventually assimilated into the superior and more encompassing Turkish identity (Somer, 2007; Yeğen, 2006). Those Kurds who refuse to be assimilated are then securitized as potential terrorists and foreign collaborators.

While attitudes toward the Kurdish issue undoubtedly vary at the individual level among those who self-identify as Turk – ranging from the ultra-nationalists who reject Kurdish identity outright to liberals who advocate multicultural citizenship – these dominant narratives and practices bear considerable weight and can easily be mobilized by political elites to justify violent and repressive measures toward Kurds. Consequently, at the individual level Turkish ontological security has come to rest on a position of moral righteousness and superiority (Saraçoğlu, 2009) based on the perception of the PKK as a criminal, terrorist organization, and on a lack of awareness of the rampant human rights violations in eastern and southeastern Turkey. Discourses on Turkish–Kurdish fraternity also coexist with negative images that have solidified over years of conflict. Representations of Kurds fighting alongside Turks in the 1919–1922 War of Independence are deeply embedded in history books and political discourses, and frequently articulated in civil society workshops on the Kurdish Issue (e.g. Ekopolitik, 2009).

On the other hand, the PKK’s narrative represents the Turkish state as a colonial power guilty of ‘physical and cultural genocide’ against the Kurds (PKK, 2011). This narrative justifies the practice of treating Turkish state institutions and employees as enemy military targets. Over the years, the PKK has evolved from an initially Marxist–Leninist ideology toward its current eclectic form, incorporating first a nationalist agenda and later elements of liberal human rights discourses (Eccarius-Kelly, 2012). Consequently, the political demands of the PKK have come to include institutional and legal changes to respect the individual and collective rights of Kurds, codified in a constitution ‘composed through a social consensus based on protecting the democratic citizen and communities against the nation-state’, ‘correct understanding of history and the present’, and acceptance of a ‘self-defence principle’ applied in some form of autonomy (PKK, 2011). The narratives of Kurdish political parties, such as those of the contemporary HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, Peoples’ Democratic Party), reject violence and assert the need to recognize Kurds’ right to autonomy because of their status as one of the peoples of Turkey.

While the specific political demands of the Kurdish movement have varied over time, the dominant narratives at the societal level stress the inequality between Kurds and Turks, pointing out that while Turks enjoy rights as a nation, Kurds have not been granted similar rights. A common thread in Kurdish societal narratives stresses that the conflict originates in this inequality and its resolution rests on securing the recognition, respect, and dignity of Kurdish identity (Al, 2014).⁹ While Turkish societal narratives of the conflict are widely produced by the mainstream media and state officials, Kurdish narratives of conflict are often marginalized and discredited, especially during times of heightened tension. The Turkish narratives of moral superiority and the criminalization of Kurdish cultural and political demands generate ontological insecurity among Kurds, leading to an ontological asymmetry in the conflict at the societal level.

At the individual level among those who self-identify as Kurd, there is undoubtedly ideological variation. Not all Kurds support the PKK-led struggle to the same degree, with some prioritizing their religious identity over ethnic identity, and others having internalized the Turkish national identity (Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu, 2014). Many Kurds, however, do not partake in the labeling of the PKK as a terrorist organization, and considerable numbers regard the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, as a supreme leader who embodies the Kurdish political will (Güneş and Zeydanlıoğlu, 2013). While discourses of Turkish–Kurdish fraternity are also reproduced by Kurds, a sense of inequality and discrimination is widespread and is reflected in everyday practices of hiding identity and place of origin.

Ontological (in)security and the 2009–2015 peace process

From 1984 until the beginning of the peace process in 2009, the Kurdish issue underwent various stages of escalation and de-escalation; however, there was not much disruption to the dominant narratives outlined above. Despite the human and economic cost, the conflict enabled both the Turkish state and the PKK to reproduce existing identities, narratives, and routines of violence. At the societal and individual levels, the Turkish narratives focusing on national unity and homogeneity remained largely intact. Although the Kurdish uprising challenged the main presumptions of these narratives, the Turkish state sidelined this challenge by framing the problem as one of security and terrorism. The post-1999 EU candidacy and accession process empowered advocates of a liberal, rights-based solution; however the limited cultural rights granted to Kurds in the EU accession process did not generate a significant degree of ontological insecurity among Turks, mostly because the reforms were undertaken within an individual rights rather than a group rights framework (Kirişçi, 2011). On the other hand, Kurds continued to experience ontological insecurity stemming from the non-recognition of their claims to difference, and the piecemeal reform process undertaken to fulfill EU criteria fell short of securing this recognition (Kirişçi, 2011).

