evans - dissertation - 11-10-2019
TRANSCRIPT
REBEL FRATRICIDE IN STRONG STATES: INFIGHTING IN NORTHERN IRELAND’S REPUBLICAN INSURGENCY AND
THE KURDISH REBELLION IN TURKEY
By
Tyler Evans
Submitted to the
Faculty of the School of International Service
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
In
International Relations
Chair:
Boaz Atzili, Ph.D.
Kursad Turan, Ph.D.
Joseph K. Young, Ph.D.
Dean of the School of International Service
Date
2019
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016
© COPYRIGHT
by
Tyler Evans
2019
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
To Ruth
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REBEL FRATRICIDE IN STRONG STATES: INFIGHTING IN NORTHERN IRELAND’S REPUBLICAN INSURGENCY AND
THE KURDISH REBELLION IN TURKEY
BY
Tyler Evans
ABSTRACT
Why do rebels sometimes go to war with each other, weakening their position against
their common enemy, the state? This dissertation compares two cases of intra-rebel war
that pose an especially difficult puzzle for existing theories of intra-rebel war: the
fighting between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA in Belfast (1969-1980) and
war among Kurdish revolutionaries in Turkey (1974-1980). These two cases are puzzling
because both occurred in areas where the state was strong, and therefore able to capitalize
operationally and politically on rebel fratricide. By comparing these two cases, this
dissertation argues that broadly similar causal mechanisms can help to explain these
intra-rebel wars.
In both cases, rebel organizations were shaped by their involvement in defensive
violence in response to repression from the state and state-aligned attackers. Learning to
counteract this violence changed the operational and cultural character of these
organizations, with downstream effects on how these organizations strategically
appraised the costs and benefits of using violence against rivals. Furthermore, these
organizational changes led to an increased frequency of violence that was non-strategic;
that is, it was not performed as the result of a considered and thorough decision-making
process. In combination, these mechanisms promoted repeated spirals of fratricidal
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violence that progressively altered threat perceptions, and thereby encouraged riskier,
more concerted applications of violence against rivals. This dissertation fashions this
comparative explanation into a generalizable argument about the causes of intra-rebel
war in strong states, and provides initial testing of the arguments with two shadow cases,
taken from the Algerian independence movement in France and the Sinhalese leftist
insurgency in Sri Lanka.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Throughout my dissertation work, I have been amazed by the generosity and openness of
the academic community around the world. This dissertation has only been possible
thanks to help from a list of researchers and scholars that is too lengthy to fit into these
brief acknowledgements. I also owe a great debt to my committee. Joe Young
encouraged me to think harder about my concepts and to enjoy the exploration and
discovery of dissertation writing. My conversations with Kursad Turan added focus to
my project, and taught me much about the study of political violence. Boaz Atzili gave
more of his time and intellectual energy to my dissertation than I ever could have
expected. Working patiently with me over many twists and turns, he showed an
unwavering dedication to my growth as a researcher. And of course, I am grateful to my
wife, Ruth, not least for the Sunday afternoons that she spent reading over my literature
reviews, instead of restaurant reviews. The mistakes and omissions that remain are mine
alone.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: THE PUZZLE OF REBEL FRATRICIDE IN STRONG STATES ...........1 1.1. Introduction and main concepts ...........................................................................1
1.1.1. Research question and argument .......................................................................3 1.1.2. Key definitions ...................................................................................................5 1.1.3. Defining and operationalizing intra-rebel war ................................................16
1.2. Wars within: comparing the Republican movement and Kurdish revolutionaries .............................................................................................................18
1.2.1. Intra-rebel war in strong states .........................................................................24 1.2.2. Possible explanations .......................................................................................29 1.2.3. The plan and approach of the dissertation .......................................................38
CHAPTER 2: MOBILIZATION, COUNTER-MOBILIZATION, AND VIOLENCE ....43
2.1. Northern Ireland: from civil rights to civil war ................................................45
2.1.1. Political opportunity and early risers ...............................................................47 2.1.2. Counter-mobilization (1966-1969) ..................................................................49 2.1.3. Transgressive protest and violent backlash: an escalating cycle .....................51 2.1.4. Inter-communal strife .......................................................................................55 2.1.5. Belfast in flames ..............................................................................................59 2.1.6. The British Army in Northern Ireland: from peacekeeping to COIN ..............61 2.1.7. Loyalist violence: a continuing danger (1970-1980) .......................................64 2.1.8. The politics of community threat .....................................................................66
2.2. Turkey’s twin insurgencies .................................................................................67 2.2.1. Political opportunity structure and the pro-Kurdish movement in Turkey (1960-1971) ...............................................................................................69 2.2.2. The rise of the left in western Turkey (1960-1971) .........................................71 2.2.3. Grassroots counter-mobilization ......................................................................72 2.2.4. A new decade and new heights of conflict ......................................................76 2.2.5. Defying the dangers of total repression in eastern Turkey ..............................80 2.2.6. New heights of violence and military intervention ..........................................85 2.2.7. The new politics of violence in eastern Turkey ...............................................86
2.3. Theorizing repressive environments .................................................................87 2.3.1. Contentious politics and disorderly violent repression ....................................89 2.3.2. Disorderly violent repression: an antecedent condition for intra-rebel war ..103
CHAPTER 3: VIOLENCE AND INSURGENT CHANGE ...........................................104 3.1. Continuity and change in the Irish Republican movement ...........................105
3.1.1. The Officials ..................................................................................................106
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3.1.2. The Provisional IRA: organizing anew ..........................................................115 3.2. Changing patterns of repression and organizing violence in Turkey ...........119
3.2.1. The Kurdish incumbency: born in the shadow of total repression ................120 3.2.2. The TKDP/KUK: fighting tradition ...............................................................128 3.2.3. The PKK: a violent newcomer .......................................................................134
3.3. Theorizing violence and dissident transformation .........................................146 3.3.1. Changes in the local culture of the dissident community ..............................147 3.3.2. Shaping organizations within the dissident movement ..................................157 3.3.3. Imprints from disorderly violent repression ..................................................160 3.3.4. Rudimentary violence as politics ...................................................................163 3.3.5. The hazards of routines of rudimentary violence ..........................................168 3.3.6. Implications for interaction ............................................................................171
CHAPTER 4: ENTERING THE PATH TO WAR ........................................................173 4.1. The Republican movement after 1969: early antagonisms, lasting
animosity ....................................................................................................................174 4.1.1. Physical competition ......................................................................................181 4.1.2. Taking non-lethal violence to the limit ..........................................................184 4.1.3. Community defense and intensifying competition ........................................186 4.1.4. The Cracked Cup and the Burning Embers ...................................................190 4.1.5. Competition and containing the feud .............................................................198 4.1.6. The British military closes in .........................................................................203 4.1.7. Strategy vs. organizational routines ...............................................................205 4.1.8. Fighting in the vicinity of the British military ...............................................208 4.1.9. Dangerous precedents, recurring patterns ......................................................211
4.2. Revolutionary fratricide: the PKK’s early conflicts with Kurdish rivals .....212 4.2.1. The PKK’s early rivals: Turkey’s left ............................................................212 4.2.2. The death of Haki Karer and the war with Sterka Sor ...................................215 4.2.3. The war with the left continues ......................................................................217 4.2.4. The Tekoşin challenge ...................................................................................218 4.2.5. Facing the incumbents: the PKK and the DDKD/KİP ...................................220 4.2.6. PKK fratricide that did not escalate ...............................................................224 4.2.7. Understanding variation in fratricide .............................................................228
4.3. Theorizing the path to war: processes of escalation .......................................230 4.3.1. Strategy ..........................................................................................................231 4.3.2. Non-strategic violence ...................................................................................232 4.3.3. Concatenating violence ..................................................................................234
CHAPTER 5: WARS WITHOUT WINNERS ................................................................239 5.1. The IRAs: a winding road to war .....................................................................239
5.1.1. The OIRA-INLA war .....................................................................................242 5.1.2. The 1975 Provisional ceasefire and escalating fratricide ..............................245
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5.1.3. The PIRA assault of 29 October ....................................................................253 5.1.4. Two weeks of war ..........................................................................................255 5.1.5. Sporadic clashes (1977-1980) ........................................................................263
5.2. Eastern Turkey: a rebellion at war with itself ................................................266 5.2.1. The TKDP/KUK: competition and violence ..................................................266 5.2.2. Alliance politics: The formation of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDG) .......................................................................................267 5.2.3. Flashpoint: the Ceylanpınar State Development Farm ..................................271 5.2.4. Physical competition ......................................................................................274 5.2.5. A widening war ..............................................................................................277 5.2.6. A failed ceasefire ...........................................................................................281 5.2.7. The war in the villages ...................................................................................282 5.2.8. Making a ceasefire .........................................................................................287 5.2.9. Breaking a ceasefire .......................................................................................289 5.2.10. The UDG unravels .......................................................................................291 5.2.11. Scattered violence in the towns and cities ...................................................297 5.2.12. Military intervention and a shaky truce .......................................................300
5.3. Theorizing fratricidal escalation .......................................................................302 5.3.1. Violence and boundary work .........................................................................304 5.3.2. Threat perceptions ..........................................................................................308 5.3.3. Rhetoric, propaganda, and perception ...........................................................317
CHAPTER 6: STATING AND EVALUATING THE THEORY .................................320
6.1.The rudimentary violence path to intra-rebel war ..........................................320 6.1.1. Disorderly violent repression .........................................................................321 6.1.2. Movement continuity and change ..................................................................322 6.1.3. Organizational imprinting ..............................................................................324 6.1.4. Strategic violence ...........................................................................................328 6.1.5. Organizational routines ..................................................................................328 6.1.6. Concatenating spirals .....................................................................................329 6.1.7. Group and individual psychology ..................................................................329
6.2. Preliminary process tracing tests: the Sinhalese left and the Algerian Independence Movement ..........................................................................................332
6.2.1. Case selection .................................................................................................332 6.2.2. Scope condition: intra-rebel war in the shadow of a strong state ..................335 6.2.3. Antecedent condition: the onset of disorderly violent repression ..................340 6.2.4. Process tracing tests .......................................................................................350 6.2.5. Conclusion .....................................................................................................369
CHAPTER 7: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .....................................................370 7.1. Evaluating the argument ...................................................................................370
7.1.1 Summary of findings ......................................................................................370 7.1.2. Alternative arguments ....................................................................................375
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7.2. Discussing implications ......................................................................................380 7.2.1. Contributions to scholarship on insurgency ...................................................380 7.2.2. Policy implications ........................................................................................386 7.2.3. Conclusion ...................................................................................................387
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................389 APPENDIX .....................................................................................................................423
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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 3.1. Imprinting from disorderly violent repression Table 4.1. Dyadic interactions and risks of intra-rebel war Figure 1.1. Conceptualizing dissident movements Figure 2.1 Annual strikes in Turkey (1963-1980) Figure 2.2. Proportional distribution of major protest events (1960-1974) Figure 2.3. Proportional distribution of major protest events (1975-1980) Figure 2.4. Deaths from Left Right violence in Turkey (May 1978 to June 1979) Figure 3.1. The organizational legacy of the DDKO Figure 3.2. Environments of disorderly violent repression and organizational imprints Figure 6.1. The rudimentary violence path to intra-rebel war
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CHAPTER 1
THE PUZZLE OF REBEL FRATRICIDE IN STRONG STATES
1.1. Introduction and main concepts
A team of gunmen burst into a bar, firing rapidly into a group of drinkers before escaping
into the Belfast dusk. The British military were on the scene within minutes1to investigate
this latest attack, part of a spasm of violence that erupted in Belfast within the
compressed span of two weeks in October/November 1975. The Irish Republican Army’s
two main factions, the Officials and Provisionals, were embroiled in their bloodiest war
yet. And they were fighting it under the noses of their own community and of the British
army. British soldiers looked on as rebels fired at one another in the streets; they took
witness interviews and made detentions and arrests in the moments after each encounter.
The cumulative effect of this violence on both wings of the IRA was disastrous. Not only
did the fighting result in the loss of important fighters and organizers on both sides, it
also provided their shared enemy, the British state, with intelligence gathering
opportunities and a political cudgel for bludgeoning the rebels and their claim to
legitimacy.
A similar story played out five years later, this time in eastern Turkey. The
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdistan National Liberators (TKDP/KUK),
two Kurdish rebel organizations committed to the same cause of Kurdish independence,
1 See United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975); Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 62.
2
collided in a war that spread to several towns and cities, including the densely populated
streets of Diyarbakır. Beyond its cost in manpower, the fighting exposed both sides
directly to Turkey’s military and intelligence forces, which were already preparing for a
massive crackdown on the militant organizations.
The PKK in Turkey and the PIRA in Northern Ireland have earned reputations as
politically determined and strategically focused rebel organizations.2 Yet, during the first
years of their existence, they found themselves tangled in disastrously unproductive wars
with ostensible allies in the insurgency, setting back the cause and bringing harm to their
own organization. In neither case did the wars garner discernable benefits: the PKK and
the PIRA were unable to destroy their rivals with the fighting, an outcome that should
have been obvious from the start, considering the amount of violence that would have
been required to achieve this aim. Furthermore, the wars drained resources that could
have been used in the rebellion against the state. And more detrimentally, they provided
opportunities for the state to operationally and politically weaken the rebels. How could
rebel organizations, otherwise recognized for their strategic acumen, have allowed
themselves to fall into such a deadly quagmire?
2 For a discussion of the IRA, see for example, Rachel Caroline Kowalski, "The Role of Sectarianism in the Provisional IRA Campaign, 1969–1997," Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 4 (2018); Thomas Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015); Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007); Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca, "The Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism: ETA and the IRA," Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 3 (2007). For a discussion of the PKK, see for example, Claire Metelits, Inside Insurgency: Violence, Civilians, and Revolutionary Group Behavior (New York, NY: NYU Press, 2009); Megan A Stewart and Yu-Ming Liou, "Do Good Borders Make Good Rebels? Territorial Control and Civilian Casualties," The Journal of Politics 79, no. 1 (2017); Mustafa Cosar Unal, "Strategist or Pragmatist: A Challenging Look at Ocalan's Retrospective Classification and Definition of PKK's Strategic Periods between 1973 and 2012," Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 3 (2014).
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1.1.1. Research question and argument
This dissertation addresses this empirical puzzle as a manifestation of a more general
theoretical puzzle: intra-rebel war in strong states. Rebel fratricide is dangerous, and
these dangers are particularly acute when rebels challenge a state that is powerful enough
to exploit the vulnerabilities that arise from fratricide. States with a powerful security
apparatus can cripple aspiring rebel organizations that fail to conceal their membership
and activities from authorities.3 And intra-rebel wars can result in a precipitous loss of
support from locals, as states use their propaganda capabilities to defame rebels for their
fratricidal behaviors. Why, then, would rebel organizations seeking to survive and
challenge a strong state go to war with each other?
Rebel infighting is common in many rebellions. In weak states, rebels can deny
central authorities access to large swaths of territory and extract resources from locals,
with coercion if necessary. In these conflicts, the greatest threat to a rebel organization
may not be the state, but other rebels. Existing theories provide useful insight into the
strategic underpinnings of rebel infighting in such conditions.4 But rebel infighting
sometimes erupts in insurgencies that do not evince such power relative to the enemy
state. Owing to its unique risks and costs, these fratricidal wars are puzzling in their own
right.
Through a comparison of the bloody fratricidal wars in Northern Ireland and
Turkey, this dissertation develops and evaluates a theory of intra-rebel war in strong
states. The argument holds that these two intra-rebel wars, while occurring in vastly
3 For a conceptual discussion of the dangers and dilemmas of illicitly operating in a hostile environment, see Sean F Everton and Dan Cunningham, "Dark Network Resilience in a Hostile Environment: Optimizing Centralization and Density," Criminology, Crim. Just. L & Soc'y 16 (2015). 4 See section 1.7.1. of this chapter
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different contexts, both embody an analytically similar causal path to intra-rebel war: the
rudimentary violence path (RVP). This explanation distills the salient mechanisms that
explain why, in both cases, rebels became involved in bloody and self-defeating internal
conflicts.
The thrust of the argument is that rebel organizations, in both cases, were
crucially shaped by their involvement in defensive violence in response to violent
repression meted out by state security forces or non-state actors that aligned themselves
with the state. Learning to counteract state violence influenced the operational and
cultural character of these organizations, with downstream effects on how these
organizations interacted with each other. Revealingly, in both conflicts, rebel
organizations that were less dedicated to defensive violence were also less involved in
rebel fratricide.
Conducting a ‘most different’ comparison of intra-rebel wars in Northern Ireland
and Turkey serves as the basis for developing this argument and exploring its
implications (Those interested mainly in the general argument of this dissertation may
wish to skip immediately to Chapter 6 for a complete statement of the argument that
emerges from this comparative analysis). That the RVP model proves useful for
explaining two cases that otherwise differ on a wide array of variables suggests its
potential general merits. To further probe this possibility, this dissertation will look to
two shadow cases, examining the intra-rebel wars within the Algerian movement in Paris
(1956 - 1962) and the Marxist movement in Sri Lanka (1987 – 1990). These cases
suggest that while the RVP model is limited in certain respects, it displays distinct merits
against alternative arguments.
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The remainder of this chapter will provide some conceptual background that is
necessary for undertaking the main case studies that will begin in Chapter 2. This section
begins with a definitional discussion of terms that will reappear throughout this
dissertation. After that, the chapter will explicate more precisely why intra-rebel war in
strong states poses a thorny puzzle for scholars of political violence. The chapter will
then offer a set of initial potential explanations for this phenomenon -- showing how each
of these explanations is limited in its ability to explain the main cases of this dissertation.
Finally, this chapter will conclude with a roadmap of the dissertation.
1.1.2. Key Definitions
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to define several terms that will recur
throughout this dissertation.
Strong states
This dissertation seeks to offer an explanation for intra-rebel war that occurs in zones of
state strength.5 As such, it is necessary to provide a definition of strong states that is
suitable for the purposes of this dissertation. This is especially important because I define
the term quite narrowly, as the ability to pursue and damage rebel challengers through the
use of physical force and political maneuvering.
Usually adopting more comprehensive criteria, scholars have offered numerous
definitions for state strength and capacity. Conceptualizations are typically multi-
dimensional, crafted to include such disparate features as coercive capacity, the ability to 5 State strength, as I define it in this section, is a scope condition of the argument developed in this dissertation. See Gary Goertz and J. Joseph Hewitt, "Concepts and Choosing Populations." In Social Science Concepts: A User's Guide (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011).
6
extract revenue, the socio-political capacity to resolve conflict and redress grievances,
and economic size and vitality.6 Theorists such as Joel Migdal, Margaret Levy, and Barry
Buzan discuss the ingredients that allow states to elicit compliance, loyalty, and active
support from their citizenry.7 Other scholars, such as Joseph Young and Cullen Hendrix,
focus more exclusively on the state’s ability to organize violence effectively and to
collect and manage information.8
My contention is that intra-rebel war is mainly puzzling because of the physical
and political risks that it imposes on rebels. Obviously, rebels have less reason to worry
about these dangers if the state is too weak to take advantage of the opportunities that
fratricide confers. Thus, states that do not pose a serious physical threat to rebels –
through some combination of direct kinetic repression and indirect political action -- do
not fit within the scope conditions of this dissertation.
For this reason, I define strong states as those that create a hostile environment for
violent dissidents through the use of physical repression and political effort. A strong
state has at its disposal a mix of military strength, police-intelligence capability, and
political coherence that can be used to threaten its domestic foes.9 Some states will fit
more easily into this scope condition than others. Germany and China are clearly strong
6 For discussions on the various dimensions of state capacity, see Halvard Buhaug, "Relative Capability and Rebel Objective in Civil War," Journal of Peace Research 43, no. 6 (2006); Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 1991); Cullen S Hendrix and Joseph K Young, "State Capacity and Terrorism: A Two-Dimensional Approach," Security Studies 23, no. 2 (2014). 7 See Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 1991). 8 See Hendrix and Young, "State Capacity and Terrorism: A Two-Dimensional Approach," Security Studies 23, no. 2 (2014). 9 This is similar to what Fjelde and De Soysa (2009) refer to as “threat capacity.” This ability is acknowledged as an important element of state strength. As Sepp (2005) concludes: “Intelligence operations that help detect terrorist insurgents for arrest and prosecution are the single most important practice to protect a population from threats to its security. Honest, trained, robust police forces responsible for security can gather intelligence at the community level.”(9). See Hanne Fjelde and Indra De Soysa, "Coercion, Co-Optation, or Cooperation? State Capacity and the Risk of Civil War, 1961—2004," Conflict Management and Peace Science 26, no. 1 (2009); Kalev I Sepp, "Best Practices in Counterinsurgency," Military Review (May-June 2005).
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states by this definition. Anyone seeking to mount a violent challenge to these states will
face insuperable odds. If rebels are to survive they have no choice but to operate with
utmost caution. These constraints look very different in places such as, say, the Central
African Republic,10 and they probably only partly apply for states like Lebanon11 or the
peripheral regions of Burma.12 Indeed, in these weaker states, other rebels pose a greater
threat than the state does in many cases.13
State strength also tends to vary across the territory within state borders.14 States
that are overall quite weak might have a strong presence within their capital city or major
commercial centers. Likewise, even fairly strong states may fail to control pockets of
rough terrain on their periphery or vast spaces of urban poverty. This dissertation is
concerned with intra-rebel war that occurs in zones of state strength. The cases discussed
in this dissertation include rebel battles fought on the streets of Paris, Colombo, Belfast,
and Diyarbakır – all areas of thorough military and police presence, where battling in
public exposed rebels to detection and capture, or else aided the state in its efforts to
infiltrate and disrupt the rebels.
Finally, it is worth underlining that state strength, as defined here, is distinct from
the ability to prevent internal violent conflict. States can prevent the rise of violent
10 For a comparative analysis of state weakness in Africa, see Richard Jackson, "Violent Internal Conflict and the African State: Towards a Framework of Analysis," Journal of Contemporary African Studies 20, no. 1 (2002). 11 Boaz Atzili, "State Weakness and “Vacuum of Power” in Lebanon," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 8 (2010). 12 Neil A Englehart, "Is Regime Change Enough for Burma? The Problem of State Capacity," Asian Survey 45, no. 4 (2005). 13 Tilly Tarrow and McAdam make this comment, “[…] high-capacity governments exert extensive control over available means of coercion, with the consequences that governmental opponents rarely have substantial force to deploy, governmental allies can rely on forceful backing, and contentious encounters between governmental agents and opponents typically involve large disparities of force. Low-capacity governments, in contrast, regularly experience the formation of rival coercive centers as well as struggle among those coercive centers that the government itself lacks the means to suppress.” Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, "Comparative Perspectives on Contentious Politics," in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, ed. Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S Zuckerman (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 278. 14 See Buhaug, "Relative Capability and Rebel Objective in Civil War," Journal of Peace Research 43, no. 6 (2006)
8
challenges through methods other than their ability to use physical repression or nimble
political maneuvering.15 Some states enjoy high levels of societal support and legitimacy,
and therefore, can afford to maintain only a weak capacity for repression and political
machination.16 Conversely, many strong states face determined violent challengers.17
What matters for the purposes of this dissertation is whether a state commands a
formidable ability to seek out and harm prospective violent challengers, as well as
undermine their political underpinnings.
It is also true that strong states vary in their regimes of repression. Some strong
states unequivocally signal their willingness to decimate potentially rebellious
communities with unbridled, total repression. Regimes of total repression create few
opportunities for dissidents to defy the state, short of turning to forms of insurgency that
keep rebels at an arms length from security forces. These include highly clandestine,
terroristic violence, or warfare in zones outside of the state’s reach, such as in mountains
or dense jungle.18 Other regimes are more constrained. Due to a combination of
economic, strategic and normative considerations, more constrained regimes cannot
credibly threaten to destroy insurgencies with total repression, though they may have the
brute material capacity to do so. Importantly, regimes of repression may vary within a
single state, depending on how state authorities appraise communities in terms of the 15 Joseph K Young, "Repression, Dissent, and the Onset of Civil War," Political Research Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2012). 16 Atzili provides a comprehensive, multi-faceted definition of state capacity, based on the notion of “socio political strength.” This is comprised of five elements: “1) the preservation of a monopoly over the use of legitimate force; 2) the level of taxation and other means of revenue extraction; 3) efficiency and control of state bureaucracy; 4) reach and breadth of state institutions in areas such as law and education; 5) extent and spread (i.e. distance from center) of public spending and provision of goods; 6) cohesiveness of the society and level of identification of the residents with their state.” See Boaz Atzili, Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 33. 17 Buzan distinguishes between two state features: holding powerful military forces and enjoying “domestic political and social consensus.” He remarks that the two do not always co-vary. See Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 1991), 99. 18 In this discussion, I follow Tilly’s (2003) conceptual framework. See Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
9
threats they pose and their economic and intrinsic value within society. Regimes of
repression also vary over time, and may change in response to an insurgent challenges.
The dissident movement
The dependent variable of this dissertation is intra-rebel war. Intra-rebel war is organized
violent conflict between rebel organizations of the same dissident movement that causes
enough damage to substantially affect the interests of at least one party to the conflict.
Below, I will provide a more detailed discussion of how to distinguish intra-rebel war
from less severe forms of violent rebel infighting (see Section 1.4. below). For now, it is
important to clarify which actors must be involved for violence to qualify as having
occurred within a rebel movement.
This dissertation does not seek to explain why rebels use violence in general, nor
does it seek to explain why violence is used against particular kinds of victims, such as
civilians, politicians, women, children, etc. This dissertation is solely concerned with
explaining war between organizations that are ostensible allies in the same insurgency
(e.g., violence between Republicans and Loyalists in Northern Ireland does not count as
intra-rebel war, while violence within the Republican movement does). Scholarship on
social movements and political violence uses the term ‘movement’ to demarcate
collective action against the state that occurs under a broadly similar political banner.
Researchers in this tradition often apply modifiers to narrow their scope, focusing for
instance on “national movements,”19 “self-determination movements,20” or “challenger
19 Peter Krause, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017). 20 Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Inside the Politics of Self-Determination (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014).
10
movements.”21 This dissertation, too, focuses on a subcategory of political movements.
Although I use the terms insurgency and rebellion throughout this dissertation, a more
precise term for the entity that unites various rebel organizations is the dissident
movement. I suggest three joint, nested characteristics to classify a collective activity as a
dissident movement.
First, a dissident movement is a movement, inasmuch as it is comprised of one or
more organizations that claim to act on behalf of a notional group’s shared identity and
interests.22 The group may be defined according to ethnicity, economic class, religion, or
any other conceivable basis of group solidarity. That sometimes this putative group may
be largely a figment of the movement’s own discourse is less important than the appeals
that the organization(s) make to advancing a shared cause. It is also true that the
boundaries for membership in a movement are typically porous and contested.23
Members of movements will place different nuances on the purpose of the movement and
draw crosscutting boundaries that alternatively include and exclude potential
constituencies.24
Second, at least one of the organizations within the movement must engage in
non-routine forms of political claim making. Claim making refers to overt efforts at 21 William Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Homeward, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1975). 22 With this definition, I follow Bakke Cunningham and Seymour’s definition, wherein movements encompass “organizations mobilized around a collective identity in pursuit of particular interests related to this identity in a fundamental way”(266). Similar definitions place greater emphasis on activities, rather than actors. McAdam Tarrow and Tilly, for example, offer the following definition: “[…] the social movement involves sustained challenges to power holders in the name of a population living under the jurisdiction of those holders by means of concerned displays of that population’s worthiness, numbers, and commitment”(277-278). See: Kristin M Bakke, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, and Lee JM Seymour, "A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars," Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 02 (2012); McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, "Comparative Perspectives on Contentious Politics," in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, ed. Lichbach and Zuckerman (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 23 Bakke, Cunningham, and Seymour, "A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars," Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 02 (2012): 267. 24 R. D. Benford and D. A. Snow, "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment," Annual Review of Sociology 26, no. 2000 (2000).
11
influencing the behavior of those outside of the movement in a manner that affects their
interests.25 A claim is non-routine when it does not involve participation in an
institutional political process, such as elections, congressional testimony, or lobbying
through prescribed channels.26 Transgressive protest is one type of non-routine claim
making,27 but the category also includes more directly lethal activities, such as
assassinations, suicide bombings, and other forms of organized political violence.28
Finally, a dissident movement must either advance explicit goals that the state
regards as illegitimate, or it must use strategies and tactics that the state forbids, or both.29
This criterion excludes many political and social movements. Dissident movements are
unique in that their participants have well-founded reasons to worry that their activities
might provoke physical repression from the state. That said, not all members of a
dissident movement need be armed or violent. Some dissident movements may be
entirely non-violent, while still espousing goals that the state regards as illegitimate, and
using non-violent methods that the state prohibits, such as disruptive protests.30
25 My definition follows Tilly Tarrow and McAdam, who define claims as “calls for action on the part of some object that would, if realized, affect that object’s interests”(261). McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, "Comparative Perspectives on Contentious Politics," in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, ed. Lichbach and Zuckerman (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 26 Routine claim making is more difficult to undertake when a movement is fully or partly excluded from what is referred to as polity membership, that is, “reliable access to government agents and resources.” Dynamics of Contention (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2.; also see Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1978). 27 Beissinger remarks on a related distinction with regard to nationalist mobilization. He draws a distinction between “a ‘quiet’ politics of nationalism,” during which “state institutions remain dominant” and a “‘noisy’ politics of nationalism, precipitated by a perceived opening of political opportunities, in which the political order and its institutions (including the definition of the boundaries of the community) come under direct challenge and contest”(26). See Mark R. Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 28 Here I follow the discussion in Colin J Beck, Radicals, Revolutionaries, and Terrorists (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), Chapter 1. 29 For a similar conceptual distinction, see Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 30 For a discussion of “transgressive contention,” see McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34.
12
This definition implies several unique features. Intra-dissident movement
violence, by this definition, encompasses violence between armed rebels as well as
attacks by armed rebels against non-violent victims, so long as these victims are
politically active within the same dissident movement. For instance, in India’s Jammu
and Kashmir region the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen attacked rivals, violent and non-violent,
alike, in its bid for hegemony over the insurgency during the early 1990s.31
Likewise, it is important to note the difference between intra-rebel violence and
other forms of intra-group violence, such as intra-ethnic violence. The boundaries of a
dissident movement are analytically (and often empirically) distinct from those of an
ethnic group. Intra-ethnic violence is violence that occurs between people who share
certain ascriptive characteristics associated with a category of ethnicity.32 But co-
ethnicity does not imply political solidarity. For example, in the Basque region of Spain,
ETA has attacked prominent co-ethnics, such as factory owners, who do not support
ETA’s overarching political goals.33 Such violence does not count as intra-rebel violence.
A common counter-insurgency strategy is to prop up paramilitaries of co-ethnics
to battle insurgents. Drawn from the same communities and speaking the local language,
such paramilitaries are thought to be useful assets in identifying insurgents and
controlling contested areas.34 Co-ethnic paramilitaries are not part of the same dissident
movement; hence, their battles with rebels do not qualify as intra-rebel war. To be sure, 31 Arif Jamal, Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House 2009), 155. 32 For conceptual discussions of ethnicity, see Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Kanchan Chandra, "What Is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?," Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 9 (2006). 33 Robert P. Clark, The Basque Insurgents: ETA, 1952-1980 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 67. 34 See Ariel I. Ahram, Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State-Sponsored Militia (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Sabine C Carey, Michael P Colaresi, and Neil J Mitchell, "Governments, Informal Links to Militias, and Accountability," Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015); Corinna Jentzsch, Stathis N Kalyvas, and Livia Isabella Schubiger, "Militias in Civil Wars," ibid.; Goran Peic, "Civilian Defense Forces, Tribal Groups, and Counterinsurgency Outcomes" (Doctoral Dissertation, Emory University, 2013).
13
the distinction between intra-rebel violence and co-ethnic defection becomes difficult to
sustain when intra-rebel war leads certain factions in the movement to defect to the side
of the state.35 The criteria applied in this dissertation for such cases is to stipulate that
once a rebel organization declares its loyalty to the state, it exits the dissident movement,
and therefore, any fighting that subsequently occurs no longer qualifies as intra-rebel war.
Furthermore, violence between rebels that come from opposing dissident
movements also falls outside the boundaries of intra-rebel violence: for instance, clashes
between Sunni and Shia rebels in Iraq, though both were involved in an insurgency
against external military forces, do not count as intra-rebel violence, per the definition
used in this dissertation.
Figure 1.1. Conceptualizing dissident movements
35 P. Staniland, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries," Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 1 (2012).
14
Organizations in a dissident movement
Dissident movements are comprised of organizations. While it is possible for a single
organization to subsume an entire dissident movement, typically, dissident movements
contain various distinct organizations that are best conceived of as separate actors. Intra-
rebel war occurs between two or more of these entities.36 Following convention used in
other studies of rebel infighting, this dissertation uses the terms faction and organization
interchangeably to refer to these actors. Organizations are defined as an association of
individuals with a distinct leadership and operational structure.37
This dissertation foregrounds organizations because they stand at the intersection
of the macro-level (state-dissident movement interaction) and the micro-level (inter-
individual interactions). In this conceptualization, organizations are at once generated by
conflict processes, and at the same time, pivotal actors within these processual dynamics.
