Title: CONSTRUCTION AND RE-CONSTRUCTION OF CULTURAL CODES THROUGH POLITICAL VIOLENCE: THE CASE OF KURDISH NATIONALISM
Author: Önenli Güven, Merve
Publisher: THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
Release date: 2021

In this thesis, the aim was to explore and understand the discursive construction of Kurdish identity in 1970s. 1970s was determined for the period of the research because with 1970s, discourses on being Kurdish had been re-constructed with re-invented constituents. In this period, there had been the re-definition and re-construction of cultural subjects through political frames. Hence, it is aimed to reveal identity-society relation through how collective identity was produced by the formation of collective emotions, collective memory and collective action with the inclusion of discourse on violence in the Kurdish case. In this way, this thesis attempted to explain how feelings on ethnicity can turn into nationalistic movements. Özgürlük Yolu (Freedom Path), which was a monthly published journal that had been printed between 1975-1979 was selected as the source, in order to search for in the re-organization of socio-cultural and political life of Kurdish people; how Kurdish culture was re-interpreted, what kind of a discourse on culture was produced by the integration of political issues and did this discourse include narratives on violence by using CDA and Maxqda software technique. It was observed that in the journal of Özgürlük Yolu (Freedom Path) Kurdish cultural aspects were re-interpreted and combined by ethnic-national constituents. Kurdish culture that had been re-constructed was not the folk culture as it had been experienced in everyday life, but a culture that was invented through the establishment of a discourse on violence that carry nationalist connotations. [1]