ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 examines the post-insurgency era that can be identified as a heavy assimilation period of the Kurds in Turkey from 1938 after the failure of Kurdish insurgency. The authoritarian one-party regime and ‘silent years’ of Kurdish politics are continued until the democratisation process of Turkey when the pluralist election system is introduced in 1946. The chapter benefits from Gramsci’s theoretical legacy in explaining how ideological and intellectual contests operated among the various Kurdish political representatives while the power struggle continued against external cultural supremacy. It is contextualised in terms of the concepts of the historical bloc, war of position (passive revolution), organic and traditional intellectuals, common sense, and the modern Prince. Moreover, it examines the construction of the modern Kurdish political identity that deconstructed from Turkish ‘ethno-national imaginaries’ by organic intellectuals through operations in the media, civil society, and political parties in a passive way during the 1950s and early 1960s. The chapter investigates the new strategies and tactics employed by a new intellectual and moral leadership, which challenges the official state definition of Kurdishness in a submissive way until the new armed conflict which is started in 1984 between the PKK and state security forces.
