THE KURDISH CONFLICT IN TURKEY: A SYNOPSIS

Between 35 and 40 million Kurds make up one of the largest ethnic groups in the Middle East. Their numbers make up roughly 10% of the total population in both Iran and Syria and 20% in both Iraq and Turkey (Romano and Gurses Reference Romano and Gurses2014). Upon the creation of modern Turkey in 1923, Turkish republican elites quickly adopted an aggressive assimilationist policy as a way to create a homogenous state with clear national identity. Numerous strategies were employed including constitutional and social devices aimed at eliminating anything that might hint at a separate Kurdish nation (Gunter 2004, 200). These policies included, but were not limited to, the denial of Kurds as a distinct ethnic group, as well as a ban against teaching and using the Kurdish language along with other symbols of Kurdishness (Bruinessen Reference Bruinessen1992; McDowall Reference McDowall1997; Olson Reference Olson1989; Reference Olson1996; Romano Reference Romano2006).

Despite several major Kurdish uprisings during the formative years in modern Turkey, a long period of coerced tranquility was realized in the Kurdish provinces due to these repressive state policies and the failure of the Kurds to attempt autonomy or independence. However, in the late 1970s, the rise of a militant Kurdish organization, the PKK, brought an end to the calm, and by 1984 armed conflict erupted. The Turkish government responded to the escalating unrest with the deployment of hundreds of thousands of regular troops and special operation teams (Ozel Tim) in hopes of quelling the insurgency. As a result, the conflict, peaking in the early 1990s, culminated in the deaths of tens of thousands, devastation of agriculture in Kurdish regions, and the forced displacement of rural Kurds into the major cities of Turkey (Ayata and Yukseker Reference Ayata and Yukseker2005; Gurses Reference Gurses2012). Following the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the PKK abandoned its goal of creating an independent Kurdish state, relocated its troops from Turkish territories to bases in northern Iraq, and sought a negotiated peace settlement with the Turkish government.

This temporary equability coincided with a series of Turkish economic and political reforms motivated by Turkey's 1999 candidacy to the European Union. With the rise of the AKP to power in 2002, these reforms were accelerated and ushered in one of the most ambitious reform periods in the history of modern Turkey (Tezcür Reference Tezcür2010). The Kurds also benefited during this time and “the legal regulation of torture was vastly improved, restrictions on freedom of expression and association were lessened and prohibitions on Kurdish language broadcasting and teaching were theoretically lifted” (Yildiz Reference Yildiz2005, 23).

Tranquility was to be short lived and in 2004, as a result of the Turkish government's refusal to engage the PKK (or the pro-Kurdish political party of the time, the Democratic Society Party), dissatisfaction with the pace and depth of reforms,Footnote ² and the destabilizing effect of the war in Iraq, the PKK radicalized once again. The death toll quickly reached 167 in 2004 and continued to climb culminating in 349 deaths in 2008 (Tezcür Reference Tezcür2013).

While the PKK and Turkey skirmished, across the Turkish border in northern Iraq the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) rose as a legitimate Kurdish political entity. Although the KRG was officially recognized in the 2005 Iraq Constitution, the Turkish government refused to recognize the KRG and accused it of harboring and supporting the PKK. These tense relations culminated in Turkish airstrikes and ground offensives against the PKK bases in northern Iraq in 2008. The Turkish government gloated victory and argued it had demonstrated both strength and military capability in crossing its border, an effort it could repeat at will. However, the final outcome was far from complete in destroying the PKK bases or even general support for the insurgency (Romano Reference Romano2008).

The failure of a military solution to the PKK, coupled with the rising cost of the conflict and significant changes in Iraq, resulted in a shift in Turkey's policy toward the Kurdish issue. Turkey began to court the KRG shortly after Turkey's military offensive into northern Iraq. This rapprochement with the KRG led to improved economic and diplomatic relations. The KRG stepped in and called upon the PKK to cease its armed struggle against Turkey and adopt a peaceful resolution to the conflict (International Crisis Group 2008). In response, the AKP government took steps toward resolving the country's long-standing Kurdish conflict in the following year.

