Losing the One, Caring for the All: The Activism of the Peace Mothers in Turkey

Abstract

This article focuses on the political activism of the Peace Mothers in Turkey, a group of Kurdish mothers whose children were either Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) guerrillas or political dissidents during the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK. The peace activism of the Mothers is a distinctive case that speaks to the tension between the domains of the familial and the political—a tension that appears in everyday discussions as well as in feminist literature. In this article, I suggest that the Peace Mothers’ struggle to bridge national and local peace-making ideals is a subtle effort to resolve that tension and to transform the realms of family and politics. The mobilization around “motherhood” aims at peace on the national scale, but has led to an unexpected form of activism in the Kurdish community, where the Mothers now mediate local family conflicts in the wake of war. While the Mothers’ activism has not been successful in achieving its main goal of securing a national peace settlement, I argue that it transforms both the political and the familial spheres to a significant extent. The Mothers conceive of motherhood broadly: as the state of being an agent with the capacity to connect to the All via a sense of loss and care. In engaging with feminist debates on motherhood, activism, and care, this article presents a novel framework for understanding the persistent boundary between the political and the familial and calls attention to the role of gendered politics and maternal activism in understudied local settings.

Maternal activism in comparative perspective: Past, present, and future

“…Instead, Dietz finds maternal thinking and practices inadequate in a democracy, thereby eclipsing the affinity between democracy and direct maternal action, individual or collective, particularly when enacted in contexts of social and political paralysis. It is not a coincidence that maternal activism has emerged as a recurring strategy mobilized in contexts of warfare and state violence and is championed mainly—although not exclusively—by those subjects excluded from conventional political channels (Göksel, 2018; Rivera Hernández, 2017). Moreover, Dietz neglects to consider how democratic citizenship cultivates political apathy, isolation, and mistrust of government, especially among subjects historically and persistently excluded from its protections.…”

“…As a growing area of feminist inquiry, maternal activism considers mothers' advocacy for peace, welfare policies toward children, and the environment. It registers maternal acts of resistance against violence, racism, or gender inequality (Carreon & Moghadam, 2015; Göksel, 2018; Lawson, 2018; Miller, 2010; Orozco Mendoza, 2016; Udel, 2001). The wide variety of themes explored under the rubric of maternal activism reveals the changing nature of the field and its contested character.…”

Tracing State Violence, Resistance and Memory in Kurdish Cinema

“…24 Millions of Kurdish forced immigrants experienced systematic state violence, oppression, poverty, discrimination, and exclusion in their new settlements. However, these places also have become a site for empowerment, especially for Kurdish women (Açık, 2013;Kılıçaslan, 2015;Göksel, 2018). They have overcome the loss of community, culture, and language, creating a different kind of belonging, a community where they can feel safe and can live their political life.…”

Little prayer: Ambiguous grief in the LGBTQIA+ movement in Turkey

“…After 4 years, the formation of the Saturday Mothers in reaction to the disappearances, Kurdish women whose children or husbands were either Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan ( PKK ) guerrillas or political dissidents in the war between the Turkish state and the PKK through 1990s formed the Peace Mothers in 1999 (Aslan, 2007; Göksel, 2018: 174; Karaman, 2016: 385). As a Peace Mother, Sultan Bozkurt told Emine R. Karaman (2016), in the absence of legal or ethical rules, mothers, wives, siblings and other relatives of the disappeared and the murdered continue to demand some kind of a closure: ‘You always justify your violations .…”