261
O N T O L O G I C A L  ( I N ) S E C U R I T Y 
A N D  T H E  K U R D I S H  I S S U E 
I N  T U R K E Y :  T H E  U S E  O F 
S E C U R I T Y  D I S C O U R S E 
( 1 9 2 5 ‒ 1 9 8 4 )
G ö k ç e  B a l a b a n
Introduction
There is separatism in every field in our country. The most pervasive one 
among those is the one that is made under Kurdism.1
How could one account for the discourse of security used by Turk-
ish state elites considering the Kurdish issue before 1984, when terror-
ist attacks by the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistani (PKK) had not yet be-
gun, and hence there was no physical security threat against the state?2 
This article aims to answer this question from the perspective of on-
tological (in)security. According to ontological security theory, actors 
do not only seek physical security (such as the security of their body 
or territory), but they also strive for the security of their identity. To 
be ontologically secure, agents’ self-identity should have certainty and 
continuity over time.3 The actors’ self is maintained through autobio-
1  Türkiye’de Yıkıcı ve Bölücü Akımlar [Destructive and Seperatist Movements in Turkey] 
(Ankara: Kara Kuvvetleri Komutanlığı Yayınları, 1982), 43.
2 The PKK is a separatist group that was formed with the idea of establishing an independent 
Kurdistan state in the Northern Kurdistan region. To this end, it started a terror campaign in 
1984 in the south-eastern and eastern regions of Turkey.
3 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (London: Standford University Press, 
1990).
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P o L I G r A f I
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graphical narratives – stories they tell to and about themselves4, which 
give life to routinized practices.5 Based on this approach, the article 
contends that after the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925, the constitut-
ing traits of Kurdish collective identity, such as the tribal and religious 
structure in the Kurdish region, and the Kurdish language, started to 
generate uncertainty in Turkish self-identity because these characteris-
tics of Kurdishness disrupted and challenged the narratives about being 
a Turk. Uncertainty created ontological insecurity, which led to the use 
of security discourse by the state and the securitization of the traits of 
Kurdish identity.6 Securitization also provided a legitimate basis for ex-
traordinary measures like resettlement policies, imprisoning those who 
expressed their Kurdish identity, banning the use of the Kurdish lan-
guage, and so on. Through securitization, state elites aimed to reinstate 
ontological security because it is through those extraordinary measures 
that Kurdish identity claims were suppressed, and this suppression 
served to strengthen the certainty and continuity of the Turkish self. 
This article will analyze both securitization (i.e. how Kurdishness was 
associated with the discourse of security), and its results (i.e. the ex-
traordinary measures taken with regard to the Kurdish issue).
Taking 1925 as its starting point, this article concentrates on state 
discourses/practices in the Kurdish issue between 1925 and 1984, when 
there was no terrorism or direct security threat against the state, but 
the use of security discourse in the Kurdish issue was still high on the 
political agenda. This period will also be analysed in two sub-periods: 
first between 1925 and 1960, and second between 1960‒1984. Before 
1960, the state usually securitized the tribal and religious structures 
of Kurds since it saw those structures as important carriers of Kurdish 
4  Jelena Subotic, “Narrative, ontological Security and foreign Policy Change,” Foreign 
Policy Analysis 12, no. 4 (october 2016): 611.
5  Brent J. Steele, Ontological Security in International Relations (London: routledge, 2008). 
6  Securitization occurs when an issue is presented as a security issue by state-elites. Accord-
ing to Weaver, security is a speech-act, meaning that it has a performative function. By uttering 
the word “security” state-elites move a particular development –in this case the Kurdish issue– 
into a specific area and claim a special right to use whatever means necessary to block it. See ole 
Weaver, “Securitization and Desecuritization,” in On Security, ed. ronnie D. Lipschutz (New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 46‒86.
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identity.7 This traditional structure started to lose its grip among Kurds 
after the second half of the 1950s, and new Kurdish intelligentsia, who 
emphasized their Kurdishness more vocally, rose in the city centers. 
Thus, what is seen in state discourse after 1960 is the association of the 
claims of Kurdishness and speaking/writing in Kurdish to the discourse 
of security by the state elites. from this perspective, it can be said that 
this study engages in a retrospective analysis and tries to explore his-
torical discourses through a new lens. The article, however, should not 
only be considered historical research which aims to re-evaluate the 
past. The historical background presented herein could also shed light 
on the securitization of the Kurdish issue in today’s political discourse. 
After all, ontological insecurity of the state was not replaced with physi-
cal security considerations when the terror attacks started in 1984. on 
the contrary, the PKK’s separatist claims further generated ontological 
insecurity for Turkey because it disrupted the Turkish narrative, which 
envisaged Muslim groups assimilating into Turkishness through reli-
gious bonds.8 Thus, this article could make a contribution to one’s un-
derstanding of the Kurdish issue by bringing in the ontological security 
perspective for ontological (in)security concerns of the Turkish state 
have always been an active force in shaping state discourses and prac-
tices regarding the Kurdish issue.
The ontological insecurity of the Turkish state vis-à-vis Kurdish 
identity will be traced through Critical Discourse Analysis methodol-
7  one thing should be noted here: “security” as a term started to be used in political dis-
course after the 1960 coup d’etat in Turkey. Before that time, there was no direct reference to 
security in the state discourse vis-à-vis the Kurdish issue. However, as this article tries to show, 
Kurdish political and religious structures were always constituted as “obstacles” against the ide-
als of the republic and hence were portrayed as threats against the identity of the new regime. 
As it will be demonstrated, one could also see that Kurdish tribal chieftains had been labelled 
as persons threatening the peace in their region and damaging national interests in the state dis-
course before national security terminology was popularized. for the history of national secu-
rity terminology in Turkey see Gencer Özcan, “Türkiye’de Milli Güvenlik Kavramının Gelişimi 
[The Development of the Concept of National Security in Turkey],” in Türkiye’de Ordu, Devlet 
ve Güvenlik Siyaseti [Military, State and Security Politics in Turkey], eds. İsmet Akça and Evren 
Balta Paker (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2010), 307‒351.
8  for terrorist attacks’ triggering ontological insecurity see Amir Lupovici, “ontological 
Dissonance, Clashing Identities, and Israel’s Unilateral Steps towards the Palestinians,” Review 
of International Studies 38, no. 4 (october 2012): 824.
