CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Istanbul Sehir University Repository TRANSFORMATION OF KURDISH ISLAMISTS: THE CASE OF FREE-CAUSE PARTY OF TURKEY TUĞBA YAŞAROĞLU İSTANBUL ŞEHİR UNIVERSITY FEBRUARY 2015 TRANSFORMATION OF KURDISH ISLAMISTS: THE CASE OF FREE-CAUSE PARTY OF TURKEY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF İSTANBUL ŞEHİR UNIVERSITY BY TUĞBA YAŞAROĞLU IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN MODERN TURKISH STUDIES FEBRUARY 2015 ABSTRACT Transformation of Kurdish Islamism: the Case of Free-Cause Party of Turkey Yaşaroğlu, Tuğba MA, Department of Modern Turkish Studies Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Hüseyin Alptekin February 2015, 136 pages Kurdish issue has been one of the most important and problematic topics in Turkish politics. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the official policy of the state has been built on propagation of secularism and Turkish nationalism for the foundation and continuation of a homogeneous nation-state. Therefore ethnic as well as religious groups have been suppressed with both violent and nonviolent methods for decades. Kurdish Islamists have been the greatest victims of such social engineering and suppression. Until the 1990s some manifestations of Kurdish Islamists appeared time to time. Nonetheless, with Kurdish Hezbollah’s operations, Kurdish Islamism’s political formation emerged. Hezbollah appealed to violence and adopted armed struggle and then was abolished and went underground in the early 2000s. However, its mass base has continued to redefine and reorganize themselves with non-governmental organizations and social platforms. After the ban on the community’s most important social organization Mustazaflar Hareketi, it decided to carry its activities to the formal political sphere. Therefore, in 2012 the Free Cause Party was established and started to manifest Kurdish peoples’ problems with an Islam-centered agenda. This thesis aims to analyze Kurdish Islamists’ transformation with a special reference to the moderation theory. Key Words: Islamism, nationalism, political parties, the Kurdish question, moderation theory. v ÖZ Kürt İslamcılığının Dönüşümü: Hür Dava Partisi Örneği Yaşaroğlu, Tuğba MA, Modern Türkiye Çalışmaları Bölümü Tez Danışmanı: Yrd. Doç. Dr. Hüseyin Alptekin Şubat 2015, 136 sayfa Kürt meselesi Türkiye siyasetinin en önemli ve bir o kadar da problemli konularından biridir. Cumhuriyet’in kurulmasından beri devletin resmi siyaseti Türk milliyetçiliği ve sekülerliğin topluma kazandırılarak homojen bir ulus-devlet düzeninin oluşturulması ve devamıdır. Bu nedenle etnik gruplar ve öncelikli olarak inanç toplulukları uzun yıllar baskı görmüştür. Siyasi oluşumları yeni olsa da Kürt İslamcıları bu mühendislik ve baskı ortamının başlıca mağdurlarından olagelmiştir. 1990’lara kadar çeşitli şekillerde Kürt İslamcılığının tezahürleri görülse de, Hizbullah’ın etkinlikleriyle Kürt İslamcılığının siyasi oluşumu kendini gün yüzüne çıkarmış; şiddet, tehdit ve silahlı mücadele yolunu benimseyen Hizbullah, 2000’lerin başında bitirilmiş yahut yer altına inmek zorunda bırakılmıştır. Bununla beraber hitap ettiği topluluklar kendilerini STK ve platformlar üzerinden tanımlamaya ve organizasyonlarını biçimlendirmeye devam etmiştir. Bu topluluk 2012’de Hür Dava Partisi’nin (Hüda-Par) kurulmasıyla kendini siyasi olarak da ifade etmeye ve Kürt toplumunun problemlerini İslam merkezli olarak ortaya koymaya başladı. Elinizdeki tez Kürt İslamcılığı’nın dönüşümünü ılımlılaşma teorisi üzerinden incelemeyi hedeflemektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: İslamcılık, milliyetçilik, siyasi partiler, Kürt meselesi, ılımlılaşma teorisi. vi To my parents… vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work could not be accomplished without the help and support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude and deepest appreciation to my supervisor Assist. Prof. Hüseyin Alptekin, who spent his valuable time by reading my drafts several times, commenting and guiding me for a better work. Second, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Burhanettin Duran for introducing me to the topic and guiding me for drawing the structure of this work. I also would like to thank Assist. Prof. Talha Köse and Assist. Prof. Mehmet Akif Kayapınar for their useful comments. Throughout the process, Istanbul Şehir University’s Office of Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences provided me with necessary guidance and made their best for me to overcome the problems I had. I would like to express my gratitude