MESOPOTAMIA NEWS NEW BOOKS & PAPERS : ONTOLOGICAL INSECURITY IN ASYMMETRIC CONFLICTS: A DISCUSSION OF AGONISTIC PEACE IN TURKEY’S KURDISH ISSUE
Ayse Betul Celik – Bahar Rumelili
Introduction:
Ethnic conflicts are often impregnated with a myriad of security concerns. Apart from multiple forms of violence, concerns about the maintenance of distinct collective identities (Roe 2004) intensify ethnic conflicts and hamper peace efforts. These concerns make ontological security theory, which focuses on the security that individuals and collectives derive from the continuity and stability of their Being (Giddens 1991; Kinnvall 2004; Mitzen 2006; Steele 2005, 2008; Zarakol 2010; Croft 2012; Malksoo 2015), a valuable starting point in the analysis of such conflicts. All conflicts over time become embroiled in a certain set of self-conceptions and narratives vis-à-vis the Other, and their maintenance become critical for ontological security. In ethnic conflicts, however, these conceptions and narratives also often intersect with a fundamental ontological asymmetry, because such conflicts often pit state parties with secure existence against ethnic groups with contested status and illegitimate standing. This article contributes to the recent literature on ontological security in conflict studies (Mitzen 2006; Kay 2012; Rumelili 2015a), by empirically investigating, through a case study of Turkey’s
Kurdish issue, how ontological asymmetry complicates peace processe