P o L I G r A f I
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ogy (CDA), with a specific focus on the “discourse historical approach” 
of reisigl and Wodak9, and the “social actor network” model of Theo 
Van Leeuwen.10 Accordingly, the article applies CDA to the discourses 
used by the Turkish state officials/institutions vis-à-vis the Kurdish is-
sue. Here the article should also clarify which texts are chosen for analy-
sis and why, and how those texts are analyzed. 
To address the first question, the article relies on the classification 
of “fields of action” used by reisigl and Wodak.11 Accordingly, “fields 
of action” are “the segments of the societal reality, which contribute to 
constituting the ‘frame’ of the discourse.”12 In terms of political action, 
reisigl and Wodak define several fields of action which consist of dif-
ferent genres that altogether establish political discourses. The focus in 
this article will be on the political/executive/judiciary administration 
fields13 and the field of law-making procedure, which includes different 
genres such as official reports prepared by state bureaucrats, speeches of 
heads of governments, laws, judicial decisions and prosecution charges. 
Analyzing various texts written/spoken by different agents and institu-
tions of the state gives the reader an overall picture of state discourse on 
the Kurdish issue and helps to trace intertextuality between different 
state documents. Yet, since all texts could not be analyzed, specific focus 
will be on the texts that were written in “critical situations” which refer 
to the times when the institutionalized routines and self-identity of the 
state were disturbed.14 focusing on critical situations may give more 
insight on the state’s approach towards the Kurdish issue as it is at those 
times that the state felt ontologically insecure and to overcome this, 
legitimized extraordinary measures by new discursive practices. 
9  Martin reisigl and ruth Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and 
Anti-Semitism (London: routledge, 2011).
10  Theo V. Leeuwen, Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Analysis (New York: oxford 
University Press, 2008).
11  reisigl and Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination, 35‒41.
12  reisigl and Wodak, Discourse and Discrimination, 36.
13  In reisigl and Wodak’s work, this field is defined as political/executive administration only, 
yet since the judiciary is actively used to “manage” the Kurdish issue in Turkey, I also added the 
judiciary field to the analysis.
14  Steele, Ontological Security, 12. As it will be demonstrated, in the Kurdish issue, critical 
situations happened when Kurds emphasized their self-identity as a separate identity from the 
Turkish one and hence disturbed the autobiographical narrative of the state.
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With regards to the second question, the discourse analysis con-
ducted in this article integrates the socio-historical background of the 
texts (the context which rendered the texts possible), and the discursive 
strategies employed in them. As for the latter, the focus of analysis will 
be on referential strategies (how actors are represented), predicational 
strategies (what traits are attributed to those actors), and argumentation 
strategies (with which argumentation or legitimization are actors repre-
sented as they are in the texts). These strategies are important because 
they can demonstrate how Kurds are represented and how this specific 
representation was constituted as a threat against the Turkish self in the 
official discourse. 
on the referential strategy side, the article relies on Van Leeuwen’s 
“social actor network model” which presents an extensive analysis of 
how actors are included and excluded in the texts15. Considering the 
limits of the article, exclusion will be the center of attention because, 
as it will be seen, it is mainly through excluding Kurdish identity that 
the Turkish self aimed to overcome its ontological insecurity. Exclu-
sion, according to Leeuwen, could take two forms: suppression and 
backgrounding.16 Suppression happens when there is no reference to 
the social actor in question in the text; backgrounding happens when 
excluded actors may not be mentioned in a related action but they are 
mentioned elsewhere in the text.17 In addition to showing the exclusion 
of Kurdish identity in state discourse, the article will also show what 
characteristics are attributed to Kurdish identity and how those traits 
are associated with the discourse of security.
The article begins by explaining the theory of ontological (in)secu-
rity with a particular focus on why it is used to understand state-minor-
ity group relations. The second part briefly explores what Turkishness 
meant to the state elites during the establishment years, and thus shows 
how the Turkish self was constructed. This is necessary to understand 
how and why Kurdish identity was perceived and constituted as a threat 
to Turkish identity after the Sheikh Said rebellion. The third part ana-
15  Leeuwen, Discourse and Practice, 23‒55.
16  Leeuwen, Discourse and Practice, 28‒32.
17  Leeuwen, Discourse and Practice, 29.
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lyzes the securitization of the tribal and religious structure of Kurds 
between 1925 and 1960, which resulted in the resettlement of local no-
tables within the country. The final part focuses on the securitization of 
Kurdish identity between 1960 and 1984. In this period, Kurds began 
to more vocally emphasize their Kurdishness, and this induced anxiety 
and generated ontological insecurity for the state. Since the source of 
the threat was the reiteration of Kurdish identity, the state constantly 
pressured those actors who were vocal in the Kurdish issue using tri-
als, detentions and as will be seen, by banning the use of the Kurdish 
language.
Theoretical background: ontological (in)security 
The roots of ontological security lie in psychoanalysis and the term 
was first used by psychiatrist ronald David Laing. According to Laing, 
an ontologically secure person is one who has a “sense of his presence 
as alive, whole and, in a temporal sense a continuous person.”18 An 
ontologically insecure person, on the other hand, “lacks the experience 
of his own temporal continuity and his/her identity and autonomy is 
under question.”19 Thus, for Laing two points come into prominence 
in defining ontological security: first, a person’s sense of being as an 
entity will not be questioned; and second, this sense of being will have 
continuity in time. Continuity of self was also emphasized by Anthony 
Giddens, who further elaborated on the concept.20 for Giddens, con-
tinuity is important because it provides the consistency crucial for self-
identity.21 Based on this, Giddens describes ontological security as the 
“confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their 
self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and mate-
rial environments of action.”22
18 ronald D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (London: 
Penguin Books, 1990), 42.
19  Laing, The Divided Self, 42.
20  Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age 
(London: Standford University Press, 1991).
21  Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 92.
22  Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 92.
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Both Laing and Giddens make an individual level analysis and use the 
concept to understand insecurities experienced by individuals. Starting 
from the early 2000s, the concept began to be used by Ir scholars, who 
mostly applied the concept to the state level to understand the foreign 
policy behavior of states. Among those, Mitzen’s and Steele’s works are 
particularly important due to their role in shaping ontological security 
literature in Ir.23 Deriving from the works of Giddens, both schol-
ars emphasize states’ need to have consistent, stable concepts of self. 24 
The stability and continuity of identity crucial for ontological security 
is provided by routines which stabilize identities, and which produce 
trust among the states.25 The disruption of routines generates anxiety, 
which leads to a disconnect from the self and hence becomes a source 
of ontological insecurity.26 Someone who suffers from anxiety must re-
form behavior in order to regenerate ontological security.
