CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Corut, Ilker |
|---|---|
| Title | Kurds between Sovereign Violence and Bio-Political Care: Healthcare Provision in Hakkari during the AK Party Era |
| Summary | This thesis aims to contribute to the discussions around the complicated role and value of social policy in nation-building processes in multi-ethnic contexts. The particular issue explored to achieve this goal is the striking improvement in healthcare provision in Hakkâri, a small Kurdish province in the southeastern corner of Turkey, between 2002 and 2013 and the unforeseen effects of this improvement. This thesis reveals that the on-going improvement in healthcare provision in Hakkâri is part of a nationalist strategy implemented in the whole of the Kurdish region by the conservative AK Party. This is a strategy committed to defending the unity of the nation against the ethno-political claims of the Kurdish movement. This strategy diverged from the usual Turkish stance towards Kurds even if it still maintained the usual “one nation” narrative. Compared to the violent policies and inadequacy of social services in the pre-AK Party period, the general Kurdish policy of the Turkish state between 2002 and 2013 was less violent, more inclined to recognize some Kurdish claims, and, most importantly, relied on the effective use of social policy instruments, as can be followed in the statistics concerning public investment and social assistance. This thesis asks why this strategy, the “politics of service”, evidently failed to liquidate the Kurdish movement. How is it possible that the Kurdish movement has reached the peak of its power in a period characterized by less violent and more benevolent policies? The answer is given through a detailed analysis of an everyday form of ethno-political resistance in Hakkâri. Even though Hakkârians have been able to access a more or less adequate health service in Hakkâri thanks to the policies and investment introduced after 2002, patient dissatisfaction in Hakkâri still persists as a mass phenomenon as if nothing has substantially changed in this area. This seemingly irrational situation, this thesis argues, is a daily symptom of an ethno-political resistance to being interpellated by the AK Party as citizens-in-the-making expected to compare past and present, realize the progress and thus appreciate the current quality of healthcare provision by tolerating some persisting shortcomings. This thesis reveals that the history of state-citizen relations in Hakkâri, that is, the firmly established conviction on the part of Hakkârians that their lives count for little in the eyes of the Turkish state, and the strong egalitarian insistence on “here” and “now”, which is not tolerant of any “in the making” talk, are two factors that prevent the majority of Hakkârians from subscribing to any transition narrative. This thesis makes three main contributions to scholarly research. First of all, it is an ethnographic contribution to studies on the nationalism-social policy nexus through fieldwork consisting of semi-structured interviews with medical specialists and GPs, unstructured interviews with members and administrators of NGOs, illness and treatment narratives of patients, questionnaire research implemented in family health centers, and field notes and participatory observations. Combining its findings with insights provided by anthropology of policy, post-colonial theory, nationalism studies, and critical social policy analysis, this thesis confirms that the use of social policy for the containment of ethno-political challenges is not a straightforward issue. Secondly, underlining the central role of social policy in contemporary Turkish state-nationalism and diagnosing patient dissatisfaction in Hakkâri as a symptom of an ethno-political resistance, this thesis reveals the necessity to revise the tendency in Turkish-Kurdish studies to identify Turkish nationalism with sovereign violence and Kurdish resistance with political unrest. Finally, this thesis does not content itself with matching evidence to available concepts and puts forward some new concepts, like “being of nation,” “becoming of nation,” “indirect state racism,” “production of space as endurance”, in the hope of enriching the toolbox of scholars of nationalism studies. |
| Supervisor | Caglar, Ayse; Rajaram, Prem Kumar |
| Department | Sociology PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/corut_ilker.pdf |
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