for their work. I owe my family a debt of gratitude for their patience and support while I was thinking, reading about and writing this thesis. They listened to me when I needed, they encouraged me when I hesitated, and they motivated me when I felt unable to think, read, and write. For the past year, they made a lot of things for me to ease the process and work comfortably. Without them, I could not have been survived the times of crisis and completed this work. Therefore, I would like to express my special thanks to my father -Asım Yaşaroğlu-, my mother –Emine Yaşaroğlu-, and my sisters Büşra and Elif Yaşaroğlu. I would like to thank my friends Fatma Betül Acun, Cahide Nur Cünük, Elif Yardımcı, Büşra Acun, Elif Zaim, Emine Turgut, Nur Hilal Vural, Mücahide Esra Yabacıoğlu, Zehra Sarıhan, Selma Yaşa, Hadice Meryem Okumuş, Ayşe Topçu, Kamil Öz, Sinem Seval Tolun, Hanife Or, Zehra Özdil Arıkan, Abdulgani Yıldırım and Osman Şenlik for their help, support and care. I would also like to thank Beyza Kaya, my manager at work, for letting me take leave of absence whenever I needed without a moment of hesitation and encouraging me to complete my classes and thesis. Last but not least in importance, I would like to thank the participants in my interviews, Mr. Said Şahin, Mr. Mehmet Yavuz, Mrs. Aynur Sülün and Mr. Faruk Bildirici who gave me the opportunity to pose my questions and shared their valuable opinions with me. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................................................................ v Öz ................................................................................................................................ vi Dedication ................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... viii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................ ix List of Figures ............................................................................................................ xi List of Tables ............................................................................................................. xii List of Abbreviations................................................................................................. xiii CHAPTER 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. The Hypothesis .................................................................................................. 3 1.2. The Methodology .............................................................................................. 4 2. Moderation Literature .............................................................................................. 6 2.1. Definitions ......................................................................................................... 6 2.2. Moderation Theory ............................................................................................ 8 2.3. Moderation in Islamist Groups ………………………………………………10 2.4. Moderation in Islamist Context in Turkey ...................................................... 13 3. Islamism and Nationalism in Turkey .................................................................... 18 3.1. Definitions of Islamism .................................................................................. 18 3.2. Islamism and Nationalism in the Turn of the 20th Century ........................... 21 3.3. Transformation of the State and Responses of Turkish and Kurdish Nationalists and Islamists ....................................................................................... 24 3.3.1. Kurdish Nationalism and Its Sources ................................................... 24 3.3.2. Transformation of the Turkish State .................................................... 27 3.3.3. Islamism in the Republican Turkey ..................................................... 31 3.3.4. The Kurdish Issue and the Kurdish Islamism ..................................... 37 3.4. Islamism and Kurdish Cause in Contemporary Turkey ................................. 41 3.5. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 49 4. Turkey’s Hezbollah ............................................................................................... 50 4.1. The Ideal of Islamic State and Its Reflections on Turkey’s Hezbollah .......... 50 4.2. The Foundation of Turkish Hezbollah ........................................................... 55 4.3. Operations and Ideas ....................................................................................... 61 4.4. The Hezbollah’s Valuable Loneliness ...........................................................