Interrogating this interplay is important for understanding intra-rebel war, and will
therefore comprise much of the explanatory work of this dissertation
Taking this approach provides a basis for treating organizations as actors in their
own right, without losing sight of the forces that shape these organizations. Dissident
organizations confronting strong states use varied strategies to organize, grow, and make
36 This dissertation, therefore, does not seek to explain killings that occur within a single rebel organization, such as the execution of suspected spies or deadly purges against internal dissidents. To be sure, inter-factional fighting often occurs as previously united organizations split into multiple factions. Determining when infighting becomes inter-factional requires close attention to degree of organizational integration of the parties to the violence. For a discussion of this form of violence, see Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin, "Ethnic and Nationalist Violence," Annual Review of Sociology 24, no. 1 (1998). 37 With this conceptualization, I follow major studies. Cunningham (2014, 23) defines a faction as “an organized actor that represents the interests of a subset of a larger political entity, and that seeks to influence decision making within that entity.” Similarly, Bakke Cunningham and Seymour define a faction as: “organizations within the broader movement that recognize no higher command authority, have their own leadership and organizational structure (including resources and memberships), and actively make demands related to the group’s collective aims or status”(268). Both of these definitions are compatible with that of a social movement organization (SMO), “a complex, or formal, organization which identifies its goals with the preferences of a social movement or a countermovement and attempts to implement these goals”(McCarthy and Zald 1979, 2). See: Bakke, Cunningham, and Seymour, "A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars," Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 02 (2012); Cunningham, Inside the Politics of Self-Determination (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014); Mayer N Zald and John D McCarthy, "Social Movement Industries: Competition and Cooperation among Movement Organizations," Res. Soc. Mov. Confl. Change 3 (1979).
15
political claims. Some dissidents exploit legal openings the state makes available. They
use non-violence and legal or semi-legal organizations -- such as trade unions and
political organizations -- to mobilize resources and disseminate their political message.
Others use violence, but are forced to conduct attacks in a far more clandestine and
sporadic fashion than insurgents facing weak states.38 Some organizations manage to
combine multiple strategies, both violent and non-violent. 39
This dissertation emphasizes the predicament that dissident organizations face
when seeking to challenge a strong state: whatever their strategy, dissidents’ access to
resources and security is limited when the state remains powerful. Without control over
territory, rebels cannot extract large amounts of resources from local communities, and
moving weapons and resources is costly and risky.40 Recruitment, too, is difficult, as only
the most risk-acceptant or committed individuals will fully join a dissident movement
when the costs are high compared to the likely benefits of participation.41 Only through
the use of ingenious techniques – creative non-violence, violent innovation, etc. -- do
such movements manage to survive and press claims against the state.42
38 For research on the effect of state strength on militant violence, see Joshua Kilberg, "A Basic Model Explaining Terrorist Group Organizational Structure," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 35, no. 11 (2012). 39 For a discussion, see Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Chapter 2. 40 Daniel Byman, "Understanding Proto-Insurgencies," Journal of Strategic Studies 31, no. 2 (2008); Everton and Cunningham, "Dark Network Resilience in a Hostile Environment: Optimizing Centralization and Density," Criminology, Crim. Just. L & Soc'y 16 (2015); J. D. Fearon and D. D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003); Kilberg, "A Basic Model Explaining Terrorist Group Organizational Structure," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 35, no. 11 (2012). 41 Stathis N Kalyvas and Matthew Adam Kocher, "How “Free” Is Free Riding in Civil Wars?: Violence, Insurgency, and the Collective Action Problem," World Politics 59, no. 2 (2007); Roger Petersen, "A Community-Based Theory of Rebellion," European Journal of Sociology 34, no. 1 (1993). 42 For discussion of non-violent insurgency, see: Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011).
16
1.1.3. Defining and operationalizing intra-rebel war
Not all intra-rebel violence counts as intra-rebel war. Setting conceptual and
operationalization guidelines for classifying levels of violence within a rival movement is
important for understanding how to identify and measure the key outcome variable of this
dissertation – intra-rebel war. This dissertation follows Pischedda (2015) in advocating
for a case-specific conceptualization of intra-rebel war, defined according to its political
and strategic significance rather than by measuring body counts. For this dissertation, a
three-tier scale of intra-rebel violence (low/absent violent, skirmishing, and intra-rebel
war) is sufficient for capturing the variation in violence across time and across rebel
dyads.
Low or absent violence
In dissident movements, tempers flare, accidents happen, or idiosyncratic decisions are
made to attack a rival. But these flares of violence need not become concerted conflicts.
Accordingly, violence is considered low/absent if either [1] a reasonably thorough review
of sources fails to identify any instances of violence in a dyad or if [2] incidents are so
rare and aberrational that few participants and scholars report them, and those that do
refer to such incidents as an aberration. This case-specific coding has certain advantages
over a rigid quantitative threshold because it better captures how rebels and informed
observers appraised the political and strategic nature of intra-rebel violence. Different
conflicts may have different thresholds for how many incidents of intra-rebel violence
must occur before actors and relevant audiences take notice. As such, the strategic toll
from the infighting may depend on contextual conditions.
17
Intra-rebel skirmishing
It is important to separate intra-rebel war from “low-level clashes, which are pervasive in
civil war settings.”43 In many civil wars, the presence of large numbers of armed
individuals makes avoiding periodic outbreaks of violence difficult. Nonetheless, these
violent incidents, even if somewhat frequent, may not stem from decisions taken within
the rebel chain-of-command. If the violence lacks association with purposive, organized
efforts made within the rebel chain-of-command, then violence is best described as
skirmishing, rather than intra-rebel war. Of course, skirmishing can causally contribute
to intra-rebel war, but it is not useful to describe this form of violence, itself, as intra-
rebel war.
Intra-rebel war
Intra-rebel war is the most severe and strategically consequential form of intra-rebel
violence. Thus, it is the outcome of interest in this dissertation. This dissertation defines
intra-rebel war as strategically and politically consequential armed conflict that meets
two conditions. First, it is fought between rebel organizations from within the same
movement. And second, it is at least partly directed by the ordinary chain-of-command of
at least one of the parties to the intra-rebel war.
Intra-rebel war is particularly interesting because compared to lower intensity and
less concerted violence, it can be expected to inflict higher costs associated with state
detection and loss of local support. Its coordination and intensity leaves more traces for
43 Constantino Pischedda, "Wars within Wars: Understanding Inter-Rebel Fighting" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University 2015), 42.
18
state security forces in their hunt for rebel operators. Also, it occurs with the involvement
of high-ranking members of the rebel factions (i.e., planning and/or participation),
rendering them comparatively more vulnerable to detection. Furthermore, its organized
and sustained nature catches the attention of the communities from which rebel
organizations seek support.
Intra-rebel war is operationalized with the following criteria. First, decisions to
launch attacks, for at least one of the factions in the dyad, must be the result of decision-
making processes within the normal hierarchy of the organization. In other words,
fighting cannot be merely the product of certain commanders or rank-and-file going
rogue, even if some portion of the violence involves local initiative or actions outside of
the organizational hierarchy.
Second, the fighting must result in enough physical damage to hold strategic
importance (positive or negative) for participants, as acknowledged by rebels and/or
informed observers. Instead of a quantitative death threshold, inspecting individual cases
allows for this context-sensitive assessment of fratricide. For the Northern Ireland case
this approach is particularly important. Compared to other insurgencies, the death toll
from fratricide in Belfast was quite low. However, the political and strategic
ramifications of the fighting were severe.
1.2. Wars within: comparing the Republican movement and Kurdish revolutionaries
On the night of 29 October 1975, gunfire rang out across Belfast.44 The sound of
gunshots in the night was hardly unusual for the city’s residents, accustomed to the
44 Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 281.
19
sounds of IRA battles with the British military and local security forces. And nighttime
clashes between the Provisional IRA (PIRA) and the Official IRA (OIRA) were far from
unheard of; by this time, the “feud” had become a time-honored, if embarrassing, practice
among Republicans.45
But this time was different. In the opening days of the violence, the OIRA claims
the PIRA attacked them sixty times,46 and the OIRA struck back will equal ferocity.
Without respite, units from both sides attacked each other in their homes, in their
respective bars and drinking clubs, and in the streets.47 For weeks, armed patrols hunted
each other across Belfast, and traded gunfire from entrenched positions in homes and
street corners. The local community “watched appalled” 48as the fighting claimed the
lives of local militants and innocent bystanders, alike, stoking outrage among many who
were otherwise supportive of the insurgency. Two weeks later, mediation efforts of local
clergymen finally cemented a truce between the two sides.49
In total, eleven people died in these clashes,50but the costs transcended the
immediate death toll. The intra-rebel war in Belfast was fought under the interested gaze
of a state opponent that held vast experience in counter-insurgency, and was developing a
45 John F Morrison, The Origins and Rise of Dissident Irish Republicanism: The Role and Impact of Organizational Splits (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013). 46 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 47Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 185. 48 Ciarán De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 197. 49 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 296; Robert White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 221. 50 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 281; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 321.
20
formidable security and intelligence regime to combat the IRA.51 When the British
military first deployed in the streets of Derry and Belfast in August 1969, their
knowledge of the Republican movement was thin and outdated. But over time, British
security services began to implement the techniques of intelligence gathering and
counter-insurgency that they had honed in conflicts across the world. In late-July 1972,
the British military launched a massive operation to greatly deepen its physical presence
in Catholic areas of Belfast.52 It set up a dense nettle of military posts, fences, and guard
walls throughout the city, so that British soldiers could observe the trouble spots of the
city53 and collect a constant stream of intelligence through techniques such as
‘screening,’ or picking up local civilians as they went about their daily lives for routine
questioning, sometimes leading to the recruitment of new informers. 54
The British military also built a detailed picture of the human geography of
Belfast, conducting more than 35,000 house searches in 1972, alone.55 Between 1972 and
1977, the rate of British military house searches was two per home, with many homes
searched far more often.56 The British military also built systems for careful processing of
the evidence that violent clashes left behind.57 Intra-IRA killings no doubt provided
51 Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015). 52 Huw Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010); Andrew Sanders and Ian S. Wood, Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 64. 53 See J Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 362. 54 Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015). 55 Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 519. 56 Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 119. 57 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 342; Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015), 20.
21
valuable material for these efforts.58 British soldiers swooped onto the scene after
incidents to question witnesses and sometimes to arrest participants.59Twenty-four OIRA
and PIRA members were arrested and charged with crimes “directly resulting” from the
autumn 1975 clashes.60
The fighting also left political legacies that plagued both sides for years to come.
Of course, the intra-rebel war did not cause the total collapse of the insurgency. The
Republican insurgency against the British state continued as a low intensity conflict until
the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. But throughout these decades, rebel
infighting across the insurgency chronically weakened the movement. The PIRA and
OIRA had to direct energy away from the insurgency to take precautions against future
attacks from rivals.61 And the sides’ inability to bury the hatchet weakened them
politically at a critical time. Local Catholic communities voiced anger over what they saw
as “indiscriminate woundings and killings” in an “an internecine republican conflict” that
endangered innocent lives without any purpose or benefit.62
The fighting also coincided with a gradual shift in British government policy
toward treating IRA members as ordinary criminals, rather than political militants.63 The
bloodshed between the two sides served this narrative, making it easier to argue that the
58 Instructional material for army intelligence highlighted the usefulness of local conflicts as opportunities to gather intelligence. See, David A Charters, "‘Have a Go’: British Army/Mi5 Agent-Running Operations in Northern Ireland, 1970–72," Intelligence and National Security 28, no. 2 (2013): 219. 59 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 60 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 321; "Feud between IRA Factions Led to Capture of Arms," The Times 18 November 1975. 61 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 322. 62 Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 165. 63 Paul Bew and Gordon Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 115; Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015), 71.
22
IRA was not deserving of recognition as a political movement, 64that they were “more
like gangsters than a national liberation army.”65The Republican movement was painfully
aware of these costs. “It was later conceded by the Provisionals that this period of self-
destruction played directly into the hands of the British,” notes local Belfast historian,
Ciaran de Baroid. Portraying the IRA as obsessed with “a gangland vendetta”66 made it
easier for the British to justify security polices that were operationally dangerous to the
movement. All told, the fighting within the Republican movement, particularly when it
escalated beyond low level clashes, resulted in multifarious harmful effects for all of
those involved. It was, by the admission of those involved, a mistake that continues to
haunt the memories of those who lived through it.67
Five years later, a similar – if more deadly – intra-rebel war broke out in eastern
Turkey. In the early months of 1980, fighting broke out between the PKK and the
TKDP/KUK, the two most well armed factions in Turkey’s Kurdish insurgency at the
time. The 1970s witnessed the budding of pro-Kurdish violent insurgency in Turkey for
the first time since the early years of the Turkish republic during the 1920s and 1930s.
But before turning their weapons against the Turkish state, the rebels fell into a costly
fratricidal war that set back the struggle and exposed both sides to the repressive
machinery of the Turkish state.
After initial clashes in an industrial farm at Ceylanpınar – near the Syrian border –
the fighting between the PKK and the TKDP/KUK spread to the nearby towns of
64 Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 431. 65 White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 138. 66 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 198. 67 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 275.
23
Batman, Mardin, Nusaybin and to the city of Diyarbakır.68 Redolent of the battles in
Belfast, the sides clashed with automatic weapons in cafés and on street corners. They
also carried the fighting to the towns and villages nearby, engaging in running gun battles
from cars and raiding villages where rivals were encamped. It was months before a truce
was holding between the two sides.69 Despite acknowledging the toll that the fighting
was exacting,70 the sides were unable to curb the fighting, which led to scores of dead and
wounded.71
In fact, the PKK vs. TKDP/KUK war could not have come at a worse time for the
rebels. In early 1980, Turkey’s military was already engaged in preparations for a coup
d’état, and they were stepping up their campaign of repression, with the aim of stamping
out the wave of political mobilization and violence that was sweeping over Turkey during
the late-1970s.72 Both the PKK73 and the TKDP/KUK74 recognized the critical
importance of concealment as the military trained its crosshairs on the rebels. By clashing
with each other on the urban streets of Diyarbakır and elsewhere, often in broad daylight,
they jeopardized the concealment of their cadres and weapons cachets. Battles resulted in
68 Mehmet Can Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377. 69 Hewar 2 (September 1980); "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 203. 70 Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 378. 71 Ibid., 379; Abdullah Öcalan, PKK’ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi (Cologne, Germany: Serxwebun), 380-82. Also see, Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 379. 72 Banu Eligür, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 86; Erik J Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2004), 262. 73 Öcalan, PKK’ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi (Cologne, Germany: Serxwebun), 12-13. 74 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 111 (1981).
24
the direct capture of fighters and hidden arms cachets,75 and came with political costs
analogous to those in Northern Ireland.
And like the Republican war, benefits from the fighting were predictably elusive.
To be certain, the PKK used violence unremittingly against almost all of its rivals in the
Kurdish rebel movement, in some cases with discernable success. But the war with the
TKDP/KUK was conspicuously inconclusive: it was state repression -- not the PKK --
that eviscerated the TKDP/KUK. Plus, the protracted campaign of killing fellow rebels
left a blight on everyone involved, as the PKK later implicitly conceded.76
1.2.1. Intra-rebel war in strong states
The intra-rebels wars in Northern Ireland and Turkey defy conventional wisdom and
theoretical expectations regarding when and why rebels use intense violence against one
another. These cases differ from the more common arenas of intra-rebel war, such as
Afghanistan during the 1990s and Lebanon during the 1970s, where clear strategic
inducements for intra-rebel war existed. In weak states like these, there is less need to
balance against a powerful, shared adversary,77 and weak states are unable to take
advantage of infighting.
If anything, the fratricidal wars in Northern Ireland and Turkey were fought in
locations where the state was comparatively strong. As such, these cases typify a more
general puzzle: that of intra-rebel war in strong states. The next section details more
75 For detailed examples, see ibid. 76 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 379. 77 Fotini Christia, Alliance Formation in Civil Wars (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 38.
25
explicitly why the distinct costs and the availability of alternatives to violence stand out
as the two most salient features of this puzzle.
The dangers of intra-rebel war in strong states
State strength makes intra-rebel violence risky. Besides the cases discussed above,
illustrations of this stylized fact abound. Even single incidents of fratricide in strong
states can prove disastrous for rebels. Consider, for instance, the case of far-right
infighting in Great Britain: in 1998, fissures in the British neo-Nazi group Combat 18
(C18) turned violent when two leading members of one faction ambushed a rival,
murdering him with a kitchen knife. Reportedly disgusted by the attack, another C18
member informed the police about the incident, later testifying in court against the
offenders. Both attackers received life sentences.78 Far right politics in Britain lived on,
but the imprisoned leaders of the C18 splinter would have to participate from a prison
cell.
Besides these direct dangers, strong states also have the wherewithal to exploit
rebel infighting in sophisticated and insidious ways.79 The propaganda and intelligence
setbacks that the IRA and PKK suffered are by no means isolated outcomes. To take just
78 Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 101; Nick Lowles and Nick Ryan, "Neo-Nazi Gang War Fear after Murder " The Independent, 25 January 1998. 79 The indirect costs of infighting are widely recognized. Pischedda succinctly enumerates some of these effects: “Actual and potential supporters at home and abroad may be disheartened by the occurrence of incomprehensible internecine violence in the rebel camp, while the government may be better able to resist international pressure to address the grievances voiced by the rebels by pointing out that the insurgents are themselves divided and claiming that the government-rebels cleavage is not the main axis of violence” (Pischedda 2015,14). Staniland, too, makes similar remarks: “States that previously had trouble exploiting internal divisions will now face a far easier task. Counterinsurgency effectiveness should increase during and after messy rounds of infighting”(Staniland 2014, 53). Hafez further points out the dangers of “delegitimization” that come with infighting: A rebel organization “risks delegitimation if it cannot justify its fratricide to its ardent supporters, and rationalize it within the broader rebel movement” (Hafez 2017, 5). Mohammed M Hafez, "Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars," Terrorism and Political Violence (2017); Pischedda, "Wars within Wars: Understanding Inter-Rebel Fighting" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University 2015); Paul Staniland, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).
26
one illustration: in 1975, the Organization of Iranian People’s Mojahedin (OIPM) – one
of the organizations waging an insurgency against the Shah of Iran – split over whether to
follow Islamist or Marxist precepts.80 Before long, the Marxist leaders decided to launch
a hostile takeover of their Islamist rivals. A violent encounter ensued, whereupon the
leader of the Islamist splinter, Majid Sharif Vaqefi, was killed. But his associate managed
to escape and reach a doctor, and disastrously, the doctor turned the wounded militant
over to the police. Soon afterward, Iran’s intelligence services found the body of Vaqefi,
the slain Islamist leader.81
Following a string of arrests against suspected OIPM members, the regime
publicized and embellished the incident, squeezing from it every bit of propaganda value.
Not only did the clash contribute to a rift between Islamist and Marxist revolutionaries,82
more concretely, the Shah’s security forces began to secretly kill suspected OIPM
members and dispose of their bodies in a similar manner to the way the Marxist OIPM
discarded the corpse of Sharif Vaqefi; they would then pin the blame for the killings on
intra-rebel violence.83
To be sure, despite the risks involved, sometimes carefully calibrated applications
of small-scale violence can be strategically effective, even in strong states. A small
number of attacks or assassinations can disrupt a peace process or plunge a rival into
disarray, while staying below the state’s radar. But when attacks escalate into sustained
and open confrontation, the dangers increase precipitously. If fighting between rebels 80 Peyman Vahabzadeh, Guerilla Odyssey: Modernization, Secularism, Democracy, and the Fadai Period of National Liberation in Iran, 1971-1979 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010). 81 Ibid., 169. 82 ibid. 83 This claim is based on an account by historian Ervand Abrahamian. See: Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 162-63.
27
goes on for too long, or grows too severe, strong states are sure to take notice -- and are
very likely to take advantage.
The alternatives available
Another curious feature of intra-rebel war in strong states is that it occurs despite the
clear availability of alternatives. The presence of a capable state renders non-violent
forms of rebel competition viable, unlike in weak states, where violence is often required
for survival. So long as states police areas where dissidents operate, rebel factions do not
compete in an anarchic environment where the strong may do what they will and the
weak will suffer what they must.84 Even if the state privately applauds rebel fratricide, its
agents are unlikely to stand by indefinitely during intra-rebel wars. Routine policing
duties disrupt sustained violence, and political authorities face pressures to prevent chaos
in core zones of political and economic concern. What is more, non-violent factions that
appeal openly for state protection may often receive it, at least enough to protect them
from destruction.
These lessons go on display when we look at fratricide in Turkey’s Kurdish
Islamist movement of the 1990s. During this decade, a highly secretive Islamist
organization, the Ilim Group, began to compete with the state and the PKK for control
over the Kurdish towns and cities of southeast Turkey. At first, Turkey’s security services
appear to have allowed the Islamists and the PKK (both enemies of the state) to kill each
84 In these conditions, violent dissident organizations are usefully conceptualized as dark networks. Like other dark networks, such organizations are subject to a steep efficiency-secrecy trade-off. See René M Bakker, Jörg Raab, and H Brinton Milward, "A Preliminary Theory of Dark Network Resilience," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31, no. 1 (2012); Everton and Cunningham, "Dark Network Resilience in a Hostile Environment: Optimizing Centralization and Density," Criminology, Crim. Just. L & Soc'y 16 (2015).
28
other relatively unimpeded.85 But over time, the Ilim began to direct its violence toward
rival Kurdish Islamists. As this fratricidal bloodshed worsened, Turkish police began to
garner increased intelligence about the Ilim organization.86 Finally, in 2000, the police
caught up with the Ilim’s leader, decapitating the organization. On the heels of this
breakthrough, the Turkish state supplied the media with images of the Ilim Group’s
handiwork -- horrific artifacts of the Ilim’s alleged campaign of torture and violence,
much of it against rival Islamists and conservative Kurds.
In the end, the Ilim failed to destroy its intra-movement rivals through violent
aggression, and its attempt to do so resulted in operational vulnerability and political ruin,
as it hemorrhaged support from sympathizers and its rank-and-file, many of whom later
claimed to have been shocked when they learned of the atrocities Ilim inflicted on fellow
Muslims.87 Meanwhile, various non-violent Islamist factions that the Ilim had targeted
remained intact, continuing to incrementally pursue their political agendas through non-
violent means; their disciplined refusal to be drawn into a fratricidal war proved a
superior strategy of survival, despite the short term costs it entailed.
The empirical phenomenon of intra-rebel war in strong states
A dearth of detailed large-n data on rebel infighting makes a reliable estimate of the
global incidence of intra-rebel war and its empirical association with state strength
difficult to establish. Still, existing datasets demonstrate that numerous cases of rebel
85 Allegations also exist that the Turkish security services colluded with Ilim in its activities against the PKK. Of course, these claims are difficult to appraise. For a discussion, see Ruşen Çakır, Derin Hizbullah: İslamcı Şiddetin Geleceği (Istanbul, Turkey: Metis Yayınları, 2011); Mehmet Kurt, Türkiye'de Hizbullah: Din, Şiddet ve Aidiyet (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2015). 86 This account is based on investigative research by Ruşen Çakır. See: Ruşen Çakır, Derin Hizbullah: İslamcı Şiddetin Geleceği (Istanbul, Turkey: Metis Yayınları, 2011), 90. 87 See, for instance, Kurt, Türkiye'de Hizbullah: Din, Şiddet ve Aidiyet (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2015), 64-66.
29
infighting in strong states have occurred. Two major datasets of rebel infighting – those
used in Fjelde and Nilsson (2012) and Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour (2012) --
record infighting as occurring across many weak states, such as the Democratic Republic
of Congo and Bangladesh. But they also identify rebel infighting during insurgencies that
confront strong states, such as Israel, Pakistan, France, and Russia.88 These cases,
combined with the various historical examples alluded to so far, suggest that rebels do
sometimes go to war with one another in strong states.
1.2.2. Possible explanations
Four initial explanations, considered independently or in concert, might seem to alleviate
the need for further theory building. Explanations that look to strategy, ideology,
collective psychological pathologies, and organizational failure all offer coherent models
for explaining intra-rebel violence. But upon closer scrutiny, neither the Northern Ireland
case nor the Turkey case is easily explained with any of these arguments, though they do
provide partial insights. The following is a brief review and critique of each potential
explanation.
Strategy
Major theories of intra-rebel war place their emphasis squarely upon strategic interaction.
An initial assumption of strategic theories is that the organizations comprising an
insurgency are rational and self-interested. While rebel organizations may be concerned
with the overall fate of the insurgency, their main priority is their own survival and 88 Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, Kristin M Bakke, and Lee JM Seymour, "Shirts Today, Skins Tomorrow Dual Contests and the Effects of Fragmentation in Self-Determination Disputes," Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 1 (2012); Hanne Fjelde and Desirée Nilsson, "Rebels against Rebels Explaining Violence between Rebel Groups," ibid., no. 4.
30
success.89 A second basic premise is that rebel organizations’ primary logic of action is
strategic calculation. Rebel organizations evaluate a wide range of possible actions that
might advance their interests, incorporating both the expected benefits and expected costs
into these calculations, with an eye to the likely actions and reactions of the other actors
involved. They then choose the option that appears to best promote their ultimate goals of
survival and growth.
This approach is useful for highlighting instances in which rebel infighting
promises distinct benefits. For starters, violence can inflict lasting damage against a rival,
diminishing its ability to compete in the future.90 It can also send a costly signal,
demonstrating that the attacker is determined and powerful.91 This can pay off when
rebels are trying to exert their will against others in the insurgency, and it can also
demonstrate to the state that the attacker is powerful enough to impose agreements upon
others in the movement, enhancing its standing as a bargaining partner with the state.92
Conversely, a rebel organization might use violence to spoil an ongoing negotiation with
the state. Spoiler violence can demonstrate that without addressing the attacker’s
interests, no lasting political bargain will be possible.93
89 This assumption is usually made explicit, or at least, it is implied in the rationalist frameworks of these theories. Seymour Bakke and Cunningham invoke this assumption, contending that: “Efforts to foster unity are regularly set back by the actions of self-interested individuals or organizations whose actions undermine the wider movement’s capability”(5). Krause (2017) explicitly makes the same assumption: “[…] the organizational objectives of survival and strength that are more important to groups than collective strategic outcomes”(7). See Krause, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017); Lee JM Seymour, Kristin M Bakke, and Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, "E Pluribus Unum, Ex Uno Plures: Competition, Violence, and Fragmentation in Ethnopolitical Movements," Journal of Peace Research 53, no. 1 (2016). 90 Cunningham, Inside the Politics of Self-Determination (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014). 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Peter Krause, "The Structure of Success: How the Internal Distribution of Power Drives Armed Group Behavior and National Movement Effectiveness," International Security 38, no. 3 (2014); Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017).
31
Furthermore, in some cases, violence can produce decisive outcomes. If a rival is
weak and vulnerable, a swift application of violence might remove them from the playing
field altogether.94 Alternatively, an organization in terminal decline might attack an
erstwhile ally in a “gamble for resurrection.”95 Although offering only a tiny chance of
averting its decline, rebels may judge this option as better than accepting certain
extinction on their trend line of decline. 96
These logics, however, also recognize the basic puzzle of this dissertation: the
presence of a strong state greatly increases the expected costs of intra-rebel war. The high
expected costs associated with violent infighting in strong states dramatically narrows the
conditions under which a sound strategic logic exists for engaging in sustained and
intensive violence. To be sure, the main cases of this dissertation confirm the notion that
competition provides incentives for violence. As this dissertation’s case studies will
demonstrate, rivalry over access to turf and support from local communities figured in the
decision making of rebel leaders. Yet the sheer intensity and duration of violence in both
cases brought costs that were out-of-step with a reasonable cost-benefit appraisal.
Applying the above strategic logic, it is possible to identify two sorts of violence
that might be warranted in an area of high state presence: first, isolated applications of
violence to attain a proximate strategic goal might bring distinct benefits, while avoiding
inordinate costs. An assassination, a punishment beating, or a sudden drive-by shooting,
for instance, could produce a strategic benefit, while also allowing the perpetrators to
cover their tracks and only minimally expose their operational structures to the dangers of
94 Pischedda, "Wars within Wars: Understanding Inter-Rebel Fighting" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University 2015). 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.
32
state repression. Second, a high intensity onslaught, with a good chance of decisive
result, might be worth the risk. As Pischedda (2015) argues, dyads with a wide power
asymmetry provide the strong actor with the opportunity to use high intensity violence to
wipe out a rival.
Both kinds of strategic conditions did prevail at certain times for the PKK and the
PIRA. The PIRA engaged in violence against local rivals during the peace process of the
1990s to solidify its control over the community and enforce its side of the deal,97 and the
PKK has used violence in a calculated fashion against internal rivals for decades, with
carefully planned assassinations in Europe and Northern Iraq to eliminate critics and
rivals. During the late-1970s, it used violence to decimate weak rivals.98
Yet the two intra-rebel wars that this dissertation focuses upon do not match
either of these types of intra-rebel violence. These wars were drawn out and bloody,
while at the same time, predictability inconclusive. The scale of violence in the PIRA vs.
OIRA war was enough to operationally and politically weaken the insurgency, but it was
clearly below what would have been required to violently eliminate either side or push
them out of their respective Belfast strongholds.
Likewise, the PKK and TKDP/KUK in 1980 stood as the two most powerful
factions in the insurgency in terms of armed capability. The PKK had, by then, a solid
foothold in multiple locations across southeastern Turkey; it was not vulnerable to swift
organizational death at the hands of a rival. Quite the contrary, it was clearly on the rise,
taking influence and turf from other Kurdish rebel organizations across the region. The
97 Anthony McIntyre, "Provisional Republicanism: Internal Politics, Inequities and Modes of Repression," in Republicanism in Modern Ireland, ed. Fearghal McGarry (Dublin, Ireland: University College Dublin, 2003). 98 Mehmet Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 96.
33
TKDP/KUK was more concentrated in the borderlands with Syria and Iraq, as well as
areas of Diyarbakır.99 But it was far from an easy victim. Its members were well armed,
and the PKK accepted100 that they could not easily dislodge the TKDP/KUK from its
strongholds, where it drew support from longstanding social networks.101Thus, at least to
the outside observer, 102 it should have been clear from the outset that these would be
costly and dangerous wars that were very unlikely to bring commensurate benefits.
Ideology
If pure strategic calculation seems an unlikely candidate for explaining these cases, then
perhaps these wars occurred because strategic considerations did not wholly drive the
decision making of these actors. Other logics, such as ideology, may have overridden
careful material calculations. Hafez (2017) argues that ideology explains rebel infighting
by shaping the stakes of competition, influencing threat framings, and informing strategy
selection. In his theory of ideological “proxidistance,” he argues that intractable rivalries
emerge when two rebel factions share common ideological roots, but differ on key
matters of strategy and tactics. That causes rebels to compete for the same ideological
constituency, positioning each side’s counterpart as an enduring threat. If within such a
dyad at least one of the factions subscribes to an extreme ideology (that is, an ideology 99 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 203; Michael M Gunter, The Kurds in Turkey: A Political Dilemma (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), 62. 100 Cemil Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 30. 101 Sait Aydoğmus, Yakın Tarihimizde İki Sait Olayı (Rizgari.com, 2005); Cemil Gündoğan, "From Traditionalism to Modernism:The Transformation of the Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey in the Case of Democratic Party of Turkish Kurdistan" (Masters’ Thesis, Stockholm University, 2002). 102 Necmettin Büyükkaya, a seasoned Kurdish guerrilla, unaffiliated with either side, looked on as the fighting intensified between the PKK and TKDP/KUK. “So what is this KUK-PKK conflict?,” he asked rhetorically: “It is a consequence of the enemy’s policy of divide-and-conquer, the provocation of Kurdish political powers of various tendencies, pitting them against each other.” Büyükkaya could easily see the mutually deleterious effects of the war, yet, despite its obvious futility, the PKK and TKP/KUK were unable to bring it to a close until autumn of that year. Necmettin Büyükkaya, "Personal Notes 20 June 1980 " in Kalemimden Sayfalar, ed. Şerwan Büyükkaya (Stockholm, Sweden: Vate).
34
that among other features endorses an “expansive and indiscriminate” approach to
violence103) the conditions for fratricidal violence are present. In addition to making
compromise and tolerance more difficult, extremist ideologies furnish rebels with
permissive, even encouraging, views on violence. Thus, while ideologically moderate
rebels will seek to undermine proxidistant rivals through means other than fratricidal
violence, extremist factions will favor violence as a method of eliminating rivals.104
Ideological proxidistance is limited in its ability to shed light on the main cases of
this dissertation. In Northern Ireland, neither the PIRA nor the OIRA espoused an
“extremist” ideology, per the definition that Hafez offers. The ideologies of both the
PIRA and OIRA were committed to careful discrimination in their use of violence
(ideologically, if not always in practice). Their ideological commitments, however one
sees them, can hardly be interpreted as endorsing gratuitous and indiscriminate violence,
by the standard Hafez stipulates.105
The PKK’s ideological framework was arguably more permissive toward
violence, as will become apparent in Chapter 3, while the TKDP/KUK seems to have
espoused a more ‘moderate’ stance on violence.106 In this regard, the PKK vs.
