Turkish Studies

ISSN: 1468-3849 (Print) 1743-9663 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20

A peace that wasn’t: friends, foes,

and contentious re-entrenchment of Kurdish
politics in Turkey

Kumru F. Toktamis

To cite this article: Kumru F. Toktamis (2018): A peace that wasn’t: friends, foes,
and contentious re-entrenchment of Kurdish politics in Turkey, Turkish Studies, DOI:
10.1080/14683849.2018.1500139

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2018.1500139

Published online: 22 Jul 2018.

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TURKISH STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2018.1500139

A peace that wasn’t: friends, foes,

and contentious re-entrenchment of Kurdish politics
in Turkey
Kumru F. Toktamis
Department of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, USA

ABSTRACT
This essay explores the relationship between the collapse of negotiations
between Turkey and the PKK and the rupture between the governing AKP
and its former ally, the Cemaat or Gülen Movement. This schism transformed
both the AKP regime and Kurdish politics. This article traces the shifting
narratives of key actors in this process. It also identifies the multifaceted
underpinnings of the political violence that erupted and disrupted the
resolution/peace process. In the end, the peace/resolution process was a
(re)entrenchment, or inadvertent re-positioning of violent means of
suppression against Kurdish politics in Turkey, beyond the particular
intentions, beliefs, ideas and attitudes of all parties.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 6 April 2018; Accepted 9 July 2018

KEYWORDS Kurdish politics; AKP; Gülen movement; PKK; peace process; contentious politics

Introduction
For almost a decade, there was some hope among Turkish and Kurdish
publics, as well as anticipation among politicians from both the left and
right, that the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma
Partisi, AKP) was willing to broker some sort of peace and even a resolution
with the armed guerrilla group,1 the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Kar-
kerên Kurdistanê, PKK), to end a violent conflict that has been going on for
more than 30 years. While the ruling party presented what it called a ‘resol-
ution process,’ many Kurds and progressive Turks were expecting a more
ambitious course towards ‘peace’ or at least ‘nonviolence.’ Clearly, different
segments of the state and society had different expectations, as nationalists
on both the left and right constantly attacked on-going talks between the gov-
ernment and the PKK.

CONTACT Kumru F. Toktamis kumru@pratt.edu Department of Social Sciences and Cultural

Studies, Pratt Institute, 200 Willoughby Avenue, DeKalb Hall, Brooklyn, NY 11205, USA
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 K. F. TOKTAMIS

The hopes for peace disappeared in August 2015 when President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan announced the ‘resolution process’ was over,2 following the
national elections in which the AKP lost its absolute majority in the parlia-
ment with the advance of a ‘Kurdish-issue-focused’ progressive party, the
People’s Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP). Violent
clashes between the PKK and Turkish security forces soon resumed. In the
meantime, another crack was also opening up in the polity, between AKP
and its former ally, the Cemaat.
Erdogan obliquely addressed the ongoing feud with the Cemaat during that
same August 2015 talk, which later became the top political issue in Turkey
after the failed putsch of July 2016. The former ally, namely ‘Hizmet’
[Service] as it is called by its members and Cemaat [Congregation] by outsi-
ders, is a Sunni-religious social solidarity network, is also known as the Gülen
movement (centered around a self-exiled cleric, Fethullah Gülen, residing in
the United States since 1999). It provided major social, political and intellec-
tual support for the rise to power of the moderate political Islamism of the
AKP.3 The Cemaat and the AKP were planning and building a firm re-organ-
ization of state power, mainly targeting the military, which functioned as the
guardian of the existing regime since the establishment of a republic in the
country in 1923.
This essay explores the relationship between the collapse of negotiations
with the PKK and the rupture between these former allies by tracing the shift-
ing narratives of key actors. It also identifies the multifaceted underpinnings
of the political violence that erupted and disrupted the resolution/peace
process. In the end, the peace/resolution process was a retrenchment or inad-
vertent re-positioning of violent means of suppression against Kurdish actors
in Turkey, beyond the particular intentions, beliefs, ideas and attitudes of all
parties.
To understand these dynamics, this essay focuses on three difficult-to-
access records of that process: (a) commentaries from Today’s Zaman daily
between 2008 and 2014 as selectively displayed on Fethullah Gülen’s official
website4; (b) the records of the negotiations of Turkish intelligence officers
with the PKK and Kurdish politicians – the so-called ‘Oslo talks’ and (c)
the only available records of the İmralı talks between Abdullah Öcalan, the
imprisoned leader of PKK, and various Kurdish politicians.5 During the nego-
tiations, we find a growing discourse on and about the Cemaat as a threat to
democracy and an impediment for a non-violent resolution.
Politics as violence has always been an innate aspect of the Turkish Repub-
lic’s relationship with the Kurdish-speaking minority residing within its
borders, a point that is also documented in other papers in this special
issue.6 The resolution/peace process initiated by the AKP and affirmed by
Kurdish political leaders, roughly since 2006,7 was judged in many quarters
as a digression from the traditional state policy that regarded Kurdish politics
 TURKISH STUDIES 3

as a security threat to be dealt using coercive measures. Yet, as became evident

during these negotiations, the AKP’s aim was disarmament of the rebels,
whereas the PKK constantly demanded legislative enactments and legal guar-
antees for Kurdish fighters and political leaders. In his public declaration to
end the negotiations, Erdoğan clearly stated the end of the resolution
process as the beginning of a new regime:
As far as I am concerned the resolution process is in the freezer. Yet, as of now
the National Unity and Brotherhood Project is active on the agenda and we are
willing to walk with those who are here to support us.8

This statement signaled a new era of retrenchment of the Turkish state’s

Kurdish politics, as well as indicating a breaking point within the power
bloc of the AKP regime. But did Erdogan’s battle with his former ally play
an important, perhaps decisive, role in the re-entrenchment of Kurdish poli-
tics in Turkey? Are these two shifts connected? This essay suggests a positive
response to both of these important questions.

Contentious politics and the Gramscian war of position

To understand the relation between the AKP’s corroding alliance with the
Cemaat and the collapse of the peace/resolution process with Kurds, this
essay draws on the theoretical framework of Contentious Politics in political
sociology and loosely incorporates Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of the
‘war of position,’ which he later formulated as hegemonic strategy. A Conten-
tious Politics perspective posits political violence as a social relationship and
form of political contention generated by the properties of political regimes
themselves.9 It treats political violence as a contingent product of relational
mechanisms rather than using normative, teleological premises or seeking
answers in intentions, attitudes, ideas and beliefs of some actors.10 The
ways in which peace, or any end to violence, became unattainable in the
AKP’s resolution process is understood as a regime question, i.e. ‘transactions
among agents of government, polity members, challengers, and subjects’11
and needs to be located within those complex interactions.
Polarization and radicalization of any political conflict is always dynamic,
multifaceted, open-ended and subject to contingencies of interactions among
actors and processes. Such a theoretical framework does not bracket violence
for normative purposes, as it treats both state and non-state actors as valid
agents whether they are recognized as legitimate or not by power holders of
all sorts. The outcomes are always contingently created concatenations12 in
time and space, and the researcher’s task is to identify the properties of the
mechanisms or processes in their dynamics and fluidity.13
Because the Gülenist narrative, as expressed on its official website, increas-
ingly expressed discontent with the AKP’s engagement with the PKK and the
4 K. F. TOKTAMIS

Cemaat frequently appears as a specter in the records of the peace talks, the
ambiguous relationship between (former) allies, the AKP and the Cemaat,
and a regime foe, the PKK, can be located in the following framework of
Charles Tilly. He sets up analyses of collective violence emphasizing its con-
nections with nonviolent political processes:
… a good deal of violent behavior occurs under the cover of law. Government
agents and allies regularly employ violence as they pursue their own ends. Sol-
diers, sailors, police, jailers, and guards enjoy legal rights –even legal obligations
— to use violent means on behalf of governments. Within the purviews of most
historical governments, multiple parties have exercised some control over
violent means with varying degrees of authorization by governments, and
their relations to governments have shifted rapidly. Pirates, privateers, parami-
litaries, bandits, mercenaries, mafiosi, militias, posses, guerrilla forces, vigilante
groups, company police, and body guards, all operate in a middle ground
between (on one side) the full authorization of a national army, (on the
other) private employment of violence.14

