Talk: “Inclusive Citizenship and Societal Reconciliation in Turkey’s Kurdish Issue”
by
Prof. Dr. Ayşe Betül Çelik
Sabancı University
Wednesday, December 26, 12:30 p.m.
FEASS Building, A-130
Abstract:
Inasmuch as the talks between the Turkish state and the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK, Kurdish Workers’ Party) and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, tended to dominate the public discussions during Turkey’s so-called Kurdish Opening, concerns for reconciliatory mechanisms – especially in some form of confronting the past initiatives – have also been publically voiced. However, despite these efforts not much has been done to address various issues of reconciliation in Turkey. Using Turkey’s Kurdish issue as an example, this paper discusses how ethnic conflicts produce problems at multiple levels of relations in multi-ethnic societies, and how lack of societal reconciliatory moves can feed into the failure of peace processes by bridging the literature on inclusive democracy and reconciliation. Even though the peace process in Turkey failed due to various other reasons, this study aims to show that lack of reconciliatory moves at the societal level also supported the failure.
Short Bio:
Prof. Dr. Ayşe Betül Çelik received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2002 and teaches at the Conflict Analysis and Resolution M.A. Program at Sabanci University in Istanbul. Her work focuses on ethnicity, forced migration, reconciliation, civil society and gender in peacebuilding in theory and Turkey’s Kurdish Issue as a case study. Some of her works appeared in journals like Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Refugee Studies, Security Dialogue, Patterns of Prejudice, and International Journal of Intercultural Relations.