TKDP/KUK dyad seems congruent with Hafez’s theory. But the causal mechanisms that
Hafez provides are insufficient for understanding the within-case patterns of the Turkey
case: as the following chapters will show, the PKK faced an array of proxidistant rivals
103 Hafez, "Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars," Terrorism and Political Violence (2017): 7. 104 Ibid. 105 Rachel Caroline Kowalski, "The Role of Sectarianism in the Provisional IRA Campaign, 1969–1997," ibid.30, no. 4 (2018); Michael Lawrence Rowan Smith, Fighting for Ireland?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). 106 Xebat 3 (October/November 1978): 13.
35
during the 1970s, yet the severity of its violent interactions varies widely, with its war
against the TKDP/KUK far bloodier than its contests against other rivals. The task of this
dissertation is to elucidate the distinct causal mechanisms that explain this variation.
Collective pathology
Socio-psychological pathologies that arise in small groups may also contribute to
fratricide. Scholars have argued that going deep underground to avoid state repression
can divorce rebels from the realities of the outside world, leading to shared delusions
within these small groups.107 Inasmuch as these organizations start “to view the goals and
strategies of their movement in emotive, rather than strategic, terms”108 they develop
attitudes toward violence that are difficult to reconcile with coherent strategy. Instead,
rebel violence becomes an end in itself. These studies are of a piece with Abrahms’
(2008)109 call to take more seriously the hypothesis that those who participate in terrorism
do so primarily because of the solidary benefits that come with belonging to a tight knit
social group, giving rise to collective behaviors with little connection to the strategic
pursuit of wider goals.110
While perhaps applicable in certain times and places, this model does not apply to
the main cases of this dissertation, because in both cases, the rebels were not isolated
107 Donatella Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 108 Mohammed M Hafez, "From Marginalization to Massacres: A Political Process Explanation of Gia Violence in Algeria," in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach, ed. Quintan Wiktorowicz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 38.
109 Max Abrahms, "What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategy," International Security 32, no. 4 (2008). 110 Cronin makes a related observation: “One of the biggest problems for many groups in the twentieth century was trying to remain in touch with a constituency even as they operated underground. The more groups drew in upon themselves, because of state repression, police successes, or the revulsion of the public, the more they tended to operate according to their own internal dynamics and become further removed from the public, thereby undermining both their raison d’etre and their ability to operate.” Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 107.
36
from the wider community. In fact, the intensification of state repression and insurgency,
if anything, integrated the rebels more closely with locals. The PIRA and PKK, in
particular, grew and expanded by melding into community life, a process that was
hastened by state repression that made locals dependent on rebels.
To be certain, the ability to use techniques to conceal operational structures and
members from the state was important for all of the organizations in these cases. But
these organizations still managed to remain in close, frequent interaction with the
communities from which they sought to derive support, and as such, the key antecedent
condition for these explanations was absent from these cases.
Organizational failure
Rebel fratricide in strong states may also result from the inability of some rebel
organizations to maintain their coherence as unity actors. As Weinstein (2007) explains,
some rebel organizations are plagued with recruits that join the insurgency
opportunistically, not out of commitment to the cause but because they believe that
fighting will afford them a chance at loot and plunder.111 Staniland (2014) further notes
that rebel organizations may sometimes fail to socialize and integrate large influxes of
new members, especially if they come from outside the social networks of the leadership
echelon. This can lead to internal frictions, which in some cases, may erupt into violent
internal splits.112
Recruits with malign motives, combined with poor structures for socialization,
may produce organizations that behave apolitically. In a strong rendition of this 111 Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 112 Staniland, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 48.
37
argument, it is possible to paint an image of rebel organizations whose greed-driven
members battle one another with little concern for the larger ramifications to their own
organization and the wider cause.
Of course, maintaining effective command and control structures is famously
difficult for violent organizations that operate in strong state environments,113 and the
organizations featured in this dissertation are no exception. Moreover, in both conflicts,
resource flows – such as control over smuggling routes and illicit markets – became a
basis for rebel competition. Nonetheless, it would be misleading to characterize these
organizations as extreme manifestations of organizational failure.
For starters, the realities of both conflicts make it unlikely that recruits would
have joined in search of near-term tangible benefits. Entrants into the PKK before 1980
were what scholars call “first movers,” those who join a rebellion while the costs and
dangers are still very high, with a low probability of compensatory material gain.114 And
while joining the Republican movement could bring access to illicit incomes,115 it also
came with grave risks, something that Republican recruiters impressed upon prospective
IRA entrants.116
Furthermore, the conduct of political prisoners in both organizations is a clear
indication of the self-sacrificing commitment of large numbers of the rank-and-file. PKK
113 Bakker, Raab, and Milward, "A Preliminary Theory of Dark Network Resilience," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 31, no. 1 (2012); Everton and Cunningham, "Dark Network Resilience in a Hostile Environment: Optimizing Centralization and Density," Criminology, Crim. Just. L & Soc'y 16 (2015); Jacob N Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 114 Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Stathis N Kalyvas, "Jihadi Rebels in Civil War," Dædalus 147, no. 1 (2018); Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 115 See for example, Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994). 116 W.H. Van Voris, "The Provisional IRA and the Limits of Terrorism," The Massachusetts Review 16, no. 3 (1975); Andrew Silke, "Rebel's Dilemma: The Changing Relationship between the IRA, Sinn Féin and Paramilitary Vigilantism in Northern Ireland," Terrorism and Political Violence 11, no. 1 (1999).
38
prisoners117 after the 1980 coup staged disciplined collective protests, including self-
immolations and hunger strikes unto death. IRA prisoners118 displayed similarly
disciplined self-harm, not the kind of behavior to be expected from self-interested, loot
seeking militants.
Meanwhile, none of the organizations in question were lacking in structures for
political socialization and discipline. Each had mechanisms of punishment and reward, to
keep members oriented toward organizational goals, rather than private gain.119 As
subsequent chapters will show, it is indeed true that non-sanctioned acts of violence
played a critical role in escalating these intra-rebel conflicts. Yet, the organizational
failure model fails to properly diagnose these organizational pathologies.
1.2.3. The plan and approach of the dissertation
The ensuing chapters will cast further doubt on the above perspectives. In the pages that
lie ahead, a more elaborate, but ultimately more compelling, account will take shape that
identifies central processes that led to intra-rebel war in both cases. The comparative
approach of this dissertation is parallel and diachronic: it begins with an examination of
the broad conditions that are similar to both insurgencies; it then explores how salient
aspects of these broad conditions influenced the organizations active in these insurgences.
117 For an in-depth study, see Banu Bargu, Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2014). 118 See, for example, Padraig O'Malley, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990). 119 Richard Ned Lebow, "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978); Nihat Ali Özcan, PKK (Kürdistan İşçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yöntemi (Ankara, Turkey: ASAM, Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yayınları, 1999); Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
39
Finally, it analyzes how these factors shaped the behaviors and interactions of rebel
organizations, focusing specifically on their turn to fratricidal violence.
This parallel and diachronic approach will have distinct merits. Looking at two
cases in parallel will sensitize this inquiry to major similarities that based on intuition and
existing scholarship stand out as important for understanding how and why intra-rebel
war occurred in both places. While this ‘most different’ comparative strategy necessitates
glossing over some of the particularities of each case, it yields a set of causal mechanisms
that travel easily for application elsewhere. I will put this advantage to the test toward the
end of this dissertation by testing the resultant explanation using two other “shadow
cases,” one taken from the Algerian independence movement and the other from the
Sinhalese left in Sri Lanka.
Setting out on this comparison, Chapter 2 examines the development of
insurgency both in Northern Ireland and Turkey. While acknowledging the differences
across these two conflicts, this chapter calls attention to a similar form of state repression
carried out by security forces, as well as state-aligned proxies. Though powerful, in these
cases, security forces initially lacked the specialized know-how for managing social
unrest. Thus, in practice, the state began to rely on ad hoc violent repression, which
angered dissidents and radicalized dissident activity. Failing to pacify growing unrest, the
state then began to leave the field open to groups in society that were violently opposed
to the growing protest movements. The involvement of these counter-groups further
transformed the practice of politics into a violent contest fought using rudimentary
weapons and tactics.
40
This escalatory pattern is often witnessed when high capacity states seek to
manage threats from vigorous challengers. The concluding section of this chapter draws
out these similarities into conceptualization of disorderly violent repression, which I
define as violent repression that is indiscriminate and pervasive, while also limited in its
lethal potential. Explicitly defining the features that constitute this variety of repression
provides the necessary groundwork for exploring how this form of repression uniquely
shapes rebel movements.
Taking up this task, Chapter 3 delves into the processes of insurgent change
ushered by the rise of disorderly violent repression in these cases. A similarity in both
Northern Ireland and Turkey is that this form of violence stimulated bottom-up practical
learning from activists and locals on the ground. These collective practices added new
tactics to the quivers of rebel organizations. I use the term routines of rudimentary
violence to denote these new collective routines of violence. It also reshaped rebel
culture, attaching new affective connotations to acts of raw and spontaneous violence.
Hence, there emerged the social role of a specialist in rudimentary violence, a locally
intelligible social category that conferred acceptance and cachet upon those who excelled
in its performance.
This chapter also establishes that these pressures did not act uniformly on rebel
organizations. Older and more institutionalized rebel organizations were able to learn
these new techniques without becoming consumed by them. By contrast, new
organizations – or organizations that were weakly institutionalized – grasped onto these
new tactics as a mainstay tool, useful not just for defending themselves, but for
application to other political ends, such as winning attention from the community,
41
signaling power to the state, and coercing other rebel organizations through quick flashes
of violence. The concluding section of this chapter schematizes these observations into a
model of organizational imprinting, and proposes how these differing organizational
features translate into patterns of dyadic interaction that create risks of escalating
fratricide, specifically when both sides of a rebel rivalry are significantly imprinted by
disorderly violent repression.
Chapters 4 and 5 explore the implications of Chapters 2 and 3. It was no
coincidence, I argue, that intra-rebel wars broke out between the organizations that most
deeply bore the marks of learning routines of rudimentary violence. Chapter 4 traces the
early violent interactions among rebels in both insurgencies. This detailed tracing
uncovers indications that organizational traits inhering in these dyad types promoted
spirals of attack and response that grew more serious as time when on. The concluding
section of this chapter theorizes these interactions, adducing that strategic logics and
organizational routines, working in tandem, combined into a dynamic that produced
escalation in both cases.
Chapter 5 continues this parallel process tracing with a detailed account of how
worsening bloodshed turned to full-blown intra-rebel war in both cases. Both accounts
are replete with events that vividly exposed the liabilities of fratricide to all parties,
fleshing out concretely the puzzle of intra-rebel war in strong states. Why then did rebels
continue to fight? In this chapter, instead of insisting that intra-rebel war was
unavoidable, and rather than attempting to provide a fully sufficient conjunction of
causes, I point to several models from individual and group psychology that shed light on
42
the link between ongoing violence and shifts in threat perception. Such shifts in
sentiments, discourses and beliefs may have encouraged rebels to opt for further violence.
Chapter 6 begins with a succinct statement of the theory, gathering the major
findings of the case comparison into a model of the rudimentary violence path (RVP) to
intra-rebel war. Readers who are primarily interested in the main argument of this
dissertation may wish to skip immediately to this section. Here, I am careful to offer a
general statement of the argument that avoids deterministic, teleological reasoning (a
dangerous pitfall of making inferences from cases selected on the dependent variable).
I then put this general statement of the argument to work with two shadow case
studies: the Algerian independence movement in France and the Sinhalese leftist
insurgency in Sri Lanka. Like the major cases of this dissertation, both of these
insurgencies descended into costly fratricide under the noses of state security forces, and
each paid dearly for this turn of events. I find some preliminary evidence to suggest that
major causal mechanisms of the RVP model worked similarly in these cases.
Chapter 7 looks back at these cases to inform a discussion of the strengths and
limitations of the argument that I develop in this dissertation. It then concludes the
dissertation with some reflections on broader scholarly and practical implications of the
theory and empirics of this dissertation.
43
CHAPTER 2
MOBILIZATION, COUNTER-MOBILIZATION, AND VIOLENCE
A basic claim of this dissertation is that attributes at the organization-level provide a layer
of explanation that is crucial for understanding intra-rebel war in strong states. As such,
this dissertation brings organizations to the center of the analysis, but it does so by
offering a perspective on how organizations vary that is more elaborate than the theories
reviewed in the previous chapter. This approach emphasizes how the external
environment exerts specific effects on organizations, depending on their age and
institutionalization.
The most natural way to tackle such an explanatory task is to begin with an
examination of the broad conflict environment that shapes organizations. Taking a
comparative approach, this chapter will reveal similar environmental conditions for both
the Northern Ireland and Turkey cases. In highlighting these similarities, the purpose of
this chapter is not only to provide relevant historical background, but also to underscore
how similar conflict processes created an environment beset with new dangers and
opportunities for rebels. The implications of this new environment for rebel organizations
are then investigated in Chapter 3.
Both Northern Ireland (as part of the United Kingdom) and Turkey remained
strong states throughout their respective encounters with rising protest and insurgency.
Yet, each was limited in the tools it had at its disposal to stifle public dissent. Both states
were hampered by initial deficiencies in intelligence knowledge and bureaucratic
nimbleness. Some states can compensate for these limitations by resorting to extreme,
44
unremitting violence to destroy restive groups. This was not an option for the cases
explored here: such a strategy was entirely off-the-table in Northern Ireland, while in
Turkey, security elites countenanced total repression against the Kurdish-majority
geographic periphery, but could not bring the same threats against the major cities of
Istanbul and Ankara.
Thus, in both countries a similar pattern of protest and insurgency arose. Initial
interactions between dissidents and security forces prompted early incidents of violence,
which neither side fully anticipated due to the novelty of the political situation, the
inexperience of both sides, and radical agitators that used violence to outbid rivals and
escalate levels of conflict.120 Over time, a spiral of repression and dissent accelerated.
This opened the field to informal counter-movement actors that framed dissidents as a
threat to cherished values and identity. As a result, incidents of violence progressively
grew more severe, further shifting the advantage to radicals in the dissident movement. In
Northern Ireland, those towns and cities populated by a mix of Catholics and Protestants,
especially Belfast, were pervaded with a sense of besiegement: locals feared attacks from
sectarian security forces and Loyalist assailants, as well as incursions from British
soldiers. A comparable development occurred in the Turkish case, where street violence
became a mode of political competition in many areas by the late-1970s. For Turkey, this
marked the culmination of a conflict that began in western Turkey during the 1960s, and
spread into eastern Turkey in the mid-1970s. Over time, a worsening atmosphere of
120 For a discussion of these causal mechanisms and their recurrent appearance during many protest waves, see: Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Clandestine Political Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Chares Demetriou, Stefan Malthaner, and Lorenzo Bosi, Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict (Ashgate Publishing, 2014).
45
violence was fueled by a left vs. right conflict that inflamed local sectarian, ethnic, and
tribal divides. Thus, both in Northern Ireland and Turkey, rebel movements found
themselves plagued with violence that was pervasive and often indiscriminate, and yet,
did not reach a degree of systematic lethality sufficient to break the insurgents.
2.1. Northern Ireland: from civil rights to civil war
This section offers an account of insurgency in Northern Ireland between the 1960s and
1980, focusing its attention on the rise of new forms of violent repression during the
1970s.
Between 1916 and 1923, insurrection and civil war altered the political map of
Ireland. Out of this foment, the island’s southern and western regions moved toward
independent statehood, while the northeastern portion of the island (six of the nine
counties of the historical province of Ulster) remained within the United Kingdom. The
new southern state was predominately Catholic, while the section of the island that
remained fully part of the United Kingdom – Northern Ireland -- was roughly two-thirds
Protestant.121 Northern Ireland would remain a province divided, with Nationalists (most
of them Catholic) favoring unification with Ireland, and Unionists (mostly Protestant),
firmly insisting on maintaining their connection with Britain.122
Since partition, Northern Ireland’s cities have never been fully free of sectarian
tension. During the fighting surrounding Ireland’s partition, areas of mixed confessional
121 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 37. 122 For a historical survey, see Jonathan Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).
46
make-up, and especially Belfast, were sites of inter-communal violence.123 Later on,
during the 1930s, efforts to promote cross-confessional working class solidarity
degenerated into inter-sectarian fighting.124 Yet, during the decades that followed the
1930s, relative calm settled across the province. In the 1940s, the IRA waged a low
intensity military campaign across the island with little success. Badly weakened by
1945, it was not until 1956 that the IRA mounted a renewed campaign, which, too, ended
in defeat in 1962.125 These low level insurgencies were conducted far from the mixed
urban population, and the fighting barely imposed itself on ordinary life in Northern
Ireland’s major cities of Belfast and Derry.126 To be certain, violent reminders of
Northern Ireland’s divide did sometimes manifest during these decades,127 but the
violence was too fleeting to shape the core exigencies of organizing during these years.
This changed during the 1960s. A shift to transgressive protest on the part of
Catholics was matched by intensified Unionist counter-mobilization. These encounters
reactivated sectarian boundaries, and led to a rise in political violence. For my purposes,
it is important to attend to how this rise in violence affected the Catholic communities
living on sectarian fault lines in Belfast and Derry, and by extension the operating
environment of the IRA. This chapter traces how the violence, over time, created an
atmosphere in which Catholics experienced and feared acts of violence that were
123 Robert Lynch, "The People's Protectors? The Irish Republican Army and the “Belfast Pogrom,” 1920–1922," Journal of British Studies 47, no. 2 (2008). 124 Jack Holland, Too Long a Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland since 1969 (New York, NY: Dodd Mead & Company, 1981), 7. 125 J Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916-1979 (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1989), 199-234, 83; Matt Treacy, The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 9-14. 126 Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916-1979 (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1989), 285; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 89. 127 Holland, Too Long a Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland since 1969 (New York, NY: Dodd Mead & Company, 1981), 7.
47
indiscriminate and pervasive, yet not sufficiently lethal to precipitate their capitulation or
full-scale exodus.
2.1.1. Political opportunity and early risers
Before the advent of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, two avenues existed
for those wishing to advocate on behalf of Nationalist/Catholic interests in Northern
Ireland. On the one hand, the Republican tradition – with IRA as its military exponent –
was premised on a rejection of the political institutions of Ireland, both north and south.
Joining the Republican movement meant supporting armed struggle against the existing
political system. Supporters could promote this goal by taking up arms or by aiding those
who did.128 On the other hand, institutional politics was an alternative avenue to violence,
offered in the form of elections for seats in the local parliament, in local government
bodies, or in the Westminster parliament in London.129 With the province under a firm
Unionist majority, however, parliamentary politics was not viewed as a promising means
for ushering deep reforms. 130
Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement (CRM) was an attempt to pursue new
goals (civil rights, instead of abolishing the Northern state), with new techniques,
imported from social movements abroad, especially in the United States. Desultory
experiments with non-violent protest had begun in the 1950s.131 By the 1960s, these
128 Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916-1979 (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1989); Smith, Fighting for Ireland?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). 129 Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), 2. 130 Gianluca De Fazio, "Intra-Movement Competition and Political Outbidding as Mechanisms of Radicalization in Northern Ireland, 1968–1969," in Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, ed. Lorenzo Bosi, Chares Demetriou, and Stefan Malthaner (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). 131 The Marxist Connolly Association, for instance, organized public protests against the internment of suspected IRA members during
48
activities were in full swing, with the many strands of the movement eventually gathering
under the banner of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), which
formally came into existence on 29 January 1967.132
By this time, CRM activities had begun to turn from quiet lobbying toward
disruptive and direct protest. And this repertoire shift was empowering the more radical
strains in the movement at the expense of the more moderate mainstream leadership.
From the beginning, counter-demonstrators and police threatened civil rights marches,
causing moderates to balk at continuing with these tactics for fear of triggering “sectarian
violence and communal conflict in the region as had happened in the past (1930s).”133 On
the contrary, radicals held that violence was revealing the true colors of Unionist tyranny
in Northern Ireland.134 Implicitly, however, it was clear that the Unionist government,
however politically retrograde, would always be constrained in its use of violence.
Radicals in the CRM likely surmised that the Unionist state was liable to harm, and even
kill, Catholic protesters in the coming years. But the British province of Northern Ireland
would not see full-scale massacres of entire masses of people, or the full devastation of
entire geographical areas.135
the 1950s. And during the early 1960s, small social movement organizations had begun to emulate the activities of the protest wave of the 1960s to advocate on issues such as nuclear disarmament and tenants rights. See Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 74; John Nagle, "From ‘Ban-the-Bomb’to ‘Ban-the-Increase’: 1960s Street Politics in Pre-Civil Rights Belfast," Irish Political Studies 23, no. 1 (2008); Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 97. 132 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 70; Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 82. 133 De Fazio, "Intra-Movement Competition and Political Outbidding as Mechanisms of Radicalization in Northern Ireland, 1968–1969," in Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, ed. Bosi, Demetriou, and Malthaner (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). 134 Nagle, "From ‘Ban-the-Bomb’to ‘Ban-the-Increase’: 1960s Street Politics in Pre-Civil Rights Belfast," Irish Political Studies 23, no. 1 (2008). 135 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 190; Paul Dixon, "‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Northern Ireland," Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 454-55; Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 50;
49
Under this regime of repression, trangressive protest became an expedient
strategy to “embarrass the moderate CRM leaders and establish a principal role”136for the
radical flank. As De Fazio (2014) argues in his analysis of the CRM, this gave rise to a
process of political outbidding137 that led to accelerating incidents of spontaneous
violence, and an intensifying repression-dissent spiral.
2.1.2. Counter-mobilization (1966-1969)
Segments in the Unionist community were mobilizing to oppose reform agenda even
before the CRM took to the streets. Radical Unionist politicians framed the situation in
dire terms: the CRM was a Trojan horse for tearing Ulster away from the United
Kingdom, once and for all.138 At the fore of this counter-mobilization strode the
Reverend Ian Paisley. A fiery orator, Paisley became the leading figure in a host of
grassroots organizations that arose to oppose the CRM.139 Paisley became a household
name in Belfast, and others were soon to follow, such as William Craig and Desmond
Boal, each outbidding the other in their hardline opposition to the CRM.140
Christopher Tuck, "Northern Ireland and the British Approach to Counter-Insurgency," Defense & Security Analysis 23, no. 2 (2007): 171-72. 136 Lorenzo Bosi, "Explaining the Emergence Process of the Civil Rights Protest in Northern Ireland (1945–1968): Insights from a Relational Social Movement Approach," Journal of Historical Sociology 21, no. 2-3 (2008): 259. 137 De Fazio, "Intra-Movement Competition and Political Outbidding as Mechanisms of Radicalization in Northern Ireland, 1968–1969," in Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, ed. Bosi, Demetriou, and Malthaner (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 259. 138 Landon E Hancock, "We Shall Not Overcome: Divided Identity and the Failure of Nicra 1968," Ethnopolitics 13, no. 5 (2014): 506. 139 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 71; Margaret O'Callaghan and Catherine O'Donnell, "The Northern Ireland Government, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ and Ulster Unionism in 1966," Irish Political Studies 21, no. 2 (2006): 202. 140The CRM, for Paisley, was “a front movement for the destruction of the Constitution of Northern Ireland.” In 1966, Paisley’s supporters began publishing the Protestant Telegraph. The paper featured “vitriolic attacks on, among others, the government, ecumenism and the IRA.”See "The Northern Ireland Government, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ and Ulster Unionism in 1966," Irish Political Studies 21, no. 2 (2006): 206.
50
From the start, physical action was a mainstay of counter-mobilization. When
Sinn Fein (the political wing of the IRA) hung an Irish flag from its offices in Belfast
during the lead up to the October 1964 elections for Westminster parliament, Paisley
threatened that if the police did not remove the flag, he would bring in his supporters to
do it themselves. The subsequent police action to remove the flag sparked several days of
rioting between local Catholics, Paisley supporters, and police.141 The Belfast Telegraph
recorded the violence as the worst that Belfast had seen in three decades. 142 The rioting
grew so severe that the British government contemplated deploying troops onto the
streets in Belfast.143
In January 1965, the prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, Sean Lemass, paid
a visit to Belfast. This visit, the first since 1925,144 was seen by many as symbolizing the
cautiously reformist atmosphere of the rising generation of Unionist leadership. To
register their disgust at this turn, Paisley led a group of supporters to protest the visit.
They held signs emblazoned with the headline ‘IRA Murderer Welcomed to
Stormont’,145 and Paisley threw snowballs at Lemass’ car.146 Though his supporters did
not manage to arouse much commotion with a protest of the 1966 commemoration of the
Easter Rising,147 tensions deepened with a series of aggressive rallies and marches later
141 Brendan Anderson and Joe Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 163-64; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 35. 141 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 31. 142 Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 31. 143 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 71. 144 Ibid., 62. 145 Peter Taylor, Loyalists (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2000), 33. 146 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 62. 147 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 61-62; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 54.
51
that year.148 The worst fighting of the year occurred in June, when Paisley led marchers
to provoke the Catholic residents of west Belfast, who reacted by turning out to brawl
with the Paisleyites and police.149
The appearance in May 1966 of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) -- named after
the Protestant paramilitary that mustered to oppose Home Rule in 1913150 -- ratcheted up
the conflict. Pledging to pursue “known IRA men” and to kill them “mercilessly and
without hesitation,”151 the UVF conducted its first killings in the summer of 1966,
claiming the lives of five civilians, none of them members of the IRA.152
2.1.3. Transgressive protest and violent backlash: an escalating cycle
Its risks apparent, the CRM was cautious in its early marches. On 24 August 1968,
roughly two thousand marchers completed the short walk between Coalisland and
Dungannon. Stewards, some affiliated with the IRA, directed the marchers away from a
crowd of counter-protestors that had mustered to oppose the march. 153 The next march
did not show the same care. A week later, on 5 October 1968, a group of marchers
assembled on the initiative of the local Derry Housing Action Committee, known for
148 O'Callaghan and O'Donnell, "The Northern Ireland Government, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ and Ulster Unionism in 1966," Irish Political Studies 21, no. 2 (2006). 149 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 348; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 56; O'Callaghan and O'Donnell, "The Northern Ireland Government, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ and Ulster Unionism in 1966," Irish Political Studies 21, no. 2 (2006): 207-08. 150Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 9.
151 O'Callaghan and O'Donnell, "The Northern Ireland Government, the ‘Paisleyite Movement’ and Ulster Unionism in 1966," Irish Political Studies 21, no. 2 (2006): 208. 152 Martin Dillon, The Shankill Butchers: The Real Story of Cold-Blooded Mass Murder (New York, NY Routledge, 1989); Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 56; Lebow, "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978): 46; Taylor, Loyalists (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2000), 40. 153 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 74-75; "The Civil Rights Campaign - a Chronology of Main Events," CAIN Webservice, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm.
52
holding a more radical stance than NICRA mainstreamers.154 The march to Derry city
center was blatantly provocative and resulted in police violence that triggered scattered
Catholic rioting throughout the night, with Derry residents putting up several barricades
to prevent the police from entering Catholic neighborhoods.155
Vivid images of police violence drew widespread attention, and subsequent
marches saw a sharp rise in attendance. While the 5 October march attracted perhaps as
few as 500, some of the larger marches of the succeeding months were attended by well
over 10,000 people.156 A major agent of political outbidding during the marching
campaign was the People’s Democracy (PD),157a student group that emerged in response
to the repression of early CRM marches. Initial PD actions were disciplined and non-
violent, but frustration at police obstruction soon wore down this self-restraint.158
With police and inter-movement clashes worsening, 159the government of
Northern Ireland submitted a package of reforms aimed at addressing some of the
burning concerns of the CRM.160 Radicals in the CRM were unsatisfied. On 13
November 1968, the hardline Unionist Minister of Home Affairs, William Craig,
announced a one-month ban on all marches within Derry’s walls.161 The DCAC openly
154 "The Civil Rights Campaign - a Chronology of Main Events," CAIN Webservice, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm; Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993), 83. 155 Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 489; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 76; Hancock, "We Shall Not Overcome: Divided Identity and the Failure of NICRA 1968," Ethnopolitics 13, no. 5 (2014). 156 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 76; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 105. 157 Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990). 158 Ibid., 212. 159 Ibid. 160 See Niall Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 27. 161 Ibid., 25.
53
defied the ban three days later162 and led the largest march yet through Derry.163 Despite
the efforts of stewards to contain the massive body of marchers, “stones, pepper bombs
and coins were thrown at the RUC and scuffles broke out” with police.164
Meanwhile, Paisleyite counter-mobilizers began to flex their muscles. Before a
planned CRM march in Armagh, slated for 30 November, Loyalists (a term used to
denote hardline Unionists) distributed notices “warning the townspeople to ‘Board up
your windows’ and ‘Remove all women and children’” from the area on the day of the
march.165 On the day of the march, they gathered at the town center, armed with
cudgels.166 Their action forced the CRM marchers to stop short of entering their planned
destination167
On 9 December, the government again made a public plea for the CRM to halt its
activities to allow time for the passage of a reform bill.168 After internal debate, NICRA’s
leaders agreed to a hiatus on marching,169 but the PD refused to abide by the truce. On 20
December, it announced a march from Belfast to Derry, to begin on 1 January. Counter-
protestors attacked them on the Burntollet Bridge, near Derry, brutalizing the students in
162 Ibid. 163 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 76. 164 Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 25. 165 Hancock, "We Shall Not Overcome: Divided Identity and the Failure of NICRA 1968," Ethnopolitics 13, no. 5 (2014): 508. 166 Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), 221.
167 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 105. 168 "The Civil Rights Campaign - a Chronology of Main Events," CAIN Webservice, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm; The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 108. 169 ibid; The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009).
54
full view of television reporters who had arrived to cover the march.170Shortly after the
march, PD leader Bernadette Devlin explained the rationale of the provocative display.
The PD had intended “to break the truce,” and by inciting police repression, to “show the
people that [Prime Minister Terence] O'Neill was, in fact, offering them nothing […]
what we really wanted to do was pull the carpet off the floor to show the dirt that was
under it, so that we could sweep it up.”171
For all the noises of concern that this strategy elicited from establishment
politicians, it was generating measurable political benefits for radicals on both sides. In
April 1969, Devlin won a by-election for the Mid-Ulster seat in Westminster
parliament.172And Paisley buried himself as a thorn in the side of the Unionist
establishment. After a narrow loss to O’Neill at his home seat in Bannside in the
February 1969 Stormont elections,173 he won the seat after O’Neill resigned.174
The spring and summer of 1969 saw the spiral of violence accelerate further.
Purdie (1990) counts thirty-one major marches between late-January and the end of
July.175 Ten of them became violent.176 On 19 April 1969, Loyalists attacked a sit-in in
central Derry, and when the demonstrators retreated into the Bogside, locals fought back
against police baton charges, heaving stones down from the tops of buildings. Over 150
170 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 8; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 100; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 215; Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 35. 171 Devlin. The Price of my Soul. Cited in Richard English, Armed Struggle (New York, NY: Oxford, 2003), 96. 172 Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), 494; Ronnie Munck, "The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland," Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 2 (1992): 223. 173 Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 46. 174 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 86. 175 Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), 218. 176 Ibid.
55
injuries were recorded in the fighting,177 and police severely beat a middle-aged resident
of the Bogside after bursting into his home in pursuit of rioters. He later died.178 Riots
also occurred in Belfast, Dungiven, and Lurgan in July.179 Rumors spread through the
Protestant Shankill neighborhood in Belfast that the IRA was preparing an armed
invasion of the neighborhood180 (in reality, the IRA in Belfast at that time was small and
unprepared for urban fighting).181
2.1.4. Inter-communal strife
The CRM’s turn to transgressive protest set in motion “a typical spiral of mobilization
and repression”182that activated the very sectarian boundaries that the CRM aimed to
transcend.183 Violent incidents heightened fears in confessionally-mixed areas of Belfast.
Soon, the belief arose among ordinary people that they might be attacked simply by dint
of their religious affiliation, which might be gleaned from their place of residence, their
last name, or other bits of local knowledge.184
By late summer, the situation was turning dire. For Northern Ireland’s Protestants,
the summer months are an occasion for parades that commemorate victories over
177 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 92. 178 Munck, "The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland," Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 2 (1992): 225. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid., 224. 181 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 114. 182 De Fazio, "Intra-Movement Competition and Political Outbidding as Mechanisms of Radicalization in Northern Ireland, 1968–1969," in Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, ed. Bosi, Demetriou, and Malthaner (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 115. 183 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 75. 184 The dynamic fits neatly with Posen’s (1993) model of the ethnic security dilemma. See Barry R. Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," Survival 35, no. 1 (1993).
56
Catholics in times past. In Belfast, rumors “pervaded the city” of planned sectarian
assaults, and threats of forced evictions.185 In Protestant neighborhoods, a rumor spread
“that the IRA men were seen going up and down the Falls with guns and they were going
to invade.”186 In west Belfast, the Shankill Defense Association emerged and began to
assist Protestant families in moving out of the now seemingly dangerous mixed areas.
Evidence also suggests they exerted pressure Catholics to move away from Protestant
zones.187 Meanwhile, local defense associations spread in Catholic areas of Belfast and
Derry, many on the initiative of local Republicans, conducting nighttime patrols of their
neighborhoods.188
By now, the state’s ability to control dissident mobilization and resultant
community militarization was hopelessly insufficient to prevent rising violence. Of
course, the government in Northern Ireland, backed by the power of the British state,
could draw upon sizable bureaucratic and coercive capacity. But it was also faced with
the vexing task of managing conflict between communities that were well-practiced at
neighborhood mobilization. And for the government of Northern Ireland of the time, it
was impossible to appear as an autonomous arbiter of the conflict, since its security
forces overlapped with the semi-official and unofficial auxiliaries that were
overwhelmingly drawn from the Protestant community. Thus, the situation continued to
deteriorate. Following the 12 July Battle of the Boyne march, which turned violent both
185 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 125.
