Ideology Political Agenda and Conflict: A Comparison of American European and Turkish Legislatures' Discourses on Kurdish Question

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Date

2017

Authors

Ünver, Hamid Akın

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Center Foreign Policy & Peace Research

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Abstract

Combining discourse analysis with quantitative methods this article compares how the legislatures of Turkey the US and the EU discursively constructed Turkey's Kurdish question. An examination of the legislative-political discourse through 1990 to 1999 suggests that a country suffering from a domestic secessionist conflict perceives and verbalizes the problem differently than outside observers and external stakeholders do. Host countries of conflicts perceive their problems through a more security-oriented lens and those who observe these conflicts at a distance focus more on the humanitarian aspects. As regards Turkey this study tests politicians' perceptions of conflicts and the influence of these perceptions on their pre-existing political agendas for the Kurdish question and offers a new model for studying political discourse on intra-state conflicts. The article suggests that a political agenda emerges as the prevalent dynamic in conservative politicians' approaches to the Kurdish question whereas ideology plays a greater role for liberal/pro-emancipation politicians. Data shows that politically conservative politicians have greater variance in their definitions based on material factors such as financial electoral or alliance-building constraints whereas liberal and/or left-wing politicians choose ideologically confined discursive frameworks such as human rights and democracy.

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Intra-state conflict, Conflict discourse analysis, Legislative politics, Kurdish question

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0

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N/A

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Q1

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Volume

6

Issue

1

Start Page

49

End Page

82