These steps, known as the “Kurdish initiative” did not meet the Kurdish demands, but did open a public debate on how to resolve the issues. The Kurdish initiative proposed easing restrictions on public expression of Kurdish identity, restoring of Kurdish names, and allowing the Kurdish language to be offered, at least as an elective, in secondary and high schools. Today, the government has launched a 24-hour Kurdish language TV station as well as allowed several universities in the Kurdish-populated region, notably Artuklu University (Mardin) and Dicle University (Diyarbakir), to offer a two-year master's degree program on Kurdish language and culture (Kurdology). Furthermore, in June 2012, Prime Minister Erdogan announced the plan to offer Kurdish language elective courses at the fifth-grade level. Members of the Peace and Democracy Party, the pro-Kurdish party that is often described as the political wing of the PKK, warn the plan is yet another tactic to assimilate the Kurds. Gulten Kisanak, the co-chairperson of the Peace and Democracy Party, stated that the actions of the prime minister amounts to a directive of “go to school, learn Turkish, become assimilated, and then learn your own language.”Footnote ³

The lack of trust between actors, as demonstrated by the AKP government refusing to engage the PKK in a long-term peaceful resolution, coupled with ongoing civil war in neighboring Syria, led to one of the bloodiest of the past 13 years in the conflict, producing 541 casualties in 2012 (Tezcür Reference Tezcür2013). However, in December 2012, after months of intense fighting, the Turkish prime minister announced his government had indeed initiated a peace process with the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, aimed at conflict resolution and ultimate disarmament.

THE KURDISH CONFLICT IN TURKEY: ENTER ISLAM

Islamists in Turkey have long attributed the root causes of the Kurdish conflict to anti-religious Turkish nationalism embraced and promulgated by the Kemalist republican elite. Abdullah Gul, former president of Turkey and a key political figure in the Islamist Welfare (Refah) Party in the 1990s ascribed the conflict to the racist state policies and offered Islamic brotherhood as a common denominator to solve the Kurdish issue (Beriker-Atiyas Reference Beriker-Atiyas1997, 443). Moreover, leading members of the Gulen Community — by far the most influential socio-religious group in modern Turkey (Yavuz and Esposito Reference Yavuz and Esposito2003) — have pointed to winning the hearts and minds of the Kurds through Islam. In the early 1990s, the spiritual leader of this community, Fethullah Gulen, urged the state to employ “Muslim ulema [religious leaders] to stress religious brotherhood between Turks and Kurds” (Yavuz Reference Yavuz2003, 195). Recently, Gulen lent support for education in one's mother tongue (read as Kurdish)Footnote ⁴ and voiced support for the recent AKP/PKK negotiations despite his group's own political feud with the AKP since December 2013 resulting in former allies (the AKP and Gulen community) becoming rivals.

References to Islam as a solution to the conflict, however, increased with the rise of AKP to power in 2002. The AKP continued to remain at the political forefront through its landslide victories in subsequent elections. Following its first electoral victory in 2002 with 34.29% of total votes, the party increased its vote share and emerged victorious in elections of 2007 (46.58%) and 2011 (49.83%), making its leader, Tayyip Erdogan, the longest serving democratically elected leader in Turkish history. Tayyip Erdogan, during his tenure as prime minister, along with Abdullah Gul (president between 2007 and 2014) and leading figures from Turkey's Islamist communities, made numerous references to Islam as a potential uniting factor.

This strategy of relying upon Islam as a uniting factor has come to be known as the Islamic brotherhood thesis. The proponents credit religious identity in overcoming and transcending other identities. Erdogan, for instance, who according to Yavuz (Reference Yavuz2009, 131) sees the world from a religious perspective, has repeatedly emphasized religious identity over ethnic identity. He has stated that “whenever someone inquires about your identity, you should simply reply: ‘Thank God’ [Elhamdulillah] I am a Muslim!' That is enough.” Notwithstanding the significance of religion in identity formation, such an approach overlooks the importance of other components of identity such as customs, language, and ethnicity. Identity formation is complex, fluid, and context dependent (Brubaker Reference Brubaker2009; Fearon and Laitin Reference Fearon and Laitin2000). A Texan, for instance, is simply an American in Egypt or Turkey, whereas such a sub-national identity can become an important marker that distinguishes a Texan from a New Yorker in the United States. Thus, in certain contexts, co-religiosity or “Islamic brotherhood as cement,” will likely cease to matter, as differences rather than similarities, as in the case of a Texan in New York, are likely to be pronounced.Footnote ⁵ The fact that armed conflict even broke out between ethnic Kurds and Turks, both Muslims, demonstrates that co-religiosity as a static factor has failed to suppress ethnic identities.

