Counterterrorism as a boundary-producing practice: Turkey’s war on the PKK in the 1980s

ABSTRACTThis article aims to demonstrate how counterterrorism tactics abnormalize particular geographic areas by subjectifying communities as elements of this milieu to regulate and control the movements of ‘terrorists.’ Borrowing from Ashley and Campbell, this aspect of counterterrorism calls for it to be viewed as a ‘boundary-producing’ practice. Through a close examination of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Proceedings Journal, which documents parliamentary debates on the Turkish War on Terror in the 1980s, this article discusses how the Southeastern Anatolia Region, where a significant Kurdish population lives, is abnormalized as an unfriendly, bordering, and uncivilized space. As a result, violent acts and policies of the state, such as cross-border operations, mass deportations, and restrictions on civil liberties in the name of developmentalism, have been institutionalized, redrawing the boundaries between the Region and the rest of the country.KEYWORDS: TerrorismTurkeysubjectificationboundaryPKK AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank the editors and reviewers for their constructive feedback and insightful suggestions.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Supplemental dataSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2023.2281035.Notes1. According to the statistics provided by Jacoby (Citation2004, 143–144), ‘within the first seven months of military rule, 122,609 arrests (more than 10,000 in the first week) were made. By the end of January 1981, 215 people had died, 108 had been sentenced to death.’ Among the detainees between September 1980 and February 1983, ‘the government classified 54% as leftists, 25% as unknown, 14% as rightists and 7% as Kurdish separatists’.2. Some of the militants went on hunger strikes while they were detained in protest of the prison administration’s repressive policies. Even a few of them killed themselves. All of these ended up serving as symbols for the Kurdish movement (Kutschera Citation1994).3. Intellectuals’ Hearths was established in 1970 by several nationalist intellectuals and politicians. For the earlier discussions on integration of Turkishness and Islam in the nationalist and Islamist circles, see Çetinsaya (Citation1999).4. Turkish-Islamic Synthesis was created as a reaction to the ‘secular’ nationalist account of Turkish history that was presented in accordance with the Turkish History Thesis and extolled the glory of pre-Ottoman Turkish history. In order to reduce the political influence of Islam and state control over it in the socio-political spheres as part of secularization initiatives, Turkish history was extended to the pre-Islamic past. For more detail, see Coşar (Citation2012).5. One of the catchphrases used by the MHP circles was ‘we are as Turkish as Mount Tanri and as Muslim as Mount Hira’6. As it was recalled by Toprak (Citation2005), it was stated by Agah Oktay Güner, the vice-chairman of the MHP prior to the 1980 Coup d’état, that the ideas of the MHP was in power, even though they were imprisoned. Waxman (Citation2000, 19) also points out that the putschists appointed some of the key figures in the Intellectuals’ Hearths, particularly in the education sector, with the goal of ‘reintegration of Islamic values into public education in order to strengthen national unity.’7. On the other hand, it is also critical to keep in mind the PKK’s ‘forced conscription’ policies regarding the inhabitants of isolated villages. According to Aydın and Emrence (Citation2015, 25), the PKK might have recruited up to 1500 militants with the aid of ‘forced conscription,’ and in the early 1990s, ‘in Diyarbakır alone, more than thirty recruits were joining the rebel ranks each day.’8. The harsh policies of the Turkish government and army, according to Abdullah Öcalan’s brother Osman Öcalan, aided in the recruitment of militants: ‘We have to thank Turkey. We won half of the town of Cizre [by our own efforts], the other half has been presented to us on a silver plate’ (as cited in Bozarslan Citation2001, 47). Marcus (Citation2007, 45) also mentions a villager’s early encounter with the PKK: ‘In my village, for example, everyone had a relative who had been beaten by the soldiers and the PKK was [stood] against that. The PKK was also against the aghas [wealthy landowners] who would steal everything, even gold off a woman’s neck. After years of being repressed, suddenly there was something and everyone ran to the PKK.’9. Tedhiş is a Turkish word that also means terror. The term tedhiş was interchangeable with terror throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Today, tedhiş is seldom used in everyday Turkish.10. According to figures provided by Bozarslan (Citation2001, 45), almost three million people were evicted from their homes, and around 1800 villages and hamlets, and around 6200 settlements were destroyed.11. According to Öcalan, 300 to 350 militants were added to the ranks every three months for a total of 15.000 (Aydın and Emrence Citation2015).Additional informationNotes on contributorsTuncer BeyribeyTuncer Beyribey is a researcher who received his PhD degree in International Relations from Marmara University, Istanbul, in 2021. He was research assistant at the Marmara University and a visiting researcher at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris. His research interests include the genealogy of the discourse of terrorism in Turkey and Foucauldian analysis of political and state violence.