186 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972).
187 Ibid.
188 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 104.
57
in Derry and Belfast,189 the British government asked the Northern Ireland authorities to
ban the next major march, slated to take place on 12 August. The local authorities replied
that they lacked the resources do so.190
And so, with permission from the government, the 12 August Apprentice Boys
march in Derry went ahead on schedule.191The route of the march skirted the Catholic
Bogside neighborhood.192 Anticipating the dangers of a confrontation, the Derry Citizens
Defense Association (DCDA) assembled, with Republican involvement, to prepare for
the likely event of attack.193 In the early afternoon of 12 August the roughly 15,000
strong procession of Unionists neared the neighborhood to the sound of fifes and
drums.194 While the parade itself was “well controlled and orderly,”195 the leadership on
both sides failed to prevent crowds from trading insults and small-projectiles, such as
coins and slingshots. These turned to stones and bricks,196and before long, a full riot was
underway. The local defense committee in the Bogside sprung into action. Quickly, they
set up barricades at strategic entry points of the area, with the help of construction
189 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972); The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 95; Munck, "The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland," Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 2 (1992): 224. 190 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 105. 191 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 17; Munck, "The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland," Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 2 (1992): 224. 192 McCann, War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993), 113-15. 193 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972); War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993), 114. 194 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 99.
195 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972).
196 The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 99.
58
machinery they had taken from local building sites, and they put together stations for
assembling Molotov cocktails.197
Positioned between the two opposing crowds, and exposed to showers of stones
and bricks from the Bogside, the police attempted to demolish the Bogside barricades.
But because these actions threatened to open a passage for Protestant crowds to enter the
Catholic area, Catholic youths redoubled their efforts to resist the security forces.198 For
roughly 48 hours, the locals of the Bogside used stones, blocks of cement and Molotov
cocktails to repel the police and Protestant crowds. The resistance vexed the police force,
which was not permitted to use live fire against the militants on the rooftops.199
On the evening of August 13,200 the prime minster of Ireland, Jack Lynch, made a
television broadcast declaring that the Irish government could “no longer stand by and
see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.”201 He called for a United Nations
peacekeeping force to intervene, and announced that the Irish military was setting up
field hospitals near the border.202 With the ordinary police forces exhausted,203 the
northern government mobilized the paramilitary auxiliaries of the Ulster Special
Constabulary, commonly known as the B-Specials,204 associated in the Catholic
197 Ibid., 100; McCann, War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993), 115. 198 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 100. 199 McCann, War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993), 115. 200 Anthony Babington, Military Intervention in Britain: From the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 168-69. 201 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 105. 202 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 334; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 116. 203 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 105. 204 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 126.
59
community with sectarian repression of past generations.205 At the request of the
authorities in Northern Ireland, the British government agreed to move troops into Derry
to relieve the local security forces.206 British army troops began to set up positions in
Derry in the evening of 14 August.207
2.1.5. Belfast in flames
As the Battle of the Bogside raged, local Derry organizers called upon the movement to
mount demonstrations across the province “to stretch police resources and take the heat
off of the besieged Bogsiders.”208 While responding to this call elsewhere, the NICRA
leadership was wary of ordering rallies in Belfast, “for fear of inflaming sectarian
tensions.”209 But on the evening of August 13, local Belfast organizers, some of them
IRA members, defied NICRA’s policy and began to stage diversionary demonstrations in
west Belfast.210
Groups mustered in front of police stations in west Belfast, ostensibly to hand
over petitions protesting police violence in Derry. Soon, stones began to fly toward the
police garrisons. At one point, an effort was made to bash in a police station door “with a
makeshift battering ram.”211 The police deployed armored cars, which came under fire
205 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 104. 206 Ibid., 105.
207 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972); De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 119.
208 Taylor, Loyalists (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2000), 66. 209 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 103; Taylor, Loyalists (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2000), 66. 210 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 126. 211 Ibid.
60
from small arms, Molotov cocktails, and according to certain accounts, a grenade, 212 in
what De Baroid recounts as “a major escalation” in the pattern of violence against
security forces.213Though the gunfire was sporadic and ineffective, Unionist police forces
apprehended it as the opening shots of a coordinated IRA offensive.214
Protestant neighborhoods looked on as the fighting with police stretched into the
early hours of the morning of 14 August. According to one Shankill resident, rumors
began to spread that Catholics had already begun to infiltrate their neighborhood to attack
Protestants, and that a major assault was planned for the coming day.215 For defense,
residents set up makeshift facilities for assembling Molotov cocktails.216 In parallel, the
Catholic neighborhoods began to brace for an impending battle. According to Hanley and
Millar (2009), the local IRA commander, Billy McMillen, ordered all IRA units to
defensive duties, setting up their own Molotov stations and requisitioning buses to use as
barricades.217 Groups of youths set up positions on rooftops of apartment buildings to
throw projectiles at passing police patrols.218
During the afternoon, groups from both communities had begun to gather at
intersections where Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods intersected. By nightfall,
212 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 135; De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 17. 213 Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 17. 214 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 102. 215 Taylor, Loyalists (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2000), 67. 216 Ibid. 217 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 127. 218 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 17.
61
clashes between the two sides had begun.219 Police attempts at intervening were met with
gunfire. Businesses and homes in mixed areas began to go up in flames.220As the fighting
worsened, the Northern Ireland government mobilized the B-Specials into Belfast, 221 and
requested British army troop deployments, 222 which were already arriving in Derry.
Large processions of displaced people appeared on the streets the next morning,223
and by evening, clashes began anew. In areas where British troops had not yet deployed,
more Catholic houses were burned.224 It was not until the night of the 16th that the British
army was able to fully quell the violence in Belfast.225 The fighting in Belfast resulted in
seven deaths, hundreds of injuries, and over 150 homes burned down.226 Though the
worst violence occurred in Belfast, smaller episodes of rioting and inter-communal
fighting broke out across the province.227
2.1.6. The British Army in Northern Ireland: from peacekeeping to COIN
As the crisis in Northern Ireland worsened, British military involvement became
increasingly unavoidable. While the British military had added detachments to guard 219 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 106-07; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 127. 220 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 18. 221 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 127. 222 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 114. 223 Ibid. 224 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972); The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 117. 225 "The Civil Rights Campaign - a Chronology of Main Events," CAIN Webservice, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm; "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972). 226 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 18; White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 75. 227 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972).; De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 18.
62
critical infrastructure in April 1969,228 the British crossed a major threshold when it
deployed into the streets of Derry and Belfast in response to the events of 14-17 August
1969.229
The intervention was obviously necessary to mitigate further inter-sectarian
bloodshed. Yet, it also invited a new phase in the conflict, for just as British troops were
deploying on the streets of Derry and Belfast, so too were units of the regrouping IRA,
suddenly enlisted into the role of community defender.
Forming in Derry and Belfast after years of latency, the IRA could not allow the
British military to govern the streets uncontested, as doing so would have affirmed the
legitimacy of British rule in Ireland. And the IRA’s efforts were helped by the ordinary
difficulties of military occupation. By the time the British arrived, the violence in the
Catholic neighborhoods had generated a cohort of local militants that were well practiced
in the arts of rioting and public disturbance. Whatever the initial distribution of attitudes
toward the British among the Catholic population, these performances captured public
attention and shaped perceptions of the British deployment. In Derry, friction between
these groups and British soldiers was almost immediate, with small clashes breaking out
during 1970 New Years’ celebrations.230
In Belfast, too, the situation was delicate. British commanders cautioned that
“strict discipline among the troops” was the most important foundation of military-
228 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 105. 229 Tuck, "Northern Ireland and the British Approach to Counter-Insurgency," Defense & Security Analysis 23, no. 2 (2007): 167. 230 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 113; Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 5.
63
community relations.231 But with soldiers and locals in close and frequent contact, lapses
were inevitable. The everyday brush between off-duty soldiers and locals at a pub; a child
knocked over by an armored car while playing in the street;232a slur during a tense
exchange between locals and troops on riot duty: over time, the accumulation of these
many small irritants made it easier for the IRA to frame the military as force of occupiers,
not peacekeepers.
The British army also had difficultly managing the task of riot control without
exposing itself to the Republican charge that they favored the Protestant Unionists, and
were pulling the strings of Unionist aggression.233After allowing several months for the
British honeymoon to wear off, the Provisional IRA judged the conditions ripe for attacks
on British soldiers. 234 The PIRA also unleashed a campaign against infrastructure targets
that “virtually crippled Northern Ireland’s electricity supply”235 during the summer of
1971.
Now tasked with defeating a capable insurgent opponent, the British
peacekeeping role was compounded in difficulty.236 British searches for arms cachets and
militant safe houses brought soldiers into rough contact with Catholic civilians in their
homes, further exacerbating local grievances. And some British units began to dabble in
231 Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 517-18. 232 Tuck, "Northern Ireland and the British Approach to Counter-Insurgency," Defense & Security Analysis 23, no. 2 (2007): 173. 233 Several accounts report that the first clashes with British troops occurred in April 1970 in Belfast. Ó Dochartaigh records that on 31 December 1969 “small scale clashes broke out between youths and soldiers after a New Year’s dance in the Bogside in Derry.” See, Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 88; Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 5. 234 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA(London: Penguin, 2007), 95. 235 Tony Craig, "Sabotage! The Origins, Development and Impact of the IRA's Infrastructural Bombing Campaigns 1939–1997," Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 3 (2010): 318. 236 Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 515.
64
more heavy-handed tactics. These only further damaged its reputation in the Catholic
community,237 and made it easier for the Republican movement to propagate the narrative
that the British army were not disinterested protectors, but an occupying force that posed
a physical threat of the same basic variety as that of the local security forces and their
auxiliaries.
2.1.7. Loyalist violence: a continuing danger (1970-1980)
The spiral of violence in 1969 created a niche for neighborhoods defenders on both sides
of the sectarian divide. In Protestant districts, the previously fictitious IRA threat had
turned into a self-fulfilled prophecy. The appearance of armed IRA patrols in Belfast’s
Catholic neighborhoods galvanized Protestant neighborhoods to hasten their own
militarization. These Loyalist paramilitaries were more fragmented and localized than the
IRA, drawn from a large number of ad hoc neighborhood-based groups that had emerged
during the street fighting.238 Their tactics mirrored those of the defense associations and
the IRA in Catholic neighborhoods. They would conduct foot patrols for defense against
feared Catholic incursions. And during riots, their units would materialize to protect
Protestants, with gunmen emerging to exchange fire with the IRA.
In the summer of 1970, leaders of a number of these local groups joined these
associations under a single umbrella, leading to the emergence of the Ulster Defense
Association (UDA),239 which officially announced its existence in August 1971.240 The
237 Rod Thornton, "Getting It Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in the Early Stages of the British Army's Deployment to Northern Ireland (August 1969 to March 1972)," Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (2007): 99; Maurice Punch, State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2012), 4. 238 Lebow, "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978): 50-52. 239 Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 195; Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 46.
65
UDA became the largest Loyalist paramilitary, with estimates of its size ranging between
20 and 50 thousand.241 Meanwhile, the other major Loyalist organization, the Ulster
Volunteer Force (UVF) grew more active during the 1970s, attempting to emulate the
model of the IRA.242 The UVF kept a smaller roster, estimated at about 1,500.243
In the Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast, these organizations arrogated informal
authority to themselves. 244 They used coercion to police their areas of control, and to
induce collective action for strikes and rallies. They also took control of local criminal
activities, competing among themselves for control over dark markets.245
Hardline Unionist politicians, like Paisley and Craig, courted the support of these
organizations, since they held sway over the grassroots. Paisley sought to simultaneously
cast himself as the champion of Ulster’s armed defenders, while disavowing
responsibility for their more brutal acts of violence.246William Craig established his own
‘Vanguard Movement’ in early 1972 in a bid to outflank both Paisley and the Unionist
establishment. On one occasion on 19 October 1972, Craig declared breathlessly: “We
are prepared to come out and shoot and kill. I am prepared to come out and shoot and kill.
Let us put the bluff aside. I am prepared to kill, and those behind me will have my full
240 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 259. 241 Lebow, "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978): 54; Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 46. 242 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 270; Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 194. 243 The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992, 351; Lebow, "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978): 53. 244 "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978): 48. 245 Ibid., 54. 246 Colin J McIlheney, "Arbiters of Ulster's Destiny? The Military Role of the Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland," Journal of Conflict Studies 5, no. 2 (1985): 38.
66
support.”247 Such rhetoric from top figures of the Unionist camp no doubt hardened
perceptions in the Catholic community of a state that was hostile and dangerous.
Both the UDA and UVF carried out sectarian killings, each using front
organizations – the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) 248 and the Protestant Action Force
(PAF), 249 respectively – to claim attacks. The threat that the Loyalists confronted was
difficult to counter, as the IRA concealed itself within Catholic neighborhoods. Thus,
Loyalist paramilitaries took to attacking any Catholic they suspected of IRA involvement,
or in many cases, simply any Catholic male of military age they could lay their hands
upon.250 According to local Ballymurphy historian, Ciaran de Baroid, it was not until
late-1977 that mediation efforts between Loyalist and Republican leaders began to
alleviate this sense of “sectarian siege.”251
2.1.8. The politics of community threat
Having canvassed the transition of politics in Northern Ireland from the CRM to the
initiation of the Troubles, a few features of the case are worth highlighting. Setting the
tone of politics going forward, the novel agenda and tactical repertoire of the civil rights
movement was met with immediate, physical resistance from Protestant counter-
mobilizers, as early as the mid-1960s.
247 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 349. 248 Lebow, "The Origins of Sectarian Assassination: The Case of Belfast," Journal of International Affairs 32, no. 1 (1978): 55; Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 46. 249 McIlheney, "Arbiters of Ulster's Destiny? The Military Role of the Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland," Journal of Conflict Studies 5, no. 2 (1985): 37. 250 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 310; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 322; Dillon, The Shankill Butchers: The Real Story of Cold-Blooded Mass Murder (New York, NY Routledge, 1989). 251 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 212.
67
This, in turn, enhanced the appeal among some in the CRM to turn to
transgressive protest, as part of a strategy to heighten societal polarization and to weaken
moderates. These moves fueled an escalatory spiral of physical confrontation between
Catholic dissidents, Unionist counter-mobilizers, and local security forces. Before long,
protest-related violence activated sectarian boundaries and presented opportunities for
armed militants on both sides to bill themselves as community defenders. Finally, the
British army was compelled to intervene.
The presence of British soldiers undoubtedly prevented greater bloodshed on the
streets of Belfast. But at the same time, British counter-insurgency fostered new
grievances among locals. The British army was then faced with the unenviable task of
rooting out IRA militants from neighborhoods where they could easily conceal
themselves. Going forward, Catholic rioters and motley teams of IRA gunmen could rely
on their creativity and doggedness to stalemate the materially superior British presence.
In doing so, the cultural and organizational nature of the insurgency was transformed in a
fashion that will be examined in Chapter 3.
This dissertation will now move onto a parallel discussion of the rise of Kurdish
dissident activity in Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the relevant
comparative aspects of this case.
2.2. Turkey’s twin insurgencies
The onset of today’s Kurdish insurgency in Turkey is typically dated to August 1984,
when the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attacked military outposts on the Turkish-
Iraqi border. Since then, the PKK and the Turkish military have fought a grinding
68
asymmetrical conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. But this guerrilla
campaign did not come out of nowhere. It was the culmination of roughly two decades of
political formation and militarization, both in Turkey’s western cities and in the Kurdish-
majority east. The proceeding section covers these decades, drawing special attention to
relevant parallels to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, violent repression manifested mostly in urban areas,
particularly the densely populated hotspots of mixed neighborhoods. Police and military
forces sought to control dissident activities, sometimes with disproportionate repression,
but they were always constrained from resorting to massive violence: the British army
could not burn the Bogside to the ground nor could they drive the Catholics out of the
province wholesale.
In Turkey, tracing the variation in violent repression that shaped the PKK and its
rivals in the Kurdish insurgency is more complicated. This is because two separate
regimes of repression (one in the Kurdish-majority east and the other in the Turkish-
majority west) prevailed in Turkey between 1960 and 1980. In Turkey’s western regions,
the state response to public rallies and riots was not much different from Northern
Ireland. Security forces could be brutal, but they did not resort to mass violence. By
contrast, Turkey’s Kurdish-majority east faced precisely such a danger. To forestall a
Kurdish insurrection (a top fear of Turkey’s security establishment) the military signaled
that it would suppress would-be insurgents with extreme violence, as it had done in
decades past.
This chapter shows how this regime of repression deterred pro-Kurdish
demonstrators from engaging in transgressive protest in eastern Turkey during the 1960s.
69
This changed, however, by the mid-1970s. During this decade, a wave of contention that
arose in Turkey’s west spread eastward, giving rise to transgressive protest and violence
in sites across the country. All told, these events produced an environment that was
similar in relevant regards to that facing the IRA at the end of the 1960s: militants and
locals, alike, were exercised by the dangers of attack from security forces and state-
aligned violent counter-groups. These anxieties drove budding rebel organizations to
learn tactics suited for these circumstances, a process that Chapter 3 will elaborate.
2.2.1. Political opportunity structure and the pro-Kurdish movement in Turkey (1960-
1971)
Following the wholesale suppression of revolts in Anatolia during the 1920s and
1930s,252 small circles of Kurdish intellectuals and elites quietly nurtured a conception of
ethnic difference, but they were wary of ostentatious displays of Kurdishness.253 The
stirrings of a leftist movement in Turkey during the 1960s provided a new opportunity for
Kurdish political entrepreneurs to graft pro-Kurdish aspirations onto a more universalist
emancipatory discourse.254 Among its advantages, this allowed pro-Kurdish
entrepreneurs to phrase their appeals in a language that was at least ambiguously 252 For discussions, see: David Romano, "Kurdish Nationalist Movements: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity" (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002), 50; Robert Olson, "The Kurdish Rebellions of Sheikh Said (1925), Mt. Ararat (1930), and Dersim (1937-8): Their Impact on the Development of the Turkish Air Force and on Kurdish and Turkish Nationalism," Die Welt Des Islams 40, no. 1 (2000); Martin M Van Bruinessen, "Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38)," in Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of Genocide, ed. George J. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). 253For memories and testimony on this attitude toward organizing, see: Orhan Miroğlu, Hevsel Bahçesinde Bir Dut Ağacı: Canip Yıldırım'la Söyleşi (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayıncılık AŞ, 2010), 99; Celal Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 215; Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Lice'den Paris'e Anılarım (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2010), 26; Mehdi Zana, Bekle Diyarbakır (Istanbul: Doz, 1991), 65. 254 A TKSP member, for instance, calls the 1960s the decade “when the Kurdish movement emerged again, after many years of almost no activity following the bloody repression of the revolts of the 1920s and 30s.” See: "The Kurdish Movement in Turkey – an Interview with a Representative of the Ozgurluk Yolu Movement," KNaC (December 1980). Also see: Nicole Watts, "Silence and Voice: Turkish Policies and Kurdish Resistance in the Mid-20th Century," in The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, ed. Mohammed Ahmed and Michael Gunter (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2007).; David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 405; Feqi Hüseyin Sağnıç, Portreler (Istanbul, Turkey: İstanbul Kürt Enstitüsü Yayınları, 2000), 69.
70
acceptable within the national idiom of the day. Yet, the daunting political opportunity
structure confronting pro-Kurdish organizers during the 1960s necessitated utmost care.
Turkey’s legal framework and official discourse unequivocally forbade expressions of
Kurdish ethnic difference.255
And Turkey’s security forces signaled a willingness to enforce these restrictions
severely. Constructing its doctrines from the experiences of the early Turkish republic,
government elites and state officials viewed Kurdist aspirations as a perennial security
threat.256 These anxieties worsened in 1961 when Mustafa Barzani raised anew his
Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq.257 Fearing a spillover into Turkey, government and
military elites conveyed in no uncertain terms that they saw Kurdish insurrection as a
vital threat – one that they would quash with whatever means they deemed necessary.258
255For analyses of these political opportunity structures, see: Romano, "Kurdish Nationalist Movements: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity" (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002), 54; Ahmet Alis, "The Process of the Politicization of the Kurdish Identity in Turkey: The Kurds and the Turkish Labor Party (1961-1971) " (Bogazici University, 2009), 64; Mehmet Kucukozer, "Peasant Rebellions in the Age of Globalization: The EZLN in Mexico and the PKK in Turkey " (Doctoral Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010), 194. 256 See Chikara Hashimoto and Egemen B Bezci, "Do the Kurds Have ‘No Friends but the Mountains’? Turkey's Secret War against Communists, Soviets and the Kurds," Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 4 (2016); Watts, "Silence and Voice: Turkish Policies and Kurdish Resistance in the Mid-20th Century," in The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, ed. Ahmed and Gunter (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2007). 257 Ofra Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2012); Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (London, UK: IB Tauris, 2001); McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 406. 258 This posture was made obvious in myriad fashion. A military coup in May 1960 led to a new constitution, which generally expanded the rights and freedoms available to ordinary citizens in Turkey. But the provisions of the constitution of 1961 “did not in effect apply to the Kurdish issue”(Romano 2002, 54). If anything, the legal framework that was put in place during the 1960s further hardened restrictions on pro-Kurdish expression. It included explicit bans on political claims based on national or cultural difference (Alis 2009, 64). And the new regime ushered an invigorated campaign to erase Kurdishness from public view. Towns and geographical sites with Kurdish, Armenian, or Greek names were officially renamed with Turkified labels (Kucukozer 2010, 194), and restrictions on disseminating Kurdish written and audio material were codified into law in 1967 (Alis 2009, 65). Statements from top government leaders reinforced this position, such as when Cemal Gürsel called on citizens “to spit in the faces” of anyone who claims to be a Kurd (Akkaya 2013, 4), and put his name on the forward of a book published by the Turkish Ministry of Education, which claimed that Kurds were, in fact, ethnic Turks who had lost touch with their true ethnic origins (Yeleser 2011, 23). It was also rumored that during the 1950s the DP leadership mulled a mass public hanging of major Kurdish figures, to deter any stirrings of activism (McDowall 2007, 405). See: Romano, "Kurdish Nationalist Movements: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity" (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002); Alis, "The Process of the Politicization of the Kurdish Identity in Turkey: The Kurds and the Turkish Labor Party (1961-1971) " (Bogazici University, 2009); Kucukozer, "Peasant Rebellions in the Age of Globalization: The EZLN in Mexico and the PKK in Turkey " (Doctoral Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010); Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013); McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2007); Selin Yeleser, "The Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths (1969 - 1971): A Turning Point in the Formation of the Kurdish Left in Turkey" (Masters’ Thesis, Bogazici University 2011).
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Modern Kurdish politics in Turkey, thus, developed quietly, with organizers
honing their skills for legal politics and cautious public performances calibrated to
minimize the risk of pressing a nerve in the military and political establishment.259 At the
same time, a small circle of aspiring guerrillas began preparations for a future military
struggle, based across the border in Northern Iraq. But these plots never surpassed the
preparation stage (see Chapter 3).
2.2.2. The rise of the left in western Turkey (1960-1971)
The 1960s unfolded very differently in western Turkey, where the majority of the
population is ethnically Turkish. Unlike in the east, dissidents in the western region were
more aggressive in their political demands and protest techniques, an approach that was
possible because the threat of total repression did not loom over these dissidents in the
same way it did for the Kurds of eastern Turkey. Thus, led by a radical flank, leftist
dissidents in western Turkey, especially in the major cities of Ankara and Istanbul,
provoked encounters with security forces and counter-groups in society that gave rise to a
pattern of violent repression similar to that witnessed in Northern Ireland. A military
intervention in 1971 temporarily arrested this protest wave, but it returned with a
vengeance in the mid-1970s.
Until 1960, the Turkish regime afforded few opportunities for leftist organizing in
Turkey. Strikes were illegal,260 and the major labor confederation, the Confederation of
Turkish Labor Unions (TÜRK-İŞ), discouraged adversarial action against the 259 For historical overviews, see: Recep Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 185-87; Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015). 260 Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London, UK: Routledge, 1993), 99; Brian Mello, "Political Process and the Development of Labor Insurgency in Turkey, 1945–80," Social Movement Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 212.
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government. Almost immediately after the passage of the 1961 constitution, the settled
political arrangements of republican Turkey came under assault from a small, but
energetic current of organized workers and peasants, their leaders emboldened by the
new constitutional protections. Before long, a vanguard of intellectuals, professional
agitators, and militant students were clamoring to position themselves at the forefront of
this emergent movement.261 They carried with them new techniques of transgressive
protest, and some of them were beginning to imbibe Marxist doctrines.262
2.2.3. Grassroots counter-mobilization
A sense of dread at these developments rippled into a scattered wave of resistance to
confront these challengers.263 In some towns in Anatolia, local party bosses propped up
their own youth organizations as a counterweight to local leftists, often drawing upon
local sectarian or ethnic cleavages.264 Local religious networks, too, became sites for
organizing local opposition to leftist challenges.265 The tactics of the loosely integrated
261 By 1964 and 1965, local unions were taking increasing initiative. The oil workers in the southeastern oil town of Batman went on strike in July 1964 and the coal miners in the Black sea area of Zonguldak launched a wildcat strike that spread across the region and led to fatal clashes with police. These actions contravened the TÜRK-İŞ leadership’s opposition to “political unionism” and its determination to maintain a position “above party politics.” But they were unable to bridle this current, as police battled with textile workers in Izmir in early 1966 and Ankara and Istanbul became focal points of labor agitation. Even Ankara’s state theater went on strike in 1965. The breaking point came following a strike of the workers at the Paşabahçe glassworks in Istanbul, which lasted all through the spring of 1966. The militancy of the local union activists set off major controversy within TÜRK-İŞ; after months of conflict, in February 1967, dissidents within TÜRK-İŞ declared the establishment of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK). See: Milliyet, 10 July 1964; "Binlerce Mâden Kanunsuz Greve Başladi," Milliyet, 11 March 1965; Aziz Çelik and Zafer Aydın, Paşabahçe 1966-Gelenek Yaratan Grev (Istanbul, Turkey: TÜSTAV, 2006); Jacob M Landau, Radical Politics in Turkey (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1974), 93; Brian Mello, "Communists and Compromisers: Explaining Divergences within Turkish Labor Activism, 1960-1980," European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey, no. 11 (2010): 9-10. 262 For historical surveys, see: Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London, UK: Routledge, 1993), 99; Mello, "Political Process and the Development of Labor Insurgency in Turkey, 1945–80," Social Movement Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 212; Artun Ünsal, Umuttan Yalnızlığa: Türkiye İşçi Partisi, 1961-1971 (Istanbul, Turkey: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 2002). 263 M Çağatay Okutan, Bozkurt'tan Kur'an'a Millî Türk Talebe Birliği (MTTB): 1916-1980 (İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2004), 164. 264 Ruşen Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 133. 265 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 80-83.
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counter movement during the early 1960s were broadly similar to those of the Paisleyites
in Northern Ireland. Counter-protestors staged their own rallies to counteract protests of
the left;266 and groups of rightists and leftists would clash over public space, such as
cinemas or other student hangouts.267
Virtually from its inception, the Turkish Workers Party (TWP) –which
represented the rising left in parliament -- suffered attacks from organized bands of
counterprotestors. On 10 November 1962, the TWP held a seminar in Istanbul to debate
the party’s agenda. Partway through the seminar, a group of outsiders broke through the
line of stewards guarding the doorway. Shouts of “damnation upon the
communists!”268disrupted the TWP gathering. A more severe incident occurred at a TWP
gathering held shortly thereafter, this time resulting in injuries to several members of the
TWP’s youth branch.269
In July 1965, a “mob of thousands”270 attacked a TWP election rally in Bursa, not
far from Istanbul. To chants of “death to the communists” 271 the attackers severely beat
the TWP delegates who were present, leaving six of them badly hurt.272 Leftists believed
that such attacks picked up in tempo when right-led coalitions controlled
266 Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950-1975 (London, UK: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1977), 197-99; Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 91; Masaki Kakizaki, "Contentious Politics in Turkey: The Changing Patterns of Political Participation in Protest, 1945-2007 " (Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Utah, 2015), 59; Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 203. 267 Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 68. 268 Ekinci, Lice'den Paris'e Anılarım (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2010), 334. 269 Ibid. 270 Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950-1975 (London, UK: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1977), 225-26. 271 Ibid. 272 Ibid.
74
parliament.273Ruşen Arslan, then a young supporter of the TWP, recalls that during those
years “virtually every one of our gatherings”274 became a target of rightist violence.
The radicalization of the movement occurred through processes similar to those
witnessed in Northern Ireland. While flashes of violence gave pause to older, more
established figures, younger and more radical students seized upon the dangers as a
chance to raise their profile in the movement. Heightening the polarization, this radical
flank leapt at ever more daring and provocative acts of transgressive protest. Their noisy
disruption of public events could turn easily into rowdy attacks on property – which
would, almost inevitably, devolve into violent clashes with youth on the other side of the
left-right divide.275
Since its standard bearers were students who possessed a high social reputation
and because their militancy was centered in the cities of Ankara and Istanbul, there were
steep constraints on the amount of violence that security forces would use against the
radical left. It was, instead, unofficial counter-mobilizers who took the fore – a
development that is broadly similar to that witnessed in Northern Ireland.276Indeed, as in
Northern Ireland, coercive and bureaucratic capacity, though formidable, did not fully
prepare the state for managing these violent energies in society.277
273 Ibid. 274 Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 73. 275 For descriptions, see: Interview with Bozkurt Nuhoğlu in Emre Demir, Kırmızı Günler: 68'in Liderlerinden Bozkurt Nuhoğlu Anlatıyor (Destek, 2009), 30. Also see: Gün Zileli, Yarılma: 1954-1972 (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayınları, 2002); Nermin Abadan, "The Politics of Students and Young Workers in Turkey," in International Association of Sociology 7th World Congress International Assoication of Sociology 7th World Congress (Varna, Bulgaria1970). 276 Such developments are familiar to scholars of protest and social movements more generally. See for instance, Eitan Alimi, Lorenzo Bosi, and Chares Demetriou, "Relational Dynamics and Processes of Radicalization: A Comparative Framework," Mobilization: An International Quarterly 17, no. 1 (2012); Tijen Demirel-Pegg, "From the Streets to the Mountains: The Dynamics of Transition from a Protest Wave to an Insurgency in Kashmir," ibid.19, no. 3 (2014); Doug McAdam, "Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency," American Sociological Review 48, no. 6 (1983). 277 For a thorough analysis, see: Erken, Ali. "The Construction of Nationalist Politics in Turkey: The MHP: 1965-1980." Doctoral Dissertation, Oxford University, 2013.
75
By the mid-1960s, the scattered efforts at resisting the left had begun to loosely
coalesce under the banner of the Idealist Movement (Ülkücu Hareketi), led by Colonel
Alparslan Türkeş, a polarizing figure who assumed a prominent role in the 1960 coup
before being sidelined by elements of the military that were unnerved by his hardline
views and evident ambition.278 The Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi;
NAP/MHP),279arose as the political edifice of the Idealist Movement. Though electorally
weak, the “real strength”280 of the NAP resided in its links with networks of local youth
organizations called the Idealist Hearths (Ülkü Ocakları).281 At some of these locations,
rightist militants received paramilitary training.282Between 1968 and 1971, the left
orchestrated huge street demonstrations, and the ‘right,’ headed up by the Idealists,
answered back with major shows of strength – sometimes leading to bloody collisions.283
Meanwhile, everyday politics, from passing pamphlets to showing propaganda films
278 Erken, Ali. "The Construction of Nationalist Politics in Turkey: The MHP: 1965-1980." Doctoral Dissertation, Oxford University, 2013, 63; Landau, Jacob M. "The Nationalist Action Party in Turkey." Journal of Contemporary History 17, no. 4 (1982): 589; Balci, Tamer. "The Rise and Fall of Nine Lights Ideology." Politics, Religion & Ideology 12, no. 2 (2011): 145-60; Sanlı, Ferit Salim. "Türk Sağındaki Politik Çatallaşmaya Adalet Partisinden Bakmak: 1961-1967 Yılları Arası AP İçerisinde Yaşanan" Müfrit-Mutedil" Mücadelesi ve Bu Mücadelenin" Türkeş Hareketi" ile Olan Münasebet." CTAD: Journal of Modern Turkish History Studies 13, no. 25 (2017). 279 In October 1960, currents within the military and RPP sidelined Türkeş, dispatching him as a military attache abroad after he made a bid to steer the military junta in a more authoritarian direction. But Türkeş would not remain on the sidelines; he soon returned to Turkey, and eventually took control of the right-wing Republican Villagers Nation Party (Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi, CKMP), which he would later rebrand the Nationalist Action Party (NAP/MHP). See: Tamer Balci, "The Rise and Fall of Nine Lights Ideology," Politics, Religion & Ideology 12, no. 2 (2011): 146; Douglas Howard, "The History of Turkey," (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001), 135; Landau, Radical Politics in Turkey (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1974), 589; Özgür Mutlu Ulus, The Army and the Radical Left in Turkey: Military Coups, Socialist Revolution and Kemalism (London, UK: IB Tauris, 2010), 25. 280 Abadan, "The Politics of Students and Young Workers in Turkey," in International Assoication of Sociology 7th World Congress International Assoication of Sociology 7th World Congress (Varna, Bulgaria1970), 99-100. 281 Seyla Benhabib, "The Next Iran or the Next Brazil?: Right-Wing Groups Behind Political Violence in Turkey," MERIP Reports 77 (1979): 17. 282 Landau, Radical Politics in Turkey (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1974), 215. 283 For descriptions of such events, see for example: İsmail Beşikci, Doğu Mitingleri'nin Analizi (1967) (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikci Vakfı, 2014), 78-79; Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 97; Ali Erken, "Örgüt Ve Strateji: 1965-1980 Arasında Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi," İnsan & Toplum Dergisi 4, no. 7 (2014): 139; Kakizaki, "Contentious Politics in Turkey: The Changing Patterns of Political Participation in Protest, 1945-2007 " (Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Utah, 2015), 59; Rıfat N Bali, Model Citizens of the State: The Jews of Turkey During the Multi-Party Period (Lexington Books, 2012), 148.
