The Politics of the Digital Technoscape in Turkey: Surveillance and Resistance of Kurds

Abstract

This paper explores how the state employs digital technologies in its pacification of dissident political bodies, subjectivities, and communicative capabilities. It explores strategies of resistance to the surveillance practices which come to the fore as a state form, as a means of social control, and as a mechanism for creating manageable and disciplined crowds. Drawing upon ethnographic data, it focuses on the contemporary politics of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. In particular, it analyses the digitized surveillance and resistance of Kurds, both of which function as crucial components of contemporary power regimes in Turkey.

Turkey’s communicative authoritarianism

“…The KCK trials, on the contrary, were deemed to be justified in a political climate in which the policies of Kurdish opening such as opening Kurdish TV, language courses and the homecoming of the PKK guerrillas had instigated national hysteria among the nationalist segments of the society, especially among the AKP supporters (Yeğen, 2011). These three counterterrorism cases were especially important in seeing how the AKP administration manoeuvred the amalgamated forces of law and technology to silence and criminalize opposing voices, and neutralize the key critical institutions of the state apparatus such as the secularist military and civilian bureaucracy (Çelik, 2013).…”

“I Have the Government in My Pocket…”: Social Media Users in Turkey, Transmit-Trap Dynamics, and Struggles Over Internet Freedom

“…People were prosecuted just for speaking Kurdish in public.” During the last decade, partly in light of Turkey's aspirations to join the European Union (EU), Turkish policy toward its Kurdish citizens has become less antagonistic, even though militant struggles between the groups persist in the eastern part of the country. Ongoing tensions are exemplified by Turkey's lack of support for the Kurdish fight against ISIS in 2015 and, more egregiously, its military attack on Kurdish fighters in Syria in October 2015 (Çelik, ) and in August 2016.…”

“…For these users, the risks of posting on social media are outweighed by the necessity of transmitting accurate and credible information within and about their communities. Growing media conservatism has compelled Turkey's historically marginalized Kurds to create new modes of information sharing (Çelik, ; Kocer, ; Sheyholislammi, 2011), including via Twitter. In the 1990s, nearly 400,000 Kurds were forcibly displaced from Turkey due to a conflict between the PKK (Kurdistan Worker's Party) and the Turkish government.…”

Under big brother's watchful eye: Cross-country attitudes toward facial recognition technology

“…On the one hand, these technologies promise to provide public services and law enforcement in order to solve urgent problems (e.g., traffic congestion, pollution control, and public security) more efficiently. On the other hand, the same technologies are also being utilized for mass surveillance, ethnic profiling, targeted repression, and privacy violations (Çelik, 2013;Gohdes, 2014;Gunitsky, 2015;Haraszti, Roberts, Villeneuve, Zuckerman, & Maclay, 2010;Xu, 2020).…”