Despite those common points, Steele’s and Mitzen’s works diverge 
on the role of “external others” in the constitution of state identity. 
Mitzen takes an externalist approach and emphasizes the role of “oth-
ers” in the formation of state identity and self-concepts within inter-
national society. on the other hand, Steele focuses on the internal dy-
namics of identity formation within the state. According to this view, a 
state’s conception of its self-identity is “constructed internally through 
the development of autobiographical narratives, which are the narra-
tives about self.”27 It is through those narratives that states link a policy 
to the conception of self and give their actions a meaning consistent 
with their identity.28 The autobiographical narrative stabilizes the sense 
of self and provides continuity and certainty for identity. When a state 
23  Jennifer Mitzen, “ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security 
Dilemma,” European Journal of International Relations, 12, no. 3 (September 2006): 341‒370; 
Brent J. Steele, “ontological Security and the Power of Self-Identity: British and the American 
Civil War,” Review of International Studies 31, no. 3 (September 2005): 519‒540.
24  Mitzen, “ontological Security,” 344; Steele, Ontological Security, 3.
25  Steele, Ontological Security, 3, 51; Steele, “ontological Security and the Power of Self-
Identity,” 526; Mitzen, “ontological Security in World Politics,” 346‒347.
26  Steele, Ontological Security, 52.
27  Will K. Delehanty and Brent J. Steele, “Engaging the Narrative in ontological (In)Secu-
rity Theory: Insights from feminist Ir,” Cambridge Review of International Studies 22, no. 3 
(September 2009): 523.
28  Steele, Ontological Security, 10‒11.
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acts incongruently with its autobiographical narrative, it experiences 
shame, which also generates ontological insecurity along with anxiety.29 
Since this article analyzes Turkish ontological (in)security within do-
mestic politics, it focuses on how Turkishness was constituted internally 
through autobiographical narratives, rather than its intersubjective for-
mation vis-à-vis external others.
In both Steele and Mitzen’s analyses, the state is granted personhood 
and the individual level is projected onto the state level. Thus, ontologi-
cal security in those analyses is used to understand the relations between 
states. one may then ask whether it is appropriate to use ontological 
security to understand state – minority group relations, as is the aim of 
this article. To start with, it should be mentioned that the idea of “state 
as level of analysis” has also been found problematic by some scholars30 
who maintain that it is not the states or collective actors, but rather in-
dividuals living in the community who feel and experience ontological 
insecurity. This article, on the other hand, ascribes self-identity to the 
Turkish nation-state, but analyzes its ontological insecurity towards a 
minority group within the domestic context. This is not pointless when 
one looks at Jef Huysmans’ pioneering work on the topic31. According 
to Huysmans, the role of the state is not only to mediate threats but 
also to mediate chaos, and the latter could be realized by giving mean-
ing and intelligibility to relations with others and by bringing order to 
the environment, whereby an “acceptable degree of certainty” could be 
achieved32. However, strangers both inside and outside a society may ar-
ticulate ambivalence and challenge the ordering activity, which relies on 
reducing uncertainty.33 Thus, those strangers create the very chaos that 
states attempt to eliminate as a possibility. Since, according to Huys-
29  Steele, Ontological Security, 10‒11.
30  Alanna Krolikowski, “State Personhood in ontological Security Theories of International 
relations and Chinese Nationalism: A Skeptical View,” The Chinese Journal of International 
Politics 2, no. 1 (July 2008): 190‒133; Stuart Croft, “Constructing ontological Insecurity: 
The Insecuritization of Britain’s Muslims,” Contemporary Security Policy 33, no. 2 (June 2012): 
219‒235.
31  Jef Huysmans, “Security! What Do You Mean? from Concept to Thick Signifier,” Euro-
pean Journal of International Relations 4, no. 2 (June 1998): 226‒255.
32  Huysmans, “Security!,” 241.
33  Huysmans, “Security!,” 241.
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mans, the mediation of order and chaos defines ontological security, 
those elements (insider and outsider strangers) which are ambivalent 
and which create uncertainty, hence challenging ontological security, 
must be eliminated, possibly through enemy construction in the lan-
guage.34 Thus, ontological insecurity experienced by the state leads to 
the securitization of strangers inside and outside society. from this per-
spective then, it is not inconsequential to use an ontological security 
framework to understand the Turkish state’s (self-identity) securitiza-
tion of the traits of Kurdish identity –“strangers” that are inside society.
The Turkish self in the early republican period
In order to understand actors’ ontological security-providing behav-
iors, it is necessary to focus on their “formative stages of life” because, 
as Giddens mentions, it is at these times that basic trust, which refers to 
agents’ confidence in the continuity of others, and self-identity emerg-
es.35 This article takes Turkey’s formative stages as the early republican 
period of the 1920s and 1930s, where there were various efforts to es-
tablish self-identity through constituting biographical narratives.
A close look at state discourses and practices in the 1920s and 1930s 
demonstrates that the main pillar of Turkishness was the religion of 
Islam. The first indications of the link between Turkishness and Islam 
could be seen during the period of the War of Independence between 
1919 and 1922. In this time period it appears that the Turkish nation 
referred to all Muslim communities living in the ottoman Empire. 
A parliamentary discussion in 1920 reveals this situation clearly. The 
deputy Abdulaziz Mecdi Efendi requested that parliament clarify the 
meaning of Turk. His question and the reactions from parliament are 
enlightening and aid in the understanding of the role of Islam in defin-
ing Turkishness:
As far as I understand, whenever Turkish history was mentioned in this 
platform, what is meant is various Islamic groups such as Turks, Kurds, Cir-
cassians, Laz, isn’t it? (The crowd shouts yes, it is, applauds). If this is not what 
34  Huysmans, “Security!,” 242.
35  Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity, 38.