76
often involved scuffles and encounters between bands of youth on either side of the right
vs. left divide.
The campuses, especially, were turning into a battleground between the left and
right. Fights over turf then began to spread to the high schools and low income
neighborhoods of Istanbul, Ankara, and to a limited extent, to the smaller cities and
towns in the region.284 By the autumn of 1969, this competition was turning deadly.285
According to Abadan (1970), roughly 20 students were killed in the fighting between
December 1969 and September 1970.286 This was far lower than the scale of violence in
the coming decade, but it was enough to alert its participants to the stakes of the conflict.
2.2.4. A new decade and new heights of conflict
A military coup in March 1971 temporarily stalled political mobilization and violence,
but the military had loosened its grip considerably by 1973, and a political amnesty in
1974 allowed many of the leftist and pro-Kurdish leaders to resume their political
activities.287 They soon found themselves atop a wave of social mobilization that
surpassed the prior decade. More than ever before, the left asserted itself in parliamentary
politics and vied for control of the streets and the factories. A politicized Kurdish
identity, meanwhile, had begun to affix itself in the public discourse, thrusting the
284 Oral Çalışlar, ’68 Anılarım (Istanbul, Turkey: Everest 2011), 19-20. 285 Robert W Olson, "Al-Fatah in Turkey: Its Influence on the March 12 Coup," Middle Eastern Studies 9, no. 2 (1973): 200. 286 Abadan, "The Politics of Students and Young Workers in Turkey," in International Association of Sociology 7th World Congress International Assoication of Sociology 7th World Congress (Varna, Bulgaria1970), 97. 287 Gareth Jenkins, Political Islam in Turkey, Running West Heading East? (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2008), 133; O'Connor and Oikonomakis, "Preconflict Mobilization Strategies and Urban-Rural Transition: The Cases of the PKK and the FLN/EZLN," Mobilization: An International Quarterly 20, no. 3 (2015): 383; Ali Türkler Ertuncay, Görülememiştir: Bir TKP/ML Sanığının Günlükleri (Istanbul, Turkey: Ayrıntı, 2015), 35; Rızgari ve Ala Rızgari Örgütleri: İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı, 1981/307, 23 (1981).
77
Kurdish issue into the public limelight for the first time since the rural rebellions of the
1920s and 1930s.288
A suggestive barometer for the scale of leftist mobilization is the growth of the
Mayday tradition in Turkey during this period. As late as 1975, Mayday in Turkey was
not a major occasion,289stirring only limited celebrations confined mostly to
Istanbul.290Noting the upswing in leftist sentiment, DİSK – the radical splinter from
Turkey’s major trade union, TÜRK-İŞ -- decided to popularize the holiday in 1976.291 Its
organizers claim they turned out half a million people at the celebrations that year.292
This demonstration went off almost without any violence, aside from minor skirmishing
with police.293The next year witnessed a large turnout as well,294 but this time, the rally
turned bloody, with gunfire from unknown attackers leading to a stampede and dozens of
deaths.295
288 Kurdish dissidents, not least, were aware of these shifts in public discourse. In 1970, Kurdish activists had made the central task of their court battles rebutting the state’s claims that the Kurds did not exist in Turkey. By 1980, Kurdish activists realized that, thanks to the efforts of the previous two decades, they had surpassed this stage. “At this point, from the perspective of Kurdistan, the issue is not whether to accept or reject the existence of a Kurdish nation,” the court defense of the Kurdish Kawa organization proudly declared: “This is an issue that history has resolved. Now, the fascists are even forced to admit that the Kurdish nation exists”(Gündoğan 2007, 346). In the eyes of the Kurdish movement’s cadres, nobody was “debating whether or not Kurds existed” (Rızgari, May 1979, 8). They had instead moved on to discussing the “liberation struggle of colonized Kurdistan”(Rızgari, May 1979, 8) See: Cemil Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007).;"Militarist-Sömürge Türk Burjuvasinin Imha Eylemleri ve Komal Yayınevinin Yağmalanması Üzerine," Rızgari (May 1979): 8. 289 See Özgürlük Yolu 1 (1975): 83 290 See Özgürlük Yolu 12 (May 1976): 65. 291 Mehmet Ö Alkan, "Dünyada ve Türkiye'de '1 Mayıs'ın Kısa Tarihi," Karar, 1 May 2016. 292 Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 220. 293 "1 Mayıs Işci Bayram Kutlandı," Cumhuriyet, 2 May 1976. 294 Mello, "Political Process and the Development of Labor Insurgency in Turkey, 1945–80," Social Movement Studies 6, no. 3 (2007): 223. 295 Ahmet (Murat Belge) Samim, "The Tragedy of the Turkish Left," New Left Review 126, no. 1 (1981): 61; Özgürlük Yolu 25 (June 1977 ): 3-6.
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Figure 2.1 Annual strikes in Turkey (1963-1980)296
Attempting to push themselves to the crest of this wave, a new crop of leftist militant
organizations sprung up, most of them claiming the legacy of one or another leftist
vanguard organization from the prior decade. Compared to the handful of rebel
organizations at the close of the 1960s, Akyol (2010) counts over 40 leftist organizations
active during by the end of the decade,297 while Eligür (2010) counts 49.298 The rebel
group that would soon be known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) took its first
formative steps within this milieu of student radicals, particularly in Ankara (Chapter 3
will address these origins in detail).
Signifying the trend toward political disorder, major pillars of civil society, once
solidly dependent on the state, began to split into mirroring leftist and rightist
296 Alpaslan Işıklı, "Wage Labor and Unionization," in Turkey in Transition: New Perspectives, (Re) Considering the Labor Movement in Turkey (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987). 297 Hüseyin Akyol, Türkiye'de Sol Örgütler - Bölüne Bölüne Büyümek (Ankara, Turkey: Phoenix, 2010). 298 Eligür, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 87.
79
associations.299 Even the police split into a rightist POL-BİR, and leftist POL-DER. 300 In
1978, Prime Minister Ecevit admitted that while he believed the military was still solidly
independent, the police forces were “infiltrated by political factions and divided."301 A
year later, an internal military report went so far as to express concerns that the armed
forces, too, could be headed toward a fracture along ideological lines.302
All the while, the left and right redoubled their battles for control over the streets,
slums, and campuses. Fighting began once again in 1974, but this time with ferocity that
greatly surpassed the previous decade. On 18 December 1974, the rightists carried out
their first killing since the 1971 coup, stabbing to death a leftist student leader at a bus
stop in the heart of Istanbul.303Leftists answered in kind, as the sides commenced a war
for control of Istanbul and Ankara’s campuses and slum neighborhoods.
Before long, entire sections of Turkey’s major cities became violently contested
zones between leftist and rightist militants.304 Just as Ian Paisley in Northern Ireland
gained politically from the violence he helped to incite, Colonel Alparslan Türkeş saw his
fortunes rise along with worsening societal conflict. In 1975, Prime Minister Demirel
299 Ibid., 85. 300 "Ankara Valisi Pol-Der ve Pol-Bir Genel Merkezlerini Kapattı," Cumhuriyet, 6 July 1978; Benjamin Gourisse, "Electoral Participation, Penetration of the State, and Armed Violence in the Turkish Political Crisis of the Second Half of the 1970s," Politix, no. 2 (2012): 8. 301 Benhabib, "The Next Iran or the Next Brazil?: Right-Wing Groups Behind Political Violence in Turkey," MERIP Reports 77 (1979): 17. 302 Eligür, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 86. 303 See Devrimci Yol Savunması, (1989). 304 In one local manifestation of this war, in September 1979, an Idealist pamphlet celebrated their capture of the Cerrahpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul, which the left “had for years considered their own liberated zone.” But now, “with the efforts of the Idealist Movement” and the “help of the people” the leftists were “cleansed” and “tossed out” of the area. See "Untitled Pamphlet - Distributed in Cerrahpaşa," Cerrahpaşa Ülkücüleri (September 1979).
80
granted the NAP two cabinet posts in the Nationalist Front government, though the NAP
only won three seats in parliament in the 1973 election.305
These dynamics produced a mounting death toll. In 1975, there were 37 political
killings, according to government sources.306 This was only the beginning. The death
count rose to 108 in 1976 and then 319 the next year.307 And fighting intensified steeply
from there: 1,096 were killed in 1978, and 1,362 in 1978.308 Further worsening these
conditions, in 1979, the commencement of high profile assassinations added to the sense
of crisis among the wider public.309
Many areas of Turkey were not directly touched by the conflict. But politically
and/or ethnically defined communities were greatly preoccupied by the violence.310
Depending on the tally, somewhere between 3,200 and 3,500 died during the period of
months in the run-up to 12 September 1980 military coup.311
2.2.5. Defying the dangers of total repression in eastern Turkey
In the Kurdish-majority regions of Turkey’s east, however, this rise in political instability
did not unambiguously expand the opportunity space for rebellion. The military
continued to show its readiness against challenges to state authority in the sensitive
305 Gourisse, "Electoral Participation, Penetration of the State, and Armed Violence in the Turkish Political Crisis of the Second Half of the 1970s," Politix, no. 2 (2012): 4. 306 Cited from government sources in Sabri Sayari, "Political Violence and Terrorism in Turkey, 1976–80: A Retrospective Analysis," Terrorism and Political Violence 22, no. 2 (2010). 307 Cited from government sources in ibid. 308 Cited from government sources in ibid. 309 Michael M Gunter, "Political Instability in Turkey During the 1970s," Journal of Conflict Studies 9, no. 1 (1989).; Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2004), 264. 310 During this time period, the military claims to have recorded 9,056 incidents of “armed attacks and clashes” resulting in 166 fatalities among the security forces. See, "Türkiye'deki Anarşi ve Terörün Durumu." Genelkurmay Başkanlığı, 1983. 311 The two above sources use government statistics to provide similar, though not identical, figures.
81
Kurdish zones.312 But, despite these clear dangers, transgressive protest spread across the
country during the late-1970s. With DİSK leading the way, fresh labor organizing began
across Anatolia, from the growing factories in Konya,313 to the industrial centers of
Çukurova and also into strongly Kurdish-majority areas of the southeast.314
Complementing these efforts, leftist organizations cast a latticework of civil
society associations across the region. These branches served as nodes for organizing
region-wide protests, such as in January 1975, when the leftist teachers union, TÖB-
DER, launched a series of demonstrations across 52 provinces – including Kurdish
districts like Muş, Malatya, and Maraş -- to protest the rising cost of living and
“fascism.”315 Kurdish dissident organizations participated unofficially in these civil
society organizations, and several of them also established their own legal
312 There are abundant indications of the military sending such signals, which were clearly received by Kurdish dissidents and ordinary inhabitants of the region. In January 1977, the RPP deputy from the town of Hakkari declared on the parliamentary floor that military repression was reaching new heights (Özgürlük Yolu Feb/March 1977: 21-22). Going forward, military intimidation in the east only intensified as countrywide political instability worsened. In September 1978, the military conducted a mass exercise in the border zone of Yüksekova that involved a large motorized contingent of military forces rehearsing an attack on an opposing force that they had dressed in local garb (Kürekken 2015: 214; Göktaş 1991). Kenan Evren, the general who would preside over the impending military coup, later described the exercise as part of the military’s effort to demonstrate that it would not allow the region to slip out of government control (Birand 1998). The various currents of the Kurdish movement got the message. Shortly after the exercise, the TKDP/KUK distributed pamphlets that explained the exercise as a manifestation of Turkey’s “colonizer mindset” toward the Kurds. Roja Welat, a TKSP publication, interpreted the exercise as an explicit threat to the Kurds, declaring, in effect, that “‘this is what I will do to you if you fail to remain quiescent”(Burkay 2009: 218). The cumulative effect of these activities left a lasting impression. A private letter that an imprisoned PKK cadre wrote shortly after the military coup echoes this perception. Alluding to the Kurdish rebellions of prior generations, he writes, “In Kurdistan, the slightest rustling is suppressed with blood, gunpowder and the noose” (Aydın). Tallying with this perception, Paşa Uzun, who was then affiliated with the DDKD/KİP, recalls joining a group of parents in Siverek to petition the local prefect for more funding to the local school. Before they knew it, the parents found themselves surrounded by gendarmes, dispatched rapidly from the provincial center (Uzun 2005: 21). As this anecdotes suggests, Kurdish dissidents at the time believed that the military was likely to regard any collective expression of unrest, however apparently innocent, as meriting a firm response. See: Ünlü, Mustafa. "12 Eylül ": Cine 5, 1998; Özgürlük Yolu 21-22 (February/March 1977), 93; Küreken, İbrahim. Parçası, Tanığı, Mahkumu, Sürgünü Oldum. Istanbul, Turkey İletişim, 2016, 124; Xebat 3 (October/November 1978), 11; Roja Welat September 1978 issue 10, quoted in Burkay 2009, 128; Aydın, Orhan. c. 1981; Uzun, Paşa. "O Bir Dağ Çiçeğiydi." Istanbul, Turkey: Elma, 2005, 21. 313 Süzan Bozyiğit, "Seydişehir Ilçesinin Beşeri ve Ekonomik Coğrafyası" (Masters’ Thesis, Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2005); "Seydişehir’de CHP ve TSIP ile Bazı Sendika Binalarına Saldırıldı," Cumhuriyet, 28 December 1975. 314 For reporting on these activities, see:"TPAO Işyerlerindeki Grevler Bakanlar Kurulunca 30 Gün Süre ile Ertelendi," Ayrıntılı Haber, 25 Feburary 1976; "Topkar: 50 Bin Sopa Iie Bayram Kutlanmaz," Tercüman, 25 April 1978. Also see: "Mem-Der Adana Şubesi’nin Ilk Genel Kurulunda Partizan Baskılar Kınandı," Cumhuriyet, 5 March 1976; "Alaağa Rafinerisinde Çalışan 252 İşçi Için Soruşturma Açıldı," Cumhuriyet, 14 November 1976; "Grev ve Lokavt Kararından Sonra Marsa’da Toplu Sözleşme Imzalandı," Cumhuriyet, 10 April 1978; "Adana Sigara Fabrikasinin Kadın Işçileri, ‘Klima Cihazı’ Ve ‘Duş Yeri’ Için Yürüyüş Yaptılar," Cumhuriyet, 27 July 1978; "Cimsa’da Grev Kararı Alan Mersin Citos – Iş Yönetim Kurulu Genel Merkezce Feshedildi," Cumhuriyet, 10 April 1978; "Iskendurun – Demir Çelik’te 500 Teknik Eleman Direnişe Başladı," Cumhuriyet, 7 April 1978. 315 Devrimci Yol Savunması (1989).
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fronts.316Likewise, they began to make inroads in local elections, in places like
Diyarbakır317 and Ağrı.318
This diffusion of leftist activity brought with it the same styles of trangressive
protest common in Turkey’s west. Figures 2.2. and 2.3. are indicative of the overall
pattern. Using a sample collected from multiple sources, these figures map the proportion
of protest events across Turkey, with Figure 2.2. showing 1960-1974 and Figure 2.3.
showing 1975-1980. Dark shading indicates that a protest event included a recorded
instance of violence.319 Though based on an admittedly thin sample, the data is
nonetheless illustrative of the likely pattern. Prior to 1975, major protests were less
common in the Kurdish southeast, compared to the west, and non-violence predominated
in the east. Between 1975 and 1980, by contrast, protest events in the east claimed an
increased portion of total protest, with many of these incidents featuring violence.
316 Kemal Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 110; Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015). 317 Gilles Dorronsoro and Nicole F Watts, "Toward Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics: The 1977 Local Elections in Diyarbakir," International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (2009). 318 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013). 319 See the appendix for a list of sources used for this dataset.
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Figure 2.2. Proportional distribution of major protest events (1960-1974) (n=82)
Figure 2.3. Proportional distribution of major protest events (1975-1980) (n=126)
Size:proportionoftotaleventsDark:portionofeventswithreportsofviolenceLight:portionofeventswithoutreportofviolence.
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Comparing these snapshots suggests that public protest had grown more violent
by the latter half of the 1970s.320 In western Turkey during the 1960s, radical students
warded off melee attacks from rightists – and their physical approach to politics began to
win them attention and esteem. When mobilization spread further east during the 1970s,
it politicized local sectarian and ethnic divides, subsuming them under the left-right
schema.
Mechanisms similar to those at work in Northern Ireland during the late-1960s
were clearly on display. In Northern Ireland, radical students sidelined the cautious
mainstream with transgressive protest that elicited violent responses from police and
Protestant counter-protestors. Once violence spiraled to deadly proportions, the
momentum shifted to the previously marginal IRA, its skills in lethal violence suddenly
and urgently in demand. This sequence of developments occurred on a broader scale in
Turkey, in part because national polarization enflamed the many and variegated sectarian,
tribal, and parochial cleavages that had long been present in Anatolia.
The major force behind anti-left violence in western and central Anatolia
remained the Idealist Movement. The military imprisoned Idealist Youth militants and
closed Idealist Hearth organizations in 1971, but the movement regrouped quickly,
opening new associations to replace those that the military had shut down.321 After 1973,
the Idealist Movement was expanding at a rate to match that of the leftist movement.322 It
was also expanding beyond its traditional strongholds in Turkey’s major cities and
longtime redoubts in certain areas of Anatolia. According to Erken (2014), the number of 320 Sabri Sayari and Bruce Hoffman, "Urbanization and Insurgency: The Turkish Case, 1976-1980,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 5, no. 2 (1991): 1. 321 Erken, "Örgüt ve Strateji: 1965-1980 Arasında Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi," İnsan & Toplum Dergisi 4, no. 7 (2014): 140-44. 322 Ibid., 144; Samim, "The Tragedy of the Turkish Left," New Left Review 126, no. 1 (1981): 80.
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Idealist Hearth branches across Turkey reached 1000 by 1976 and exceeded 1,200 by
1980.323 In the regions of Turkey that were predominately Sunni Kurdish, the inroads of
the Idealist Movement were shallower. Instead, the ‘rightists’ tapped into specific local
conditions that aligned landowners, center-right party bosses, and sometimes, Islamist
youth organizations against the increasingly assertive leftist/Kurdish activists.324
2.2.6. New heights of violence and military intervention
Toward the end of the decade, a series of pogroms against Alevis broke out across mixed
Sunni-Alevi towns in central and south-central Turkey.325 Meanwhile, further southeast,
the PKK was involving itself in conflicts between Kurdish tribes, transforming parochial
disputes into new fronts in the budding Kurdish rebellion. Notably, while these inter-
communal and inter-tribal battles raged, clashes with security forces were, on the main,
spontaneous or defensive.326 Even the PKK feared drawing the gaze of the Turkish
military, preferring instead to pluck the low hanging fruit – local landlords, rightist
strongmen, and rival Kurdist organizations.
323 Erken, "Örgüt ve Strateji: 1965-1980 Arasında Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi," İnsan & Toplum Dergisi 4, no. 7 (2014): 145. 324 For analysis, see: Jenkins, Political Islam in Turkey, Running West Heading East? (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2008); Ceren Belge, "State Building and the Limits of Legibility: Kinship Networks and Kurdish Resistance in Turkey," International Journal of Middle East Studies 43, no. 01 (2011); Tezcur, "Violence and Nationalist Mobilization: The Onset of the Kurdish Insurgency in Turkey," Nationalities Papers 43, no. 2 (2015). For contemporary perspectives from Kurdish dissidents, see: Özgürlük Yolu 17 (October 1976): 86; Harun Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koc University, 2010), 128; "Faşizm," Rızgari, no. 9 (1980); Zana, Bekle Diyarbakir (Istanbul: Doz, 1991); Özgürlük Yolu 20 (1977): 52; "The Kurdish Movement in Turkey – an Interview with a Representative of the Ozgurluk Yolu Movement," KNaC (December 1980): 30; Özgürlük Yolu 25 (June 1977 ): 83-84; Özgürlük Yolu 12 (May 1976): 76. 325 These conflicts saw a major escalatory turn when, in 1978, a bombing killed the local mayor in Malatya, triggering Sunni Kurdish tribal attacks on leftists and Alevis. Months later, the period’s most deadly eruption of anti-Alevi violence broke out, this time in Maraş. In December 1978, a series of provocations incited a large-scale Sunni attack against Alevi districts in the province. Several days of attacks left more than 100 dead. Similar, if less severe outbreaks of violence, occurred across the region. See, Halkın Birliği Special Issue (1978); Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 120; Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 81-82. Kakizaki, "Contentious Politics in Turkey: The Changing Patterns of Political Participation in Protest, 1945-2007 " (Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Utah, 2015), 65 326 For analyses, see Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010); Özcan, PKK (Kürdistan İşçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yöntemi (Ankara, Turkey: ASAM, Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yayınları, 1999).
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Finally, after lengthy preparation, the military intervened on 12 September 1980.
The military’s heavy repression put a stop to non-state violence across the country. The
Kurdish movement, including the PKK, hastened their flight into exile, and many were
captured. The left in Turkey would never recover the prominence it held during the
1970s. As for the Kurdish movement, it foundered in disarray for several years.
Meanwhile, the PKK regrouped across the border and began to fashion itself into a
guerrilla army.327
2.2.7. The new politics of violence in eastern Turkey
Summing up the major patterns of political violence in Turkey, an important takeaway is
that while deadly left-right violence during the 1960s was confined, for the most part, to
Turkey’s major western cities, during the 1970s, it spread across the country. In
November 1979, Turkey’s Interior and Justice ministries provided a list of the names and
location of death of some 839 individuals that had died in left-right political violence
over the previous year.328 Below, Figure 2.4. shows a map of the locations of these
killings. This data suggests that while Istanbul and Ankara featured prominently in the
violence, fatalities had by this time spread across Turkey.329 The Çukurova region, where
the Turkish and Kurdish left were organizing migrant workers from further east, was a
particular focal zone, as were the cities and towns further east. Some fighting also
327 Aliza Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), Chapter 4. 328 Millet Meclisi Tutanak Dergisi 5, no. 13-3 (November 1979). 329 Not surprisingly, specific figures of the political violence deaths in Anatolia are patchy, and vary widely. For instance, Benhabib (1979): report deaths tolls in 1978 as: Kars, 24; Elâzığ, 60; Gaziantep, 60; Diyarbakır, 27; and Sivas, 50. Data revealed at a session of the Turkish parliament in 1978 (cited above) that covers deaths between May and December of that year differs: Kars, 7; Elâzığ, 32; Gaziantep, 21; and Sivas, 4. Sources, both primary and secondary, agree however that violence in Anatolia had spread more widely and become more lethal than in the prior decade. See: ibid.; Benhabib, "The Next Iran or the Next Brazil?: Right-Wing Groups Behind Political Violence in Turkey," MERIP Reports 77 (1979).
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occurred in the northeast, in places like Ağrı, where Kurdish leftists competed with ultra-
nationalists of the Idealist Movement. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the
proportion of violence in these regions rose even higher by 1980.
Figure 2.4. Deaths from Left Right violence in Turkey (May 1978 to June 1979) (n=839)330
2.3. Theorizing repressive environments
Having canvassed the development of insurgency both in Northern Ireland and Turkey,
this section now boils down some of these cross-case commonalities into a more general
set of claims concerning dissident mobilization and the emergence of new environments
of repression.
Perhaps one of the few statements approaching a general law in the social
sciences is that states respond to significant challenges to the status quo with
repression,331 defined abstractly as efforts to increase the costs of collective action.332
Yet, the forms that repression takes vary widely, with factors such as state capacity, the
330 Millet Meclisi Tutanak Dergisi 5, no. 13-3 (November 1979). 331 Christian Davenport, "State Repression and Political Order," Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 10 (2007). 332 Here I follow Tilly’s conceptualization, See Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
Size:portionofreportedpoliticalviolencedeaths
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skill and culture of the state’s repressive machinery, and the status of the dissident group
influencing what varieties of repression appear.333
Scholars have proposed numerous typologies of repression and introduced
hypotheses concerning their relations to the dynamics of insurgency. Research has, for
instance, examined: the linkages between external security threats and severity of
repression;334 regime type and repression;335 indiscriminate vs. selective repression;336
repression that occurs through institutional channels verses that which occurs during
protest events;337 the causes of consequences of state massacres;338 and typologies of
security force repressive styles.339 Working in the agenda, I suggest that dissidents in
Northern Ireland and Turkey experienced a pattern of repression that featured certain
essential commonalities – and that this similar repressive style exerted similar effects on
the dissident movements in both conflicts (a topic that Chapter 3 will develop).
To be sure, states generally apply multiple strategies of repression at once, and
Northern Ireland and Turkey are no exception. Each used manifold tactics and strategies
and, thus, each state is quite unique it its overall repertoire of repression. Yet, within
333 Davenport, "State Repression and Political Order," Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 10 (2007); Jennifer Earl, "Political Repression: Iron Fists, Velvet Gloves, and Diffuse Control," Annual Review of Sociology 37 (2011); Donatella Della Porta, "On Violence and Repression: A Relational Approach (the Government and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Memorial Lecture, 2013)," Government and Opposition 49, no. 2 (2014). 334 Ahsan I Butt, Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy against Separatists (Cornell University Press, 2017). 335 Daniel Byman, "‘Death Solves All Problems’: The Authoritarian Model of Counterinsurgency," Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 1 (2016). 336 Jason Lyall, "Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks? Evidence from Chechnya," Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 3 (2009); Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York, NY: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2006); Evgeny Finkel, "The Phoenix Effect of State Repression: Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust," American Political Science Review 109, no. 2 (2015); Jeff Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 337 Ruud Koopmans, "Dynamics of Repression and Mobilization: The German Extreme Right in the 1990s," Mobilization: An International Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1997). 338 Ronald Francisco, "After the Massacre: Mobilization in the Wake of Harsh Repression," ibid.9 (2004). 339 Donatella Della Porta and Olivier Fillieule, "Policing Social Protest," in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A Snow, Sarah Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2004).
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these broad sets of repressive practices, incidents of disorderly violent repression became
commonplace in both countries.
2.3.1. Contentious politics and disorderly violent repression
In both cases, a dissident movement grew rapidly in strength, catching state authorities
unprepared with its demands and tactics. Faced with dangerous threats to the status quo, a
state might, in theory, wish to respond to such a challenge with an optimal mix of
repression and accommodation. Such a response would demobilize the challenger
movement at a minimal cost in terms of concessions and costly violence.340
Weak states, virtually by definition, lack the ability to mount these sorts of
coherent responses.341 Yet, as we saw in the above comparison, strong states are far from
immune to social unrest. They may have difficulty marshaling the right resources to meet
unfamiliar challenges,342 especially when the needed resources involve bureaucratic skill
and police ‘know how’ – resources that are difficult to cultivate in the best of times.
While strong states are thought to possess an ability to implement selective
repression (for instance, confining repression to dissident leaders and militants)343 pulling
off this surgical approach to repression is costly and difficult to achieve within relevant
340 For studies on how regimes combine repression and accommodation to promote their survival, see: Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective," Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004); Fjelde and De Soysa, "Coercion, Co-Optation, or Cooperation? State Capacity and the Risk of Civil War, 1961—2004," Conflict Management and Peace Science 26, no. 1 (2009); Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, "Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats," Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 11 (2007); Jack A Goldstone and Charles Tilly, "Threat (and Opportunity): Popular Action and State Response in the Dynamics of Contentious Action," in Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (New York, NY: 2001). 341 For an empirical application of this insight, see Brian Blankenship, "When Do States Take the Bait? State Capacity and the Provocation Logic of Terrorism," Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 2 (2018). 342 See, for example, Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989). 343 T David Mason and Dale A Krane, "The Political Economy of Death Squads: Toward a Theory of the Impact of State-Sanctioned Terror," International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1989).
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time horizons.344 Thus, even the highest capacity states may fail initially at selective
repression, only improving over time.345
Some high capacity states compensate for these limitations by turning to total,
merciless repression.346 Hafez Al Assad’s decimation of the city of Hama,347 or the
suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune348 stand as examples of how total repression can
put a stop to dissident mobilization, at least for awhile.349 In Turkey’s western provinces
and across Northern Ireland, political and economic considerations took this strategy off
the table. Ad hoc violence, coupled with an inability or unwillingness to make
concessions to the dissidents, was the alternative policy that emerged in practice.
Tasked with unfamiliar duties, frontline security forces in these cases initially
lacked effective techniques for dealing with protest.350 Police batons failed to discipline
the movements they faced, inflaming unrest over the long run, rather than quelling it.351
In April 1969, a demonstration near Derry devolved into rioting in the Catholic Bogside
neighborhood. In pursuit of a small group of stone throwing youths, policemen burst into
the home of Samuel Devenny, a forty-two year old man who was not involved in the
344 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York, NY: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2006). 345 See for example, Sanchez-Cuenca, "The Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism: ETA and the IRA," Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 3 (2007). 346 Here I follow Kalyvas in his discussion the effects of massive repression, compared to less severe forms. Stathis N Kalyvas, "The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War," The Journal of Ethics 8, no. 1 (2004). 347 Pearlman records the lasting memories of this massacre. See, Wendy Pearlman, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2017). I am grateful to Laura Bosco for this suggestion. 348 Roger V Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 349 Byman, "‘Death Solves All Problems’: The Authoritarian Model of Counterinsurgency," Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 1 (2016). 350 For a review on styles of protest policing in high capacity states, see Della Porta and Fillieule, "Policing Social Protest," in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. Snow, Soule, and Kriesi (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2004). 351 For a formal description of this process, see Young, "Repression, Dissent, and the Onset of Civil War," Political Research Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2012).
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protesting and was in poor physical health.352The stone throwers had disappeared, but
in the heat of the moment, the police battered Devenny with batons and boots.353 The
beating was so severe that blood was spattered “even on the ceiling,” remembers
Raymond McClean, the first CRM organizer to arrive on the scene after word spread of
the incident.354 Anger over the incident welled up as local residents and CRM organizers
gathered at the Devenny home to discuss how to respond.355
Similar indignation arose when Turkey’s police forces turned their batons on
student activists in Turkey. On 17 July 1968, on the eve of a protest against a U.S. naval
fleet visiting Istanbul, police raided the dorms of Istanbul Technical University, where
leftist students were awaiting the day of the protest.356 “I had never seen a human being
attack another human being with such savagery,” recalled Gökalp Eren, one of the
students, who remembers the attack as the first time he ever truly experienced state
violence: “We had seen photographs of such violence – the Vietnam war and other wars.
But to be an object of such violence, that was something different entirely.”357 One of the
students either fell or was pushed (accounts differ) from a dorm window amid the police
beatings. He later died.358 As for Samuel Devenny in Derry, he passed away several
months after his encounter with police. Locals were convinced that the injuries he
352 Bishop, Patrick, and Eamonn Mallie. The Provisional IRA. London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987, 92; Murray, Raymond. State Violence in Northern Ireland, 1969-1997. Dublin, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1998, 146. 353 Leavy, James. "Self-Defence Against the Police." McGill Law Journal 19, no. 3 (1973): 417. 354 McClean, Raymond. The Road to Bloody Sunday. Dublin, Ireland: Ward River Press, 1983, 69-70. 355 Ibid. 356 Güngör, Hakan. "6. Filo Uğruna Öldürülen Genç: Vedat Demircioğlu." Evrensel, 24 July 2019. 357 Interview with Gökalp Eren, in: Özkarabekir, Cengiz. "Türkiye'nin 68’i." 2008. 358 See: Alper, Emin. "Protest Diffusion and Rising Political Violence in the Turkish’68 Movement: The Arab-Israeli War." In Dynamics of Political Violence: a Process-oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, 255-175. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.
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sustained from the police beating were the cause of his death, and over 20,000 attended
his funeral.359 In both cases, similiar incidents of police repression only accumulated over
the following years, adding to the store of fresh grievances.
Of course, ad hoc violence may not always backfire in this manner. Sometimes, it
may achieve its desired ends, intimidating enough dissidents to demobilize the
movement. Alternatively, it may steer dissidents toward less conspicuous tactics – such
as forming underground societies that nourish dissident identities and/or rationalize the
use of terroristic violence. Yet, Northern Ireland and Turkey embody another possible
(and probably fairly common) outcome of sustained disorderly violent repression. In both
cases, ad hoc attacks outraged the communities from which rebels sought to gain support
and lent credence to more radical narratives concerning the nature and intentions of the
state.360 Yet, at the same time, this violence was insufficient to deplete the psychological
and physical ability of dissidents to continue their public agitation.