Islamism in Turkey, however, had long been banned by the staunchly secularist elite who were backed by the Turkish army. Thus, Islamists have traditionally blamed the Kemalist state's forced secularism and Turkish nationalism for the Kurdish conflict. The argument therefore goes; a shift to an Islamic state structure will render ethnically-based grievances and the resulting armed conflict unnecessary. Despite its appeal, this argument oversimplifies identity formation by assuming that religious and ethnic identities are mutually exclusive.

The case of Kurdish minority in Iran is instructive. The regime change in 1979 brought about an Islamic state. However, it has failed to produce a political environment in which minority Muslim Kurds can co-exist peacefully in the Muslim Persian dominated Islamic Republic of Iran. The Kurds in Iran constitute about 10% of the total population and have engaged in several armed rebellions against Iran since the 1920s. The Kurdish rebellion during World War II culminated in a short-lived self-declared Kurdish republic but was crushed by the Iranian state in 1946. The conflict recurred in the 1960s, 1970s, and once again in the early years of the Islamic Republic of Iran, born on the heels of the overthrow of Reza Shah Pahlavi's monarchial regime in 1979 (Stansfield Reference Stansfield, Romano and Gurses2014).

Although in Iran both the Kurds and majority Persians are Muslims, only a minority of Kurds in Iran are adherents to Shiite Islam, the official sect of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This aspect of Kurdish-Iran relations distinguishes it from the Kurdish problem in Turkey where both majority Turks and Kurds are Sunni Muslims. Nevertheless, the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 has failed to address ethnic demands from the Kurdish minority. Like its monarchial predecessor, the new Islamic regime, in its efforts to establish a centralized Islamic state, has pursued a repressive policy against its Kurdish minority, despite the Kurdish support during the revolution (Entessar Reference Entessar, Romano and Gurses2014).

The revolutionary installation of “God's system” in the shape of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as Houston (Reference Houston2001, 165) notes, has failed to solve the Kurdish problem. To date, the Kurdish demands for equal rights have been ignored, assigned a secondary role, or simply dismissed as “foreign” plot against the Islamic regime. Muslim Kurds in both secular monarchial and Islamic Republic of Iran have been relegated to a subservient status and often accused of plotting with “foreign” powers to undermine the peace and unity in Iran. In July 2014, following the Kurdish gains after the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Chairman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, warned against the Kurdish aspiration for statehood. He tied this aspiration to the Zionist regime's [Israel] special goals in the region and concluded that maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity is a necessity.Footnote ⁶

While Islam plays an important role in social and political lives of both Kurds and Turks, it is inadequate to address strong ethno-nationalist demands from a large segment of the Kurds. This is much like Islamic brotherhood has failed to prevent Muslim Bengalis from engaging a bloody civil war to secede from their Muslim Pakistani brethren; to dissuade Iraq under Saddam Hussein to commit atrocities that amounted to genocide against his co-religious Kurds in the 1980s; to prevent Sudan to commit genocidal killings against its Muslim citizens in Darfur, Islamic brotherhood alone will not solve the Kurdish problem. Unlike addressing underlying ethnic grievances through building a broad pluralistic democratic coalition, Islamic brotherhood can only serve as a thin veneer for the existing state structure which gave rise to the onset of ethnic armed conflict in the first place, a conclusion that is confirmed by the analysis below.

SAMPLE AND DATA

This article utilizes data from in-depth interviews with members of the Kurdish Islamist communities in Turkey to address the Islamic brotherhood thesis. These interviews were conducted in the summer of 2013 in Diyarbakir and Batman, two major towns in the Kurdish-dominated region of Turkey that has been a primary site of armed conflict between the PKK and state security forces. Some interviews were conducted with Kurds living in Istanbul. Subjects for interview were selected on the basis that they are part of Islamist communities and groups. In other words, to examine the impact of decades-long armed conflict on Islamists of Kurdish origin, special care was given to exclude hard-core PKK supporters/Kurdish nationalists, non-practicing Kurdish Muslims, as well as the non-Kurdish population. The sample includes a broad range of Kurdish Islamists such as engineers, lawyers, certified public accountants, construction workers, school teachers, and college students, ranging from 18 to 60 years of age. Most of these interviews were held in the interviewees' offices or at a public place of their choice and lasted about an hour each.

