INTERVIEW: Mehmet Kurt on Kurdish Hizbullah in southeast Turkey

The support from the Kurdish Islamist party Hüda-Par for the shift to an executive presidential system in Turkey's April 16 referendum was likely a small but significant factor behind the final narrow "Yes" result.

Hüda-Par was founded in 2012 on the ashes of the outlawed militant group Hizbullah (not to be confused with Hezbollah in Lebanon). Hizbullah is less influential than the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but it has still been an important, often violent, force in southeast Turkey over the past few decades.

"Kurdish Hizbullah in Turkey" by Queen Mary University fellow Mehmet Kurt describes the shady origins and development of Hizbullah through the 1980s and 90s. It is enriched by the fact that Kurt has personal knowledge of the subject, having attended at a religious imam-hatip boarding school in Mardin where Hizbullah was influential. 

Kurt spoke to the Hürriyet Daily News about his book (reviewed in HDN here). The conversation has been edited for clarity.

You attended an imam-hatip school in Mardin in the 1990s and stayed in a dormitory where Hizbullah had a strong presence. Talk about your background growing up and your interest in this subject.

I graduated from Mardin imam-hatip high school in 1999. Including secondary school I spent seven years in Mardin imam-hatip schools, including at a boarding school dormitory where Hizbullah-affiliated students were dominant. As a teenager it is hard to give meaning to what is happening and why there is such intense violence directed by religious students against other religious students.

I went on to study theology at university but it was not really a personal choice. After the Feb. 27, 1997 postmodern coup it was decided that...