The Contentious Politics perspective focuses on identifying the political

context, political actors, and processes of category formation (that create iden-
tities through ‘invention, borrowing and encounter’15) and claim-making
(‘interactive performance’ when ‘political actors follow rough scripts to uncer-
tain outcomes as they negotiate’16). Since ‘the political context,’ i.e. ‘the organ-
ization of political life, in general shapes the character of collective violence, as
well as how closely violent and nonviolent forms of political life interact’17, the
interactions between the government and political actors who are organized
around the government create figurative and literal mechanisms for violence
as politics. The performative narrative of the Gulenist website, as displayed in
its account of the negotiations, and claims during the peace/resolution talks
between AKP officials and Kurdish politicians imply complex political and
social interactions and provide evidence, if not the direction, of a strong
relation between the breakdown of the peace/resolution talks and the conco-
mitant collapse of the Cemaat-AKP alliance. Their contentious claims during
the peace/resolution process were based on hegemony-seeking entrenched
positions that were concurrently related to rapidly shifting alliances.
To identify the multifaceted interactions between hegemony and violence,
the idea of (re)-entrenchment, as a product of mechanisms of ‘claim-making’
and ‘category formation’ is inspired by Gramsci’s conceptualization of the war
of position, which refers to protracted political struggles and negotiations.
Especially when contentions do not directly emanate from political
economy but take place in political and cultural fields, it is important to ident-
ify the interfacing mechanisms between violent confrontations and political
negotiations.18 In this formulation of political change, Gramsci identifies
general economic, cultural, social conditions as capable of becoming meta-
phorical ‘trenches’ that players fall into and are guided by.19
 TURKISH STUDIES 5

In explaining such political dynamism and fluidity, this study suggests that
‘entrenchment’ can become a more expedient conceptualization of the process
than other normative concepts utilized by the actors themselves. Repeatedly
used concepts such as peace, resolution (or even democracy) are normative
designations that often have different meanings to different actors and
agents who have diverse stakes in pursuing such goals. Hence they are cat-
egories of practice that have little or no analytical value. Similarly, actors
use such concepts asserting their essential and universal qualities. The analytic
utility of the concepts is particularly low when what is situational and histori-
cal is being essentialized and reified in theory.
Furthermore, entrenchment can account for the relational quality of mech-
anisms that operate sequentially to produce outcomes different from the orig-
inal goals and purposes of all actors and agencies involved. More importantly,
as entrenchment is often used to describe acts of fixing and freezing, such acts
inherently contain elements of erosion because they do not happen in iso-
lation but take place in a relational setting. In other words, entrenchment is
always a moment of contentious engagement, an interplay seemingly fixed
and steady yet more fluid and dynamic due to its transgressive qualities. In
military terminology, when one party digs or occupies a trench, such defen-
sive fortification is at the same time infringing/encroaching/trespassing on
someone else’s territory.
The AKP regime’s quest for hegemony in Turkey has been a war of pos-
ition on multiple fronts: with the Kemalist military; Kurdish insurgency;
and even its ally the Cemaat. These (re)entrenchments took place in the
much wider context of local and regional dynamics that involve global
powers such as the United States and Russia, and regional powers such as
Iran and Israel, among others. The Cemaat, which was the AKP’s ally in
their common goal to re-institutionalize the state and military,20 emerged
as a political foe during the peace/resolution process. Below we will see the
public claim-makings of the Cemaat as expressed in daily columns in
Today’s Zaman by writers who may or may not be close to Cemaat circles
yet whose expressed ideas are selectively displayed to form the narrative
and historical account of the peace-resolution process on the pro-Cemaat
webpage. This narrative of the Cemaat during both the Oslo and Imrali
talks reveal the trajectories of contention between the allies that impacted
the re-entrenchment of Kurdish politics.21
Gülenist or not, these commentators display the movement’s positions on
the talks, and are the only available records of the negotiations to contend that
the AKP government and its (former) ally played different and diverging roles
during the process. These commentaries strategically constitute the Gulenist
narrative and display its position about the negotiations with Kurdish poli-
ticians. They show a) Gülenist writers expressing suspicion and discontent
about the ongoing peace/resolution process while vehemently denying any
6 K. F. TOKTAMIS

Gülenist involvement with violence, and b) position themselves against the

AKP’s ‘misguided’ actions. The (re)entrenchment of Kurdish politics can par-
tially be explained by the collapse of the regime bloc as it is revealed in these
accounts and the imminent presence of a performative narrative of the former
ally looming over the peace/resolution talks. While all parties were firmly
entrenched in their starting positions, their simultaneous transgressions,
including the shared concern of both AKP and Kurdish negotiators about
the Cemaat as a threat to peace and democracy in Turkey, led to a new pos-
ition that was most likely originally unintended by any of the actors. These
performative narratives of Cemaat commentaries and PKK records of nego-
tiations may be indicative of a policy shift because of the clear correlation
between the breakdown of the power bloc and the collapse of the peace/recon-
ciliation process.
This approach moves beyond a growing literature on the peace/reconcilia-
tion process that sees the manipulative nature of the AKP’s policy intentions
at the time as an opportunistic bid for Kurdish support on the basis of reli-
gious affinities with Sunni Turks22 and instrumentalism for consolidating
its domestic and regional power.23 While these studies focus on Erdoğan’s
determined presidential bid and ambitious regional aspirations in the
Middle East as his main objective of launching the peace/reconciliation
process, they somehow overlook the Cemaat’s expressed disputes and the
looming presence of a narrative about the former ally of the AKP throughout
the talks that were central to the process during which many positions of
friends and foes had to be reshuffled.
The Kurdish records of the ‘Oslo talks’ and officially monitored meetings
between Öcalan and Kurdish parliamentarians reveal the looming specter24
in the resolution/peace process created by the Cemaat as a threat to the demo-
cratically elected AKP regime. At the same time, pro-Cemaat writers were
already publicly expressing their discontent with the process. It is hard to
tell whether Kurdish politics was a breaking point between the former allies
or it was simply instrumentalized during their conflict to increase their
shares of power, but this conflict was clearly presented as an existential
issue for the survival of the dialogue and negotiations, long before the
public was made aware of it. Yet, it was evident early on that Kurdish politics
was a cause of disruption within the power bloc25 and it may well be ‘the first
and major disagreement between the AKP and the Gülen movement.’26

Friends, foes and Kurdish politics: the AKP and the Cemaat
The AKP regime had set out to broker an end to violence with the PKK (if not
a broader political settlement), first secretly around 2005 and publicly in 2011
under the disapproving gaze of the nationalist old-guard. While political
alignments may shift very fast in Turkey, it can be said that the AKP
 TURKISH STUDIES 7