The data came from interviews with two main groups. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with more than two dozen leading members of Zehra, a Kurdish Islamist group in Turkey. Zehra is a small Islamist group that came out of the Nur Movement, the most effective and powerful socio-political community in modern Turkey (Yavuz Reference Yavuz2003, 151). The Nur movement was born as peaceful resistance to the Kemalist elites' aggressive modernization and secularization policies in the 1920s. Said Nursi's writings (Risale-i Nur Kulliyati) constitute the base of this movement. After Nursi's death in 1960 and especially after the 1980 military coup, the movement split into several groups (Yavuz Reference Yavuz2003, 151–174).

Med-Zehra, despite its smaller size, was distinguished from other Nur groups by its emphasis on Nursi's Kurdish background as well as by their critique of “nationalized” interpretations of Nursi's writings in the hand of the Nur movement. Med-Zehra accuses mainstream Nur groups of distorting Nursi's writings, and asserts that certain passages and words, especially those pertinent to Kurdishness and the regime in Turkey, have been removed from the original text (Atacan Reference Atacan2001). Med-Zehra experienced an internal split over leadership in the early 1990s, leading to the formation of yet another small Nur group, Zehra. This group, often known as Zehracilar,Footnote ⁷ established Zehra Education and Cultural Foundation and is very similar in outlook and methods to Med-Zehra.

Zehra, Med-Zehra, and other Kurdish Islamists, share a solution to ethnic conflict, especially to the Kurdish conflict, that is predicated on the principle that all Muslims are equal, and as a result each ethnic group has the right to its own state (Atacan Reference Atacan2001; Houston Reference Houston2001). An analysis of the interviews with members of this group has the potential to reveal invaluable information about the link between ethnic conflict and Islam because they are active in the Kurdish populated areas of the country, represent an important segment of the Islamist Kurds, and have distanced themselves from the PKK due mainly to its secular outlook.

Second, the article utilizes more than 60 in-depth and semi-structured interviews with pious Muslim Kurds, most of which were members of other Nur groups. The second group of interviewees is more diverse as it includes Kurds from several Islamists communities, including but not limited to the aforementioned Gulen Community and Mesveret, another influential Nur group in Turkey.

The reader should bear in mind that Islamist perspective is by no means monolithic. Moreover, the sample is not random, raising the issue of representativeness of the sample. That being said, probability samples may run the risk of excluding key actors where the goal is to identify and/or include the key political actors in the study (Tansey Reference Tansey2007). These interviews with dozens of religiously conservative, well-educated, and accomplished Muslim Kurds who do not subscribe to the PKK's secular ideology and its violent tactics should provide a proper test for the argument proposed in this article. Furthermore, it should be noted that considering the interviewees' socio-economic backgrounds, if there is any bias, it should be toward finding support for the Islamic brotherhood thesis as individuals with higher level of education and income are less likely to lend support for Kurdish ethno-nationalism (Sarigil Reference Sarigil2008). In other words, this sub-sample of the Kurds — accomplished Islamist of Kurdish origin — should serve as a likely audience for the Islamic brotherhood thesis.

FINDINGS

The data from these in-depth interviews not only weakens the argument made by the proponents of the Islamic brotherhood as a solution to the conflict but also demonstrates the transformative nature of the armed conflict on respondents' attachments and identity formation. The interviewees were first asked questions to tease out their overall views of democracy. Similar to Turkish Islamists' views on democracy (Gurses Reference Gurses2014), the responses to “In a few words what does democracy mean for you?” centered on such concepts as “freedom” and “equality.” It is important to note, however, beyond this general view of democracy there is an important disagreement over the nature of a democratic regime. Turkish and Kurdish Islamists differ on their positions on minority rights, especially the Kurdish minority's status in the political system. While Turkish Islamists tend to pay lip service to this issue, Kurdish Islamists consider the same issue to be one of the most important priorities the country faced with regard to democracy. When asked “In your opinion, what is the most serious problem the country faces in regard to democracy?” unlike Turkish Islamists (Gurses Reference Gurses2014) the vast majority of the respondents pointed to “the Kurdish issue” as the most serious problem facing Turkey. The responses to “In your opinion, is this country very democratic, somewhat democratic, not very democratic or not at all democratic?” included an important number of “not very democratic” and some “not democratic at all”, confirming dissatisfaction with the progress made with regard to addressing Kurdish demands.