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Turk means, I request the wording of Islamic elements instead of Turk during 
the speeches.36 
The discussion reveals that the name Turk was used as an umbrella 
identity for all Muslim groups living in the country right before the 
foundation of the republic. This belief also continued in the early re-
publican period and the new Turkish state saw the Muslim majority 
as its societal ground.37 Another important consequence of this was 
that Kemalists started to view all Anatolian Muslims as Turks, an idea 
which would start the assimilation of non-Turkish Muslim groups into 
Turkishness.38
Yet, Islam was not the only criteria used to define Turkishness. The 
discourses and practices of the period reveal that language and culture 
were other essential elements of the Turkish self. Language and culture 
were seen as the cornerstones of the nation by influential thinkers such 
as Ziya Gökalp, whose ideas influenced the Kemalist elites in the 1920s. 
for him a nation “is not a racial or ethnic or geographic or political or 
volitional entity but is composed of individuals who share a common 
language, religion, morality and aesthetics; that is to say, of those who 
have received the same education.”39 Thus, for Gökalp, one could be ac-
cepted as a Turk if she is educated as a Turk, she could express herself in 
Turkish, and she shares the Turkish ideal.40 In other words, for Gökalp, 
a nation is socialization through language and culture.
Gökalp’s ideas can be traced in the state discourses of the 1920s and 
1930s. The speech of Hamdullah Suphi, who was an influential spokes-
man of Turkish nationalism in the late ottoman and early republi-
can period, during the parliamentary debate of Article 88 of the 1924 
Constitution reveals the importance of language in Turkishness. Suphi 
36  TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi [Turkish Grand Assembly, Minutes of Debates], Vol. 2, Session 10 
(December 1920): 170.
37  Özlem Kaygusuz, “Modern Türkiye Vatandaşlığının Erken Öncülleri: Milli Mücadele 
Döneminde Vatandaşlığın Kuruluşu [The Early Antecedents of Modern Turkish Citizenship: 
The Construction of National Citizenship in National Struggle],” Ankara Üniversitesi SBF Der-
gisi 60, no. 2 (2005): 195‒217.
38  Soner Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk (oxon: 
routledge, 2006), 102.
39  Ziya Gökalp, The Principles of Turkism (n.p.: Bill Archive, 1968), 15.
40  Gökalp, The Principles of Turkism, 16.
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was against the categorization of Greeks and Armenians as Turks, since 
essentially they were not Turks. Yet, there was a way to become a Turk:
Someone (meaning a Jew), an old friend of mine, asked me “Could you 
please tell me, how can I become a Turk?” I said, “You can become a Turk.” As 
long as Jews, who were expelled from Spain and came here with Spanish, ac-
cept (Turkish) language of the country…they could be Turks…Adopt Turkish 
culture. After that, we can call you Turk.41 
Thus, according to Suphi, one could become a Turk if he/she speaks 
Turkish and adopts Turkish culture. 
Although Gökalp’s idea of nation was inclusionary, Kemalist nation-
alism took a more exclusionary character in the 1930s when ethnicity 
and race became important traits of Turkishness. The distinctiveness 
and superiority of the Turkish race vis-à-vis other nations was the domi-
nant discourse of the 1930s and via legal amendments, ethnic Turks 
were made the privileged group within the nation.42
Lastly, modernization understood as Westernization could also 
be considered an important pillar of Turkishness in the early repub-
lican period. As Keyman and Özkırımlı mention, “the primary goal 
of Kemalist elite was to ‘reach the contemporary level of civilization’ 
by adopting the main political, economic and ideological elements of 
Western civilization.”43 Indeed, according to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 
this is so crucial that those who ignore civilization (read as Westerni-
zation) “will be drowning by the flood of it.”44 This process of West-
ernization not only started an institutional change but also dictated a 
new “modern” national identity, defined by rationalism, secularism and 
41  TBMM, Zabıt Ceridesi [Turkish Grand Assembly, Minutes of Debates], Vol. 8/1, Session 
42 (April 1924), 909.
42  Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? 
(New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 68‒80. In this period, non-Turks were excluded 
from some important public services such as being a government employee, which demon-
strates the importance of ethnicity in defining Turkishness. See Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism and 
Nationalism.
43  fuat Keyman and Umut Özkırımlı, “The ‘Kurdish Question’ revisited: Modernity, Na-
tionalism and Citizenship in Turkey,” in Understanding Turkey’s Kurdish Question, eds. fevzi 
Bilgin and Ali Sarıhan (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013).
44 The quote is from Atatürk’s speech on the second anniversary of the victory of the War of 
Independence. Atatürk’ün Söylev ve Demeçleri Vol 2. (Ankara: Divan Yayıncılık, 2006).
P o L I G r A f I
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progress. This also meant the removal of old traditions and institutions 
which were mostly defined by religion and Islamic values45. As a result, 
the symbols and institutions that belonged to the ottoman past such 
as tekkes (Islamic monasteries), dervish lodges and Muslim theological 
schools of medreses were removed. Clearly, for Kemalist elites, these re-
ligious institutions were incompatible with their civilizing mission. As 
will be shown in the next section, this would be one of the main reasons 
for division between the Turkish state and Kurds who were strongly at-
tached to religious institutions in their social lives.
ontological (in)security and the securitization of Kurdish tribal      
and religious structure
Having argued that modernity as Westernization was one of the 
pillars of Turkish identity in the early republican period, this section 
analyzes how Kurds’ tribal and religious structure became (and was 
constructed as) a source of ontological insecurity for the Turkish self 
between 1925 and 1960. It will be argued that the Sheikh Said rebel-
lion, which broke out in 1925, was a turning point here: the rebellion 
threatened the security of the new republic, not only in the sense of 
traditional survival logic, but also in the sense of ontological security. 
The rebellion generated ontological insecurity in the Turkish self by 
challenging its stability and certainty. To reinstate ontological security, 
state elites first constructed these elements of Kurdishness (tribal and 
religious structure) as threats against the republic in the discourse and 
later followed assimilationist policies towards Kurds by which they 
aimed to melt those elements of Kurdishness that destabilized Turkish 
self-identity. The resettlement of Kurds was an important part of this 
45  Here, it should be noted that the struggle of the founding elites was not with Islam per se, 
but with the interpretation of it. Aiming for a secular society, Kemalist elites constrained the 
power of religion to organize societal and political affairs. Hence, founding elites politicized 
those societal forces who asked for more of a role for religion in society. They were labelled 
political reactionists who want nothing but a return to seriah rule. The republican regime’s 
self-proclaimed duty here was to protect the “real” Islam (secular, progressive, national) against 
those reactionary forces in the society. for more on this topic, please see Umut Azak, Tükiye’de 
Laiklik ve İslam [Secularism and Islam in Turkey] (İstanbul: İletişim, 2019).