regime had also gained tacit yet highly significant support from Kurdish seg-
ments in society given its public expressions and actual efforts to produce
some sort of resolution that would end the armed conflict that claimed
more than 40,000 lives since the 1980s. Looking at the elections data sheets,
it can comfortably be claimed that the more pious, traditional Sunni Kurds
were already overwhelmingly supporting the AKP.27 The prospects of any
form of recognition and end to violent clashes could easily win the support
of the remaining Kurdish population, as well as provide firm regional
control of the Kurdish mobilizations in the region across the borders of
Iraq, Syria and Iran.
The AKP took a series of administrative actions to take over interactions
with the PKK from the Turkish military. Starting in 2009, government
officials announced the ‘National Unity and Brotherhood Project’ to resolve
ethnic strife in the country, with ‘brotherhood’ or ‘fraternity’ implying the
unity of Muslims rather than union of citizens. The following year, a law
created an undersecretary of Public Order and Security that reorganized the
relationship between the military and civilian administration with respect
to terror related issues.28 As a response, the PKK renewed its truce declara-
tions in 2009 and 2011.29 The government allowed the imprisoned PKK
leader Öcalan to address Kurds during the 2013, 2014 and 2015 Newroz cel-
ebrations, a national holiday for Kurds and other cultures that had been crim-
inalized in Turkey for decades. In return, Öcalan reiterated his call to PKK
fighters to leave the territory of Turkey in 2013. There was peace in the air;
a peace that never was.
The AKP’s ally, the Cemaat, had a well-established anti-Kurd and anti-
PKK attitude since the 1980s30 and this was tacitly corroborated by some
leading Gulenist columnists.31 On the other hand, its proponents also
argued that the Cemaat’s policy was to create a civilian response, such as edu-
cation institutions, community centers, and civic organizations, to the
ongoing ethnic and religious conflict in the region.32
Corroborated below with evidence from his official webpage, Gülen himself
repeatedly indicated on several occasions that his position was different than
that of Kurdish politicians and the AKP. He believed ‘the establishment of
schools and investment in the region’ would be the solution to the conflict
between Kurds and Turks yet ‘they [the PKK] did not want our activities to
prevent young people joining the militants in the mountains. Their politics
is to keep enmity between the Kurdish and Turkish people.’33 After the full
and public collapse of his alliance with the AKP regime, in his editorial
piece in The Washington Post he wrote, ‘A Turkey under a dictatorial
regime, providing haven to violent radicals and pushing its Kurdish citizens
into desperation, would be a nightmare for Middle East security.’34
A careful review of the articles posted on Fethullah Gülen’s official webpage
indicates complex, complicated and competing aspects of the movement’s
8 K. F. TOKTAMIS

approach to Kurdish politics. There are forty-one articles that discuss Kurdish
politics published between 2008 and 2014. The subject is conspicuously
missing after November 2014 and the peace/resolution process is never dis-
cussed in a larger publication with several international contributions that dis-
sects post-July 2016 Turkey.35 However, a timeline of claims made in the
articles on Kurdish politics reveals two different sets of claim-making para-
digms: Abant brotherhood and business constructivism (2008–2009) and
skepticism about the peace/resolution talks (2010–2014).

Abant brotherhood and business investment constructivism

Throughout 2008 and 2009, thirteen articles primarily focused on two Abant
Platform meetings organized by the Gülen movement and attended by hun-
dreds of Turkish, Kurdish and international journalists, academics, intellec-
tuals and political advisers.36 The first of these meetings took place in
Diyarbakir, Turkey, on March 28–29, 200837 and was entitled ‘Kurdish
Problem: Collective Search for Peace and Future.’ The second, in Arbil, in
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq on February 15, 2009,
was called ‘Searching for Peace and a Future Together.’38 Authors who elabo-
rated on these two meetings emphasized themes such as universalism, dialo-
gue, peaceful co-existence,39 brotherhood, balance between national security
and protecting democratic rights, liberties, enhancing democratic insti-
tutions,40 ‘settling the Kurdish issue with economic social and political
measures,’41 and differentiating the PKK from the Kurdish problem and
developing a language of empathy. Additionally, the KRG’s relationship
with Turkey was seen as a matter of much needed modernization for the
Kurds in Iraq, an essential contribution for its stability and security, and
most importantly, an opportunity for strategic and economic investments
that would improve political, economic and cultural relations.42 As one inter-
national observer indicated, these forums that aimed to foster cross-border
diplomatic and business relationships43 were ‘moon-landing moments’ in
the history of the Turks and Kurds.44 While hundreds of academics, journal-
ists and writers met and commented on these meetings, the Gülen website
chose to include a very interesting array of participants: two were Zaman
columnists now imprisoned and accused of being members of the Gülen
movement (Mumtaz’er Turkone and Ali Bulaç); one is an academic and
former cabinet member in the AKP government (Beril Dedeoğlu); and
various international, Kurdish or Turkish academics and journalists whose
contributions help to create a sense of objectivity and inclusiveness. One jour-
nalist described the goals of these forums as affirming civil liberties, avoiding
any possibility of a united Kurdistan, remembering an Ottoman past of co-
existence, and acknowledging that the Kurds and Kurdistan exist.45
 TURKISH STUDIES 9

The Gülen website also includes a highly important article by Erdogan’s

adviser Ibrahim Kalin where he comments on a 2009 press conference of
Turkey’s Chief of General Staff, Ilker Basbug, as heralding a new era in civi-
lian-military relations.46 Kalin interprets Basbug’s statements as deferring the
Kurdish Question to the civilian government that sees the Kurdish issue not
only a matter of national security but also a test for Turkish integration and
modernization. Kalin establishes that the Turkish military and the govern-
ment share the idea that PKK is a ‘top national security issue’ but urged dis-
tinguishing between the Kurdish people and the PKK.
With these claims in 2008 and 2009, the Gülen movement established itself
as the promoter of peace and harmony with the Kurds, as a utilitarian force in
seeking brotherhood and creating stability via business and education, and,
most importantly, as in agreement with the military establishment in dis-
tinguishing the Kurdish problem from the PKK. As stated on another pro-
Gülen website ‘Hizmet volunteers organized two major conferences on the
Kurdish issue to promote liberal and reformist perspectives, even preceding
the “Kurdish Opening” of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) govern-
ment.’47 The Gülen movement promoted cross-border brotherhood when it
wrote, ‘The solution to Turkey’s Kurdish issue is in Arbil. In order to solve
this issue, Turkey has to go to Arbil and then come back to Turkey,’48 with
Turkey playing an active role in political and economic modernization of
the KRG as an established power in the region.

A Skeptical Approach
The tone of the articles starkly changed in 2010 when the AKP government
started talks with PKK leader Ocalan in Imrali. Among 24 articles between
2010 and 2014, there is not one single article that refers to the Abant
Forums. During these years, except for a few non-Gülenist figures, most
articles on the webpage were written by well-established Cemaat writers.
During this period, three types of arguments are visible: the Cemaat’s own
message regarding recognizing cultural rights to Kurdish people; a critique
of PKK (and AKP) as a negotiating partners; and fending off critiques that
the Cemaat was behind harsh security measures against Kurds.
In almost all articles, one can see Gülen movement messages regarding
recognizing Kurdish cultural rights and establishing schools and community
centers in the Kurdish regions both within Turkey and in Iraq.49 One writer
affirmed that ‘schools opened in the region’ that aimed to alleviate the differ-
ences in opportunities citizens are afforded and there were ‘study halls that
support hundreds of reading rooms in the region, also aiming to alleviate pro-
blems in education in the area, all despite the threats of being vandalized or set
on fire,’ and ‘all this assistance was not limited to within Turkey’s borders
either.’50
10 K. F. TOKTAMIS

On the other hand, almost all articles, save one by a Kurdish AKP
member,51 heavily criticized the PKK as a negotiation partner. In his
article, Emre Uslu clarified that the Gülen movement was ‘a global network
that has lobbying power to trigger global criticism of the PKK.’ It ‘has estab-
lished good relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, where
the movement runs 10 prestigious private schools, including a university,’ and
many Kurdish families had started ‘sending their children to Gülen insti-
tutions when they enter universities in western Turkey.’52 The PKK could
not be a negotiation partner because it was growing weaker, and there were
calls to ‘Kurdish sisters and brothers why the threat of terrorism posed by
the PKK becomes a graver concern as the magnitude of the Kurdish issue
is on the wane and they should seek to find the cause of such a paradoxical
situation.’53 The same writer criticizes the government for partnering with
the PKK in another article, questioning Öcalan’s status as leader of the PKK.54
One writer criticized the MİT [National Intelligence Service of Turkey] for
preferring negotiations with the PKK instead of ‘helping Cemaat open more
schools in the region.’55 In the same vein, articles criticizing Öcalan indicated
that he should not be tolerated because he was not speaking the language of
peace56 and, as a known atheist, Öcalan was now ‘wielding a religious dis-
course for some time’ to target ‘faith-based actors who have been influential
on the Kurds who are known to be remarkably more pious than the
average in Turkey.’57
It was clear that for Gülenist writers, the PKK was not a negotiation partner
but competition. Almost all of them unequivocally identified not only the
PKK but also the Kurdish civilian networks, known as KCKs,58 as affiliates
of a terrorist organization.
The fact that the Gülen Movement has a religious aspect makes the PKK and
the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) furious. The emergence of a reli-
gious generation is the greatest fear among the PKK, PKK supporters and
the radical pro-Kurdish movement because the secular religion approach advo-
cated by the PKK cannot hold its ground in the face of the Ahl-i Sunnah59
approach promoted by the Gülen Movement.60