The majority of interviewees acknowledged the progress made during the AKP tenure. Over half of the respondents either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the following statement: “The Kurds live better in Turkey than they did before the government of the AKP.” Nonetheless, they were quick to add that this has not been a product of the Islamic brotherhood discourse that the AKP and its allies have offered to address Kurdish grievances. They attributed much of the progress to the inefficacy of military solution to the Kurdish conflict as well as the changes in Iraq and Syria that have benefited the Kurds, hence incentivizing peace with the PKK. Therefore, while conditions may be better under the AKP, it is not because of the AKP and its Islamist rhetoric, rather it is the result of the cost of decades-long armed conflict.

Next, a set of questions was asked to put the validity of the Islamic brotherhood thesis to a test. First, respondents were asked the following question: “Islamists groups and parties in Turkey, including the AKP, have long attributed the root causes of the Kurdish conflict to anti-religious Turkish nationalism embraced and promulgated by the Kemalist republican elite. Thus, they argue that common Muslim-identity would limit, if not end, the appeal of Kurdish nationalism. To what extent do you think that the AKP's Islamic discourse represents a clear break from the statist discourse in Turkey?” A few respondents agreed that “there are important differences” between Kemalist and Islamist discourses. The majority of respondents, however, vehemently opposed the argument that the AKP's Islamic discourse represents a clear break from earlier Kemalist state policies. Osman Tunc, chief editor of Zehra Publishing House, argued that Islamic brotherhood, as described in the main Islamic sources, can in fact serve as an antidote to existing ethno-nationalist conflict, a view shared by the overwhelming majority of the interviewees. Nevertheless, as the conversations continued the interviewees also stressed that Turkish Islamists approach is “tainted” with nationalist and Kemalist ideals. Islamic brotherhood, they argued, can't address the underlying causes of the Kurdish conflict, unless Turkish Islamists genuinely question the ethnic fundamentals of the modern Turkish state, something that majority of Islamists of Turkish origin, the interviewees argued, are unwilling to do. Thus, interviewees argued the so-called Islamic brotherhood as a solution to the conflict has turned into nothing more than an instrument of the new Turkish political elite to undermine the Kurdish demands for equality.

Throughout the conversations, interviewees were eager to point out that Turks, Arabs, and Persians, three politically dominant Muslim ethnicities in the region, have not hesitated to subjugate the Muslim Kurds politically, socially, and economically. A 44-year old school teacher pointed to true Islam's emphasis on equality among believers and concluded that “if Muslim Turks have the right to have their own national flag, anthem, and state, we the Kurds, also should have the same rights.” Echoing these views another interviewee dismissed the so-called Islamic brotherhood thesis as a solution to the conflict and argued that the AKP government and its Islamist allies, including the Gulen community, are not sincere in their efforts to solve the issue through Islam. The interviewee, pointing out the contingent nature of the Islamic brotherhood thesis geared toward solidifying Turkish national interests, argued that such approach is yet another manifestation of Turkification policies through Islam aimed at “buying time” and “weakening the Kurdish movement.”

If post-conflict reconciliation and sustainable peace building require the extension of dignity and esteem to the “other” through understanding, trust, and respect (Gibson Reference Gibson2004) or the promotion of empathy to repair social and familial networks (Weinstein and Halpern Reference Weinstein and Halpern2004) that was destroyed or damaged during the war, the Islamic brotherhood seems to have failed to gain the trust of Islamists of Kurdish origin. Throughout the interviews, the author made references to Fethullah Gulen's (the spiritual leader of the largest Islamist community in Turkey) support for the recent “peace talks” between the AKP government and PKK. Despite these seemingly important changes, religious Kurds distrustful of the Islamic brotherhood discourse described this allegedly new policy as nothing more than “empty words” or “a tactic” to undermine the Kurdish struggle for equal rights. An interviewee, critical of the deep-seated nationalist views within the Turkish Islamist circles, pointed out disturbing memories of being shunned, frowned upon, or simply banned from expressing his ethnic Kurdish identity, something that represents the experiences of many ethnic Kurds in Islamist social circles. The apparent shift in the AKP government's approach, something that has also received support from a wide array of Turkish Islamists, he argued, is more of a rhetorical rather than a fundamental break from Kemalist state policies and ideology. In other words, the AKP wants the Kurds to become more Islamic as a way for the Kurds to realign their identity and become less Kurdish.

It is noteworthy that Gulen's support, for the “peace talks” between government and the PKK's jailed leader comes with an important condition: “as long as national dignity and pride are not undermined.” Gulen's political thinking, as Yavuz (Reference Yavuz2003, 195) summarizes, is “influenced by the state-centric Ottoman culture and Turkish-Islamic nationalism.” Hence, “as long as national pride and dignity are not undermined” is still a crucial element of Turkish Islamist thinking. In fact, despite serious tensions between Turkish Islamists and secularists as well as rivalries between different Islamist groups, the Kurdish issue seems to work as an effective unifying force for Turks.

