6 - The PKK in Western Turkey

Summary

This chapter argues that the some of the huge Kurdish population in western Turkey forms an Internal Diaspora. It introduces the concept of the Internal Diaspora by discussing the literature in relation to international diasporas. It then proceeds to discuss the challenges in assessing how many Kurds live outside of their Kurdish homeland in western Turkey. It tracks multiple generations of Kurdish migration, and the issues migrants were confronted with in western cities. It highlights some of the lived experiences for Kurds in the West such as poverty, racist exclusion, diminishing economic opportunities and patterns of informal residential segregation, especially in gecekondu neighbourhoods. It then proceeds to analyse how and why the PKK first mobilised in western Turkey, as well as considering how the mobilisation contrasted with that in Kurdish regions. It demonstrates that Kurdish students became the organisational core of the movement before expanding into marginal neighbours populated by destitute Kurds. It also looks at the decline of the revolutionary Turkish left and takes the case of the Gaziosmanpaşa neighbourhood as an illustrative case study. It finishes with a discussion of the parliamentary Kurdish parties and how it affected the PKK mobilization.