When such conditions pertain, groups in society that perceive a threat from
dissident mobilization may begin to play an increasingly prominent role. This was, of
course, the case with Unionist/Loyalist groups in Northern Ireland and the Idealist
Movement in Turkey. These groups materialized with support (tacit or otherwise) from
state authorities, or at least, thanks to a lack of political will to suppress them.
Fear was central to the slogans of these pro-state groups. The Loyalist movement
in Northern Ireland in the late-1960s framed the CRM as an existential threat to
Protestant Ulster: not just a challenge to the economic privileges of Protestants, but a
359 Munck, Ronnie. "The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland." Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 2 (1992): 223. 360 Carey, Colaresi, and Mitchell, "Governments, Informal Links to Militias, and Accountability," Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015); Paul Staniland, "Cities on Fire: Social Mobilization, State Policy, and Urban Insurgency," Comparative Political Studies 43, no. 12 (2010).
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foreign entity bent on corrupting the Protestant body politic. The Idealist Movement in
Turkey was alarmed by what they described as an assault on the very existence of
Turkish, Muslim identity. “If you want to live, do not forget and do not forgive!” warned
an Idealist branch shortly after the 1971 military intervention: “This is the existential
struggle of the Turkish nation. It is only the Ülkücü [Idealist] nationalist Turkish youth
that will save Turkey.”361
The existential threat posed by their enemies warranted a resort to aggressive
violence, the thinking went. William Craig, a hardline Unionist, declared that his policy
was “to liquidate the enemy.”362 Though Craig lacked the ability to act on this pledge
himself, the militias working in the Protestant neighborhoods of Belfast took these words
to heart. The Ulster Defense Association (UDA) argued plainly in its newsletter that the
Catholics of the province were foreigners that “do not regard themselves as part of
Ulster” and “are on the side of murder, terrorism, intimidation, and the total destruction
of loyalists.” These designations did not apply just to armed men of the IRA, but to
Catholics generally: “we simply cannot trust any of them,”363 the UDA explained.
A similar rationale pervaded the Idealist Movement’s rhetoric during the 1970s.
For instance, a June 1977 Idealist pamphlet distributed in Istanbul identified the leftist
enemy as “traitors, taking their orders from Moscow and Beijing” who were attacking all
elements of Turkish society with the clear aim of “enslaving the Turkish nation.”364In
361Meral Ugur Cinar, "When Defense Becomes Offense: The Role of Threat Narratives in the Turkish Civil War of the 1970s," Turkish Studies 15, no. 1 (2014): 6. 362 McIlheney, "Arbiters of Ulster's Destiny? The Military Role of the Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland," Journal of Conflict Studies 5, no. 2 (1985): 34. 363 Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 46.
364 "Untitled Pamphlet – Distributed in Sirkeci," Istanbul Ülkücü Ocakları (June 1977).
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April 1979, a local Idealist branch sounded similar notes, charging the center-left
government with a litany of insults against Islam. “The Muslims must be one fist,” the
Idealists enjoined, “one heart against these insults” that “forms a fist for God” and
“strikes its targets,” so that “even if our blood flows, the victory is won for Islam.”365
Acting on these rallying cries, counter-mobilizers can act with greater leeway than
the police and military. They can stage noisy counter-rallies to block marches, and turn
their fists, sticks, knives, and guns against dissident efforts at public expression.366 State
security officials might quietly welcome auxiliaries that can hit troublesome protesters.
But if left unchecked, these forms of violence further erode confidence in the state among
affected segments of the population.367 When political polarization deepens local inter-
ethnic tensions, these sensitivities become particularly acute. “We are not asking for you
to protect our lives,” a leftist teacher says he told government officials shortly after the
massacre of Alevis in the town of Maraş: “[…] we are now determined to defend
ourselves.” 368 After taking part in the ad hoc defense of local Alevis, he says he
petitioned (and was denied) permission to stay in Maraş with his colleagues to act as
informal defenders.369The political significance of these developments was not lost on
365 "Untitled Pamphlet - Picked up in Findikzade," Ülkucu Türk Gençliği (April 1979). 366 For examples of research on counter-mobilization, see Cem Emrence and Aysegul Aydin, "Killing the Movement: How Islam Became a Rival of Ethnic Movement in Turkey, 1991–2002," in Non-State Violent Actors and Social Movement Organizations: Influence, Adaptation, and Change, ed. Julie M Mazzei (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017); McAdam, "Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency," American Sociological Review 48, no. 6 (1983); David S Meyer and Suzanne Staggenborg, "Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity," American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 6 (1996). 367 Crenshaw (2014, 298) highlights this development, noting that insurgencies may turn violent as communities militarize against threats: “Groups may turn purposefully to violence in order to defend a community against violence from other non-state actors, especially in circumstances where they believe that the state will not or cannot protect them.” Martha Crenshaw, "Conclusion," in Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, ed. Lorenzo Bosi, Chares Demetriou, and Stefan Malthaner (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). 368 "Hayatin Tanigi – Maras Katliami," (CNNTÜRK). 369 Ibid.
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revolutionaries in Turkey, as attested in a declaration from the far-left organization,
Kurtuluş, just after another pogrom erupted in Çorum:
“A portion of the people, during the course of these developments, took steps to solve their own problems themselves. They comprehended that the protection of the state, something they had long been led to believe in, was in fact a fairy tale. They saw in practice that they only they alone can protect themselves.”370
Such developments no doubt whet the appetites of the most radical currents of the
revolutionary movement. If ideology alone might convince a small number within a
community to turn their backs on the state, seeing these ideological assertions suddenly
made manifest in everyday experience is far more compelling. For an organization in
pursuit of the future revolutionary overthrow of the state, this is a promising turn of
events indeed – one that alters the opportunities and threats that nascent violent
organizations will perceive as salient in their environment (the topic of Chapter 3).
Of course, not every inter-sectarian riot or police excess will seriously erode
confidence in the state. But if perpetuated over time, such acts of violence have a
profound cumulative effect – as occurred among relevant publics both in Northern
Ireland and Turkey. In general, this pattern of repression fosters a general environment of
insecurity, 371 wherein members of politically or culturally-defined communities begin to
live with the daily expectation that low-intensity violence from state security forces (or
their apparent agents) might threaten their physical safety. Unless they capitulate to these
pressures, such communities will, of necessity, increasingly turn to self-help.
370 "Çorum’u Maraş Yapamayacaklar," Öncü, 14 July 1980. 371 For a discussion, see: David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict," International Security 21, no. 2 (1996).
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Disorderly violent repression is a useful term to carve out these analytically
similar forms of state (or state-abetted) violence from the many other varieties of state
repression.372 Three joint conditions define this variety of repression: (1) indiscriminate
targeting; (2) pervasiveness; and (3) its relatively minor lethal potential.
Indiscriminate attacks
Erroneously believing that sporadic gunfire from Catholic neighborhoods was the
opening salvo of an IRA-led invasion,373 the local police affixed heavy-caliber machine
guns on their armored cars, and opened fire at their imagined attackers “spraying the
narrow streets and the blocks of Divis Flats,”374 where Catholic families huddled under
the bullets that cleanly pierced the walls of their apartments.375 Later, the British army
would seek to avoid firing into crowded housing blocks, instead saturating restive areas
with riot gas that filled the eyes and lungs of rioters and residents, alike.376
When, in early 1963, a group of Turkish workers picketed in front of their factory
in Istanbul, they found themselves facing down 200 policemen who charged at them,
batons flying and pistols drawn.377 Before long, workers learned to expect this kind of
police response during labor disputes, and oftentimes, they prepared themselves 372 Introducing this concept, my goal is not to present a theory that predicts and explains why this form of repression occurs in some states and not others. I will also refrain from situating this concept within a larger integrated typology of the many forms of state violence. Though important, these questions are beyond the scope of this dissertation. My intention is merely to suggest that this form of violence is both conceptually coherent, and empirically evident across a large number of cases.
373 "Report of Tribunal of Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland," (Belfast: The Scarman Tribunal. Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972).
374 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 18. 375 Ibid. 376 For a discussion, see: Sjef Orbons, "Non-Lethal Weapons: Peace Enablers or Troublesome Force? Assessing the Role of CS and Baton Rounds in the Northern Ireland Conflict," Small Wars & Insurgencies 22, no. 3 (2011). 377 Emre, Yunus. The Emergence of Social Democracy in Turkey: The Left and the Transformation New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2014, Chapter 3; Aydın, Zafer Kavel 1963: ‘Kanunsuz’ bir Grevin Öyküsü. Istanbul, Turkey: TÜSTAV, 2010, 108-112.
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accordingly.378 Similar events grew common when transgressive protest diffused into the
east, beginning in the mid-1970s. In June 1975, crowds took to the streets in Diyarbakır
to protest a visit from Alparslan Türkeş, the head of the Idealist Movement. The security
forces took aim at the crowd, touching off scattered clashes with police that lasted into
the night.379 Similar confrontations only grew more frequent over the next few years in
the towns of eastern Turkey (see Figure 2.3.).
Even when security forces try to comport themselves professionally, their actions
can appear indiscriminate in the eyes of protestors.380 In the fracas of breaking-up a
rowdy protest it is difficult to separate those who are violating state-stipulated rules on
tolerated forms of political expression from those whose actions remain, however
ambiguously, within the bounds of state tolerated political action.381
And managing contention compounds in difficulty when self-appointed defenders
of the state decide to take matters into their own hands. Assaults on Catholic men amid
the heightening polarization of the late-1960s provoked fears among Catholics that
anyone of them, at any time, could become a victim. Similar dangers stalked Kurds and
leftists in Turkey. “They patrol the area in groups,” commented a prominent Kurdish
political group describing rightist violence in Elâzığ, “attacking as they wish the youth,
intellectuals, workers, as well as the workplaces, party offices and associations of the
378 For descriptions of labor related violence during this period, see inter alia:"Binlerce Mâden Kanunsuz Greve Başladi." Milliyet, 11 March 1965.; Ünsal, Artun. Umuttan yalnızlığa: Türkiye İşçi Partisi, 1961-1971. Istanbul, Turkey: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 2002, 2014; Abadan, Nermin. "The Politics of Students and Young Workers in Turkey." In International Assoication of Sociology 7th World Congress International Assoication of Sociology 7th World Congress Varna, Bulgaria, 1970, 106. 379 Faruk Bildirici, Yemin Gecesi: Leyla Zana'nın Yaşamöyküsü (Istanbul, Turkey: Doğan Kitap, 2008), 40-41; Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 126.; Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 26. 380 Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 381 In making this distinction between proscribed and accepted forms of political claim making, I follow Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Chapter 3.
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progressives”382 Eschewing illegal or transgressive political activity, thus, would not save
members of these communities from the dangers of physical violence. Associating with
the wrong political party, group of friends, or membership in the wrong ethnic group,
meant exposure to attacks that could come at any time.
A pervasive threat
“Not a day goes by without a [Kurdish] patriot or progressive being shot down,” the
Kurdish partisan Necmettin Büyükkaya wrote in his personal notes in the autumn of
1975.383 With its geographic spread and recurrent manifestations, disorderly violent
repression weaves its way into daily life. Memet Kara, a young university student who
sided with the left during the late-1970s, recalls how he and his comrades would, at a
moment’s notice, regularly leap from their seats in class, to dash into the fray below as
students fought off invading rightists. After warding off an incursion, they would return
to their lessons.384At Istanbul University, it became common practice for leftist students
to leave for the day in a large procession, as a deterrent against rightist attacks.385
Such realities are experienced daily in many polarized societies. Tracing the left-
right politicization of high schools in Italy during the 1970s, Della Porta (1995) reports
that ordinary students found it difficult to avoid affiliating with one side or the other. One
Italian militant recalls joining a militant organization after his brother was attacked. “It
grew year after year,” he recollected, “Violence called violence ... Our adversaries were
382 Özgürlük Yolu 17 (October 1976): 82 383 Büyükkaya, "Personal Notes Fall 1975," in Kalemimden Sayfalar, ed. Büyükkaya (Stockholm, Sweden: Vate, 2008). 384 Memet Kara, Ordulu Emin'in "Kurtulus" Tarihi (Istanbul, Turkey: Iletişim, 2015), 13. 385 Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 107; Kamil Tekin Sürek, "16 Mart Beyazıt Katliamı: Bu Dosya Bizim Için Kapanmadı," Evrensel, 16 March 2015.
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those who had an opposite ideology. But our fights were basically fights between bands,
according to a fashion that was widespread in our generation.”386
Ritualized through their frequency, confrontations with police and out-groups
become part of community life. So commonplace were riots in Northern Ireland in 1970
that “the BBC began to report it as the weather,” writes Bell, “storms and riots over
Northern Ireland, some light truculence in Derry and Strabane, more expected on the
morrow.”387 Daily rhythms for ordinary residents in Derry and Belfast reflected these
dangers: “It was not unusual for a non-combatant to pick a path along the edge of a riot
and through it to whatever business beckoned beyond it,” writes Shane Paul O’Doherty,
who joined the IRA while a teenager.388 Students and those living in affected
neighborhoods in Turkey, too, had to keep track of the ever-shifting map of militant-held
territory, lest one mistakenly wander onto a hostile street and suffer attack as a result.
In short, disorderly violent repression cannot be ignored as a rare aberration or as
something that happens to other people somewhere else.389 As such, devising practical
measures to cope with these dangers becomes a practical necessity, one that affects, to
varying degrees, local militants, political activists, and even ordinary residents of
vulnerable areas.
386 Bianconi (1992, 51) qtd in Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 155. 387 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 180-91. 388 Shane Paul O'Doherty, The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man's True Story (Durham, CT: Strategic Book Publishing, 2011), 32. 389 For examples of research that investigates how widespread violence influences expectations and calculations of dissidents and ordinary citizens, see Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Kalyvas, "The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War," The Journal of Ethics 8, no. 1 (2004).
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Low lethality
The more systematic and unrestrained it becomes, the more the above-described varieties
of violence stand a chance at sapping the psychological and physical resources of
rebels.390 Disorderly violent repression, however, is peculiar for its generally low
lethality. This makes it possible, albeit taxing and difficult, for rebels to sustain their
public political activities in this atmosphere.
During moments of crisis, the RUC sometimes used deadly force wildly and
unpredictably. Yet, it was also regulated by the laws and norms of a liberal state, which
prevented it from, for instance, using lethal force against stone throwers that had perched
themselves atop Catholic apartment buildings to block security force access to the area.391
In Turkey during the early-1960s, elite students “were like misbehaving children in the
eyes of the state,” as student leader Bozkurt Nuhoğlu recalls it. Even after destroying
property and physically menacing their foes, “the most [the authorities] would do was tug
on our ears and let us go.”392 This lenient attitude did not last long – but by the time
repression began to intensify, it was too late. A violent tradition of leftist agitation in
western Turkey had already been established, and indeed some of these same student
leaders, by 1971, were lunging forward in a doomed attempt at sparking a rural
insurrection.393 Then, over the decade that followed, the sheer scale of dissident
mobilization in Turkey temporarily overloaded the state’s ability to respond to threats
390 "The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War," The Journal of Ethics 8, no. 1 (2004).
391 McCann, War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993). 392 Cite Emre Demir interview with Bozkurt Nuhoglu in Demir, Kırmızı Günler: 68'in Liderlerinden Bozkurt Nuhoğlu Anlatıyor (Destek, 2009), 38. 393 Sayari, "Political Violence and Terrorism in Turkey, 1976–80: A Retrospective Analysis," Terrorism and Political Violence 22, no. 2 (2010).
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with systematic, lethal violence, though this would change after the September 1980
coup.
Such restraints on state violence create opportunities for action from groups in
society that perceive a threat from dissident mobilization. Yet, if these groups are less
constrained, their capabilities are also more limited compared to those of the state. Such
groups are rarely permitted to amass the same kind of lethal power as the state’s military
or police. Try as they might, their efforts at deterrent violence, thus, fall short of total
repression. At Burntollet Bridge, Unionist counter-groups barraged Catholic marchers
with stones and bricks, and set upon them with melee weapons. In early-1976, the
Turkish left attempted to unionize the industrial center at Seydişehir, in the Anatolian
province of Konya.394Rightists met them in battles with cudgels, metal bars, and the
occasional firearm.395 The lethality of violence intensified over the succeeding years, as
small arms became a regular feature of left-vs.-right clashes in Turkey. In December
1978, right-wing attackers in Maraş were spotted with firearms.396And as unrest spread
deeper into Turkey’s eastern provinces, Kurdish tribesman added their proficiency with
guns into the mix. The same was true in Northern Ireland, where Republicans and
Unionists began to routinely clash with firearms beginning in 1970.
Here, the important point is that while dissident politics was growing more
dangerous, the violent threat from counter-groups during these years was not highly
394 For background on the industrial project, see Bozyiğit, "Seydişehir Ilçesinin Beşeri ve Ekonomik Coğrafyası" (Masters’ Thesis, Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2005), 37. 395 For accounts of the conflict, see: "Seydişehir Etibank Tesislerinde Iki Grup Arasindaki Çatışmada 1 Işçi Öldü," Cumhuriyet, 27 December 1975; Aykut Sağanak, "Fabrikayı Tahrip Tehditleri De Savuruyorlar," ibid., 13 January 1976; "Amac, 7500 Işçinin Kayıtlı Olduğu Aluminyum-Iş Sendikasını Parçalayıp Işciyi Bölmek," Cumhuriyet, 12 January 1976; "Seydişehir’de CHP ve TSIP ile Bazı Sendika Binalarına Saldırıldı," ibid., 28 December 1975. 396 Benhabib, "The Next Iran or the Next Brazil?: Right-Wing Groups Behind Political Violence in Turkey," MERIP Reports 77 (1979).
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asymmetric. The means they had at their disposal – fists, cudgels, guns – were not out of
reach for similarly determined members of the Catholic community in Belfast or the
revolutionary Kurds in eastern Turkey.
This kind of threat, and the sort of response it elicits from determined dissidents,
is hardly unique to the case pair under study. Civil rights activists working in the
American South, for instance, made similar calculations. Coming under assault from
white supremacists brandishing simple weapons, the chance of physical harm was ever-
present. A student taking part in the Freedom Summer captures the flavor of this threat
perception in a letter home: “all considered,” he wrote, “I think my chances of being
killed are 2 percent, or one in 50,”397 For the committed and daring, such odds are not
enough to deter activism, but they certainly justify taking the right precautions. “When
Klansmen catch you in some deserted area and open fire,” a civil rights worker
commented:
“you take cover and shoot back - if you have a gun. Then both sides depart with great speed, because no one wants to get shot. If you don't have a gun, however, the Klansmen keep on shooting and moving closer, and your only hope is that their aim is poor and that you can outdistance their pursuit.”398
The same lessons became obvious to agitators and community leaders in Northern Ireland
and Turkey. As these cases show, while disorderly violent repression may deter many
individuals from further dangerous protest actions, it is not always formidable enough to
break the will of more determined currents in a restive community. For these groupings,
397 Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), 71. 398Don B. Kates Jr. quoted in Cynthia Deitle Leonardatos, "California's Attempts to Disarm the Black Panthers," San Diego L. Rev. 36 (1999): 953-54.
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violent repression shows the value of preparations against attack, not the hopelessness of
defense.
2.3.2. Disorderly violent repression: an antecedent condition for intra-rebel war
This chapter has argued that it is possible to conceptualize disorderly violent repression
as a distinct variety of strong state repression. Its peculiar features stem from the unique
capabilities and limitations possessed by many strong states. Examining its operation in
Northern Ireland and Turkey, this chapter suggests that this form of repression is unique
in its potential implications because, while it is dangerous enough to incite fear and anger
across entire segments of society, its limited rigor and lethality enables organized
resistance from those under threat. Importantly, dissidents with only rudimentary skill
and organization can accomplish such violence. Of course, efforts at defense may
ultimately fail, or even culminate in the state shifting to total repression. But as long as
state repression remains in this middle ground between effective policing and total
massacre, it will begin to have an effect on dissident culture and organizational learning.
If such conditions prevail over a period of years, a dissident movement can become
discernably transformed. Precisely how this environment acts upon organizations – and
its implications for rebel politics -- is the subject of the next chapter.
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CHAPTER 3
VIOLENCE AND INSURGENT CHANGE
Now that we have seen how disorderly violent repression arose out of similar structural
and relational mechanisms in both Northern Ireland and Turkey, this chapter narrows the
aperture to examine how this environment influenced the organizations that would later
find themselves involved in intra-rebel war.
Incidentally, in both cases the rebel dyads that would later fall into intra-rebel war
mirror one another in an important regard: each intra-rebel war featured, on one side, an
organization that formed simultaneously with the emergence of this environment (the
PIRA in Northern Ireland and the PKK in Turkey); and on the other side, an organization
rooted in organizing that took place in an earlier period, but was plunged into chaos when
disorderly violent repression arose (the OIRA in Northern Ireland and the TKDP/KUK in
Turkey).
This chapter establishes that the tactical repertoires and attendant strategic
outlooks of these organizations were, in large part, products of these environments. It
begins with an account of the changes and continuities in the Republican movement in
Northern Ireland through the decades covered in the previous chapter. It then takes the
same tack with a study of contentious Kurdish politics, looking in particular at the PKK
and the TKDP/KUK.
This comparative exercise prepares the ground for a set of explicit theoretical
statements, made in the final section of the chapter, concerning how environments shaped
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organizations in a manner that would expose some of them to a heightened risk of intra-
rebel war.
3.1. Continuity and change in the Irish Republican movement
Throughout the near-decade that transpired before the onset of disorderly violent
repression in Northern Ireland (1962 to 1969) the IRA was in flux as an organization.
With the Catholic community of the north showing little eagerness for insurrection, the
IRA attempted to stay relevant by establishing a tactical repertoire and strategic vision
wedded to non-violent agitation and class politics. As we shall see, this new direction was
contested from the very beginning, and thrown into disarray when communal violence
transformed the conditions for the Catholic community of the north during the violence
of the late-1960s and 1970s.
The IRA of the 1960s was the product of the failed Border Campaign of 1956-
1962,399 a low-intensity rural guerrilla effort that the IRA acknowledged had failed to
attract hoped for popular support.400 Hashing out this latest failure, a current of influential
voices began to advocate for a new direction in Republican politics. Instead of focusing
solely on the issue of partition and British occupation, as the IRA had done in the past,401
these reformers advocated for a greater concern with the social and economic issues that
faced ordinary people, both in the north and south.
399 John Maguire, "Internment, the IRA and the Lawless Case in Ireland: 1957-61," Journal of the Oxford University History and Society 10, no. 8 (2004). 400 Holland, Too Long a Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland since 1969 (New York, NY: Dodd Mead & Company, 1981), 23; Treacy, The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 14. 401 The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 10.
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3.1.1. The Officials
Cathal Goulding, an IRA veteran,402 led this effort. Goulding was unable to participate in
the conception of the Border Campaign, as at the time, he was serving a prison sentence
after capture during an IRA operation in England.403Soon after the close of the Border
Campaign, Goulding became Chief of Staff of the IRA,404 and immediately presided over
a series of meetings and conferences to develop a new vision for the organization. 405
Convinced that a fresh approach was necessary, Goulding enlisted help from
personalities outside the traditional circles of Republicanism, with Marxist intellectuals
exerting a powerful influence on the process of strategy formation.406 Against the
backdrop of the rising CRM, these discussions led to the formulation of a Marxian stage
plan as the IRA’s new program. In the first stage, the IRA would take part in the
movement for liberal reform in the north, agitating for civil rights alongside non-
Republicans. It was theorized that this would cause the Catholic and Protestant working
classes of Northern Ireland to recognize their common interests in opposition to the
ruling classes. The next stage would involve forging links between the workers in the
Republic of Ireland and the activists of Northern Ireland, forging a broad, island-wide
402 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 38. 403 Ibid, 50; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 8. 404 The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 51. 405 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 40-41. 406 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 8; Kacper Rekawek, "“Their History Is a Bit Like Our History”: Comparative Assessment of the Official and the Provisional IRAs," Terrorism and Political Violence 25, no. 5 (2013): 690.
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movement. Once in place, the final stage -- class revolution – would unite the island
under the auspices of workers’ emancipation.407
Operationalizing these goals required developing new tactics, quite different from
those used in rural guerrilla war. While local agitation and mass organizing activities,
such as paper selling and funding drives, had long been part of the IRA repertoire, these
had been were auxiliary to the core task of armed struggle. Now, Goulding was moving
these activities to the center of IRA’s organizational identity.408 Initially, the bulk of these
activates were concentrated south of the border,409 with the IRA in 1964-1965, for
instance, protesting foreign competition in the fishing industry, and supporting protests
against housing evictions.410In the north, the IRA was involved in the early organizational
efforts of the CRM.411
Discontents
This turn rankled older members of the leadership. Acrimonious debate harried
Goulding’s calls for limited engagement with institutional politics,412 with many
traditional members fearing that the IRA was straying from its essence.413 On the ground,
the reforming IRA also faced difficulties habituating the younger rank-and-file to the
407 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 57. 408 Smith, Fighting for Ireland?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 19-23. 409 Robert William White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 135. 410 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 42-43. 411 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 70. 412 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 68. 413 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 56-60.
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quotidian work of community building.414 As Sinn Fein leader Tomás Mac Giolla urged
in 1970, the CRM was more than a watered down version of the struggle: “the purely
reformist demands of the Civil Rights Movement were in themselves revolutionary,”415
he insisted. But impressing this upon new recruits was not easy. Young recruits often
asked impatiently “when the campaign was going to start,” to which Mac Giolla
answered: “This is the campaign.” 416 In short, even before the slide into inter-communal
violence, the “unromantic and possibly boring work” of social organizing was breeding
impatience among young recruits, who were eager for ‘real’ IRA action.417Furthermore, a
large number of those who had taken part in the campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s – the
‘forties men’ – embodied an influential sub-current of disaffection. Over the 1960s, many
had drifted away from the movement, quietly nursing their discontent.418
Disorderly violent repression and crisis
The worsening violence of the late-1960s in Northern Ireland presented an opportunity
for the IRA’s discontents to mount a serious challenge to Goulding’s vision for a new
IRA. Politics and the benefit of hindsight warp reconstructions of this period. But it is
clear that the IRA, in general, and Goulding’s circle, in particular, failed to arrive at a
414 See: Treacy, The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 2. 415 Tomás Mac Giolla, "Where We Stand: The Republican Position," July 1972. 416 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 23. 417 Patterson takes this quote from what security forces claim is a 1966 internal IRA document they were able to obtain. See Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 106. 418 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 60.
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shared diagnosis of how the IRA should respond to the spiral of inter-communal violence
that wracked Belfast in 1968 and 1969.419
It has been claimed that after the January 1969 Burntollet Bridge attack, Seán
Mac Stiofáin – who would later lead the PIRA– appealed to Goulding to authorize
retaliatory attacks on policemen and special defense units. Goulding reportedly rebuffed
him.420According to Joe Cahill and Seán Mac Stiofáin, while some of the community
defense efforts that Republicans supported in Belfast were directed with the knowledge
and consent of Dublin leadership, many more were the work of independent collections
of former IRA members who took arms in response to the rising violence. A portion of
the local defense activities were, in fact, kept a deliberate secret from Goulding,
according to these Republican dissenters.421
The trauma of August 1969 and the split
As Catholic homes burned in west Belfast, IRA discontents422 blamed Goulding for what
had transpired.423 Suddenly, the disagreements within the Republican movement were
419 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 90-94. 420White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 143. 421 See, Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 176; Seán Mac Stiofáin, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Hertfordshire, UK Free Ireland Book Club, 1975), 118; Treacy, The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 165. 422 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 114; Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 66-68. In a 1986 interview with Patrick Biship and Eamonn Mallie, Goulding concedes, “We just hadn’t the stuff, and we feared that the limited amount that we did have would just produce the reaction that the attackers wanted – and they had more guns than us.” Still, a narrative took shape that characterized the IRA as caught unawares when their community most needed them. See Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 150; White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 93. 423 See, Mac Stiofáin, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Hertfordshire, UK Free Ireland Book Club, 1975), Chapter 8.
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more than theoretical, imbuing the old controversies with evocative urgency.424 Goulding
pressed harder on his reformist agenda, while a dissident faction gathered under Seán
Mac Stiofáin.425 At the December 1969 IRA Army Convention, and at the Sinn Fein
Congress (Ard Fheis) that followed soon afterward, these differences solidified into an
open split in the organization.426
After August 1969: practical defense and strategy
As violence worsened, IRA members who would soon side with the OIRA were already
involved in directing community defense efforts. For instance, Jim Sullivan – a leading
pro-Goulding figure in Belfast – worked alongside others on the Central Citizens’
Defense Committee that formed to organize patrols and set up barricades during the
rioting.427 In the months following the violence of August 1969, these organizers
deployed youths to keep marches and protests orderly. Sullivan led these groups, armed
with hurley sticks, to stand between Catholic and Protestant crowds at sectarian fault
lines during marches, attempting to restrain Catholic rioters, while also shielding their
neighborhood from feared incursions from outside attackers.428These organizers also
raced to attain weapons and deposit them across threatened neighborhoods. Before long,
424 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), Chapter 4; Treacy, The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 144. 425 Mac Stiofáin, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Hertfordshire, UK Free Ireland Book Club, 1975), Chapter 8. 426 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 337; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 145. 427 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 5. 428 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 156.
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a small, but active, corps of gunmen was ready to deploy on a moment’s notice in the
event of sudden incursions.429
As the split rippled through Belfast, those who remained loyal to Goulding
continued to recruit from the local defense vigilantes, despite concerns that some of these
new recruits were unreliable and had criminal backgrounds.430In later years, Sean
Garland of the OIRA admitted that “reaction to the British army” and competition with
the PIRA led the OIRA to compromise on its recruitment criteria. Some of its new
recruits were “ultra-leftists,” while others were “opportunists,” or even “criminals and
plain unadulterated madmen,” he concedes.431Such recruitment practices were
necessitated by the demand for a particular set of skills and proclivities. That did not
result in the OIRA’s utter collapse as a political actor, but it did make managing the fast
growing organization more difficult.
Meanwhile in Dublin, the leadership of the OIRA regarded the post-1969
situation in Northern Ireland with ambivalence. While eager to capitalize on growing
political activation,432 the leadership feared that sectarian violence was endangering class
solidarity. Mac Giolla was disappointed that the August 1969 violence altered “the course
of the struggle,” from one focused on “civil rights” to that of “defense of people’s
homes.”433 At bottom, OIRA strategy required cooling sectarian passions, so that the
Officials could go back to their original plan of developing greater class-consciousness.
While the imperative of defending Catholic homes “remained paramount” throughout the 429 Ibid., 145-46. 430 Ibid., 160-61. 431 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 146. 432 Interview with Tomás Mac Giolla. In Gerry Foley, Ireland in Rebellion (Pathfinder Press, 1972), 27. 433 MacGiolla, "Where We Stand: The Republican Position," July 1972.
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winter of 1969, defense was “not a final objective in itself.” 434 Rather, the OIRA held
fast to its stage plan for Irish revolution.435
But the environment of disorderly violent repression made fidelity to this strategy
increasingly difficult. The OIRA strove to keep its units from launching unauthorized
operations436against British targets of opportunity or Protestant paramilitaries, but with
the PIRA gaining notoriety with its brazen attacks on British soldiers and local security
forces, the pressure for action mounted. Clearly under strain, Goulding made occasional
“off-the-cuff”437 remarks438 on the need for violence to advance the struggle,439 without
going so far as to declare war.440 In Belfast, OIRA commander Billy McMillen implied to
journalists that the OIRA was, in fact, attacking British soldiers.441
Before long, practices on the ground were overtaking strategic planning. As
Hanley and Millar record in an interview with an OIRA member, the organization had
“kind of stumbled into” an armed campaign with “no great strategy.”442 In January 1972,
the OIRA did finally authorize offensive attacks on British soldiers.443 But the OIRA
434 Interview with Tomás Mac Giolla. In Foley, Ireland in Rebellion (Pathfinder Press, 1972), 27. 435 Interview with Cathal Goulding. In ibid. 436 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 160. 437 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 183. 438 For example, in an October 1973, Cathal Goulding remarked that: “History proves only an armed, determined people will be listened to with respect. While Britain claims the right to legislate for Ireland and upholds that claim by armed force, then Irishmen must be trained and ready to resist her claim by armed force.” See Bob Whalen, Inside the IRA: Interviews with Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff IRA (Philadelphia, PA: Recon, 1975), 38. 439 For analysis of this vacillating rhetoric, see Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 183; Kevin J Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 153. 440 See interviews with Cathal Goulding in, Foley, Ireland in Rebellion (Pathfinder Press, 1972), 21; Rosita Sweetman. On Our Knees (London, UK: Pan Books, 1972), 144. 441 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 164. 442 Ibid. 443 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 152.
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leadership remained uncertain about how to connect this campaign to strategic goals.444
Several early setbacks were enough to sour the OIRA leadership on further offensive
action. On 29 May, the OIRA declared an indefinite ceasefire.445
Invoking its strategic priors, the OIRA justified the ceasefire by asserting that
further violence was raising the danger of “a sectarian war” that “would be of no benefit
whatever to the working-class.” The mission of the OIRA was to liberate the oppressed
classes in Ireland – north and south, Catholic and Protestant – and the “crack of the
rifles” was drowning out calls for the right work, to have a decent home, and a decent
future for ordinary people, the Officials attested.446
Still, the prevailing environment made abandoning arms impossible. In fact, “very
little changed in terms of OIRA operations for some time.”447 The OIRA made no secret
that it would continue to defend itself and its community, using violence when necessary.