To tease out the link between armed conflict and identity formation, interviewees were asked to answer a set of questions whereby responses reveal important details on the causal relationship between these two variables and point to transformative effect of ethno-nationalist conflict on respondents' identity formation. Responses to “Which of the following best define you? (a) Kurd (b) Muslim (c) Both Muslim and Kurd d) Other/None of the Above” shows that years of armed confrontation in the Kurdish-populated region has had far reaching consequences. The vast majority of the subjects (85%) define their primary identity as “both Muslim and Kurd.” While responding to this question an interviewee, a school teacher in his 40s, stated that “80% of people in bolge” — referring to the Kurdish-dominated South-eastern part of the country — “in my opinion would identify themselves as both Muslim and Kurd.”

Responses to a follow-up question with slightly different choices (“which of the followings best define you? (a) Kurd (b) Muslim (c) First Kurd then Muslim (d) First Muslim then Kurd (e) Other/None of the above”) confirm that respondents describe themselves with a combination of both religious and ethnic attachments: Of the 90 total subjects, 62 described themselves as “First Muslim and then Kurd,” 15 chose “First Kurd and then Muslim,” and five of them described themselves solely with reference to ethnic attachment, “Kurd.” Several interviewees, however, found this follow-up question to be inadequate in terms of reflecting their true identity as they had a hard time choosing between their religious and ethnic identities or prioritizing one component over another. The vast majority of those who selected “First Muslim then a Kurd” as their primary identity were eager to stress “Kurdishness” as their ethnic/national identity and Islam as their religious identity. It is worthwhile to emphasize that of the total 90 participants only six described themselves solely with reference to Islam and one interviewee stated that none of these identities describe his attachment.Footnote ⁸

To further explore the impact of armed conflict on respondents' perception of Kurdishness interviewees were asked the following question: “The armed conflict between the PKK and Turkey is about to enter its 30th year. As someone who has lived through this, how would you describe its effects on your identity formation? In your opinion, what is the most significant impact of the conflict on people's perception of Kurdish identity?” Answers to this open-ended question tease out the impact of the long-running armed conflict on respondents' identity formation. Interviewees pointed to greater awareness of Kurdishness as a direct result of the conflict. Despite their objection to the PKK at the ideological level, as well as their disapproval of its violent tactics, most interviewees stated that the conflict has made a significant impact on their perception of Kurdish identity. They were eager to ascribe this awareness to the PKK and its struggle for the Kurdish rights. A 62-year old retired teacher, a member of Zehra group, in an emotional manner stated that “as I see women and young people raising their voice and standing up to the state's repressive policies, I could no longer suppress my Kurdish identity.” Some stated that despite their disagreement with the PKK on several issues, including the PKK's secular outlook, they have voted for the Peace and Democracy Party, the pro-Kurdish political party that is often considered to be the mouthpiece of the PKK, due mainly to this awareness.

Results from a follow-up question in which respondents were asked to specify whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or neutral about the following statement “The armed conflict has made me more aware of my Kurdish identity” strengthen and vindicate the link between armed conflict and identity formation. Of the total 90 subjects 77% agreed (35 “strongly agree” and 34 “agree”) and 21% disagreed (15 “disagree” and four “strongly disagree”) with this statement.Footnote ⁹

These responses coming from the Kurds who consider themselves Islamists or devout Muslims demonstrate the impact of armed conflict on the subjects' identity formation. To be sure, Islam plays an important role on identity formation among the Kurds. However, the armed conflict has had far reaching implications on Muslim Kurds' national identity. The conflict between the Kurdish insurgency and the state has politicized the majority of Muslim Kurds and resulted in creating Kurds who are well aware of their ethnic identity. Despite their objections to the PKK's approach and its secular outlook, the conflict has brought pious Muslim Kurds and the PKK closer, creating an Islamic identity that is by and large consistent with the Kurdish nationalist demands. Thus the armed conflict has created conditions for an accommodation between the secular Kurdish nationalist movement and religious Kurds. In other words, similar to the rise of a Turkish Islam, Arab Islam or Iranian Islam, the Kurdish struggle for greater rights has paved the way for the rise of a “Kurdish Islam” that is increasingly converging with the secular Kurdish nationalist movement.