(Im)possibility of negotiating peace: 2005‒2015 peace/reconciliation talks between the Turkish government and Kurdish politicians

The attempt by the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) to negotiate with the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK)and Kurdish politicians was presented as a resolution process by the government and perceived as a possibility to end violence by the peace-oriented segments of the Turkish and Kurdish populations in Turkey. Robust studies of this period that stretched from clandestine talks to the end of semi-public talks with Öcalan at the Imralı Prison argue that the AKP’s goals were disarmament of the PKK and instrumentalizing the process for domestic electoral support and regional power. The same period corresponds to the deterioration and eventual breakdown of the relationship between the AKP and Cemaat, its steadfast ally. Following the conceptualization of claim-making as performance in a contentious politics perspective, this study surveys the looming narrative on Cemaat as the impediment to peace and threat for democracy as it appears in the only available records of the process between 2005 and 2015, to conclude that the possibility of non-violence might have been overshadowed by the ongoing conflict within the religious alliance that had originally carried AKP to power.