CIIS Anthropology and Social Change Visiting Scholars Series

The Obsession of the Turkish State with the Kurds

This presentation will outline the Kurdish movement in Turkey and address the obsession of the Turkish state with Kurds by focusing on visual material. I will claim that the deep psychic attachment of the Turkish state to the figure of the Kurd stem from the fact that the state cannot otherize him/her since in the Turkish polity there is no place for the other. In order to recognize a group as the “other” we need to think of it as having desire. However, notwithstanding certain brief intervals when the question was asked “what do the Kurds want” albeit with negative connotations, the Turkish state and the public have not been interested in the desire of Kurds. Rather the Turkish state has been obsessed with annihilating the capacity of Kurds to experience desire, joy and fantasy. A related argument the presentation makes is that by binding Turkish citizens to this aim, the Turkish state rules not only over Turkish citizens behaviors but also their unconscious drives.

#kurdistan #anthropology