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assimilation policy and this section also focuses on the forced resettle-
ments of Kurds and the legitimization strategies used in those resettle-
ments during the 1920s and 1930s.
After the War of Independence, republican elites pursued national-
ist policies with an intense centralization which resulted in the denial 
of political and social rights to Kurds. Yet, this did not mean that Kurds 
were perceived as “internal others” before 1925. As previously men-
tioned, the new state had been considered an entity for all the Muslim 
elements of Anatolia. A clear shift occurred in the state-elites’ perspec-
tive towards the Kurds after the Sheikh Said rebellion. The rebellion 
led by Sheikh Said quickly spread in south-eastern Anatolia and rebels 
took control of several districts in a short span of time. The rebellion, 
in this sense, threatened the physical security of the state. But, maybe 
equally important, the rebellion also posed a great threat to the onto-
logical security of the state because the rebellion disrupted the consti-
tuting characteristics of Turkish self-identity. As previously stated, the 
decision-makers in the early republican period were in the process of 
constructing Turkey as a modern, secular state. They had also thought 
that Muslim groups could be assimilated into Turkishness due to their 
religious bond and Turkish culture and language could play an impor-
tant role in this assimilation.46 However, the religious character of the 
rebellion against the cultural reforms of the new republic and the fact 
that the rebellion was led by a Muslim group that did not want to be 
assimilated into Turkishness created a serious rupture in the narratives 
of state elites. As a result, the state elites perceived the rebellion as a 
threat to the sense of self and to the Turkishness they were attempting 
to constitute. Thus, there was an existential threat; not only against 
physical security but also against the ontological security of the state.47
A close look at the final decision speech of the chairman of the Court 
of Independence, which worked as criminal courts after the rebellion, 
could be enlightening in this sense:
46  Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism.
47  Gökçe Balaban, “Tracing Turkey’s Security Discourses and Practices vis-à-vis the Kurdish 
Issue” (PhD diss., Middle East Technical University, 2016), 71.
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Your political reaction and rebellion were destroyed immediately by the 
decisive acts of the government of the republic and by the fatal strokes of 
the republican army…Everybody must know that as the young republican 
government will definitely not condone any cursed action like incitement and 
political reactionism, it will prevent this sort of banditry by means of its pre-
cise precautions. The poor people of this region who have been exploited and 
oppressed under the domination of sheikhs and feudal landlords will be freed 
from your incitements and evil and they will follow the efficient paths of our 
republic which promises progress and prosperity.48 
The first thing that could be noticed here is oppositional predica-
tions: while the republic, as an active agent, is presented positively 
as representing “progress and prosperity,” sheikhs and feudal landlords 
are represented negatively, as social “evils” against the ideals of the re-
public. Thus, a difference of identity is constructed here – positive self-
representation vs. negative other representation. What is also notable 
here is that Kurdish identity was not mentioned anywhere in the text 
explicitly and thus suppressed. However, whenever the socio-political 
structure of Kurds is considered, it may be argued that the Kurdish 
identity is hidden in the text rather than excluded. By defining agents 
and processes against the republic as political reactionism, sheikhs and 
feudal landlords, the text implicitly shifts the axis from this particular 
rebellion to Kurdish identity because all these characteristics, namely 
religion, sheikhs, and feudal landlords, were important constituent 
parts of Kurdish political and social identity.49 for one thing, religious 
institutions like medreses and tarikats were important bearers of Kurdish 
national identity.50 Especially, sheikhs of the tarikats became so influ-
ential in the 19th century that they started to arbitrate disputes between 
tribes.51 The tribes and the tribal structure (feudality as expressed in 
48  Ergun Aybars, İstiklal Mahkemeleri (1920‒1927) (İzmir: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Yayınları, 
1998) quoted in M. Yeğen, Müstakbel Türk’ten Sözde Vatandaşa: Cumhuriyet ve Kürtler [from 
Prospective Turk to So-Called Citizen: republic and Kurds] (İstanbul: İletişimYayınları: 2006), 
128, emphasis added.
49  Balaban, “Tracing Turkey’s,” 71.
50  Martin van Bruinessen, “Kurdish Society, Ethnicity, Nationalism and refugee Problems,” 
in The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview, eds. Philip G. Kreyenbroek and S. Sperl (New York: 
routledge, 1992): 33‒67.
51  Bruinessen, “Kurdish Society,” 33‒67.
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the text), on the other hand, had been the most influential political or-
ganization in the Kurdish region for centuries.52 They were the political 
institutions with some measure of territorial integrity. 
Thus, it can be argued that after the Sheikh Said rebellion, Turk-
ish state elites became aware that Kurdish political, social and cultural 
identity would disrupt the biographical continuity of the Turkish state 
and would generate ontological insecurity, because, as the Sheikh Said 
rebellion demonstrated, Kurds did not want to be assimilated into 
Turkishness and into the modernity and secularity of the new state. If it 
was the characteristics of Kurdishness which threatened the ontological 
security of the Turkish self, then to eliminate this threat, those charac-
teristics of Kurdishness that created uncertainty in this self would have 
to be eliminated.53 Therefore, many policies in this period and later on 
aimed to eliminate and/or assimilate the social and cultural traits of 
Kurdish identity. resettlement of the Kurdish population was one of 
those policies whereby state elites wanted to abolish the tribal structure 
and eliminate the power of sheikhs in the region, which were signifi-
cant characteristics of Kurdish identity. Looking into the legitimization 
discourses of resettlement laws also sheds light on how ontological se-
curity concerns of the state played an important role in assimilating the 
Kurdish identity.
The resettlement of Kurds after the Sheikh Said rebellion
After the Sheikh Said rebellion, republican elites started to resettle 
Kurds within the country in which ontological security concerns played 
an important role. This was clear in the reports prepared by the govern-
ment after the rebellion with the purpose of eliminating future threats 
that may arise in the region.
52  Wadie Jwaideh, Kürt Milliyetçiliği’nin Tarihi: Kökenleri ve Gelişimi [The Kurdish National 
Movement: Its origins and Development], trans. İsmail Çekem and Alper Duman (İstanbul: 
İletişim Yayınları, 1999).
