Turkey wins new space for Kurdishness | Didem Collinsworth

Turkey’s nationalist media had a field day after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan’s Kurdish gala in Diyarbakır, southeastern Turkey, on Nov. 16. “He who gives his hand today will lose his arm tomorrow,” screamed the headline of the mass-market Sözcü newspaper. “Tayyip has recognized Kurdistan to get some votes, and wiped out the Turkish Republic,” it continued.

Fears for national unity, and a lumping together of the region’s diverse Kurdish groups in a “separatist” bloc, are nothing new in Turkey. But outside small nationalist networks, there was no significant negative public reaction to the dramatic scenes of Turkish-Kurdish togetherness in Diyarbakır. Ethnic nationalism is out of fashion. Traditional red lines have moved.  

FULL ARTICLE (Today’s Zaman) 

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