By 2013, Cemaat writers were openly criticizing the AKP government’s

conduct of the talks.61 Emre Uslu demanded a plan B for the ‘peace period’
that was producing some unrest in Kurdish cities and towns.62
Finally, Gülenist writers were defensive against pervasive arguments that
Cemaat-oriented security and judicial forces and were behind attacks
against and arrests of Kurdish civilians and community leaders during the
talks. They claim that the ‘PKK was upset’ with the Cemaat’s educational
and community oriented programs, which indicate that ‘educated Kurdish
youth did not want to be terrorists’ and identify the Kurdish issue as a two-
tier problem involving both a national security issue against the PKK and
 TURKISH STUDIES 11

the social, economic, cultural rights of Kurdish civilians. The Cemaat was
being defamed by ‘so-called liberals, pro-PKK people … including the AKP’
for wanting ‘the Kurdish issue to be solved by the security forces and the judi-
ciary.’63 The same Gülenist writer justified the arrests of hundreds of KCK
civilians as ‘many people agree that the KCK is a terrorist organization.’64
According to this writer, if there are members of the Cemaat participating
in arrests of KCK people as members of the police force or judiciary, they
are only doing their jobs as bureaucrats and civil servants.65
Such articles on the Gülen movement’s official webpage present a narrative
of the Cemaat as ‘the most influential civil society organization’ taking the
lead in creating a peaceful resolution to the ‘most burning problem’ in the
country. However, according to writers on the Gülenist website, this initiative
incensed the PKK. And the AKP, instead of focusing on the national security
aspect of the problem by eliminating the PKK through police and judicial
action, took a strategically divergent path and started negotiating with the
PKK leader. As early as 2011, a Gülenist writer was asking ‘where is the
other half in the Kurdish question,’ not-so-ambiguously implying that
the Cemaat was performing its (nonviolent) share in the process whereas
the AKP was not.66 During the 2008–2009 Abant Forums, the Cemaat saw
itself as the leading force behind resolution. Now the AKP strategy to nego-
tiate with Kurdish politicians, including Öcalan, was heavily criticized by
Gülenist writers even though Gülen himself made a belated statement that
he was supporting the Imrali talks.67 Clearly the Cemaat had different
ideas, plans, and prospects about dealing with the Kurdish issue than the AKP.
The Gülen movement also portrayed itself as an asset for the AKP’s politi-
cal goals in the region.68 In the beginning, this was presented almost as a div-
ision of labor between allies. One sees that in an article that claims, ‘The
fundamental difference [was] the government has been trying to persuade
the PKK to lay down its guns, [while] the movement goes one step further
and works to remove the social and cultural problems that caused the
Kurdish problem.’69 Gülen’s website is also eager to display that many of
the AKP leaders, such as Erdogan’s chief adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, were in
agreement with the original Cemaat position that peace can only come
through civilian initiatives to educate Kurdish youth and security measures
to eliminate the PKK terrorism. According to their claims, it was the AKP
that abandoned this strategy by starting talks with the PKK, its leadership,
and Kurdish politicians.
Furthermore, it is implied that the breaking point between the AKP and the
Cemaat, the government closure in 2013 of the Cemaat’s prep schools, called
‘dershanes,’ was actually a concession to the PKK:
Abdullah Öcalan vocalized their discomfort with dershanes in the Kurdish
region. … this discomfort was mentioned by the PKK during the Oslo talks
12 K. F. TOKTAMIS

and their closure became part of the bargain between the government and the
PKK. Why the PKK is against the movement’s activities in the region is an
important question, but will be the topic of another article.70

While there is no evidence to corroborate this claim, it implies that Kurdish

politics was a key breaking point between the allies.

Narrative of the Cemaat in the peace process: The Oslo Talks

PKK records and Kurdish media claim that the Cemaat’s intervention in the
talks were evident in four incidents. The first apparent sign of conflict between
the AKP regime and the Cemaat was the leaking of the secret Oslo nego-
tiations between the Turkish government, more specifically the intelligence
community, and representatives of the PKK in June 2011.71 According to
PKK sources, the AKP’s first contact with PKK leaders was in June 2004,
and Erdoğan agreed with Norwegian politicians to initiate a process at a con-
ference in Europe in 2005.72 The Oslo talks were identified as ‘backchannel
communications’ involving a series of eleven meetings between Turkish
state officials and the PKK, facilitated by the Norwegian government and
some European agencies that were not named.73
The clandestine Oslo talks proceeded as violent clashes between PKK and
Turkish security forces continued. Notably, Turkish F-16 bombers attacked
PKK headquarters in Qandil in northern Iraq on December 5, 2008 in what
can only be called an assassination attempt, only the day after international
facilitators had been there. Other attacks included one on civilian villagers
in December 2011, known and often referred as the Roboski attack.74 There
were also recurrent arrests of civilian Kurdish politicians and activists as
PKK collaborators starting in April 2009.75 Kurdish representatives, as
reported by Dicle, claimed that between 2008 and 2011, while PKK represen-
tatives were seeking a political resolution, the Turkish government was stead-
fastly declaring that their goal was not a political reconciliation with the
PKK.76
As early as September 2008, Turkish officials made it clear at the Oslo
negotiations that some factions within the state should not find out
about the negotiations between the MİT and the PKK and might be
working against them.77 Following the second Oslo negotiation, on April
14, 2009, around 1700 Kurds were arrested, including mayors, NGO acti-
vists and local political leaders. Turkish officials admitted that these oper-
ations were carried out by ‘another faction within the state’ which they did
not yet have control over.78 Article 5 of the Memorandum of Understand-
ing of the third Oslo meeting stated that the operations against the
Kurdish-oriented Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi,
DTP) ‘should be stopped, those who were arrested immediately should
 TURKISH STUDIES 13

be released as the trials rapidly started.’79 The same request was repeated in
the consecutive memoranda but contrary to the pledges of the Turkish
officers attending, arrests of Kurdish civilians, community leaders and poli-
ticians continued in the so-called ‘KCK operations,’ so much so that by
October 2010 the number of detained Kurdish community leaders and pol-
itical representatives reached 7748.80 The ‘specter’ of Cemaat was beginning
to affect the process while the Turkish public, media or parliament
remained unaware of both the negotiations with the PKK and any crack
within the AKP-Cemaat relationship. In September 2011, the internation-
ally monitored, yet secret, Oslo negotiations came to an abrupt halt
when some unknown sources (that were claimed in many accounts to be
from the Cemaat) revealed recordings of some of them, targeting the Direc-
tor of the MIT, Turkey’s intelligence organization.81
The public was never fully informed about the deteriorating relationship
between the AKP and Cemaat until December 2013, when a series of recorded
tapes revealing vast corruption and money laundering activities of members
of the AKP were introduced to the newspapers.82 By early 2014, Erdoğan
himself began to publicly refer to the Cemaat as the ‘parallel state’ (ironically
the same terminology had long been used the AKP’s opponents against the
Cemaat) and he vilified this community as a terrorist organization and his
leading enemy after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.

