FEAS RESEARCH E-BULLETIN FEAS E-BULLETIN DECEMBER 2016 | Page 6

Author: Balaban, Gökçe
Title: Tracing Turkey’s Security Discourses and Practices vis-a-vis The Kurdish Issue
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ahmet Nuri Yurdusev
Department: International Relations
Date: April 2016
Abstract: This study analyzes Turkish state’s security discourses and practices vis-à-vis the Kurdish
issue from the perspectives of traditional and critical (emancipatory) security studies. The analysis is
undertaken in two periods: the past and the present. Accordingly, the thesis argues that, in the
Kurdish issue, Turkish state’s discourses and practices in the past could best be understood by
traditional understanding of security. This means that, in state security discourses and practices the
state was constituted as the only referent object of security and in security politics the use of force was
seen as the only provider of security. However, such a restricted approach was unable to bring about
security for myriad of actors, including the state itself. In the present period, on the other hand, there
are signs of ruptures from this traditional conception of security towards a more emancipatory
approach

in the Kurdish issue. As a result, security discourses and practices better addressed

insecurities of various referents. This demonstrates the potential of emancipatory approach in
bringing about security in the Kurdish issue and this thesis also analyzes the role of the non-state
and external agents in the present context that could transform state discourses and practices in more
emancipatory ways.

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