In July 2009, for the first time in the history of the conflict the Turkish government commenced a process, initially referred to as the ‘Kurdish Opening’, with the declared intention of ending the conflict. As noted earlier, the ontological asymmetry characterizing Turkey’s Kurdish issue affected the relative willingness of parties to pursue change and peace. Accordingly, while the Kurdish Opening initially triggered concern and skepticism among the Turkish opposition and societal actors, most of the Kurdish public supported it.¹⁰ However, the process, which focused primarily on legal and political reforms, proved to be very short-lived. Analysts have cited many reasons for the ultimate failure of the ‘Kurdish Opening’: its vagueness, its incompleteness, and the exclusion of key actors, as well as the AKP government’s electoral concerns (Gunter, 2012). However, as we will explain in the following, one of the main reasons lay in the process’ inattentiveness to ontological security concerns.

Three developments ultimately brought about the end of the process, not necessarily because of what they entailed but because they undermined the dominant assumptions in Turkish narratives about Turkish moral superiority and PKK criminality. First, in October 2009 34 PKK members crossed the Habur border from Northern Iraq into Turkey in combat uniforms. Although the PKK indicated that it organized the crossing as a gesture for the Opening, referring to these members as ‘Peace Ambassadors’, in the context of established Turkish narratives the only possible perception of this crossing and the crowds gathered was as a parade of PKK victory. The quick release of the PKK members by the Turkish courts shortly after their arrival (Al Jazeera, 2009) triggered further anxiety that the state was ‘forgiving the terrorists’. Harsh public reaction caused the government to make a U-turn and subsequently 17 of them were sentenced to prison for 20 months for spreading ‘terrorist propaganda’ in 2011 (Today’s Zaman, 2011; Kayhan Pusane, 2014).

Second, following the general elections in June 2011, audio recordings of secret meetings supposedly held between the PKK and Turkish government representatives in Oslo between 2008 and mid-2011 were leaked over the Internet. As the Turkish narratives about the conflict remained intact, these negotiations could not be perceived by the Turkish public as an inevitable step in the peace process. The news that the government had been negotiating with what were still regarded as ‘terrorists’ created an immediate public uproar (Öztürk, 2012), quickly delegitimized the whole peace process in the eyes of many Turks, and strengthened nationalist discourses, as well as the ideas, identities, and behaviors associated with conflict. For example, the leader of the ultranationalist party, MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, Nationalist Action Party) argued that the peace process was designed to ‘absolve the terrorist PKK’ (Objektifhaber, 2011).

While the above developments mainly triggered Turkish anxieties, a third development undermined the trust of the Kurds in the peace process. During the KCK¹¹ trials (2009–2012), thousands of Kurdish politicians, activists, journalists, and academics were prosecuted for allegedly being members of an illegal, ‘terrorist’ organization. Shortly after the start of the KCK trials, the Constitutional Court shut down the pro-Kurdish DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi, Democratic Society Party), making it the fifth Kurdish political party to be outlawed for the same reason, and arrested many Kurdish politicians affiliated with the party. The criminalization of these non-violent political actors solidified the belief in Kurdish narratives that the Turkish state is unlikely to ever grant full equal recognition to Kurds.

As the peace process shifted Turks away from a state of ontological security and triggered significant levels of anxiety, the uncertainties and U-turns in the process accentuated the ontological insecurity of Kurds and caused them to experience greater levels of anxiety. This state of general anxiety provided a context that was conducive to spoilers on both sides and led to a new cycle of intensified violence. On 13 July 2011, the PKK killed 13 Turkish soldiers in what it claimed was self-defense. The next day, the DTK (Demokratik Toplum Kongresi, Democratic Society Congress), a platform that brings together the majority of Kurdish non-governmental organizations in Diyarbakır, declared ‘democratic autonomy’. These developments, and in particular their coupling, exacerbated Turkish anxieties about the peace process. In the Turkish newspapers, the PKK attacks were universally condemned as an attack on peace, and the declaration of autonomy was represented as indicative of the Kurds’ ultimate desire for secession (Bianet, 2011). The insensitivity toward the Other fostered in this securitized environment was vividly displayed in the Roboski/Uludere incident on 28 December 2011: acting on information that the PKK militants were crossing the border, the Turkish air forces (arguably) mistakenly bombarded 34 Kurds. Shortly after that, in early 2012, Kurdish minors imprisoned for ‘throwing stones’ at security forces were allegedly exposed to sexual violence and beatings (Bianet, 2012).