Narrative of the Cemaat in the Peace Process: The İmralı Talks83

Long before the Turkish public was aware of the conflict between the AKP and
the Cemaat, Öcalan, according to the minutes of the Imralı talks, was already
warning his collaborators about the dangers the Cemaat posed to the welfare
of the Turkish democracy and the possibility of a peaceful resolution with the
Kurds. As a captive interlocutor, Öcalan was in close contact with the Turkish
Intelligence agency and was allowed to conduct meetings with Kurdish politi-
cal leaders.84 While we do not have access to Öcalan’s negotiations with gov-
ernment officials, the release of the minutes of meetings with Kurdish leaders
has become a very informative document of domestic and regional political
stakes. Issues, such as legal protection and guarantees for PKK fighters,
dynamics in the Middle East, the crisis in Syria and Rojava, local/municipal
administration, and questions of women’s emancipation were overwhel-
mingly the main topics of consultations. However, discussions of a ‘parallel
state’ formation implying and openly stating that the Cemaat was an obstacle
for peace and a challenge to the AKP administration also emerges as a recur-
rent topic of discussion among the parties.
As early as 2010, Öcalan already reckoned with the Cemaat as a significant
force not only in Turkey, but also in the region, stating that it can ‘play an
important role in the democratization and the enlightenment of the
14 K. F. TOKTAMIS

society.’85 Yet, he later changed his position declaring Cemaat as the obstacle
for peace and threat to democracy, stating that ‘Cemaat is the one that oper-
ates the “parallel state”; they are forcing us towards the inevitability of
violence.’86
During negotiations that started in 2013, in the early discussions of the
‘parallel state,’ it is not clear what exactly Öcalan means by the term, as for
example when he suggests:
[t]here are three different parallel state formations in Turkey, all three of them
have originated from the Anatolian countryside … CHP (Republican Peoples’
Party, the left nationalist party created by the founders of the Republic) and
MHP (Nationalist Action Party, a far-right nationalist party) are direct reflec-
tions of such penetration. So is the AKP.

Yet immediately afterwards, he refers to a ‘parallel state’ that had ‘pene-

trated into and taken over all government agencies except the MIT.’87
During the same first meeting, he warns Kurdish officials that a coup mental-
ity will attempt to sabotage the ongoing peace process. He is adamant that the
coup mentality of yesteryear had changed its quality but is still an ongoing
challenge against AKP rule. What is clear is that Öcalan was indicating that
there were forces within the Turkish state that were working against the
AKP’s decision to broker a settlement with the PKK and the Kurdish
mobilization.
Ocalan’s claims about Cemaat as the ‘parallel state’ can be classified as (a)
international manipulations (by the USA), (b) appeasement of (Sunni) Kurds,
(c) an impediment to the peace process, and (d) a possible coup threat against
democracy in general and against the democratically elected AKP government
in particular. He claimed that the Cemaat was an alarmingly shady organiz-
ation whose actions can be followed by focusing on certain cities,88 reading
certain newspapers,89 and observing the actions of some high-level security
officials, especially in Kurdish cities.90 Given the threat this network was
posing against democracy and peace, he positioned himself as the AKP’s
(and other democratically elected Kurdish politicians’) only hope against a
coup by reminding his interlocutors as ‘Selahattin [Demirtaş] and the HDP
cannot be instruments of the Cemaat.’91Öcalan also identified the Cemaat
as ‘in a race to grab power’ as an opposing power infiltrated within the
state organizations.92 He repeatedly discussed an imminent coup attempt
by the ‘parallel state’ that would turn Erdoğan into Mursi, the jailed leader
of the Muslim Brotherhood who won the first democratic election following
the Tahrir uprising in Egypt.93
It was Öcalan who established a close yet inverse relationship between the
Cemaat and the possibility of ending armed conflict. Declaring his role in the
process as ‘a strategic one, which is at least the same as being a prime minister,
president, or chief of staff,’94 he considered his intervention essential and
 TURKISH STUDIES 15

critical for bringing peace while at the same time eliminating the impact of
Cemaat infiltration within the government and state structures. Ocalan com-
pared his captivity with the self-exile of Cemaat’s leader in the United States:
‘As I was imprisoned here, at the same time, Gülen was placed in the USA.’95
Öcalan ‘was brought here [to Turkey and in jail] so that Kurds could be cap-
tured and tamed’ so ‘Gülen was taken to Pennsylvania to do the same to Turk-
Islam movement.’96 He denounced the international networks of Cemaat
suggesting ‘They have financial operations. Their financial operations,
terror lists, all operate from that same center.’97 He identified the AKP and
Cemaat in competition with the PKK and other Kurdish political organiz-
ations for the hearts and minds of the Kurdish people: ‘They have been
busy creating AKP-type Kurds, now they have started creating Cemaat-type
Kurds. They want us Kurds to kill, slaughter each other.’98 During a June
2013 exchange with Demirtas who was then the co-chair of the BDP (Peace
and Democracy Party, a precursor to the HDP), Öcalan expressed that
peace with Kurds is not desirable by some positioned within the AKP govern-
ment who are close to the United States, in collaboration with the Cemaat.99
When Öcalan offered a clarification on the ‘parallel state,’100 he was con-
vinced that Cemaat prosecutors and judges destroyed those within the mili-
tary who wanted peace with the PKK through the Ergenekon [arrests and
trials] and the KCK operations.101 He identified the Cemaat, with its vast
infiltration within the judiciary, as the sole threat to the AKP’s prospects in
the peace process. He also claimed that the Oslo talks were obstructed by
the Cemaat, and it intended the same for Imralı talks.102 He eventually
claimed that the ‘“parallel state” intervened and destroyed all attempts for
peace,’103 and that the AKP ‘was deceived by the parallel state’s suggestions
to eliminate [PKK].’104 He defined the ‘parallel state’ as the one formation
within the state that interjected violence onto negotiations by hollowing out
the essence of the process. He therefore warned the government official
present in the meetings to end the parallel state in order to continue the
peace process.105
He repeatedly claimed that the operations against Kurdish civilian political
organizations, the KCKs, were not carried out by the Turkish Intelligence
Organization [MIT] but by the Cemaat.106 He points to the ‘difference
between the parallel state and the official government,’ suggesting that
many atrocities against Kurdish activists and civilians (e.g. the 2013 killing
of PKK co-founder Sakine Cansız in Paris, village evacuations, a market fire
at Cizre) were actually committed by the Cemaat.107
As the HDP became a critical political actor, during a February 2014
meeting their representatives reported to Öcalan that the head of the had
told them that assassinations against the PKK leadership (in Paris) and
Kurdish civilians (in Roboski) during the negotiations were carried out by
the Cemaat and the nationalists that had already infiltrated the state
16 K. F. TOKTAMIS

structures.108 However, the parties were not convinced that the intelligence
community was uninvolved or forthcoming about these incidents. Öcalan
referred to the direct involvement of a member of one of the right-wing
ultra-nationalist parties with the assassinations in Paris, directly implicating
the Cemaat.109 The tentative partnership negotiated between the MİT and
Kurdish politicians was at this point not a matter of trust, but mutual
suspicion.
Öcalan identified three actors in the negotiation process – the AKP admin-
istration, the ‘parallel state’ and the Kurdish political organizations and civi-
lian networks – and urged the AKP to be clear in choosing its partner, with
one seeking violence and the other seeking peace.110 According to him,
there was a pending coup against the AKP, with coups a recurring pattern
in Turkish politics. He suggested that there even was a battle between a
Fethullah-oriented [Cemaat] coup and a Kemalist-oriented [nationalist old
guard] coup.111
Almost 10 days before the Cemaat-AKP tension came out in public, the
Kurdish İmralı negotiators met again on December 7, 2013, during which
they identify this particular tension as the most important topic of the
week, yet as participants they were more focused on the creation of the
HDP and its participatory role in the peace process. Öcalan affirmed that
the AKP and Kurdish politicians have to ‘establish a common-ground
against the “parallel state”’112 otherwise no one, including the PKK, could
control the ensuing chaos at home and in the region. He revealed that he
had already discussed these prospects with Fidan, the head of the MİT who
had been closely involved in the negotiation process.
However, on March 9, 2014, Öcalan proclaimed that Kurdish political
leaders had failed to distance Erdoğan from the Cemaat,113 and by April,
he was exasperated over the release of some recordings of himself during con-
versations with other inmates. ‘Is this the Cemaat, or the other deep state? I
cannot tell the difference anymore … I don’t think the Prime Minister
[Erdoğan] or Mr Fidan are capable of protecting themselves either; they are
being recorded as well.’114 By then, the threat of fragmented and competing
power blocs within the Turkish state posing challenges to the AKP adminis-
tration seemed to be established as a common concern of all parties involved
in negotiations.
During the last meeting at İmralı Prison on March 14, 2015, Öcalan, in his
characteristically self-promoting manner, elucidated his role in anticipating
Cemaat intentions, the AKP’s close connections with Cemaat and the
Cemaat’s control of the state apparatus:
If we follow the AKP’s lead, the ensuing developments would destroy the AKP.
When we started talking about the Cemaat here, when the Cemaat was count-
ing its days for a coup, I had said that I took them very seriously. When there
 TURKISH STUDIES 17

was no word of things like the parallel formations, I had mentioned it here.
Those were the days when Erdoğan was best friends forever with the
Cemaat. … Those were the days when the AKP was not allowing anyone to
speak ill of its ally. That was why I was pushing. Because these were not only
organized within the police; they control ten percent of the military … My
guess is that the organized force within the military is covering itself up very
well. Such powers are actively operating and they are going to use this force.
I made the same point when I was meeting with the government officials
here. The AKP was in alliance with them for ten years. They are the ones
who did the KCK arrests and other such things115