53  Balaban, “Tracing Turkey’s,” 72.
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276
In September 1925, the government declared the “reform report 
for the East.”54 According to Article 9 of the report, the people who were 
thought to provoke and support the rebellion, or who were not found 
suitable to reside in the region by the government, would be transferred 
to specified neighborhoods in the west with their families. Immediately 
after the report, local elites and rich landholders were exiled from their 
territories and those territories were either distributed to peasants or 
seized by the Treasury Department.55 What is striking here was that 
most of the deportees had not participated in the rebellion and what 
is more, some had even supported the state against the rebels.56 Thus, 
resettlement could be considered an act of eliminating the power of 
landlords and sheikhs who were important carriers of Kurdish identity. 
Another important resettlement law in this period was law No. 1097 
– Law regarding the Transfer of Certain Persons from the Eastern re-
gions to the Western Provinces - with which the government aimed to 
eliminate the feudal/tribal structure in the East.57 In the justification 
part of the law, it was mentioned that there would be no enlightenment 
and prosperity in the region as long as these people and these groups - 
tribal chieftains and influential families - remained in the region. Here, 
it could again be seen that the republican elites used predication strate-
gies with which they identified the republic with the positive values 
of enlightenment and prosperity against the “backward” character of 
Kurds. The tribal structure was presented as the carrier of this “back-
wardness” which should be dismantled. This logic reasserts the idea 
that one of the primary motives behind the resettlement policies in this 
period was eliminating the political and social characteristics of Kurd-
54  The report is an executive act which specified the policies of the state towards Kurdish 
populated region. for more, please see Mehmet Bayrak, Şark Islahat Planı: Kürtlere Vurulan 
Kelepçe [reform report for the East: Handcuff to Kurds] (İstanbul: Özge Yayınları, 2009).
55  Ercan Çağlayan, Cumhuriyet’in Diyarbakır’da Kimlik İnşası (1923‒1950) [The Identity 
Construction of the republic in Diyarbakır 1923‒1950)] (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2014).
56  Çağlayan, Cumhuriyet’in Diyarbakır’da Kimlik İnşası (1923‒1950).
57  Bazı Eşhasın Şark Menatıkından Garp Vilayetlerine Nakline Dair Kanun [Law regarding 
the transfer of certain persons from the eastern regions to the western provinces], no. 1097, In 
TBMM, Zabıt Ceridesi [Turkish Grand Assembly, Minutes of Debates], Vol. 33, Session 76 
(June 1927), 155‒159.
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ish identity which were threatening the modern/secular identity of the 
new republic. 
The resettlement Law of 1934 was another important population 
transfer move in this period. one of the most important points of the 
law was the suppression of Kurdish identity which was subsumed un-
der Turkish identity.58 In the text, Kurds were described as “nomads 
who are not culturally Turkish”59, “people whose mother tongue is not 
Turkish”60, “people who are not of the Turkish race.”61 Thus, their de-
fining characteristic was lacking Turkishness and this situation should 
be “fixed” by the reorganization of their residency based on loyalty to 
Turkish culture.62 This could be seen as an attempt to restore ontologi-
cal security on the part of the state. By implementing the resettlement 
law, Turkish decision-makers aimed to assimilate Kurdish collective 
identity into Turkishness by detaching Kurds from Kurdish spatiality 
and mixing them with the Turkish population. As a result, Kurds would 
lose their threatening characteristics by being assimilated into the iden-
tity of the Turkish self.
Even though the pressure on tribal structure and sheikhs diminished 
in the later years of the republic, it did not end completely. When-
ever the state elites felt threatened by Kurdish identity, they resorted to 
population policies. one example was the transfer of tribal chieftains 
and sheikhs to a camp in Sivas right after the 1960 coup. A few months 
later, most of them were released except fifty-five tribal chieftains and 
sheikhs who were dominant in the region. With the “Compulsory Set-
tlement Law” issued on 19 october 1960 as an additional law to the 
resettlement Law of 1934, these people were transferred to the western 
part of Turkey.63 In Article 1 of the law, it was mentioned that those 
who were transferred were threatening the peace of residents in the re-
gion and damaging national interests by using religion, traditions and 
58  İskân Kanunu [resettlement Law], no. 2510, Düstur [Code of Laws], Third Set, Vol. 15 
(June 1934), 1156–1175.
59  İskan Kanunu, Article 9.
60  İskan Kanunu, Article 11.
61  İskan Kanunu, Article 7.
62  İskan Kanunu, Article 1.
63  2510 Sayılı İskan Kanuna Kanuna Ek Kanun [Additional Law to the resettlement Law no. 
2510], no. 105 (october 1960).
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foreign ideologies. The clause is important in the sense of labelling the 
Kurdish tribal chieftains as “threats” and agents that challenge peace 
and threaten national interests. In the following years, with the increas-
ing frequency of the use of national security terminology by the elites, 
Kurds’ ethnic consciousness would incrementally be labelled with secu-
rity terms such as “separatism” and “threat”.
Securitization of Kurdish identity between 1960 and 1984
from the perspective of state elites, assimilation seemed to be work-
ing for two decades after the 1930s. There were no rebellions during 
this time period and Kurdishness had not been publicly expressed. The 
silence was broken in 1959 with the “trial of 49s.” In 1959, a group 
of Kurdish students and intellectuals protested a speech made by the 
republican People’s Party representative Asım Eren, who demanded 
the use of violence against Kurds in order to avenge the killings of Tur-
comans in Northern Iraq.64 The students sent a letter of protest to Prime 
Minister Adnan Menderes and signed it “Kurds of Turkey.” While the 
letter created unrest, it was not until the publication of Kurdish intel-
lectual Musa Anter’s poem “Qimil” in a Diyarbakır based magazine 
that the state took action against the signatories and intellectuals. The 
poem was in Kurdish, and was perceived as a satirical critique of the 
state, while it was also believed that the poem emphasized a“national 
revival” of Kurds.65
64  In 1959 there was an attempted coup against General Abdulkerim Kasım, the Prime Min-
ister of Iraq, by Arab General Sevaf. The coup started in Mosoul where Kurds were the majority. 
Abdulkerim Kasım had promised Mustafa Barzani autonomy for Kurds in northern Iraq and 
Barzani’s troops supported Kasım against Sevaf ’s forces. Barzani was successful in suppress-
ing this coup attempt. Later, Barzani harshly repressed the tribes who supported the coup 
and during these events two Turcomans were killed by Barzani’s forces. See Ayşe Hür, “Kımıl 
olayından 49’lar Davasına [from the Event of Quimil to the Case of 49s],” Hak Söz Haber, 
September 13, 2008, https://www.haksozhaber.net/kimil-olayindan-49lar-davasina-6614yy.
htm. 
