Examines violence against Kurdish civilians by state-sponsored paramilitary forces in Turkey in the 1990s
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A historical and political analysis of the paramilitary groups in Turkey that were mobilised against Kurdish civilians in the 1990s
Analyses the formation, organisational structure and violent acts of paramilitary groups in Turkey, with a particular focus on two local cases: Cizre and Batman
Draws on 41 in-depth interviews with the relatives of those whose disappearances remain unsolved; people who were tortured by Turkish paramilitary forces; former soldiers who served in Kurdish cities; researchers, journalists, politicians, lawyers and human rights activists who worked in the region in the 1990s
Uses court and state documents on Turkish paramilitary forces, as well as secondary sources such as memoirs, journalistic works and NGO reports
This book focuses on relations between paramilitary groups and the Turkish state during the armed conflict between the state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) in the 1990s. In August 1984, the PKK launched an armed struggle against the Turkish state, leading to a full-blown war throughout the 1990s. During the conflict, the Turkish state established new armed groups, many of them having a paramilitary character. This research investigates the ways in which these paramilitary groups emerged, functioned, and were deactivated. It analyses the historical background, transformations and continuities of these paramilitary groups, and examines their violence against civilians particularly in two regions of Northern Kurdistan: Batman province and Cizre district.
Ayhan Isik’s well-documented monograph allows us to understand the para-legal structuration of power relations in Turkey since the Hamidian Era (1876-1909) and sheds a new light on the country’s episodic violent crises, erratic evolution and impossible democratisation, in spite of the irruption of sociologically differentiated political generations.
Ayhan Işık is an interdisciplinary political historian specialising in 20th and 21st-century political violence, conflict, peace studies and Kurdish Studies. He completed his PhD in the Department of History-Political History at Utrecht University, focusing on Turkish Paramilitarism and perpetrators' violence in the 1990s. His postdoctoral research was at Centre de Recherche Mondes Modernes et Contemporains, Université libre de Bruxelles and a visiting researcher at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is a co-founder and editorial board member of the journal Toplum ve Kuram (Theory and Society: Kurdish Studies). His articles have been featured in numerous journals (including Southeast European and Black Sea Studies and Kurdish Studies). His work has also been published in the edited collection Kurds in Turkey: Ethnographies of Heterogeneous Experiences (Lexington Books, 2019). Işık also a co-editor of Kurds and the Republic, including 100 articles edited volume. Turkish Paramilitarism in Northern Kurdistan will be his first monograph.
