Zs6na’s Weblog

Since the 1910’s and 20’s the Republic of Turkey has denied that Kurdish people are part of Turkey. Authorities committed horrific human rights violations against the Kurds in an attempt to “promote” a separate Kurdish nation. Historically however both Kurds and Turks were taught that they are ancestors of the “pure” Turkish race. Turkey now declares however, that Kurds, living in the eastern mountains, have forgotten their native language with the obvious goal to make Kurds either become more Turkish or remove them from the country, what the government has called repression and assimilation. As Turkey’s past has shown this “assimilation” is most often accomplished by genocide i.e. the Armenian Genocide (which the Republic of Turkey still denies) and with the Kurds who account for about 20% of Turkey’s population.

An article from openDemocracy discusses a recent attack by Kurdish militants against the Turkish Armed Forces. In this the policy of repression and assimilation is mentioned,

“millions of Kurds living in central and western parts of Turkey have mostly avoided being identified with Kurdish nationalism. It is not uncommon for a Kurdish citizen to hide or downplay her ethnic identity even from her closest friends.”

This conflict, as the article explains, seems to be a structuralist view of ethnic conflict, that is the state has a heterogeneity of states and a possible solution would be partition, which the Kurds have pushed for, but apparently have been rejected by Turkey in establishing an independent Kurdish state. This may lead one to the conclusion that in fact this might be primodialist view of ethnic conflict meaning that these are long standing ethnic hatreds and a solution might not be possible.

     Here are two varying articles on the rational choice versus political culture debate.  The article only briefly mentions game theory, but I think that game theory is an interesting theory when placed in contrast to rational choice.  Instead of analyzing what will maximize and individual’s interest, game theory analyzes how people make choices based on what they expect other individuals to do.  In this manner more variables are usually taken into account which can often mean disaster for some of the “intimidating mathematics” that the articles postulate rational choice theorists rely so heavily upon.

     I will let you read through the articles, but I found the last comment on rational choice both intimidating and rather damning.  It states that if we continue to train our political scientists in the rational choice method then “the rational choice movement may actually erode the stock of knowledge about politics that is passed on to subsequent generations.”  Personally, whether a safe-answer or not, I believe that like most opposing ideas the truth lay somewhere in the middle, and that all theories serve a purpose, whilst no one theory can serve all.

What do you think?

Our blog topic this semester will focus on ethnic violence in Turkey, Colombia, and Chad. Some of questions we will be looking to explore are what factors have led to the problem, what is being done about it in the respective countries, is it culturally or politically driven, and how such a problem has been able to exist for so long? Of course other questions will arise during the course of the semester so we are not limiting ourselves to these alone.