TY  - JOUR
TI  - Ideology, Political Agenda, and Conflict: A Comparison of American, European, and Turkish Legislatures' Discourses on Kurdish Question
AB  - Combining discourse analysis with quantitative methods, this article compares how the legislatures of Turkey, the US, and the EU discursively constructed Turkey's Kurdish question. An examination of the legislative-political discourse through 1990 to 1999 suggests that a country suffering from a domestic secessionist conflict perceives and verbalizes the problem differently than outside observers and external stakeholders do. Host countries of conflicts perceive their problems through a more security-oriented lens, and those who observe these conflicts at a distance focus more on the humanitarian aspects. As regards Turkey, this study tests politicians' perceptions of conflicts and the influence of these perceptions on their pre-existing political agendas for the Kurdish question, and offers a new model for studying political discourse on intra-state conflicts. The article suggests that a political agenda emerges as the prevalent dynamic in conservative politicians' approaches to the Kurdish question, whereas ideology plays a greater role for liberal/pro-emancipation politicians. Data shows that politically conservative politicians have greater variance in their definitions, based on material factors such as financial, electoral, or alliance-building constraints, whereas liberal and/or left-wing politicians choose ideologically confined discursive frameworks such as human rights and democracy.
AU  - ÜNVER, HAMİD AKIN
PY  - 2017
JO  - All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
VL  - 6
IS  - 1
SN  - 2146-7757
SP  - 49
EP  - 82
DB  - TRDizin
UR  - http://search/yayin/detay/232993
ER  -