The Social Psychology of Kurds in Turkey was a project sponsored by the Research Knowledge Transfer Scheme from the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP). The project was built on the previous research by the applicants, including reviews and meta-analyses on social psychological research studying Kurdishness in Turkey. Kurdishness as a subject has often functioned as an applied context for many researchers seeking to replicate social psychological theories in Kurdish and Turkish contexts. This approach, however, misses the crucial questions that exist around studying Kurdishness in Turkey. For one, Kurdishness as an identity has been hotly contested and it is only in recent years that a political identity of “Kurdish” exists. At the same time, this identity is often a trigger word for political issues, such that even defining oneself as Kurdish can be a political act. Importantly, research on Kurdishness does not often enough recognize the dynamic social and political context of Turkey and the ongoing Turkish-Kurdish conflict when discussing its outcomes, losing out on important elements of data as well as reasons for the outcomes that are found.

Our goal was to bring together researchers based in Turkey as well as those in Europe and the UK to meet in Diyarbakır, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey, and discuss the challenges they faced in producing meaningful research and to find best practices to move the field forward. Participants at the meeting included researchers local to Diyarbakır, both those who are based in academia and those who work for non-governmental organisations, the organisers, and other significant contributors to research on the social psychology of Kurds outside of Diyarbakır.

Organisers and principal participants

Yasemin Gülsüm Acar, University of St Andrews, United Kingdom (organiser)
Elif Sandal-Önal, University of Bielefeld, Germany (organiser)
Ercan Şen, Independent Researcher, Turkey (organiser)
Mete Sefa Uysal, University of Exeter, United Kingdom (organiser)
Gülay Türkmen, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Germany
Yasin Duman, Queen Margaret University, UK
Orhan Kaya, Bern University, Switzerland
Bülent Küçük, Boğaziçi University, Turkey

Members of Kurdish Studies Centre
Members of Diyarbakır Political and Social Research Institute (DISA)
Members of Ismail Beşikçi Foundation
Members of Socio-Political Fieldwork Centre
Members of Mesopotamian Psychology Association

On our first day in Diyarbakır we held meetings with local research teams to gauge their interest in and the barriers to working with academics around the Kurdish Issue. We found these meetings to provide useful insights. For instance, many different NGOs face internal conflicts that make it difficult for them to come together. They also cited the different goals and standpoints from academics. Some institutions are more focused on advocacy, while others are more focused on research, which means varying interest or ability to collaborate with academics. But the overall issue was precarity. These institutions often rely on short term grants to fund their work, and because of this, they have to focus on the immediate future, even if they have loftier goals of longer-term research or programs. We invited them to our panel the next day with the hopes to continue the discussion in a larger forum. We have also maintained contact with some of these groups and hope to visit them again with future initiatives and possibly propose larger grants.

On our second day, we held two general panels and then a full discussion session. The first panel included Özden Melis Uluğ, Yasin Duman, and Bülent Küçük. Özden Melis Uluğ spoke about the narratives surrounding the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, which was a useful starting point for our meeting. Yasin Duman continued with intergroup perspectives between Kurds and “new” minorities, Syrian refugees in Turkey. Bülent Küçük finished the first panel with a discussion of the particular history of a key figure, to see if a specific case could help us to better understand a broader movement.

The second panel included Orhan Kaya, who spoke about methodological challenges in working with minoritised groups. This was followed by a discussion from Gülay Türkmen, who used her own experiences of conducting fieldwork in Diyarbakır to frame the challenges of being an outsider researcher. The final discussant was Ercan Şen, who discussed the history of psychology in Turkey and its colonialist legacy.

After this, we held a wider discussion forum with all the attendees. Non-panelist attendees were primarily students and staff at the local university, members of local research institutions and NGOs, civil servants, but also members of the local community. We discussed the challenges of researching Kurdishness and the Kurdish issue, the hopes and goals we have for the long-term future, and the potential for a lasting peace in the region.

Outcomes

By bringing together researchers living in different contexts studying the same topics, we were able to make suggestions and build towards an improved means of researching Kurdishness that utilises critical approaches, deals practically with concerns about data collection in repressive contexts, and creates a means for early career researchers to connect with European scholars and with the EASP. We had two overall objectives for this meeting:

1. First, by conducting this meeting in Diyarbakır, we engaged with researchers who live and work in the context, particularly those who do not usually publish outside of Turkey and who are at an early career stage.
2. In addition to academics, we involved local research teams, including the Kurdish Studies Centre, Ismail Besikci Foundation, the Diyarbakır Institute for Political and Social Research (DISA), Socio-Political Fieldwork Centre, and Mesopotamian Psychology Association. We held meetings with each organisation to learn more about their plans for future work, to gauge their interest in working with academics, and discussing any barriers to working with academia. We also invited them to our full group session to discuss best research practices in the region.

Future steps

The EASP RKTS allowed us to bring together researchers of various backgrounds to discuss our past experiences, mistakes, aspirations for future research, and plans for collaboration. In the future, we would like to establish more regular meetings in the Kurdish Region to foster further collaborations. One possibility is to support Kurdish early career researchers in establishing international networks. We hope that this initial meeting will lay the foundation for future work.