Thus, while promising an end to the conflict, the Kurdish Opening enhanced the anxieties of Turks and Kurds and rendered the process vulnerable to spoilers. The reescalation of the conflict allowed Turks to regain ontological security by reverting to stable and certain positions premised on their superiority and righteousness. Violence brought increasing support for military measures and a decreasing support for Kurdish rights (Bilali et al., 2014). A survey conducted in 2012 by a pro-government think tank, for example, showed that only 14% of Turks supported the negotiations with the PKK and Öcalan (Akyürek and Yılmaz, 2012: 14).

Due to the ontologically asymmetric nature of the conflict, support for the peace process remained much higher among Kurds, at 53% (Akyürek and Yılmaz, 2012: 14). At the same time, however, the disappointing end to the ‘Opening’, and in particular the lack of empathy following the Roboski incident, led many Kurds to proclaim an ‘emotional break’ with Turks (Taştekin, 2013). These developments were viewed as validating the assumptions present in Kurdish narratives that Turks and the Turkish state deny Kurds the equal status, dignity, and empathy they deserve.

In early 2013, the Turkish government started a new wave of talks with the PKK and its leader Öcalan. This new phase was different from the former in two ways. First, the government asked several MPs from the pro-Kurdish BDP (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, Peace and Democracy Party), with whom it refused to even speak in 2009, to shuttle between Öcalan in prison, the PKK outposts in the Kandil mountains, and the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MİT). However, the fact that these talks were being conducted in the context of established narratives was evident in the government and media practice of referring to them as ‘İmralı’ (the island where Öcalan is imprisoned) and Kandil visits. This reflected a deliberate choice to deny that these visits were legitimizing Öcalan and the PKK and to stress that the government was not ‘negotiating’, but ‘fighting with terrorism’ through peaceful means (Milliyet, 2013).

The new phase of the peace process was met with enthusiasm. Again, reflecting the ontological asymmetry, support among Kurds rose to 70% in 2013, while it remained at 50% among Turks, mainly due to concerns about the sincerity of the PKK and worries that the peace process would help strengthen the PKK (BILGESAM, 2013).

A second innovation of this new phase in the peace process was the formation of ‘Wise People Committees’ (WPCs). In an effort to increase public support for the peace process, the government gathered 63 people, mostly from academia, civil society, and the media, to meet with locals in the seven official regions of the country. The WPC meetings provided a forum in which attitudes and beliefs that had been silenced and suppressed for a long time could be aired. However, as we will note in the following section, while providing fora for the articulation of dominant narratives, these meetings generated antagonistic rather than agonistic encounters, and thus could not pave the way for a reconstruction of the us/them binary based on accommodation.

The peak in the peace process was reached on 21 March 2013, when Öcalan’s call to the PKK for a ceasefire was delivered by BDP deputies during the Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır. Moreover, the anti-government Gezi protests in June 2013 mobilized small sections of the Turkish population, most of whom had previously perceived the Kurdish issue as solely a terrorism problem, into questioning dominant narratives and expressing greater empathy with Kurdish concerns. Consequently, the pro-Kurdish BDP significantly increased its share of the national vote first in the 2014 presidential elections, to 9.76%, and later in the two 2015 national elections, to 13% and 11% respectively.

