Turkey’s civil rights movement and the reactionary coup: segregation, emancipation, and the western reaction

Abstract

Turkey went through a civil rights movement, or a “silent revolution,” under the AK Party governments between 2002 and 2013, in which the legally sanctioned segregationist measures that had previously structured the country’s political and social order were gradually abolished. This civil rights movement allowed for the public expression of religious observance and ethno-linguistic distinctiveness, thus elevating the status of previously denigrated religious conservatives and ethno-linguistic minorities to the level of equal citizenship. These reforms deprived the Gülenists and the PKK of their raison d’être. The PKK offensive in July 2015 and the Gülenist attempt at a military coup in July 2016 can be interpreted as the most violent reactions to-date against the non-violent civil rights movement Turkey went through under the AK Party governments.