INTERVIEW: Local rivalry key to understanding Turkey's Kurdish question

Turkey's Kurdish issue is often framed simply as "Turkish military vs. Kurdish militants." Since the collapse of the peace process last summer, hundreds of soldiers, militants and innocent civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands of locals displaced from their homes. Since 1980 tens of thousands have died and swathes of southeastern Anatolia have been militarized.

While there is no doubting the ferocity of clashes between the state and militants, internal Kurdish dynamics are also key to understanding how the issue will develop. Those dynamics are the subject of "Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict," an interesting new book by Mustafa Gürbüz, a policy fellow at George Mason University and adjunct lecturer at the American University in Washington DC.

Gürbüz focuses on competition between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), pro-Kurdish political parties, the outlawed Islamic Kurdish militant group Hizbullah, and the Gülen movement. He spoke to HDN about his book (reviewed here) and about how Turkey's Kurdish question can return from the brink amid the current surge in violence.

The book explores how competition in civil society and civic institutions transforms conflict, forcing various Kurdish actors to moderate and try to build their reputation as non-violent actors. Explain what you found doing the research for the book.

I suggest going beyond the idea of the "Turkish state vs. Kurds." I look at the local dynamics between other actors, analyzing complex local engagements. Civic society competition and the culture of local competition can provide institutional mechanisms in which various Kurdish actors see their best interests lying in reputation-building as non-violent actors,...