However, as the following section will indicate, the opposition between dominant Turkish and Kurdish narratives largely remained intact, and this rendered the process vulnerable to unforeseen developments in Syria. The establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria in January 2014 aggravated the Turkish state’s anxieties regarding territorial disintegration while strengthening the identity narratives of Turkey’s Kurds, who felt strong solidarity with the Syrian Kurds. Consequently, while the PKK initially responded to Öcalan’s call by beginning to withdraw its fighters from Turkey, it later stalled this process on the grounds that the government was not taking reciprocal steps. When President Erdoğan enthusiastically declared ‘Kobanê is about to fall’ in late September 2014 during the battle for the city between Syrian Kurds and the Islamic State, violent clashes between different groups erupted in many cities in Turkey (BBC, 2014). A last attempt in the process was undertaken in February 2015 when representatives of the Turkish government and the HDP (formerly BDP) met to declare agreement on a number of principles. Later, President Erdoǧan’s declaration of this agreement as null was followed by a wholesale return to violence in the summer of 2015.

Constructing an agonistic peace

The 2009–2015 peace process largely revolved around direct and indirect talks between the Turkish state and the PKK, without many concerted state- or civil society-led efforts at formulating alternative narratives on which peace may be predicated. Moreover, aside from the WPC meetings discussed in the following, venues where these different narratives could be expressed in a free and plural fashion were largely absent. Instead of producing new narratives, the Turkish political elite generally adopted a doublespeak strategy. Rhetorical moves that recognized the legitimacy of Kurdish claims and past injustices toward Kurds have always been followed by counter-statements reproducing the official narratives. For example, in August 2005, the then-prime minister Erdoğan gave a historical speech in Diyarbakır, where he said:

It does not fit us to deny past mistakes … A big state and a strong nation has the confidence to confront the past and walk to the future … The Kurdish problem is not only the problem of a section of this nation; it is the problem of us all. (Radikal, 2005)

However, shortly after, in December 2005, Erdoğan retreated back to the official discourse to argue that ‘there is no Kurdish problem, there is a terrorism problem’ (Zaman, 2005). This doublespeak had a political rationale because the AKP’s support base included Turkish nationalists and Islamists as well as Turkish and Kurdish liberals (Kayhan Pusane, 2014). Yet at the same time, such quick a reversion from a new to an established narrative undermined the credibility of new narratives and thereby allowed the official narratives to remain largely intact.

In addition to resorting to doublespeak, the AKP has made frequent references to the notion of Islamic brotherhood as an overarching identity which unites Turks and Kurds. At one level, this rhetoric enjoyed societal resonance as, during the 2000s, Islamic conservatives and Kurdish nationalists grew more sympathetic to each other’s narratives and rights claims. However, as Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu (2013) note, the use of Islam to buttress competing nationalist claims has ended up increasing friction and tension between the two groups. As noted earlier, from an ontological security perspective, regardless of how it is used, the promotion of a shared identity such as Islam is likely to generate ontological insecurity because it subsumes differences and undermines existing Kurdish narratives based on ethnic distinction (see also Çelik, 2016).

The WPCs constituted a notable attempt to initiate an open-ended societal dialogue. However, they fell short of facilitating agonistic encounters between competing Turkish and Kurdish narratives. While the meetings provided people with exposure to other narratives, the WPC reports subsequently presented to the government indicate that most attendees tended to be interested in expressing their views rather than listening to others, rearticulated dominant narratives rather than engaged in dialogue, and often expressed their views in hostile and threatening ways (UKAM, 2014). The meetings were also violently protested by opponents of the peace process in some cities in western and northeastern Turkey.

In the reports on meetings held in western parts of the country, a general lack of information, awareness, and empathy about the Kurdish concerns and the impact of the conflict on Kurds were noted. The anxieties about the peace process reflected the dominant nationalist narratives, first in the characterization of the Kurdish issue as a manipulation of foreign imperial powers,¹² and second in the belief that the peace process would entail (or facilitate) the territorial disintegration of the country (UKAM, 2014: 57). In addition, there was widespread distrust of the AKP government’s motives due to a fear that they were giving concessions to the PKK to obtain Kurdish support for the transition to a presidential system (UKAM, 2014: 47). On the other hand, in the Kurdish-dominated regions of the country, the WPC reports indicate strong support for the peace process, especially among those who were directly affected by the conflict (Arıboğan, 2013). In the meetings, Kurdish participants also complained about the lack of empathy for their grievances and conveyed a general anxiety about the ultimate outcome of the peace process (UKAM, 2014). In particular, Kurds were anxious about being cheated, an anxiety that is rooted in memories of being cheated by various Ottoman and Turkish administrations (UKAM, 2014).