65  The poem was the story of a Kurdish peasant girl whose wheat crop turned into straw 
because of wheat bugs. At the end of the poem, Anter called out to the girl by saying: “Do not 
be sorry my sister, your brothers who are going to protect you from wheat bugs, sun pests, and 
all the other exploiters are rising now.” (See Ayşe Hür, “Kımıl Olayından”) Public opinion in 
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The first reactions against the letter and poem came from Turkish 
newspapers. When public reaction increased, the state took action and 
arrested fifty Kurdish intellectuals.66 The public prosecutor charged ac-
cusations on Article 125 of the Penal Law, which specified that: 
those who try to put some or all part of state’s territory under the sov-
ereignty of a foreign country…., who tries to separate some parts of state’s 
territory from state’s authority is to be punished with aggravated life impris-
onment.67
Even though it was Kurdishness which disrupted the state, Kurd-
ish identity was not specified anywhere in the prosecutor’s charge, and 
hence suppressed. Yet those who expressed Kurdishness were character-
ized as separatists threatening the state. If one thinks that language or 
the expression of Kurdishness could not establish a physical threat but 
only an ontological one, it becomes clear that ontological (in)security 
of the state was crucial in the securitization of the expression of Kurdish 
identity. 
The trial of the Turkish Workers’ Party (TWP) and its closure is also 
worth examining to see how the state reacted to the expression of Kurd-
ish identity in the 1960s. from the beginning, the party attracted the 
interest of leftist Kurdish intellectuals whose presence also influenced 
the party discourse. In its first years, the party approached the Kurdish 
issue from the perspective of the economic inequality and economic 
backwardness of the East. Yet seeing the issue only from the economic 
perspective changed after 1966, when Kurdish groups became more 
influential in the party. At the party’s fourth congress, the Kurdish issue 
was presented as an ethnic issue rather than an economic one. Accord-
ingly, the party affirmed Kurdish existence against the denialist logic of 
Turkey was that “wheat bugs, sun pests” referred to theTurkish state, and the brothers who are 
going to save the girl referred to Kurds, hence the poem was about the national revival of Kurds.
66  The reason why it is called “the event of 49s” despite the detention of fifty intellectuals is 
that one of the detainees lost his life while in custody.
67  Mülga Türk Ceza Kanunu [Abolished Turkish Penal Code], no. 765, Article 125 (March 
1926).
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the state and promised “to support the struggle of the Kurdish people 
to exercise all their constitutional rights.”68 
The clear expression of Kurdish identity and the emphasis on the 
constitutional rights of Kurds once more disturbed the self-identity 
of the state. following the military memorandum in 1971, the party 
members were arrested and the party was banned because of the dec-
larations made about the Kurdish issue. In the final decision regard-
ing the party’s ban, the Constitutional Court decided that the TWP 
had breached the first paragraph of the 57th Article of the Constitution 
which specifies that “the actions of the political parties should be in ac-
cordance with the principle of the integrity of the state with its territory 
and its nation.”69 once again, the state labelled the expression of Kurd-
ish identity a disrupting force against the state’s integrity, constructing 
it as a separatist act in the discourse.
Another case worth looking into is the trial of the revolutionary 
Eastern Cultural Hearts (rECH). The rECH was a legal network of 
clubs formed in 1969 with the objective of promoting Kurdish culture, 
enhancing solidarity among Kurdish youth, and fighting the feudal sys-
tem in Turkey’s Kurdistan region.70 In october 1970, the leaders of 
the rECH were arrested and after the military memorandum, their 
trial was transferred to military court under the martial law command 
in Diyarbakır. The criminal charge of the military prosecutor against 
the members of the rECH is a clear reflection of the representation of 
Kurdish identity in the state discourse. 
The prosecutor’s charge begins by explaining the roots of Kurds 
and the history of Kurdishness71. Accordingly, the charge, relying on 
“historical data,” tries to “prove” that Kurds’ origins are traced back to 
68  Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Türkiye İşçi Partisi ve Kürtler [Turkish Workers’ Party and Kurds] (Istan-
bul: Sosyal TarihYayınları, 2010), 80‒81.
69  Ekinci, Türkiye İşçi Partisi ve Kürtler, 93.
70  Mümtaz Kotan, Yenilginin İzdüşümleri [footprints of Defeat] (Atina: Yunan Kürt Dostluk 
Derneği Yayınları, 2003), 280‒281; David. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: 
I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2007).
71  The translation here was made directly from the court file which was published in the 
magazine of Toplum ve Kuram. See “Kürt Meselesi’nin Tarihi ile Yüzleşmek: DDKo Dava 
Dosyası’nda Türk Milliyetçiliği-Irkçılığı [facing with the history of the Kurdish issue: Turkish 
nationalism-racism in the court file of rECH],” Toplum ve Kuram 2, (2009): 239‒246.
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Central Asia and since Central Asia is the homeland of Turkic tribes, 
Kurds are naturally Turks72. Kurds are Turks from the oghuz tribe who 
migrated in 3000 B.C. to the territory they live in today and the lan-
guage of the Kurds is nothing but Turkish. Still, even today most of 
the words that Kurmanji (a Kurdish group) use are Asian and Central 
Anatolian Turkish, but since they were neighbors with Armenians and 
Iranians, they were forced to use words from Armenian and Persian.73 
Deriving from the Turkishness of the Kurds, the prosecutor reached the 
conclusion that Kurdishness claims made by the rECH leaders could 
be nothing but the “provocation of the enemies” and those people “aim 
to destroy Turkey by undermining Turkey’s national integrity.”