If anything, the OIRA began to signal its role as community defender even more strongly
after the ceasefire. With sectarian bomb attacks on the rise, in November 1973, the OIRA
set up a unit to inspect cars for Unionist bombs, and it periodically sealed off Catholic
444 Goulding’s remarks in a 1974 interview are revealing. Asked if he disagrees that the situation in Northern Ireland will dictate the course of the broader conflict, he replies:“No, I don’t disagree with it. As I said, there is a spill-over, and the point is, you see, we are going to be involved as long as the physical force campaign exists in the Six Counties. Naturally, we are going to be involved to some extent – drawn into it. But we have declared that we’d be drawn into it as little as possible. We confine ourselves, to a certain extent, to political actions, but at the same time, when there are people suffering in the Six Counties, it has an effect on us.” See: Whalen, Inside the IRA: Interviews with Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff IRA (Philadelphia, PA: Recon, 1975), 16. 445 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 458. 446 "Army Council Sees Growing Danger of Civil War: Why Officials Called a Halt," The Starry Plough. 447 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 182.
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neighborhoods against Protestant crowds, or in response to Loyalist killings.448 And the
OIRA did not always uphold in practice its proscriptions on sectarian violence.449
The OIRA: enduring crisis
In sum, navigating the post-August 1969 environment proved exceedingly difficult for
the OIRA. The strategic framework it developed during the 1960s remained the general
roadmap for the organization, but with the rise of sectarian violence, new imperatives
forcefully imposed themselves. In January 1970, Roy Johnston, a Marxist intellectual
who helped to guide the Goulding-led turn in the IRA, continued to urge the leadership to
stay true to its political vision. "Look here, Roy, we were caught out once,” Goulding
snapped at him, according to White (2006): “If we're caught out again, the people will
rise up and destroy us.”450
Indeed, combating the stigma of August 1969 remained a constant preoccupation
for the OIRA. In mid-1975, the OIRA leadership met to discuss the conditions in the
north; among their resolutions moving forward was “not to appear in the ’69 light,” while
at the same time striving to “ensure the continuity of our political line.” 451 Pursuing both
of these objectives at once implied many dilemmas in practice. But instead of
accomplishing a full renovation of its strategy, the accretions of the past and the
448 Ibid., 190. 449 Taylor, Loyalists (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2000), 123,38; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 195. 450 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 133; White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 150. 451 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 311.
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exigencies of the present mixed into a brew of strategic incoherence and rudderless
improvisation.
3.1.2. The Provisional IRA: organizing anew
As inter-communal strife worsened, the unauthorized organizing activities to defend
northern Catholics brought dissident IRA veterans into contact with young recent initiates
into the conflict.452Marshaling these energies, Seán Mac Stiofáin nominated himself as
the principal opponent to the political vision of the Goulding IRA.453 The PIRA took
shape in December 1969, when Mac Stiofáin and his followers refused to accept
Goulding’s proposed reforms at the IRA army council,454 and the split went public at the
Sinn Fein congress of 11-12 January 1970. 455
In its propaganda, the Provisional IRA sought to portray itself as the bearer of a
Republican tradition dating back centuries.456 This ideological pedigree notwithstanding,
as an organization, the PIRA was a rupture with the continuities of the recent past. To be
sure, many in the PIRA’s initial leadership cohort -- the ‘forties men’ -- had fought
together during the campaigns of the 1940s and 1950s, and some had continued to work
452 Treacy, The IRA 1956–1969: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2011), 165. 453 Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 37. 454 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 141. 455 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 338. 456 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 162-63.
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within the IRA throughout the 1960s.457 But before the emergence of the PIRA, these
networks worked under the authority of the Goulding IRA.458
What is more, a large number of new recruits, joining in response to the rise
communal violence, soon swamped the comparatively small cohort of veterans, both in
the PIRA and OIRA.459 The OIRA strove – albeit imperfectly – to inculcate these new
joiners with a commitment to its pre-1969 vision of strategy. In the PIRA, by contrast, the
expressed motivations of these young joiners fit neatly with the sentiments of the forties
men:460 use violence to defend their homes and avenge their loss of safety and dignity.461
As such, the PIRA “had not existed”462 prior to 1969.463 Upon its emergence,
most of the “guns, experience and know-how remained on the side of the
Officials,”464and much of the organizational learning needed to be conducted from a
minimal baseline, with limited influence from the accretions of prior authorities and
routines. This allowed the pressures of the environment -- namely, the threat of disorderly
457 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 112; English, Armed Struggle (New York, NY: Oxford, 2003), 111. 458 In early 1972, Cathal Goulding remarked in an interview that “the pogroms of 1969 against the Catholic population produced the Provisional IRA.” See, Sweetman, On Our Knees (London, UK: Pan Books, 1972), 143. 459 James Dingley, The IRA: The Irish Republican Army (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), 129; English, Armed Struggle (New York, NY: Oxford, 2003), 175. 460 Over time, internal competition and disagreements would arise within the PIRA. What is important to establish is that during its initial decade, the imperative of community defense in Belfast was a point of consensus, other disagreements and personal frictions notwithstanding. Gerry Adams noted this feature of the emergent PIRA, recalling that the ‘forties men’ and the young joiners “mixed easily,” and better then they did with the McMillen faction in Belfast. See, Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 124. 461 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 81. 462 J Bowyer Bell, "The Escalation of Insurgency: The Provisional Irish Republican Army's Experience, 1969–1971," The Review of Politics 35, no. 3 (1973): 400. 463 In one demonstrative anecdote, Tim Pat Coogan recalls telling a PIRA recruit hopeful in 1970: “[..] you are mad! You have done your bit for your cause and now you risk wrecking your own happiness and everyone else’s to join a splinter of a splinter group.” Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 341. 464 Craig, "Sabotage! The Origins, Development and Impact of the IRA’s Infrastructural Bombing Campaigns 1939–1997," Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 3 (2010): 318.
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violent repression -- to powerfully influence the organizational identity of the emergent
PIRA.
Defense as strategy
The leaders of the PIRA authored their strategic plan in the months following the
violence of August 1969, and not surprisingly, its strategy made community defense the
immediate priority. This vision was codified in the PIRA’s three-stage strategic plan. In
stage one – defense – the PIRA would quickly recruit and train units to defend Catholic
areas from attack. The PIRA would subsequently move onto stage two, which entailed “a
mixture of defensive and retaliatory actions”465 to prepare the insurgency for stage three,
offense, a campaign of violence against British and local security forces in the pursuit of
the PIRA’s ultimate aim, an Ireland free of British rule.466 As stages two and three
indicate, the PIRA’s ultimate goal was to expel the British from Ireland.467 But on the
path to achieving this objective, defense came first. As PIRA leader Joe Cahill later
remarked, “defense was the main reason for the army’s existence” when it first
assembled.468 Compare this to the Officials: as discussed above, the top leadership of the
OIRA accepted the importance of its defender role, but they saw it as a detour from their
ultimate strategy.
Ad hoc, rudimentary tactics of violence were central to these efforts: the PIRA
youth wing was involved in throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at advancing police
465Ed Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 50. 466 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 364. 467 Thornton, "Getting It Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in the Early Stages of the British Army's Deployment to Northern Ireland (August 1969 to March 1972)," Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (2007): 81. 468 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 19.
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or Protestants.469 If opponents began to bear down too heavily on rioters, PIRA gunmen
would take aim with rifle fire, leading to prolonged exchanges of gunfire with Loyalist
counterparts on the other side of the riot line. 470
Of course, the PIRA of the 1970s did not limit itself to rudimentary violence. In
time, they became adept at more sophisticated, resource intensive activities to
complement their early emphasis on rioting and community defense. Before long, the
PIRA began to produce high quality marksmen, skilled at military-style sniper attacks
against British patrols. The PIRA also became practiced in carefully arranged, set-piece
ambushes of British patrols.471
And the PIRA exceeded all prior iterations of the IRA with its offensive bombing
campaigns, both in Northern Ireland and in England.472 Additionally, the PIRA
sometimes carried out planned sectarian killings of Protestants. As with the OIRA, the
PIRA did not admit openly to these attacks, as they contravened the notionally non-
sectarian ideology of Republicanism, but in reality, the PIRA’s role as a sectarian
avenger was clear.473 While these sophisticated violent routines grew in importance over
the years, routines of rudimentary violence – the capacity to muster small groups on a
moment’s notice to engage in fast and improvisational violence -- preceded them
469 Joe Cahill provides his recollections of PIRA interactions with local residents during community violence. See ibid., 202-03. Also, Shane Paul O’Doherty, who joined the PIRA as a teenager, provides in his memoir vivid descriptions of these activities. See, O'Doherty, The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man's True Story (Durham, CT: Strategic Book Publishing, 2011), 34. 470 PIRA activies during the July 1970 Falls Curfew are one example. See Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 206. 471 Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 43. 472 Brian A. Jackson, "Provisional Irish Republican Army " in Aptitude for Destruction (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2005). 473 For a discussion on PIRA targeting, see Kowalski, "The Role of Sectarianism in the Provisional IRA Campaign, 1969–1997," Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 4 (2018): 23-28; Smith, Fighting for Ireland?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
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temporally,474 and continued to occupy an important place in PIRA violence throughout
the 1970s.
The PIRA: newer, more dangerous
No organization emerges out of nowhere. The elements of an organization – the
individuals who comprise it, its ideology, and its strategic templates – all come from the
past. But new organizations configure these elements in novel ways to meet the pressing
demands imposed by their environment. The PIRA did just this. Unlike the OIRA, the
PIRA drew selectively from the stock of available ideological positions and strategic
models, adopting those that its leaders regarded as most suitable to the post-1969
environment. They combined these elements into a simple and coherent strategy and
organizational program, with rudimentary violence situated at its center.475
3.2. Changing patterns of repression and organizing violence in Turkey
This chapter now returns to Turkey. Some of the organizations active in Turkey’s
insurgency during the 1970s had their origins in political work conducted prior to the rise
of disorderly violence. As such, these organizations were fashioned to match prevailing
conditions that did not include a pressing need for defense against ad hoc attacks. These
legacies continued to exert their influence on the organizations that grew from this initial
cohort as the Kurdish movement developed during the 1970s.
474 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 373; Paddy Devlin, Straight Left: An Autobiography (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1993), 124. 475 For a relevant discussion of how organizational imprints form, see Victoria Johnson, "What Is Organizational Imprinting? Cultural Entrepreneurship in the Founding of the Paris Opera," American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 1 (2007).
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Some of these organizations held mostly intact their basic commitments to
previous styles of politics throughout the 1970s, even as the spread of disorderly violent
repression reshuffled the matrix of threats and opportunities that confronted them.
Meanwhile, other inheritors of this legacy found themselves, much like the OIRA in
Northern Ireland, experiencing internal crisis that made formulating a coherent response
to environmental change difficult to achieve. The TKDP/KUK was one such
organization. Finally, the PKK, analogous to the PIRA in Northern Ireland, drew its
initial formative collective experience from the violent affrays of street politics.
3.2.1. The Kurdish incumbency: born in the shadow of total repression
The most established Kurdish organizations active during the 1970s formed out of the
networks and organizational legacies of the previous decade. Eastern Turkey of the 1960s
lacked an environment of disorderly violent repression. Quite different from conditions in
western Turkey, the small cohort of Kurdish organizers active in predominately Kurdish
areas of eastern Turkey during this decade were not preoccupied by dangers of ad hoc
attack, but by the pervasive belief that the Turkish state might respond to unrest with
highly disproportionate and systematic violence.476
Ordinary Kurdish villagers, too, harbored such fears.477 At the local level,
memories survived of the violent pacification of the countryside during the 1920s and
476 For testimony on these perceived hazards, see for example: Zana, Bekle Diyarbakir (Istanbul: Doz, 1991), 45-50,75-78; Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 191-92; Miroğlu, Hevsel Bahçesinde Bir Dut Ağacı: Canip Yıldırım'la Söyleşi (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayıncılık AŞ, 2010), 161; Ekinci, Lice'den Paris'e Anılarım (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2010), 265. 477 Turkish journalist Cengiz Çandar recalls traveling through eastern Turkey and listening first-hand to accounts of soldiers gathering villagers into public squares to intimidate, humiliate and abuse them. Cengiz Çandar, Mezopotamya Ekspresi: Bir Tarih Yolculuğu (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayınları, 2012), 56. The DDKOs published detailed testimonies of these incidents. See for instance, Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları, "DDKO Yayın Bülteni 3," (Haşmet, 1970). Also, Mehdi Zana, who during the mid-1960s attempted to establish a TWP presence in Kurdish villages in the region, later claimed that he encountered fear and reluctance on the part of
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1930s, when entire villages were destroyed, civilians were exposed to aerial
bombardment,478 and large numbers were summarily executed or forced into exile,479until
“resistance to the state seemed pointless.”480 That total repression was a possible recourse
for the Turkish military seemed a distinct possibility for those whose perceptions of the
state were shaped by the local narratives of these incidents.
Sensitive to these dangers, the pro-Kurdish movement of the 1960s did not
engage in the sorts of transgressive protest acts that would be expected to give rise to
disorderly violent repression. In dramatic contrast from the style of contention witnessed
in Northern Ireland, pro-Kurdish organizing during the 1960s proceeded on two tracks:
first, several organizations developed an expertise at scrupulously careful non-violent
organizing. They specialized in ideological work and grassroots party building,
calibrating these activities to advance their message, while reining in experimentation
with transgressive protest. On the second track, a small number of activists began to
prepare, in utmost secrecy, for an armed uprising.
On the non-violent track, Kurdish members of Turkey’s first legal socialist party,
the Turkish Workers’ Party (TWP), began to set up branches across eastern Turkey in
1963.481Meanwhile, prominent figures associated with the pro-Kurdish movement began
villagers to engage in any political activity that might draw attention from Turkish authorities. See: Zana, Bekle Diyarbakir (Istanbul: Doz, 1991), 65. 478 Olson, "The Kurdish Rebellions of Sheikh Said (1925), Mt. Ararat (1930), and Dersim (1937-8): Their Impact on the Development of the Turkish Air Force and on Kurdish and Turkish Nationalism," Die Welt Des Islams 40, no. 1 (2000). 479 Belge, "State Building and the Limits of Legibility: Kinship Networks and Kurdish Resistance in Turkey," International Journal of Middle East Studies 43, no. 01 (2011): 100; Tim Jacoby, Social Power and the Turkish State (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), 79. 480 Romano, "Kurdish Nationalist Movements: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity" (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002), 50. 481 In many areas, limited resources, local fears, and powerful local interests blocked the TWP’s spread. But the party did manage to establish offices in places that included Malatya, Diyarbakır, Siverek, Viransehir, Suruc, Siirt, Batman, Kozluk, Sason, and Sirnak. See Ekinci, Lice'den Paris'e Anılarım (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2010), 334-96; Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 87.
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to compete in elections. Most notably, in 1969, Mehdi Zana ran for parliament as an
independent in Diyarbakır’s Silvan district.482 Beginning in 1967, these organizers played
a role in directing the ‘Eastern Meetings,’ a series of public rallies that were the most
visible protest action performed in the region up to that point.483
Following these performances, calls for a separate pro-Kurdish organization grew
louder. Hastening these calls were developments in the Turkish left: toward the end of the
decade, a new political program -- the National Democratic Revolution (NDR/MDD)
thesis484 -- came into fashion, calling for a military junta to take power and initiate a
social revolution in Turkey. Not wishing to promote a military government that they
feared would endanger the Kurdish region,485a group of Kurds in the student movement
established their own organization, the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations
(DDKOs), which espoused a more gradualist agenda, in line with the outlook of the
TWP. The DDKOs were to act as a legal platform for building the ideological and
organizational basis of the movement. It also served as a transmitter of tactical
knowledge, instructing younger cadres in the arts of survival as a Kurdish activist in
Turkey.486
482 Dorronsoro and Watts, "Toward Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics: The 1977 Local Elections in Diyarbakir," International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (2009): 471. 483 Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 185-87; Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015). 484 Ulus, The Army and the Radical Left in Turkey: Military Coups, Socialist Revolution and Kemalism (London, UK: IB Tauris, 2010). 485 İbrahim Güçlü, "Kürdistan’da Örgütenmenin Yakın Siyasi Tarihine Bakma..." Vejin (2011), https://vejin.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/kurdistan%E2%80%99da-orgutlenmenin-yakin-siyasi-tarihine-bakma%E2%80%A6/. 486 Ibid.
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Preparing for insurrection
Partly overlapping with non-violent activists, another current was dedicated to
preparations for armed insurrection. According to some accounts, as early as 1961,
Kurdish tribes on the Turkish side of the border with Iraq were actively assisting the KDP
in Iraq during its rebellion against Baghdad.487 These efforts developed into the formation
of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (Türkiye Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi;
TKDP) in the summer of 1965, a party whose program mirrored that of the Barzani-led
KDP. The TKDP was a highly secretive organization, and its intentions are difficult to
establish.
Danger of assassination and arrest, as well as fears of infiltration plagued the
TKDP from its earliest days. Shaken by these dangers, the TKDP leaders were unable to
act forcefully when a charismatic challenger, Sait Kırmızıtoprak (also known as Dr.
Şivan), began to peel away the TKDP’s supporters,488 unfurling his own, similarly named
party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Turkey (Türkiye’de Kürdistan Demokrat
Partisi, T-KDP).489
487 Aydoğmus, Sait. Yakın Tarihimizde İki Sait Olayı Rizgari.com, 2005. 488 Aydoğmus, Yakın Tarihimizde İki Sait Olayı (Rizgari.com, 2005), 13,18; Gökhan Çal, "Kürt Sı̇yasal Hareketı̇nde Devrı̇mcı̇ Doğu Kültür Ocakları Deneyı̇mı̇ (1969-1971) " (Masters’ Thesis, Ankara University 2014), 44; Cengiz Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 58; "Dr. Şivan Belgeseli ", ed. Çayan Demirel (Turkey 2013). 489 According to subsequent accounts, many of the younger organizers who followed the Şivan faction were university youth, who had exposure to the rise of leftist radicalism taking hold in western Turkey. These student cadres canvassed for support among the townspeople and villagers across Turkey’s Kurdish region. In a subsequent interview, Hatice Yaşar – an activist who rose to prominence in the Kurdish movement of the 1970s – recalled just how widespread Şivan’s influence had become by the early 1970s. According to Yaşar, the T-KDP “were going from village to village building their organization, even during the harshest days following the 12 March [1971] coup”(Ballı 1991, 86) Likewise, acolytes of Dr. Şivan appear to have become an influential faction within the TWP, by 1970 advocating for a more radical stance on the Kurdish issue. See Aydoğmus, Yakın Tarihimizde İki Sait Olayı (Rizgari.com, 2005), 25; Rafet Ballı, Kürt Dosyası (Istanbul, Turkey: Cem Yaynevi, 1991), 86.
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By 1971, the T-KDP had established a small training camp in Northern Iraq to
prepare for the armed struggle.490 But before an armed campaign was attempted, both the
TKDP and the T-KDP collapsed. In a series of events that remain disputed, Şivan
allegedly killed Elçi and several of his companions on Iraqi soil. Officials in Barzani’s
KDP then allegedly executed Şivan and his associations for the murder491 and shuttered
the T-KDP training camps.492
Back with a vengeance
A military coup in March 1971 temporarily stalled Kurdish organizing, but it resumed
with vigor after a political amnesty in 1974 released many of the old cohort back into
politics. As Turkey’s left gathered unprecedented strength, a surge of mass support for
Kurdish dissident activity followed in its wake. Flush with new recruits, these currents
interacted and debated at a network of local associations called the Revolutionary
Democratic Cultural Associations (Devrimci Demokrat Kültür Dernekleri; DDKDs),
modeled after their predecessor, the DDKOs. Unlike during the 1960s, when rivalries
within the Kurdish movement were dampened beneath DDKO umbrella, the 1970s saw a
spree of fractionalization and the consequent formation of multiple separate Kurdish
dissident organizations.
The first group to strike out on its own was the Socialist Workers Party of Turkey
(Türkiye Kürdistan Sosyalist Partisi; TKSP), whose top members were veterans from the
490 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 66. 491 Aydoğmus, Yakın Tarihimizde İki Sait Olayı (Rizgari.com, 2005). 492 Özcan, PKK (Kürdistan İşçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yöntemi (Ankara, Turkey: ASAM, Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yayınları, 1999), 20.
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Turkish Workers’ Party (TWP) of the 1960s. The Rızgari group grew out of a related
network of seasoned political organizers, many with former affiliations to the DDKOs.493
Before long, further splits began to surface. The Maoist Kawa organization was born
when a set of somewhat younger and less experienced DDKD members declared their
allegiance to Maoism and their concomitant opposition to the USSR.494
Meanwhile, veterans of Kırmızıtoprak’s T-KDP began to fasten together others in
the DDKDs that were not drawn into any of these initial breakaways.495 By spring 1975,
these activists were acting as a separate organization,496known by a variety of names, but
most commonly as the Revolutionary Democratic Cultural Associations/Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (Devrimci Demokratik Kültür Dernekleri/Kürdistan İşci Partisi;
DDKD/KİP). The pre-1970s roots of the DDKD/KİP are evident in its approach to
organization building. The DDKD/KİP followed generally the same template as its
contemporaries, such as the TKSP and Rızgari: it waded into the ideological contests of
the day with its journal, Jina Nu, and it worked to build a mass following with legal civil
society organizations to complement its clandestine structures.497
493 Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010); Çal, "Kürt Sı̇yasal Hareketı̇nde Devrı̇mcı̇ Doğu Kültür Ocakları Deneyı̇mı̇ (1969-1971) " (Masters’ Thesis, Ankara University 2014), 112-13; Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 78. 494 The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 78; Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketi’nin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970’ler," Toplum ve Bilim 127 (2013): 14; Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007), 20. 495 Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 11. 496 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 13; Ballı, Kürt Dosyası (Istanbul, Turkey: Cem Yaynevi, 1991), 309-10. 497 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 56.
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Figure 3.1. The organizational legacy of the DDKO498
Extending the organizing models of the prior decade, the DDKD/KİP established a
women’s branch, called the Womens’ Association of the Revolutionary Democrats
(Devrimci Demokrat Kadınlar Derneği),499 and its members acted as an unofficial
grouping in Turkey’s teacher’s association – TÖB-DER – figuring in the coalition
politics of this influential body.500 As late as 1979, the DDKD/KİP worked with the
TKSP to orchestrate a large Mayday demonstration in Bitlis, a testament to the faction’s
commitment to mass mobilization, even in an atmosphere of growing insecurity and
militarization.501 This adeptness at mass mobilization was also channeled into the
498 Adapted from: Tezcur, "Violence and Nationalist Mobilization: The Onset of the Kurdish Insurgency in Turkey," Nationalities Papers 43, no. 2 (2015); Akyol, Türkiye'de Sol Örgütler - Bölüne Bölüne Büyümek (Ankara, Turkey: Phoenix, 2010). 499 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 56. 500 Ibid. 501 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 187.
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electoral arena, where a candidate backed by the DDKD/KİP raced against TKSP’s
Mehdi Zana in the 1977 election for mayor of Diyarbakır.502
Splits within these organizations further inflated the number of Kurdish factions
active in Turkey. More than fifteen were active by 1980, depending on inclusion criteria
(this article restricts its comparisons to the major factions for which there exists sufficient
source material for comparison). Ala Rızgari split from Rızgari in December 1978 over a
combination of ideological controversy and personal conflict.503 Kawa split repeatedly
before 1980.504 Despite their bitter rivalries, all of these organizations managed to avoid
embroiling themselves in violent wars with other Kurdish groups, despite occasional
small flares of violence.
Several small factions also appeared from outside the DDKO tradition. A faction
called Tekoşin emerged in 1978 when Kurdish members of the Turkish leftist faction
Kurtuluş peeled away and began organizing in Antep and Tunceli/Dersim. Even less is
known about a small grouping that went by the name of Sterka Sor. In its violent
fratricidal campaign, the PKK badly damaged these already small organizations during
the later years of the decade (see Chapter 4). Yet, the organization that found itself locked
in the most deadly and protracted war with the PKK was the Kurdistan Democratic Party
of Turkey/Kurdistan National Liberators (TKDP/KUK).
502 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 13; Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 94. 503 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 179; Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 14; Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 13. 504 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 55; Martin Van Bruinessen, "The Kurds in Turkey," MERIP reports 121 (1984): 8; Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007), 37-42; Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 14.
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3.2.2. The TKDP/KUK: fighting tradition
Emerging from within the TKDP (discussed above), the TKDP/KUK had its origins in
organizational activities that occurred well before the onset of disorderly violent
repression. Throughout the 1960s, the TKDP had built itself as a highly clandestine secret
society,505but before the TKDP could make any clear strides, it was badly weakened by a
state dragnet and internal fissures.506 Compounding these setbacks, in late-March 1975,
the Barzani rebellion in Northern Iraq collapsed, leaving the TKDP bereft of its primary
benefactor and source of political prestige.507
The organization’s leadership in shambles, a cohort of younger members began to
advance a new vision for the organization.508 While these cadres did not generally come
from Turkey’s elite educational institutions,509 many of them held some form of modern
education or at least exposure to leftist political thought.510 In line with this background,
505 This focus on secrecy came with a downside: in a typical manifestation of the “terrorist’s dilemma,” the TKDP’s secrecy prevented it from expanding its activities and widening its membership. Ahmet Zeki Okçuoğlu, who was active in the Kurdish movement during the 1970s, notes that unlike the DDKO and TWP, the TKDP failed to creatively circumvent the constraints that the Turkish regime imposed. After “living under severe repression between 1925 and the 1960s, […],”Okçuoğlu argues, the TKDP could not break from their “extremely cautious” approach toward organizing, putting them at a disadvantage when competing with the Kurdish activists that had learned new protest repertoires and organizational models through their participation in Turkey’s left. Ahmet Zeki Okçuoğlu interview with Ballı, Kürt Dosyası (Istanbul, Turkey: Cem Yaynevi, 1991), 186. [translation mine] 506 Paşa Uzun, a sympathizer of Kırmızıtoprak, records that after a clash between the Elçi and Kırmızıtoprak sections of the organization, which ultimately led to the death of both leaders, the T-KDP disintegrated. Some of its members fled Turkey as refugees, while other returned to Turkey but remained in hiding, conducting few political activities. Another Kırmızıtoprak supporter, Necmettin Büyükkaya commented in his private correspondence that after the death of the two leaders the party suffered a “deadly blow.” See Büyükkaya, "Personal Notes [Undated]," in Kalemimden Sayfalar, ed. Büyükkaya (Stockholm, Sweden: Vate, 2008), 352; Paşa Uzun, "O Bir Dağ Çiçeğiydi," (Istanbul, Turkey: Elma, 2005). 507 Hamit Bozarslan, September, 2016. Also see Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 14. 508 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 56. 509 This cohort was comprised largely of younger cadres of similar age and sociological background to the ascendant PKK – inasmuch as both were dominated by young people from lower socio-economic status, but who had managed to attain education. See Sabri Sayari, "Generational Changes in Terrorist Movements: The Turkish Case," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1985), 8. 510 Ibid. As such, Gundogan (2016) characterizes the conflict within the TKDP as between the meles (local religious figures) and the talebes (students with modern education). As he underlines, not all incumbents were actually meles, just like not all of the talebes actually held university credentials. Rather, the distinction captures the ideological and experiential frames of reference and role sets that bound these cohorts, a boundary that both sides invoked in their contest for legitimacy and prestige. See: Cemil Gündoğan, "Geleneğin Değersizleşmesi: Kürt Hareketinin 1970’lerde Gelenekselle İlişkisi Üzerine," in Türkiye Siyasetinde Kürtler: Direniş, Hak Arayışı, Katılım, ed. Büşra Ersanlı, Günay Göksu Özdoğan, and Nesrin Uçarlar (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2012), 139.
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the young TKDP militants called for an ideological overhaul and a new strategic
direction. In a series of heated meetings held between the autumn of 1976 and the autumn
of 1977 the division between the two sides solidified.511 These internal challengers
distinguished themselves not only with their education and worldview, but also with their
proficiency in the styles of transgressive protest and violence that were taking hold in the
region. That, too, deeply unnerved the incumbents of the TKDP.512
In a series of political and violent confrontations, the challenger faction in the
TKDP politically and physically overwhelmed the incumbents, and in doing so, arrogated
to themselves the bulk of the material capital (including weaponry) and the local
networks that had been linked to the TKDP since the early days of the Barzani
rebellion.513Though badly weakened, the defeated incumbents continued to claim the
TKDP title for themselves, and for several years continued to attempt to win back the
prestige they had lost.514
Change and continuity in the TKDP/KUK
Having vanquished the old guard, the new TKDP/KUK leadership set about remaking
their organization to match their ideology and strategic aims. Yet, in conducting this
511 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 86 (1981); Ballı, Kürt Dosyası (Istanbul, Turkey: Cem Yaynevi, 1991), 163; Hıdır Göktaş, Kürtler II: Mehabad'dan 12 Eylül'e (Alan Yayıncılık, 1991), 121-23. 512 Kürtler II: Mehabad'dan 12 Eylül'e (Alan Yayıncılık, 1991), 122-23; İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 88-90 (1981). 513 Gündoğan, "Geleneğin Değersizleşmesi: Kürt Hareketinin 1970’lerde Gelenekselle İlişkisi Üzerine," in Türkiye Siyasetinde Kürtler: Direniş, Hak Arayışı, Katılım, ed. Ersanlı, Özdoğan, and Uçarlar (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2012), 139; Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 11. 514 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 91 (1981); Göktaş, Kürtler II: Mehabad'dan 12 Eylül'e (Alan Yayıncılık, 1991), 124.
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effort, the TKDP/KUK followed the broad template provided by the mainstream pro-
Kurdish movement of the DDKO tradition.
For starters, an aspiring Kurdish revolutionary organization seeking a place in the
movement’s mainstream was expected to debut itself with the publication of its own
journal.515 This was, for Kurdish revolutionaries, “an indicator” of whether an
organization “exists or not.”516To set out their distinctive identity, these organizations
weighed in on the debates of the day: in the late-1970s, organizations would declare
whether they were pro-Soviet or pro-China; they would stake their position on insider
debates, such as whether they sided with the Chinese ‘Theory of the Three Worlds’ or
with Enver Hoxha in Albania.517 Closer to home, they would announce their position on
the factional struggles riveting the Kurds in neighboring Iraq.518
Typically, mainstream Kurdish dissident organizations would also participate in
the various legal associations for leftists and revolutionaries – teachers unions, cultural
societies, university student associations, and so on. Through these associations, the
organizations’ clandestine leadership sought to build mass support and politicize
society.519 These were also the sites where cadres interacted publicly, competing for
515 Raşit Kısacık, Rızgari ve Ala Rızgari Kürt Sorunu ve Etnik Örgütlenmeler-2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Ozan, 2015); Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007). 516 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 6. 517 For descriptions of these debates, see Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007), 28; İbrahim Küreken, Parçası, Tanığı, Mahkumu, Sürgünü Oldum (Istanbul, Turkey İletişim, 2016), 66. 518 Journals of the period that feature debates on Northern Iraq include "Irak Kürt Halk Hareketi ve BAAS Irkçılığı." Rızgari (1975); Xebat 2 (September 1978).; "Siverek Olayı Hangi Sonun Başlangıcı Olacak." Denge Kawa (September 1979). 519 Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007), 21; Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 237.
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recognition and prestige for themselves and their organization through lengthy theoretical
debates or planning for collective protest actions.520
These were precisely the steps that the TKDP/KUK leadership followed in their
bid to refashion their organization. 521 Their first move was to set up a publishing
committee to revamp the TKDP journal, Xebat, to match the party’s new ideological line.
In this new iteration, the TKDP/KUK set down its position on the defining ideological
issues of the day. In these issues, the TKDP/KUK presented itself as representing the best
of both worlds: on the one hand, they disparaged the recently deposed TKDP
traditionalists for their anti-Marxism; the old leadership came from the ruling classes, and
hence, per ‘Marxian science,’ their interests would never align with those of the Kurdish
masses. The repeated failures of the Kurdish revolts throughout history, with the Barzani
collapse the most recent example, confirmed this. On the opposite front, the TKDP/KUK
declared that their rivals in the Kurdish left had lost touch with local realities. Taken
together, the TKDP/KUK suggested that only Marxist-Leninism could save Kurdistan,
and only the TDKP/KUK could apply Marxist-Leninism to Kurdistan’s unique
conditions.522
The TKDP/KUK equally devoted itself into the leftist associations and trade
unions that had sprouted up across the region. At these venues, the TKDP/KUK worked
in close coordination – and competition – with other factions of the pro-Kurdish
mainstream such as Rızgari, the TKSP, and the DDKD/KİP. The TKDP/KUK was 520 For testimony on this cultural field, see: Joost Jongerden and Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011); Küreken, Parçası, Tanığı, Mahkumu, Sürgünü Oldum (Istanbul, Turkey İletişim, 2016), 66; Zileli, Yarılma: 1954-1972 (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 301. 521 For a TKDP/KUK discussion on organizations, steeped in these organizing models, see: Xebat 4 (February/March 1979).
