CONFLICT RESOLUTION ATTEMPTS IN TURKEY: INEFFICACY OF EQUAL ETHNIC REPRESENTATION

In last decades, the phenomenon of equal ethnic representation – electoral engineering – emerged as an important political strategy to prevent ethnic violence and to ensure societal stability in ethnic studies literature. To provide ethnic group representation, different kinds of electoral quotas have been adapted to electoral laws in about 30 countries. Though Turkey is not among these countries, Turkish electoral system – proportional representation – enables ethnic representation through non ethnic parties while limiting the representation through ethnic parties via the general threshold practice of 10 per cent. Suprisingly, in 2015 general elections; 10 per cent threshold in electoral law served as mechanism for increasing share of votes of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) – Kurdish Ethnic Party –, and that party attained the record number of chairs in the Turkish assembly. It was expected that more than two years lasting negotiations on Kurdish issue would be implemented easier than before because of the HDP electoral success, but on the contrary of the literature, cease fire was finalized just after the elections. In this article, it is aimed to explain that equal ethnic representation do not always have the anticipated effects as argued in electoral engineering methods. A faction of ethnic movement may again turn to violence in order to implement its own agenda in case of a lack of consensus between subgroups.

TÜRKİYE’DE ÇATIŞMA ÇÖZÜM ÇABALARI: EŞİT ETNİK TEMSİLİYETİN ETKİSİZLİĞİ

Son birkaç onyıldır eşit etnik temsiliyet olgusu – seçim mühendisliği –, etnik şiddetin önlenebilmesi ve toplumsal istikrarın temin edilebilmesi amacıyla etnik çalışmalar literatüründe siyasi bir strateji olarak kendini göstermiştir. 30 kadar ülkenin seçim yasalarında, etnik grupların temsilinin sağlanabilmesi için farklı seçim kotası düzenlemeleri uygulanmaktadır. Türkiye, bu ülkelerden biri olmamakla birlikte; Türk seçim sistemi – orantılı temsil –, etnik partiler vasıtasıyla etnik temsiliyeti yüzde 10’luk baraj ile sınırlandırır iken, etnik olmayan partiler ile etnik temsiliyeti mümkün kılmaktadır. 2015 genel seçimlerinde sürpriz bir şekilde; yüzde 10’luk seçim barajı Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) oy oranının artmasını sağlayan bir mekanizma görevi görmüş ve partinin Meclis’teki sandalye sayısı rekor düzeye ulaşmıştir. HDP’nin bu başarısı sayesinde, Kürt konusu ile ilgili iki yıldan fazla süredir devam eden görüşmelerin daha da hızlanacağı sanılmış, ancak mevcut literatürün aksine seçimlerden hemen sonra çatışmasızlık sona ermiştir. Bu makalede, eşit etnik temsiliyetin seçim mühendisliği metodlarında iddia edildiği gibi her zaman beklenen sonuçları vermeyeceği açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu kapsamda; devam eden çatışmasızlık ortamı ve fazla etnik temsil oranlarına rağmen, etnik hareket içindeki herhangi bir fraksiyonun kendi ajandasını uygulamak amacıyla şiddete tekrar yönelebiliceği ileri sürülmüştür.

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