A Democratic Opening? The AKP and the Kurdish Left

Since its foundation, militant democratic arguments have underpinned an enforced secularism in Turkey. The 2002 election of the AKP, described as a “moderate Islamist party”, has challenged Turkey’s secular identity. In the more than twelve years since the AKP has been in power, Turkey’s political landscape has experienced significant changes, with periods of extensive democratic reforms punctuated by regression in certain areas, notably freedom of expression and the right to protest. State repressive measures coupled with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reluctance to exit the political stage have been the focus of much commentary and analysis. This article argues, however, that under AKP rule the Kurdish issue – critical to ensuring the normalization of politics and democratization in Turkey – has been brought in from the political cold and assesses the creation and role of the HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi), a Kurdish political party that is endeavoring to situate itself in the mainstream of Turkey’s political landscape. We posit that the HDP can be viewed as the offspring of this “democratic opening,” a project that was meant to ensure a radical transformation of the Kurdish issue in Turkey. Through analysing the historical trajectory of both AKP and HDP and the militant democratic arguments that led to their predecessors’ exclusion from the public sphere, this article engages with the key question of the extent to which the AKP’s treatment of the Kurdish issue has provided a vehicle for broader democratisation and facilitated a reconsideration of the Kurdish question in Turkey.

Partial Secrets

The ability and right to have secrets may be a condition of social ethics (Derrida, A Taste for the Secret), but at the same time the nature of secrets is that they undermine themselves. Once told, secrets are no longer secret but are known. Even to name them as possibilities is to bring them into view as objects of knowledge. Secrets are thus always in some ways partial secrets, but their “openness” also connotes the lack of certainty of any knowledge about them, their evasiveness, their lack of fixity, and hence, their partial character and openness to change. In this article, I explore partial secrets in relation to a 2011 interview study of HIV support in the United Kingdom, where HIV’s relatively low prevalence and high treatment access tends toward its invisibilization. I suggest that in this context, HIV is positioned ambiguously, as a “partial secret,” in an ongoing and precarious tension between public knowledge and acceptance of HIV, HIV’s constitution as a condition of citizenship attended by full human rights, and HIV’s being resecreted through ongoing illness, constrained resources, citizenly exclusion, and the psychological and social isolation of those affected.