Publication

This commentary examines how Turkey's ruling AKP party has pushed the idea of a multicultural Turkish national identity as a way to end its long-running “Kurdish problem.” More specifically, the text’s author argues that this attempt at “managed multiculturalism” is not that different from the long-standing nationalist insistence that the Kurds do not exist as a people. Furthermore, the author points out that Ankara's latest approach means that the AKP is in the strange position of deploying a new, multi-cultural form of Turkish identity that explicitly embraces the Kurds in order to justify its ongoing war against the self-proclaimed representatives of the country’s Kurdish citizens, the PKK.