This time Kurds were included in the text, but their inclusion was 
an attempt to reinstate the autobiographical narrative that all Anato-
lian people had Turkic roots. In addition, once more, Kurdishness was 
perceived and constituted in terms of security: its expression could be 
nothing but the provocation of the enemies who try to destroy the 
state’s integrity and national unity. from the perspective of ontological 
security, Kurdishness as expressed by the rECH disrupted the story the 
Turkish state had been telling itself about its identity for the last three 
decades (that Anatolia was a land of Turks and Kurdish is not a separate 
language), and therefore generated ontological insecurity for the Turk-
ish state. Thus, the very existence of the rECH became a threat to the 
72  Despite the Turkish state’s efforts to deny Kurdishness and its perspective of seeing Kurds 
as Turks, Kurds establish a distinct ethnic group in the southeastern and eastern part of Turkey, 
northern part of Iraq, northeastern part of Syria and northwestern part of Iran. Although there 
are debates about the ancestry of Kurds, since the 16th century there has been a consensus on 
both ottoman and Iranian resources to call tribes living in this region Kurds. Those tribes were 
distinctive mostly because of their language: they neither spoke Turkish, nor Persian nor Arabic. 
for more on this topic please see Martin van Bruinessen, Kürtlük, Türklük, Alevilik: Etnik ve 
Dinsel Kimlik Mücadeleleri [Kurdishness, Turkishness and Alevism: religious and Ethnic Iden-
tity Struggles], trans. Hakan Yurdakul (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2000), 59. 
73  It should be stressed that etymological studies do not support this argument. Many studies 
demonstrate that Kurdish belongs to the Indo-European language family rather than Uralic-
Altalic, which Turkish belongs to. for more on the etymology of Kurdish please see Ernest Mc-
Carus, “Kurdish Language Studies,” Middle East Journal 14, no. 3 (Summer 1960): 325‒335. 
Based on linguistic evidence, some scholars classified Kurds with the Iranian people, rather 
than with Asiatic groups, such as Turks. See Vladimir Minorsky, “Kurds and Kurdistan,” in 
Encylopedia of Islam, Vol. 5, eds. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Van Donzel, B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat 
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986): 447‒449.
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ontological security of the state, for it emphasized Kurdishness, and 
this is why the discourse of security was dominant in the prosecutor’s 
charge.
Securitization of Kurdish identity further increased after the 1980 
military coup. one example of this can be seen in a book prepared by 
the Turkish Land forces Command in 1982 in which separatist and de-
structive elements were identified. According to the book, Kurdism was 
the most effective separatism in the country. The argumentation of this 
discourse bears similarities with the rECH trial. The book claims that 
there are no Kurds in Turkey and the word Kurd derives from the sound 
heard when walking on the thin layer of snow in the mountains.74 This 
snow is called Kurdish snow or Kurdun, and that is why Turks living 
in snow-covered places are called Kurds. Since Kurds were Turks, those 
who emphasized Kurdishness were nothing but separatists.
The 1980 regime also took very harsh measures against the Kurd-
ish language, since it saw Kurdish as a force that undermined “nation-
al security” and “public order.” “The law on publications that will be 
made in languages other than Turkish” prohibited “expressing, publish-
ing and spreading the thoughts on languages other than those mother 
tongues of the countries recognized by the Turkish state.”75 Without a 
doubt, the law aimed to prevent the use of the Kurdish language. It was 
clear in the purpose of the law that the state saw the Kurdish language 
as a threat to itself. Accordingly, the objective of the law was specified 
as the “protection of national security and public order”76. Describing 
the Kurdish language as a threat to national security once more dem-
onstrates how securitization of Kurdish identity and the extraordinary 
measures that followed provided the state the ontological security it was 
seeking in the Kurdish issue.
74  Türkiye’de Yıkıcı ve Bölücü Akımlar, 43.
75  Türkçe’den Başka DillerdeYapılacak Yayınlar Hakkında Kanun [The Law on Publications 
that will be made in Languages other than Turkish], no. 2932 (November 1983).
76  Türkçe’den Başka DillerdeYapılacak Yayınlar Hakkında Kanun, Article 2.
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Conclusion
Since the intensification of violence on the part of the PKK, there is 
a tendency in Turkish state discourse to associate the Kurdish issue with 
terrorism. This article has tried to put forward that this specific discur-
sive construction did not start after the terrorist activities of the PKK 
but long before it. Accordingly, since the Sheikh Said rebellion, the state 
relied on security discourse and the social, political and cultural charac-
teristics of Kurdish identity were securitized, mostly by  characterizing 
them with labels of “threats” and “separatism.” The article argued that 
behind this securitization lies the ontological (in)security concerns of 
the state. ontological security refers to the security of self-identity as 
opposed to the security of the body. The continuity in self-identity is 
crucial for actors’ feelings of ontological security. from this perspective, 
the expression of Kurdish identity disrupted the continuity of the story 
that the Turkish self was recounting about who it was. for one thing, 
the Kurdish rebellions between 1925 and 1930 demonstrated that not 
all Muslim groups would be willing to assimilate into Turkishness and 
to adopt Turkish culture and language. What is more, the tribal struc-
ture and sheikhdom important for Kurdish socio-political identity also 
threatened the “modern nation-state” ideal of the new republic. Thus, 
there was a group within the nation that did not want to be assimilated 
into Turkishness, and more importantly, the ethnic characteristics of 
this group threatened the new state’s “modern” identity. 
While this perception of threat led to the securitization of Kurd-
ish identity in state discourse, it also affected the policies of the state 
towards Kurds. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Turkish state carried out 
a policy of forced resettlement by which the Kurdish population and 
Kurdish notables were transferred to western parts of the country. The 
aim was to suppress the ethnic traits of Kurds which generated onto-
logical insecurity. After the 1960s, suppression took the form of arrest-
ing Kurdish people or closing Kurdish associations who publicly ex-
pressed their Kurdishness. With the 1980 military regime, emphasizing 
Kurdishness was considered equal to separatism and expression of the 
Kurdish language was banned by the regime with the aim of protecting 
national security.
P o L I G r A f I
284
Lastly, one may reflect on the relevance of this article to the ongoing 
Kurdish issue. from the ontological security perspective, it could be ar-
gued that the emphasis of Kurdishness by the PKK after 1984 may have 
generated further ontological insecurity for the Turkish state because of 
its disruption of dominant narratives.This has led to further securitiza-
tion of the Kurdish issue. from the ontological security perspective, any 
solution of the Kurdish issue today requires establishing new narratives 
about Turkishness that would not see Kurdishness as a threat to itself. If 
Kurdish identity could be seen not as an internal other, but as a part of 
the self, with its distinctive character, ontological insecurity of the state 
towards Kurdishness may fall away.
B i b l i o g r a p h y
2510 Sayılı İskan Kanuna Kanuna Ek Kanun [Additional Law to the resettle-
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