Conclusion: Re-Entrenchment via Claim-Making and Category

Formation
The talks with Kurdish representatives ultimately collapsed and so did the
AKP-Cemaat alliance. Some Gülenist officers were said to have had staged
a coup against the AKP and Erdoğan on July 2016. Öcalan remains in
prison, now with thousands more accused of treasonous support of the
Cemaat movement as well as fellow Kurdish politicians rounded up in the
crossfire. The complex political and social interactions of the MİT, Cemaat,
and Öcalan shifted as interlocutors in the negotiations while the AKP and
the Cemaat shifted their positions vis-à-vis each other and presented narra-
tives and claims to secure their struggle for hegemony.
With the risk of committing the infamous ‘illusory fallacy,’ this essay con-
tends that Kurdish politics might be a central cause – if not the main cause of
– the collapse of the alliance between the Cemaat network and the AKP. As
researchers have further access to their strategic policy interactions on this
and other topics, such as regional politics in the Middle East, this conclusion
may be re-thought, but the significance of this particular contention, i.e.
Kurdish politics as a regime issue producing political fractures and violence,
still stands solid.
The AKP, Cemaat and Kurdish politicians’ interactions between 2006 and
2015 constitute a Gramscian ‘war of position,’ protracted political jockeying
between hegemony and violence, with the players engaged in ‘claim-
making’ about peace and violence and ‘category formation’ about friends
and foes, as well as the prospects of the new regime in Turkey. The hegemonic
warfare of the AKP is still raging through different segments of society and
political life in Turkey, and its former ally, the Cemaat, has become a discre-
dited player, thus allowing the AKP to consolidate its power, reinforced
through repression. Kurdish efforts to pursue representation through a politi-
cal party have been met with arrests, even as the HDP retains some seats in the
legislature. Political violence was a contingent product, not merely of the
beliefs of some actors, emerged from dynamic relations in this war of position.
Following the Contentious Politics framework, this article illustrates the
failure of the peace/resolution initiative as a regime question involving the
18 K. F. TOKTAMIS

position and engagement of ‘government, polity members, challengers, and

subjects’ with the AKP’s instrumentalization of the process. The Cemaat,
which largely opposed the peace initiative, eventually lost its place in the
power structure, while the AKP regime dialogically appropriated some of
its language into its discourse on Kurdish politics, such Erdoğan did when
he invoked the ‘fraternity or brotherhood [of Muslims]’ when he ended the
peace/resolution process.

Notes
1. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, as well as the United
States and the European Union, and its fighters are routinely labelled ‘terrorists’
in Turkish media. The term ‘terrorist,’ however, is politically charged easily
politicized. We prefer to use more neutral terminology.
2. Anatolian News Agency, “Buraya Gelip.”
3. As recently as 2017, scholarship on the Gülen movement regularly depicted it
as an enlightened, moderate, peaceful and pluralistic version of Islam, markedly
different from jihadist violent ones. See Cilingiroğlu, The Gülen Movement;
Valkenberg, Renewing Islam by Service; Tittensor, The House of Service;
Yavuz, Towards an Islamic Enlightenment; Ebayoh, The Gülen Movement;
.and Esposito and Yilmaz, Islam and Peacebuilding; and Yavuz and Esposito
Turkish Islam and the Secular State. Only a few more critical studies have ques-
tioned its staunch adherence to market economy or its candor about science
and technology. These include Hendrick Gülen: Ambiguous Politics, and, Tee
The Gülen Movement in Turkey.
4. In July 2016 pro-Cemaat dailies Zaman (in Turkish) and Today’s Zaman (in
English – the two varied a bit), where writers with heterogeneous political pos-
itions and diverse ideological backgrounds were producing commentary on
political affairs, were completely shut down and their issues since 2005 are
no longer available on-line or even at the digital archives of major university
libraries in the US. The only accessible materials were obtained from Fethullah
Gülen’s own website (www.fgulen.com), which is, in its selectivity, ‘a presen-
tation of self,’ as Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis would attest, a per-
formative display and a claim-making, in the sense of Contentious Politics, of
positions approved and promoted by the leadership of this network, about their
years of collaboration with AKP and its dissolution. Not all writers on this
website can be identified as Gülenists, yet their pieces are selected by the
official Gülenist webpage to constitute the network’s narrative of the process.
5. The adopted resolutions of the Oslo negotiations were published (in Turkish) in
Germany by Mesopotamien Verlag und Vertriebs GmbH. See Dicle 2017. The
minutes of the Imrali negotiations were similarly published in Turkish by the
same publisher. See Öcalan, 2015. The latter text also exists online. Other than
some leaked information to the press, the Turkish government does not publi-
cize its own version of events. These texts are used in the absence of any other
credible narrative by those who took active role in these negotiations.
6. Other useful works Kurdish mobilization and violence include Aras, “State
Sovereignty and Politics of Fear”; Bozaraslan, “Why the Armed Struggle?”;
and Günay, “Towards a Critique.”
 TURKISH STUDIES 19

7. Prior to the semi-public İmralı talks, there were also talks in Oslo which were
initiated in 2005 and included 11 meetings between Kurdish politicians and
Turkish government officials which continued until these ‘backchannel com-
munications’ were leaked to the Turkish public in 2011. See Kadıoğlu, “The
Oslo Talks.”
8. Anatolian News Agency, “Buraya Gelip.”
9. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.
10. So much so that, for example mechanisms and processes that produce democ-
racy or peace are very similar to those that produce authoritarian coercion or
violent clashes.
11. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, 30.
12. Tilly, “Mechanisms in Political Processes,” 24.
13. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, and Tilly and Tarrow
Contentious Politics.
14. Tilly, 19.
15. Ibid., 29.
16. Ibid., 45.
17. Ibid., 28.
18. According to Gramsci, political strategy is always a complex relationship
between war and politics and military metaphors ‘as stimuli to thought’ play
a central role as tools for analysis in his work. In explaining political strategies,
he developed the concept of a war of positions (as opposed to insurrection, i.e.
war of maneuvering) to delineate acts of political change. See Gramsci, Selec-
tions. I am grateful to J.K. for inspiring this point.
19. Gramsci, Selections, 238.
20. For international media coverage of the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, see “Time-
line: Turkey’s ‘Ergenekon’ Trial,” Al-Jazeera, August 5, 2013, accessed June 5,
2018 at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/08/20138512358195978.
html; Dexter Filkins, “Show Trials on the Bosphorous,” The New Yorker,
August 13, 2013, accessed June 5, 2018 at https://www.newyorker.com/news/
daily-comment/show-trials-on-the-bosphorus; and “Justice or revenge?” The
Economist, August 10, 2013, accessed June 5, 2018, at https://www.
economistcom/news/europe/21583312-harsh-verdicts-are-handed-down-
ergenekon-trial-justice-or-revenge. Eventually Erdoğan disowned these trials
against the military. See report in The New York Times, February 26, 2014, at
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/world/europe/turkish-leader-disowns-
trials-that-helped-him-tame-military.html.
21. We have identified 41 articles from 2008 to 2014 (by searching the terms Kurds,
Öcalan and PKK, and by closely surveying the posted articles) by various
authors, some of whom are not necessarily adherents of the Gulen movement.
Before 2008, only six articles posted on the fgulen.com website refer to Kurds:
one on the arrest of Ocalan in 1999; two on regional politics especially about
Iraq; one on the Cemaat schools in ‘northern Iraq’; and one article discussing
the role of religion and secularism among Kurdish population.
22. Çiçek, Kurds of Turkey.
23. Özpek, The Peace Process.
24. After 2016, In post-putsch Turkey, it is close to impossible to gather infor-
mation about the Cemaat’s position on the peace process, I use the term
specter to indicate the narrative presence of the former ally throughout the
negotiations. As a powerful ally of the AKP, the Cemaat’s shadow was
20 K. F. TOKTAMIS