In these varied attempts at constructing more encompassing narratives based on shared Islamic identity and at promoting societal reconciliation through dialogue, the potential for agonistic peacebuilding has largely been absent. As also noted earlier, the shared Islamic identity narrative has generated ontological insecurity by calling for agreement on a shared identity, rather than facilitating the understanding and accommodation of differences. The WPC meetings, on the other hand, encouraged free and pluralistic expression of differences, grievances, and anxieties, but could not move much beyond an antagonistic encounter between dominant narratives. Creative agency in transforming the us/them dichotomy was lacking.

Since the summer of 2015, Turkey’s Kurdish issue has entered into another violent phase, and the prospects for dialogue, let alone any meaningful engagement across differences, have become slim. Yet in the short term, general acceptance of two building blocks of agonistic peace can be fostered separately among Turks and Kurds through the use of civil society and peace advocacy. First, a lasting solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey cannot be based on a formula in which one party’s conditions of ontological security prevail over those of the other. Instead of zero-sum competition between two conflicting narratives, parties should be invited to reflect on how to arrive at a state of mutual ontological security. Second, rather than seeking the agreement of parties on a single narrative, the aim should be to foster the construction of plural, separate but mutually respectful, narratives which convert the Other from an enemy or antagonist into an adversary, and which coexist without requiring the validation of the other.

Conclusion

Ontological security theory underscores the significance that actors attach to maintaining a stability of being through narratives and routines, and offers valuable insights into how such concerns impact conflicts and peace processes. By analyzing Turkey’s Kurdish issue from an ontological security perspective, this article has sought both to show how ontological security concerns affected the 2009–2015 peace process and to further develop the literature on ontological security and conflict resolution in two main ways. First, we have underscored that the ontological asymmetry between parties in ethnic conflicts, which arises due to the non-recognition of the identity narratives of minority groups, renders peace processes both easier to initiate and harder to conclude. Whereas majority groups can rely on established historical and official narratives to maintain their ontological security, minority groups face constant challenges to their established narratives. Peace processes are easier to initiate because they offer the ontologically insecure minority groups a potential pathway to stability and legitimacy of being. Yet they are harder to conclude because on the one hand, ontological insecurity renders minority groups more vulnerable to spoilers, and on the other hand, ontological security renders majority groups more resistant to change. During the 2009–2015 peace process such ontological (in)security-induced dynamics presented themselves in cyclical patterns of ambitious peace initiatives receiving greater support among the Kurdish public, but giving way, at the first sign of crisis, to a rapid and dramatic return to violence, which neither side acted to stem.

Second, this article has drawn on the literature on agonistic peace to specify how identity narratives need to be reconstructed to reinstate ontological security in peace processes. The imposition of a singular grand peace narrative generates ontological insecurity, especially in conflicts where parties find themselves locked in a societal security dilemma because of their construction of the other’s narratives as existential threats. In contrast, agonistic peace rests on the coexistence of multiple and contestatory narratives and on promoting accommodation and understanding of differences, rather than enforcing agreement and reconciliation. While thus far the peace process in Turkey has not included conscious measures to construct new narratives, we argue that such efforts should aim to build an agonistic peace through creating venues for different narratives to coexist and challenge the established conflict narratives. Despite the asymmetric nature of the conflict, neither can Kurdish ontological security be reinstated at the expense of Turkish ontological security, nor vice versa.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback and suggestions. The authors have contributed to the article on an equal basis.

Funding

There are no funders to report for this submission.

Notes

Bahar Rumelili is Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at the Department of International Relations, Koç University, Istanbul. Her research has focused on constructivist international relations theory, processes of European identity construction, critical security studies, and the interaction between the EU and Turkish politics and civil society. She is the author of Constructing Regional Community and Order in Europe and Southeast Asia (Palgrave, 2007) and the editor of Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security: Peace Anxieties (Routledge, 2015).

Ayşe Betül Çelik received her PhD in political science from SUNY Binghamton in 2002. She is a Full Professor in the Conflict Analysis and Resolution M.A. Program at Sabancı University, Istanbul. Her work focuses on ethnicity, forced migration, reconciliation, civil society and gender in peacebuilding in general, and on the Kurdish issue in Turkey. Some of her work has appeared in journals such as Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Refugee Studies, International Journal of Peace Studies, Patterns of Prejudice and the International Journal of Intercultural Relations.

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