Publics, Politics and Participation

(Wang) #1

98 Philosophical Frames


contact that blurred the otherwise rigidly drawn boundaries between the
two antagonistic camps. Kurds were no longer automatically equated with
“terrorists” or “assassins” but took on a more human face for a portion of
the dominant public. Minority cultures started attracting popular interest.
lthough there was a whole range of political or social issues that A
prompted other forms of collective action in the 1990s, it is not an exag-
geration to claim that the Kurdish movement was one of the most mobi-
lizing agendas in Turkey for over a decade.^18 What is important for our
purposes is to note how the public gaze was outstandingly directed to the
novel concerns that emerged once the armed conflict waned.
ith the relaxing of tension in the second half of the 1990s, political W
and social actors, particularly in the southeastern provinces, found them-
selves generating new practices or responding to new demands. Reasoned
or otherwise, debate or negotiation then became inevitable between state
and non-state actors in the region—though the same did not hold on the
national scale. New spaces of interaction were opened up through com-
petition between state institutions and municipalities that were governed,
from 1999 onwards, by Kurdish parties. The latter, following the example
of Islamic parties elsewhere in Turkey, initiated and refined local practices
of democratic governance that brought constituencies, associations and
party members together in deliberative processes. Diyarbakir, the largest
city in southeastern Turkey, became a nexus between the region and the
rest of Turkey, with Turkish intellectuals and activists streaming in to ini-
tiate research, hold joint conferences and engage in social work. An urban
space that had been ravaged by fighting and ideological colonization was
re-appropriated and reinvested by local cultural elements^19 and a public
space of action and interaction was created among a plurality of actors
(both Kurdish and Turkish) where none existed a few years ago. Local
politics acquired a considerable degree of independence from the armed
forces of both camps, creating its own dynamics until very recently.
ikewise, such novel concerns as whether to allow for broadcasting L
in minority languages or to redefine citizenship such that the ethnic term
“Turk” would be replaced by the more encompassing “Türkiyeli” (liter-
ally, “of Turkey”) came to preoccupy the dominant public. The latter was
prompted into debating each unorthodox demand that was generated by
the new practices of solidarity. A public sphere in which the norms and

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