overwhelmingly present during the peace/reconciliation process and its power

haunted the process. This article cannot pinpoint the power of that presence,
but lays out the omnipresence of this former ally.
25. Tank, Between Turkeýs AKP and the Gülen movement.
26. Başaran, Frontline Turkey, location 1320 (Kindle edition).
27. For a discussion on this topic see report in Al-Monitor http://www.al-monitor.
com/pulse/originals/2016/02/turkey-erdogan-new-kurdish-allies.html and one in
the Catalan publication Nationalia from November 2015 at. http://www.
nationalia.info/new/10639/hdp-lost-votes-following-a-campaign-of-fear-against-
kurdish-voters, both accessed January 20, 2018.
28. 2010, 2/17 law # 5952. The law was later fortified with law # 6551: “law to end
terror and fortify national unity;” amendments to the Criminal Procedures and
Penal Code in 2014, and finally legislation amending the law # 6638 “Security
Package: Legal Package to Protect Freedoms” in 2015. While the underlying
intention of law #5952 was clearly establishing a civilian oversight, the later
legislations aimed to criminalize all forms of opposition including the ones
based on ethnic strife.
29. The PKK has declared a series of truces in 1993, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2006, 2009
and 2011. In addition, Öcalan called PKK fighters outside the borders of
Turkey, effectively positioning them in Kandil, Iraq and later in Rojava, Syria.
30. Çakır and Sakallı, 100 Soruda Erdoğan-Gülen Savaşı, 48.
31. ‘One cannot deny that Hizmet in its infancy had some Turkish nationalist senti-
ments. Yet, Hizmet has always understood this as an inclusive, constructive and
civic nationalism. Hizmet called this “positive nationalism” and considered it
helpful as long as it was in the service of God, Islam and humanity. Since it is a
faith-based movement rooted in Islam, it has to embrace all nations, races,
colors, etc.’ See I. Yilmaz “Hizmet and the Kurdish Question” Today’s Zaman,
June 21, 2012, accessed on April 2, 2018 https://fgulen.com/en/press/columns/
32588-ihsan-yilmaz-todays-zaman-hizmet-and-the-kurdish-question.
32. Kalyoncu, A Civilian Response.
33. Franks, Tim. “Fethullah Gulen: Powerful but Reclusive Cleric”, BBC, January
27, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25885817, accessed on
June 20, 2018.
34. Gulen, Fethullah. “The Turkey I no longer know,” Washington Post, May 15,
2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-turkey-
i-no-longer-know/2017/05/15, accessed on June 20, 2018.
35. “What Went Wrong with Turkey.”
36. The Abant platform was a dialogue initiative organized by the Journalists and
Writers Foundation of Turkey which is known as close to the networks of the
Gülen movement. It started has brought together academics, intellectuals and
writers of diverse backgrounds since 1998. The 34rd and last Abant Forum was
on January 30–31, 2016. For more, see http://hizmetnews.com/17388/
democracys-challenge-with-turkey-debated-in-abant-platform/#.Wzg6HKdKiUk,
accessed on June 20, 2018.
37. Mahmut Övür, “Abant Platform Discusses Kurdish Issue,” Sabah, February 19,
2008, accessed March 26, 2018. https://fgulen.com/en/press/columns/26215-
abant-platform-discusses-kurdish-issue.
38. Mümtaz’er Türköne, “‘Searching for Peace and a Future Together’ in Arbil,”
Today’s Zaman, February 16 2009. This article, along with all Today’s Zaman
articles cited in this piece, come from the fgulen.com web-site, which archives
 TURKISH STUDIES 21

numerous columns from this paper. It was accessed on March 26, 2018. For
sake of brevity, I am referencing only the original publication date for all
such articles.
39. Bejan Matur, “Democratic Rights and Ornamental Plants of Turkey,” Today’s
Zaman, July 19, 2008.
40. Levent Köker, “Rethinking the Kurdish Problem,” Today’s Zaman, March 1,
2009.
41. Fatma Disli, “Abant Platform Suggests New Language to Settle Kurdish
Problem,” Today’s Zaman, July 7, 2008.
42. Mümtaz’er Türköne, “Abant Platform’s Arbil Meeting: Future of Peace,”
Today’s Zaman, February 20, 2009.
43. Beril Dedeoğlu, “Iraqi Kurdistan and the Pains of Labor,” Today’s Zaman, Feb-
ruary 20, 2009.
44. Andrew Finkel, “The Kurdish Moon Landing,” Today’s Zaman, February 18,
2009.
45. Mustafa Akyol, “Welcome to Kurdistan (Not North Iraq),” Hürriyet Daily
News, February 20, 2009.
46. İbrahim Kalin, “Turkish Military and the Kurdish Question,” Today’s Zaman,
April 16, 2009.
47. Mustafa Gurbuz, “Recognition of Kurdish Identity and the Hizmet Movement,”
Gülen Movement, March 2015, accessed March 26, 2018. http://www.
gulenmovement.com/recognition-of-kurdish-identity-and-the-hizmet-movement.
html.
48. Mümtaz’er Türköne, “Abant Platform’s Arbil Meeting: Future of Peace,”
Today’s Zaman, February 20, 2009.
49. Bülent Korucu, “A Feb. 28 tactic from the PKK,” Today’s Zaman, November 16,
2011, and Ihsan Yilmaz “Hizmet and the Kurdish Question” Today’s Zaman,
June 21, 2012.
50. Bülent Korucu, “A Feb. 28 tactic from the PKK,” Today’s Zaman, November 16,
2011.
51. Orhan Miroğlu, “Who Wants Peace?” Today’s Zaman, January 11, 2013.
52. Emre Uslu, “Why Does Öcalan Need to Approach the Gülen Movement?”
Today’s Zaman, December 21, 2010.
53. Bülent Keneş, “PKK’s war for survival and power,” Today’s Zaman, October 21,
2011.
54. Bülent Keneş, “But which PKK?” Today’s Zaman, January 9, 2013.
55. Ali Halit Aslan, “Does the Gülen movement securitize the Kurdish question?”
Today’s Zaman, March 3, 2012.
56. Ekrem Dumanlı, “Was this what you called the language of peace?” Today’s
Zaman, March 4, 2013.
57. Bülent Keneş, “Öcalan invests in the post-İmralı era,” Today’s Zaman, March 6,
2013.
58. KCK (Koma Civaken Kurdistan in Kurdish; Union of Communities in Kurdi-
stan) was created as umbrella organization for all peaceful activism and civilian
local politics in 2005. Turkey’s security forces and judicial system often treated
them as urban infiltration by the PKK itself. KCK operations are the occasional
rounding up and arrests of thousands of civilian Kurdish officials as PKK col-
laborators since 2009. The Kurds (and Öcalan) claim that these operations were
carried out by Gülenist police and judiciary, whereas Gülenists claim that these
22 K. F. TOKTAMIS

