‘My Muslim Kurdish brother’: colonial rule and Islamist governmentality in the Kurdish region of Turkey

Mehmet Kurt

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2019, vol. 21, issue 3, 350-365

Abstract: This article critically examines the role of Islamist state discourse and policies in the Kurdish region of Turkey. Academic works on Islamism often address settings where Islamist movements and political parties operate as anti-colonial and oppositional entities. However, this article discusses how Islamist ideology has become an instrument of governmentality to maintain and legitimize colonial rule in the Kurdish region of Turkey under the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP). After contextualizing the Kurdish issue as an internal colonization process since the beginning of the Turkish Republic, the paper focuses on the AKP period to analyse the use of an Islamic discourse of unity and brotherhood and attempts to foster the rise of a loyal conservative civil society among the Kurds. Thus, it argues that the internal colonial paradigm remains fully relevant to analysis of the Kurdish issue during the last decade and that neoliberal Islamist governmentality should be understood as a strategy complementary to repression, to increase popular support for the government and marginalize opposition.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19448953.2018.1497757 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:21:y:2019:i:3:p:350-365

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjsb20

DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2018.1497757

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies is currently edited by Professor Vassilis Fouskas

More articles in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().