operations were carried out by law-abiding forces who were following the expli-
cit orders of the AKP government.
59. Ahl-I Sunnah is a complicated Islamic term, which can be loosely translated as
people of the tradition, habit, or crudely understood as the ways of Sunni, as
clearly indicated in The Encyclopedia of Islam published by the Directorate of
Religious Affairs in Turkey. See http://www.islamansiklopedisi.info/dia/
ayrmetin.php?idno=100525&idno2=c100447#4. The author of this piece may
be implying the widespread Sunni conviction among the Kurds or just propos-
ing a traditional path of resolving a problem. Such innuendos have been omni-
present in Gülen’s speeches in particular and in many of the Cemaat’s writers’
narratives.
60. Adem Palabıyık, “The PKK, piety and the Gülen Movement,” Today’s Zaman,
March 30, 2012.
61. İhsan Yılmaz, “The US, Israel, Iran, Kurds, AKP and Hizmet,” Today’s Zaman,
December 12, 2013.
62. Emre Uslu, “Time for urban battle in Kurdish cities,” Today’s Zaman, May 9,
2013.
63. İhsan Yılmaz, “The İmralı peace process and defaming Hizmet,” Today’s
Zaman, March 16, 2013.
64. Ihsan Yilmaz “Hizmet and the Kurdish Question,” Today’s Zaman, June 21,
2012.
65. Ali Halit Aslan, “Does the Gülen movement securitize the Kurdish question?”
Today’s Zaman, March 3, 2012.
66. İhsan Yilmaz, “Where is the other half in the Kurdish question?” Today’s
Zaman, November 17, 2011.
67. See Günay Yıldız, “Analysis: The Power of Turkey’s Fethullah Gulen,” BBC
Turkish, January 27, 2014, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-25910079, accessed June 2, 2018.
68. Adem Palabıyık, “The PKK, piety and the Gülen Movement,” Today’s Zaman,
March 30, 2012.
69. Mustafa Demir, “Diverging points between AKP and Hizmet movement:
Kurdish question,” Today’s Zaman, February 2, 2014.
70. Ibid.
71. For the demise of Oslo negotiations see Kutschera, “The Secret Talks,” and
Hess, “Turkey’s PKK Talks.” For a chronology see report in Hürriyet Daily
News, September 28, 2012, accessed June 5, 2018, available at http://www.
hurriyetdailynews.com/chronology-of-oslo-dialogues-with-pkk.aspx?pageID=
238&nID=31190&NewsCatID=338.
72. Dicle, 2005–2015 Turkiye-PKK gorusmeleri, 26. Following three years of inter-
national groundwork, these negotiations, which were kept secret from Turkish
public and parliament at the time, started in July 2008 in Geneva with the par-
ticipation of Kurdish politicians in exile, leading officers of the National Intelli-
gence Organization of Turkey, and the representatives of PKK forces stationed
in the Qandil region of Iraq. The ensuing negotiations took place in Oslo on
May 22–24, July 1–3, September 13–14 of 2009; May 2–3, August 19–20 and
again towards the end of August of 2010; and January, May 12–13 and July 5
of 2011. During these negotiations six memoranda of understanding were pro-
duced and signed by the parties.
73. Kadıoğlu, “The Oslo Talks.” Also see Bezci, ‘Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Process.’
 TURKISH STUDIES 23

74. “Turkey admits 35 Civilian Deaths Near Kurdish Village,” BBC News, 29
December 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16352388, accessed
February 2, 2017.
75. Z. Abu-Rish, ‘Turkish Politics, Kurdish Rights, and the KCK Operations’, Jadal-
liya 3 November, 2011, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3047/turkish-
politics-kurdish-rights-and-the-kck-operat, accessed February 2, 2017. KCK
operations are the occasional yet targeted rounding up and arrests of thousands
of civilian Kurdish officials as PKK collaborators since 2009. Turkey’s security
forces and judicial system often treated them as urban infiltration of the PKK
itself.
76. Dicle, 2005–2015 Türkiye-PKK görüşmeleri, 85.
77. Ibid., 81, and 87. Who those factions might be were not clarified in the docu-
ments of first Oslo meetings.
78. Ibid., 112. Following July 2016 coup attempt, all the indictments prepared by
Gülenist prosecutors were dismissed as they themselves were arrested and
imprisoned. However, the same prosecutors’ cases against Kurdish civilians
in these ‘KCK operations’ were not closed as they are still going on as open
cases. It is Dicle’s contention that, based on Erdoğan’s speeches around that
time, AKP and Gülenist prosecutors were working in concert.
79. Democratic Society Party (DTP) became the Peace and Democracy Party
(BDP), which eventually became the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the
course of series of party closing cases against Kurdish political parties.
80. See the 2011 report by the European Commission: https://ec.europa.eu/
neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/pdf/key_documents/2011/package/
tr_rapport_2011_en.pdf (accessed 2 February 2017).
81. When the prosecutors of the Ergenekon trials summoned Hakan Fidan, the
head of the MIT, for an interrogation in early 2012, this investigation was
understood as a Cemaat attack, but not much debated publicly.
82. The corruption revelations were a response to the AKP’s attempt to close down
private tutoring schools mostly run by the Cemaat. The AKP was most likely
trying to curb the revenues of the Cemaat, which was at that time challenging
its policy directions, especially with respect to Kurdish politics. See https://
www.ft.com/content/12733aa0-5328-11e1-8aa1-00144feabdc0?mhq5j=e1.
83. These were twenty-two mostly monthly meetings that took place in Imrali
Prison between February 23 2013 and March 14, 2015. See Öcalan, Demokratik
Kurtulus.
84. BDP was a Kurdish-interests centered party which had effective municipal rep-
resentations in Kurdish towns and cities. It gave birth to the HDP with the goal
of reaching out larger Turkish population with a demand of peace enhanced
with progressive rights and freedoms for all. Now jailed co-leader of the
HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, was originally the leader of the BDP.
85. A. Öcalan “Hakikat komisyonu marta kadar kurulmali” [“The truth commis-
sion has to be created by March”], Bianet, December 6, 2010.
86. Öcalan, Demokratik Kurtulus, 145.
87. Ibid., 17.
88. Ibid., 160. Urfa is identified as one.
89. Ibid., 154. He singles out Taraf (a left-liberal) and Zaman (pro-Cemaat), both
of which were banned after July 15, 2016. It is still not possible to reach their
digital archives.
24 K. F. TOKTAMIS

90. Specifically, Diyarbakır and Siirt and many drug operations carried out by local
security forces.
91. Öcalan, Demokratik Kurtulus, 445.
92. Ibid., 123.
93. Noted on some occasion in Ibid., 125–130.
94. Ibid., 127.
95. Ibid., 20.
96. Ibid., 41.
97. Ibid., 123.
98. Ibid., 110.
99. Ibid., 90.
100. Ibid., 107. However, it should be noted that each time Öcalan refers to the “par-
allel state,” he does not necessarily mean Cemaat. Often, he uses the same term
to identify NATO, global imperial forces or some other historical dynamics.
Since July 15, 2016, the AKP regime only refers to Cemaat, as the Parallel.
101. Ibid., 108.
102. Ibid., 123.
103. Ibid., 126.
104. Ibid., 127.
105. Ibid., 145.
106. Ibid., 155. In statements like this Öcalan occasionally implied that, as part of the
negotiations, he is in close contacts with the head of the MIT who is his nego-
tiating partner in the process.
107. Ibid., 153.
108. Ibid., 231.
109. Ibid., 233.
110. Ibid., 156.
111. Ibid., 177–180.
112. Ibid., 198.
113. Ibid., 264–265.
114. Ibid., 274.
115. Ibid., 443.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Pratt Institute Faculty Development Fund for its
support.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by Pratt Institute Faculty Development Fund: [Grant
Number FY 17/18].
 TURKISH STUDIES 25

Note on contributor
Kumru F. Toktamis is Associate Professor of Political Sociology in the Department of
Social Sciences and Cultural Studies of the Pratt Institute, where she is also the coor-
dinator of the Cultural Studies Minor. She is the co-editor of the book Everywhere
Taksim: Sowing the Seeds for a New Turkey at Gezi published by Amsterdam Univer-
sity Press in 2015. Her research focuses on social movements, state formation, ethni-
city, nationalism, and gender politics in Turkey and in the Middle East.

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