522 I base this reconstruction on these issues of Xebat: Xebat 1 (August 1978); Xebat 2 (September 1978); Xebat 3 (October/November 1978).
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involved in the various local efforts that replaced the banned DDKOs in the towns and
cities where the TKDP held a traditional following.523
Into the fray
Yet, the TKDP/KUK was not a perfect copy of its DDKO-rooted contemporaries. While
it followed their basic format, in practice, the TKDP/KUK’s use of violence surpassed
the mainstream. To be sure, most of the Kurdish organizations of the time were becoming
involved, to some degree, in violent politics.524 But in the case of the TKDP/KUK, this
cohort had managed to fully dislodge the older, incumbent leadership, giving them
greater leeway in their attempt to re-shape the organization. As such, the TKDP/KUK
volunteered its services to defend Kurdish candidates under threat from election-related
violence in the southeast. For instance, during the 1977 local election campaign in
Diyarbakır, the TKDP/KUK provided protection to Mehdi Zana, a locally renowned
activist and leftist politician.525 The TKDP/KUK records losing a significant number of
its fighters to clashes with the right,526and indeed, even the PKK sometimes took note of
the TKDP/KUK’s performance against rightist foes.527 Gaining repute as a formidable
523 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 64,66,99. 524 Ala Rızgari and the various splits within the Kawa organization are particularly notable instances of this trend. See Ballı, Kürt Dosyası (Istanbul, Turkey: Cem Yaynevi, 1991), 87-91; Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007); Kısacık, Rızgari ve Ala Rızgari Kürt Sorunu Ve Etnik Örgütlenmeler-2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Ozan, 2015). 525 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 113; Dorronsoro and Watts, "Toward Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics: The 1977 Local Elections in Diyarbakir," International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (2009): 471-72. 526 See TKDP/KUK brochure circulated 19 November 1979. Reprinted in "Kürdistan 1977/1979 Bildiriler," Xebat (1979). Also see: Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 43. 527 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 11.
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militant presence, the TKDP/KUK was also able to use violence and intimidation to elicit
material support from locals.528
Thus, the newly forming TKDP/KUK found itself straddling a chasm between
strategy and practice. Neither Marxist-Leninist theory, nor its traditional local influences,
provided a clear map for navigating this new environment. It also did not help that the
TKDP/KUK remained in a permanent state of crisis after its formation. From the
beginning, the organization wrestled with “indiscipline and a breakdown of the
hierarchical structure.”529 The TKDP/KUK was constantly fending off new challengers
and it was suspicious of a counter-coup from the traditionalists, leading to violent clashes
at times.530 The TKDP/KUK also apparently had difficulty retaining the loyalty of some
of the local networks it had appropriated from the TKDP, with some of these local
branches no doubt concerned by the leadership’s aggressive espousal of Marxism.531
All of this led to a convoluted approach to linking strategy and tactics. On the one
hand, the TKDP/KUK boasted that it had the mettle to stand up to the movement’s
enemies, setting it in favorable contrast to its rivals.532 But these remarks did not amount
to a clear strategy. Several years after the 1980 military coup, the TKDP/KUK reflected
on its past performance, admitting that they, along with the movement in general,
“allowed [themselves] to be pulled along by the current of unfolding events in those
528 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 202-03. 529 Xebat 3 (October/November 1978): 8. 530 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 56; , Xebat 3 (October/November 1978): 9; Hamit Bozarslan, "Türkiye’de Kürt Sol Hareketi," in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, ed. Murat Gültekingil (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2007); Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 305; Hakkı Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazla (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 1163. 531 Xebat 3 (October/November 1978) 532 Xebat 1 (August 1978): 4.; Xebat 1 (August 1978): 4
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conditions”533As they note, battling the right “in the schools, the factories, and the
streets” was a daily occupation. But rather than becoming the crux of a strategy,
“spontaneity came to characterize the movement.”534 That was a major shortcoming,
admits the TKDP/KUK, because “the struggle against fascism requires a program”535 –
and this was something that the TKDP/KUK confesses it lacked as the September 1980
military coup approached. 536
3.2.3. The PKK: a violent newcomer
The PKK, like the PIRA, was established in an environment of disorderly violent
repression – and the implications of this formative environment were similar to those of
the PIRA in Belfast.
The core of the PKK’s initial leadership cohort formed in the fluid social circle
surrounding Abdullah Öcalan at Ankara University during the early and mid-1970s.
Moving between Istanbul and Ankara, Öcalan claims he attended the speeches of the
famed ideologues and martyrs of the ’68 generation of militants,537 both in the left and in
the DDKO.538 He admits however that in those early days he was an obscure
sympathizer, watching and learning, not leading or organizing.539 Gradually, the PKK’s
social foundations began to take shape as Öcalan became more involved in the political
533 See, Xebat 7 (1984): 45. 534 Ibid. 535 Ibid. 536 Ibid. 537 Yalçın Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 85. 538 Abdullah Öcalan, Devrimin Dili ve Eylemi (Weşanên Serxwebûn, 1996), 61-62; M Hakan Yavuz, "Five Stages of the Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey," Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 7, no. 3 (2001). 539 Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 95.
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scene at Ankara University. During these early years, people drifted in and out of
Öcalan’s orbit,540 but after a few years, he had gathered around him a small group of
stalwart comrades.
Gradually, his group gained visibility among others in Ankara’s radical left. By
1973, Öcalan’s group held sway at the Ankara Higher Education Union (ADYÖD), one
of the legal student associations that served as an institutional site for organizing during
those years, and that looked to the intellectual legacy of the Revolutionary Youth of the
prior decade. 541 When the ADYÖD was banned in late-1974, the Öcalan group
abandoned legal associations, but its connections with the rising generation of radical
leftists continued. Meanwhile, Öcalan’s circle mixed with leftist militants that were
battling with the rightists for turf in the impoverished sections of Ankara. By the mid-
1970s, the Apocu – followers of Apo (Kurdish for ‘uncle,’ referring to Abdullah Öcalan)
– were a recognized entity, though not a prominent one, in the crowded leftist and pro-
Kurdish movements.
The liabilities of newness
The Apocus were different from the other major organizations in the pro-Kurdish
movement of the 1970s.542 With the exception of a few small, short-lived factions, the
rest of the movement was connected through backward linkages to the Kurdish
540 Ibid., 108. 541 Paul J White, Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers?: The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000), 134. 542 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 188.
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movement of the 1960s.543 Certainly, the rank-and-file of the PKK’s major rivals were
not vastly different from the PKK. They, too, came from non-elite backgrounds and were
political neophytes. But the PKK was different because their top leaders and cadres, too,
were drawn from this rising generation.544
The Kurdish mainstream took a dim view of the Apocus and their rough political
style. Typifying this attitude toward the PKK, a member of the TKSP heaped scorn upon
the PKK in 1980, claiming its members hailed from “those sectors of society that are
uprooted, jobless and drop-outs from school.”545 They lacked political sophistication,
according to the TKSP, appealing to “people that they can easily get behind a policy of
‘no phrases! Liberation struggle now, immediately!’”546 This was a grave charge, since a
thoroughly fleshed-out theoretical line was the very definition of activism for the
mainstream of pro-Kurdish dissident organizers at that time.
For its part, the PKK averred that its iconoclastic approach allowed them to
overcome their material disadvantage and relative lack of experience.547 PKK leaders
boasted in later years that Öcalan and his circle came from the same stock as the ordinary
543 Ömer Laçiner, "Kürt Sorunu ve PKK," in Dönemler ve Zihniyetler: Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce (İletişim, 2009); Sayari, "Generational Changes in Terrorist Movements: The Turkish Case," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1985), 8. 544 Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), 125; Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 189; Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 13. The PKK often noted this fact. See for instance, "Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Problemi ve Çözüm Yolu: Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Cephesi – Program Taslağı," Serxwebun (August 1982). 545 "The Kurdish Movement in Turkey – an Interview with a Representative of the Ozgurluk Yolu Movement," KNaC (December 1980): 10. 546 Ibid. 547" Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Problemi ve Çözüm Yolu: Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Cephesi – Program Taslağı," Serxwebun (August 1982): 118; Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 105.
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Kurdish people; they were authentic, ordinary Kurds, unlike their elitist rivals.548 PKK
commander Mustafa Karasu claims that while “90% of the leaders and top cadres” of
their rivals were “of the dominant class” the PKK came from the “workers and the
children of workers.”549 Still, the liabilities of newness weighed on the PKK from the
very beginning.550 Young, unpolished and obscure,551 the Apocus initially stood at a
serious disadvantage against the mainstream movement when it came to gaining
ideological recognition and orchestrating protests and collective action in eastern Turkey.
Going their own way
But rather than remain a pale imitation of the mainstream, Öcalan’s adherents broke from
the conventional template. After the closure of ADYÖD, the Apocu group turned away
from legal associative life, saying it exposed its members to undue police attention.552
They also showed little concern for the ‘great debates’ that structured the cultural field of
pro-Kurdish revolutionary politics during the 1970s.553 Although Öcalan’s acolytes insist
548 Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 15. 549 Interview with Mustafa Karasu in Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, "Ateşten Tarih," (Dusseldorf and Brussels 2005). 550 Öcalan, PKK’ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik Ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi (Cologne, Germany: Serxwebun, 1993), 40; Devrimin Dili ve Eylemi (Weşanên Serxwebûn, 1996), 61. 551 Leading figures of the pro-Kurdish movement insist that Öcalan was obscure before his movement began to make waves with violent actions in the late 1970s. Older figures such as Kemal Burkay and İbrahim Güçlü express having only vague memories of him as an unremarkable young presence in the milieu during early political activities in Ankara. PKK leaders, too, admit that neither the left nor the pro-Kurdish movement took them very seriously during its early years. See, Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 18; Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 65; Güçlü, "Kürdistan’da Örgütlenmenin Yakın Siyasi Tarihine Bakma..." Vejin (2011); Piro Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz Ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001): 40. 552 Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 28; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 295-96. 553 Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 95.
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he was capable of enthralling those around him with his oratory, he was a virtually
unknown quantity in the ideological debates of the 1970s.554
What is more, the Apocus, in their early years, did not have a regular journal that
propagated their stances on the ideological controversies riveting international
communism. As Seyfi Cengiz, the leader of Tekoşin, later recalled, the Apocu had
“neither an ideological line that the masses could recognize nor a basic organizational-
political stance.”555Yet, though deficient on these established metrics of prestige, the
Apocu’s renown soon began to spread, for they were succeeding in their own way – with
violence figuring far more prominently in their organizing strategy.
Öcalan, according to his later hagiography, considered taking part in the physical
protection the leftist movement a priority.556 Indeed, it was through these efforts that
some of the early relationships of the organization formed.557Just as the PIRA in Belfast
saw its political cachet as hinging on its position as a community protector, the Apocus
believed their local reputation depended on performance in these battles. According to
Bayık, the Apocus position at the forefront of the “boycotts, resistance, and fighting”
made “the existence of the group felt” within the milieu.558As Öcalan hagiographer M.
Can Yüce later wrote:
554 Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 65; Güçlü, "Kürdistan’da Örgütlenmenin Yakın Siyasi Tarihine Bakma..." Vejin (2011), https://vejin.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/kurdistan%E2%80%99da-orgutlenmenin-yakin-siyasi-tarihine-bakma%E2%80%A6/; Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz Ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001): 40. 555 "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001): 4. 556 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 241. 557 For example, before joining the Apocus, Kemal Pir (who was of Turkish ethnicity) was already a locally known leftist militant, clashing with the right on campuses and in the gecekondus. These efforts put Pir into contact with Öcalan, and the two became comrades. Soon afterward, Cemil Bayık, according to his own account, met Pir during a spontaneous battle with rightists. Bayık was Kurdish, and so Pir introduced him to Öcalan. Baki Gül, "40. Yılında Lice’den Rakka’ya PKK’nin Ateşten Tarihi," Firat News Agency (ANF), 26 November 2017; Akkaya, "Ateşten Tarih," (Dusseldorf and Brussels 2005). 558 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 13.
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“Particularly in the schools, [the Apocu] fought boldly at the forefront in the fights against the fascists. They attracted attention with their courage. In a fight with the fascists, these friends threw themselves [into the fight] without hesitation. Among the people, they assumed a place of respect. Nobody among them was timid, held reservations, shirked or was preoccupied with their individual concerns.”559
Commitment and efficacy, in other words, could be dramatically conveyed through acts
of rudimentary violence. The Apocus’ formative collective activities, and its earliest
interactions with enemies and rivals came through engaging in this violence. To wit,
according to early Apocu leader, Ali Haydar Kaytan, it was a battle with rightists that
precipitated the police closure of ADYÖD in 1974560 -- the event that pushed the Apocus
further toward illegal militancy. But most importantly, it was this emergent model of
organization that the Apocus carried into eastern Turkey, where they began to organize
amid the rise in disorderly violent repression that had just begun to sweep eastward.
‘Homecoming’
By the mid-1970s, the Apocu were casing opportunities for branching out from Ankara
into eastern Anatolia,561 and in spring 1977, they launched themselves into locales across
Turkey’s Kurdish-majority east.562 The Apocus were latecomers to these sites.563 Their
rivals in the established Kurdish movement had long been working in these areas. And
the Turkish left, too, was organizing in many of these places. In its initial push, the
559 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 242-43. 560 Ali Haytar Kaytan. Tarih Yapıcı Anlayışı ve Anlayışızlığın Trajedisi, quoted in ibid., 246. 561 Göktaş, Kürtler II: Mehabad'dan 12 Eylül'e (Alan Yayıncılık, 1991), 128; Gunter, The Kurds in Turkey: A Political Dilemma (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), 59. 562 Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 38. 563 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 15.
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Apocus focused on areas facing conditions they saw as conductive to their particular
brand of militancy. They recruited heavily from the high schools, middle schools, and
vocational and teacher training schools in the towns and cities of mixed Turkish and
Kurdish habitation, and from impoverished urban areas, crowded with newly-arrived
Kurdish migrants.564These were precisely the areas where the violent contests between
rightist and leftists were being fought most ferociously.565 Already versed in this style of
politics, the Apocus attracted locals with similarly violent proclivities to join them. These
advantages raised the Apocus to a major player in local political contests, just as it did for
the Belfast PIRA.
If anything, the structural conditions for violence in Turkey were even more
favorable for violent militancy than they were in Northern Ireland. As the Apocu
organization moved deeper into the southeast, they went to war with the land-owning
tribal leaders who held political power and commanded armed retinues of tribesmen.
Other conflicts soon broke out across the region -- in Batman, Ceylanpınar, and
elsewhere -- in some places growing into large-scale rural encounters that presaged the
PKK rural guerrilla campaign that began in 1984.566 Alongside ‘traditional’ tribal
fighting, however, street fighting -- characterized by quick and improvised attack, and
rapid defense and retaliation – continued to define the fighting in the cities and towns.567
564 Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), 129; Kucukozer, "Peasant Rebellions in the Age of Globalization: The EZLN in Mexico and the PKK in Turkey " (Doctoral Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010), 256. 565 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 286. 566 Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), 130. 567 For examples, see Apocular (PKK) Suruç Grubu: İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı 1980/1537 (1981); İddianame - Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı (Tam Ve Kısmı) - Görevsizlik Kararı ve Tefrik Kararı: PKK (Apocular) (Adana Adıyaman G Antep İçel Hatay K. Maraş Grubu), 1981/1222, (1982)
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Throughout the late-1970s, Turkey’s misfortunes redounded to the benefit of the
PKK. The spate of pogroms that broke out against the Alevi populations of central
Anatolia between 1976 and 1979 underlined dramatically the appeal of rudimentary
violence.568 After a deadly episode of inter-communal violence, in which members of the
Alevi minority were attacked in the town of Maraş in December 1978, Öcalan dispatched
Cemil Bayık to Ankara to organize a response, according to Bayık.569 And according to
state prosecutors, the PKK established a special unit to hunt down and kill those they
deemed responsible for the anti-Alevi violence.570 In sum, whether against the landlords
in Diyarbakır and Urfa, or against rightist attackers in Maraş, Çorum, and elsewhere, the
PKK sought to appoint itself as protector and avenger of endangered local communities.
While the more established pro-Kurdish organizations voiced concern at the rising
violence, the PKK moved into areas where the fighting was most intense. The town of
Batman – where the PKK would battle with the TKDP/KUK in 1980 – was a case in
point. The Raman tribe was long a dominant force in Batman’s local politics571 and at the
time, it was a backer of the political right. In 1977, a candidate of the center-left
Republican People’s Party (RPP)572 won the mayoral election, but vacated the seat.573
568 For descriptions of ethnic violence in Iğdır, Ağrı, Sivas, Elâzığ, Bingöl, Malatya, Kirikhan, and Maras, see, Özgürlük Yolu 4 (1975): 74; , Halkın Birliği Special Issue (1978): 12; Özgürlük Yolu 21-22 (February/March 1977 ): 95; Özgürlük Yolu 13/14 (June/July 1976): 72; Özgürlük Yolu 17 (October 1976): 89; Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010); Kucukozer, "Peasant Rebellions in the Age of Globalization: The EZLN in Mexico and the PKK in Turkey " (Doctoral Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010), 198-99; Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 81-82; , Özgürlük Yolu 36 (May 1978 ); Özgürlük Yolu 44 (January 1979). 569 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 62. 570 İddianame - Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı (Tam Ve Kısmı) - Görevsizlik Kararı ve Tefrik Kararı: PKK (Apocular) (Adana Adıyaman G Antep İçel Hatay K. Maraş Grubu), 1981/1222, (1982) 571 Kurt, Türkiye'de Hizbullah: Din, Şiddet ve Aidiyet (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2015). 572 The TKDP/KUK provides its own account of these events. See: Xebat 4 (February/March 1979): 21. 573 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 83-84.
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In the special election that followed in 1979, the PKK unofficially backed Edip
Solmaz, an opposition candidate against the Ramans. 574 State officials remarked that
during this period elections in Batman could hardly be counted as democratic, owing to
violent atmosphere.575 Solmaz won the election, only to be murdered shortly thereafter.
The PKK blamed the Raman tribe for the murder, and a war between PKK-aligned
militants and the Ramans erupted, leaving an estimated sixty people dead.576 Several
years later, the Raman tribe officially joined the state-backed paramilitary that the
Turkish military established to support the counterinsurgency effort against the PKK.577
The PKK’s strategy of violence
Not only did the PKK surpass its rivals in the use of rudimentary violence, it was also
unique in integrating this violence into its strategic plan. In fashioning its strategy, the
PKK drew selectively from strands of radical leftist and pro-Kurdish ideology. During
the late-1970s, a proliferation of leftist organizations emerged, each laying claim to the
political and ideological inheritance of one or another of the currents of the major leftist
radicals of the previous decade, the Revolutionary Youth (Dev-Genç) movement.
Some of these leftist organizations adopted a literal interpretation to the teachings
and writings of their chosen revolutionary hero (Deniz Gezmiş, Mahir Çayan, and
İbrahim Kaypakkaya were the most commonly chosen icons). Others held that reverence
574 Ibid., 8. PKK defector, Selim Çürükkaya, identifies Edip Solmaz as a founding member of the PKK. See Selim Cürükkaya, Susmak Ölmektir! (Germany: Neopubli, 2016), 372. 575 Correspondence between Necdet Uğur and Bülent Ecevit. Printed in Rıdvan Akar and Can Dündar, Ecevit ve Gizli Arşivi (İmge, 2008), 276. 576 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 8. 577 Mehmet Seyman Önder, Devlet ve PKK İkileminde Korucular (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2015), 65.
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of these revolutionary heroes should not blind followers to their missteps – which had led
to the defeat of 1971. In this latter category, arguments were made for more systematic
preparation before moving to the stage of violent revolution.578
The PKK imagined themselves as part of this post-Revolutionary Youth
paradigm,579 although most of its members – including Öcalan – had never held positions
of prominence in this movement. Öcalan remarked that he was an admirer of Mahir
Çayan,580 one of the major Revolutionary Youth theorists who died in clashes with the
Turkish state after the March 1971 military intervention. But Öcalan also remarks that he
took to heart the lesson that it was foolhardy to attack the state directly without the proper
preparation.581
Yet, while the military remained too dangerous to attack, the PKK’s formative
conflicts with rightists taught them that violence against more vulnerable foes – such as
landowners or local officials – was an effective way for carrying out propaganda of the
deed.582 As Cemil Bayık later remarked, striking blows against the ‘fascists’ was a
primary means of growing the organization.583 The PKK made it no secret that they
aspired to surpass all of their competitors in violence. In one of its few early
578 For an explanation of the multiple currents that arose in the Turkish left during the 1970s, see Samim, "The Tragedy of the Turkish Left," New Left Review 126, no. 1 (1981). 579 Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), 5. 580 Öcalan, Devrimin Dili ve Eylemi (Weşanên Serxwebûn, 1996), 63; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 180. 581 Joost Jongerden and Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, "The Kurdistan Workers Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of the Revolutionary Movement in Turkey through the PKK’s Memorial Text on Haki Karer," European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey, no. 14 (2012): 7; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 180. 582 Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 110. 583 Cemil Bayık, "Hı̇lvan-Sı̇verek Pratı̇ği ve Çıkarılması Gereken Dersler," (undated).
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programmatic statements, released in 1978, the organization declared what made it
different:584
“We swear upon our martyrs that, although we are a small group, by banding tightly together, without regard for the cruelty of the enemy or their numbers, or the difficult conditions of our struggle, by enduring every sacrifice, we will struggle until our country attains its independence. The massacres, murders, insults, and exiles that have been inflicted on the peoples of Kurdistan are fresh in our memories, never to be erased. We have not forgotten the inhuman massacres perpetrated by the colonizer [the Turkish government]. We hate the colonizers that roam freely in our homeland, and we hate the local reactionaries that have sold our country to the colonizer and imperialists and stained our national honor. We leap into the fight with the terrifying hatred we feel toward them. In this fight, we will not delay to find the counterpart to our noble courage; death! Until the people of Kurdistan see happy, beautiful days, we will not put down our weapons and rest even for a moment. Every revolution has a toll. Sometimes this toll is very heavy, we know this. But without revolutionary action, every word and every hope is only a mirage.”585
This pamphlet’s fervid tone speaks to the PKK’s unique attitude toward violence. Instead
of attempting to impress readers with elaborate Marxian analysis, the early PKK set itself
apart with an emotionally charged pledge to kill and die for the cause. And while the pro-
Kurdish mainstream worried that impetuous violence would incite the full wrath of the
Turkish state, the PKK arrived at the opposition conclusion: the enemy’s ruthlessness
could only be met with ruthlessness of the same magnitude.
Soon afterward, the PKK’s founding manifesto,586 released against the publicity
generated by its fighting with leading tribes in Urfa, reiterated these views, and listed
among its duties destroying the fascists “no matter the cost.”587In this manifesto, the PKK
584 For a full analysis of this text, see Jongerden and Akkaya, "The Kurdistan Workers Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of the Revolutionary Movement in Turkey through the PKK’s Memorial Text on Haki Karer," European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey, no. 14 (2012). 585 "Proleter ve Enternasyonalist Devrimci Haki Karer Anısına,"(May 1978): 14. 586 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 55. 587 "Kuruluş Bildirisi," Wesanen Serxwebun no. 25 (1984 (first printing 1978)): 38.
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tried its hand at writing out its own grand theory of Kurdish liberation struggle. The pro-
Kurdish movement’s intellectual heavyweights, people like Kemal Burkay, would later
pick apart the essay – pointing out its manifold logical incoherencies, glaring historical
errors, and lack of originality.588
But the PKK showed little interest in besting its rivals on the field of rhetoric and
theory.589If its message was unpolished, at least the PKK meant what it said, a sentiment
that PKK propagandists once put into the mouth of a fictionalized political prisoner, who,
according to the PKK’s telling, remarks that the PKK was different because they “always
answered the informer, agent, or traitor with the gun” and as such, “without delay, they
executed the punishment against those who deserved it.”590 Action, more than ever, was
what the conditions of the moment called for, went the thinking. Indeed, a core tenet of
the PKK manifesto is that the environment of disorderly violent repression made
rudimentary violence a strategic necessity:
“Because the ideological struggle is being waged in the midst of the intense attacks and provocations of the counter-revolution, it has become necessary to develop the proper concept of action against the police, the fascists, and the local reactionaries. As a result of the correct application of this concept, solid positions have been won in multiple locations. In a colony such as Kurdistan, the need for armed defense has made itself clearly evident, even in the stage of ideological struggle.”591
With this formulation, the PKK acknowledged that the struggle remained in its early
stage of ideological struggle. But while the PKK’s rivals inferred from this principle that
588 For one example, see Kemal Burkay, "Devrimcilik Mi? Terörizm Mi? PKK Üzerine," Özgürlük Yolu (1983). 589 Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), Chapter 2. 590 Feyzi Yetkin and Mehmet Tanboga, Dörtlerin Gecesi (Yurt, 1990), 39. 591 "Kuruluş Bildirisi," Wesanen Serxwebun no. 25 (1984 (first printing 1978)): 34.
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they must avoid violence until the time was ripe, the PKK called merely for a more
careful selection of targets: the battles of the left and right, where the PKK had cut its
teeth in politics, provided plenty of opportunities for rudimentary violence to serve
organization-building purposes.
With this approach, the PKK wedded the practice and strategy of violence
together with a clarity and simplicity that eluded the rest of the movement. The PKK’s
liabilities of newness – its low prestige, lack of resources, and ideological shallowness –
cut both ways, since it allowed the organization to develop a strategy tailored to the
prevailing conditions. If the mainstream of the Kurdish movement stood aghast at the
slide to violence of the late-1970s, the PKK, unfettered by the past, formed into an
organization that rose ever higher on this wave of bloodshed.592
3.3. Theorizing violence and dissident transformation In Northern Ireland and Turkey, disorderly violent repression shaped insurgent politics in
a broadly similar fashion. This section will adduce from these similarities a set of more
general assertions concerning how disorderly violent repression can shape rebel
movements. While disorderly violent repression can contribute to any number of ultimate
outcomes – from crushing the rebels to setting off a revolutionary cascade – its unique
features also make it suitable for shaping armed movements in a manner illustrated by the
above cases.
That makes possible the emergence of a set of rebel organizations wherein certain
rebel dyads (and not others) stand at greater risk of falling into patterns of interaction that
592 O'Connor and Oikonomakis, "Preconflict Mobilization Strategies and Urban-Rural Transition: The Cases of the PKK and the FLN/EZLN," Mobilization: An International Quarterly 20, no. 3 (2015): 386.
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encourage intra-rebel war. These conditions become increasingly likely to pertain if a
rebel movement continues to challenge a state through the use of transgressive protest,
but fails to severely weaken this state, and if the state continues its reliance on disorderly
violent repression.
Under these conditions, disorderly violent repression ushers transformations that
occur on two levels-of-analysis, in a mutually reinforcing fashion:
1) Changing the local culture: For relevant audiences, the significance and value of
performing ad hoc violence changes, since such acts are now associated with a kind of prowess that is necessary and praiseworthy in local community life.
2) Shaping organizations: Dissident organizations are forced to learn tactics for
defending themselves and community members against disorderly violent repression. The organization-level effects of learning these tactics differs, depending on the age and institutionalization of an organization.
This section will now develop these two propositions using concepts from social theory
and the sociology of organizations.
3.3.1. Changes in the local culture of the dissident community
In contemporary scholarship on political violence, the most prominent approach to
studying how individuals fit into insurgent organizations relies on rationalist models of
organizational structure, especially the principal-agent framework. In this approach,
researchers first impute preferences to the individuals joining an insurgent organization.
Then, the constellation of fixed preferences determines resultant organizational
problems.593 Often, it is possible to build useful models from these simple
593 For two important studies in this tradition, see Patrick Johnston, "The Geography of Insurgent Organization and Its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone," Security Studies 17, no. 1 (2008); Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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assumptions.594 Yet, the merits of these approaches aside, a more elaborate approach is
unavoidable if the goal is to understand how disorderly violent repression influences
vulnerable communities. This is because a suitable treatment of the above cases must
attend to how identities and interests were generated within the political environment,
rather than providing them as exogenous givens. Relatedly, it must look to the ways in
which these identities transformed over time through processes of mobilization, political
activation, and heightening violence.
To get a sense for why this is true, imagine the following composite characters
from the above cases: the Marxian ideologue at Queens University, winning acclaim for
her views on the latest theoretical fad; the working-class IRA man becoming
indispensible for his knack at building car bombs; the hardened Turkish labor organizer,
trusted for his resolute leadership in the touch-and-go of Istanbul street politics; the
student revolutionary, who wins friends (and female admiration) by pushing to the front
of the clamoring crowd during a protest.
Whatever we think the abstract wants and needs of these individuals might have
been, their ability to concretize these drives is inseparable from their place within the
social field of dissident life. Thus, a theory that allows us to make more context-specific
assertions concerning the individual logics of behavior in a social field is needed.
594 For instance, Schram (2019) builds an organizational model of insurgent battlefield performance from assumptions about preference divergence across local and foreign fighters. Relying on these micro-foundations, he derives a set of organizational problems that arise within units, and observes empirically the ways that commanders in conflict appear to have addressed these problems. Peter Schram, "Managing Insurgency," Journal of Conflict Resolution (2019).
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Social roles and rebel culture
Sociological theories of roles are helpful for developing this line of reasoning. The notion
of social roles is an old one, and a wide variety of conceptualizations of social roles have
appeared over time. What unites them is an interest in exploring the link between the
individual and wider society, based on the belief that certain forms of behavior are locally
intelligible and constructed through continual social intercourse.595
It is possible to conceptualize roles in three complementary regards. First, roles
are functional tools for task coordination and smoothing orderly social interaction.
Second, they socialize individuals into groups, inscribing a sense of self that is defined by
the values and expectations of relevant others. Third, roles are a dimension for inter-
individual competition. Whether in a business, a social club, or rebel group, some
individuals will wish to seek higher status or greater access to material rewards, or
authority. Roles are a means by which this competition and conflict is waged. Individuals
can advance themselves by outshining peers in performing a desired role, or by
attempting to cast themselves in new roles, perhaps prompting resistance from others
who insist that only certain people are entitled to play certain roles. Creative agents also
combine multiple roles in innovative ways or challenge the significance of roles and the
social and material resources that accrue to those who perform them.596
These contests are an inherent part of rebel politics. Consider, for example, the
contest over the roles of ‘scholar’ and ‘soldier’ in transnational Sunni militant
mobilization of the past four decades. As Brian H. Fishman closely details, ambitious
595 For literature reviews, see: Bruce J Biddle, "Recent Developments in Role Theory," Annual Review of Sociology 12, no. 1 (1986); Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors (Academic Press, 2013). 596 Wayne E Baker and Robert R Faulkner, "Role as Resource in the Hollywood Film Industry," American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 2 (1991).
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Sunni militant entrepreneurs during the 1980s and 1990s could gather a following based
on their proven credentials in interpreting religious doctrine, while for those less talented
at theological disputation, showing practical skill on the battlefield served as a source of
prestige.597
Those able to cast themselves in both roles at once were doubly impressive to
comrades. Various role combinations thus appeared in this militant movement.
Sometimes scholar-soldier duos worked together to build loyal followings, while in other
instances single individuals strove to claim both roles at once. And not surprisingly,
contests over the meaning and significance of the roles occurred frequently. Militant
leaders strove to elevate the importance of their own role, while circumscribing the
importance of roles that they were unable to access. For instance, famed scholars lacking
battlefield repute, such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, cautioned battle-hardened
fighters, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to defer to them on matters of grand strategy.
Zarqawi, true to his warrior role, retorted that theory without action was meaningless.598
Other roles draw on more general categories, such as those related to gender or
social class. For instance, various 20th century insurgencies – such as those in Eritrea,599
Southern Thailand,600 and Turkey’s Kurdish movement601 -- have featured a tension
between the role of the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ rebel activist. Those coming from
597 Brian Fishman, The Master Plan: ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016). 598 Ibid., 50. 599 This is a recurring theme, for instance, in Ruth Iyob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941-1993 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 600 Syed Serajul Islam, "The Islamic Independence Movements in Patani of Thailand and Mindanao of the Philippines," Asian Survey 38, no. 5 (1998). 601 White, Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers?: The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000).
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prominent families bearing high traditional status sought to parlay the role of traditional
leader into top positions in budding insurgencies, while those from outside this elite made
claims to leadership on the basis of their role as modernizers, burnishing their education
and modern skills. At the same time, others tried to cast themselves in both roles at once.
This gave rise to a contest not only over who could lay claim to which roles, but also over
the significance of these roles.
Role contests of various kinds played out in Northern Ireland and Turkey, but for
the purposes of this study, the emergence and contestation over one role in particular is of
crucial importance: the role of the specialist in rudimentary violence.
Repression and violent roles
As organizations scramble to cope with the challenge of disorderly violent repression,
they begin to call upon individuals to perform role of defenders. Such individuals may be
drawn from those already participating in the movement, or from those whose entry into
the movement is occasioned by their performance of this role.602 Raymond McClean, a
middle class CRM leader, says he “realized very quickly” that his colleagues “were
somewhat lacking in the ordinary muscle” needed for absorbing attacks on marchers. In
the wake of a violent assault on a CRM march, McClean decided to scout “the boxing
clubs, the wrestling clubs and the youth clubs in the city,”603to recruit shock troops that
would provide defense and maintain orderliness among the CRM marchers. Later, of
602 With this assertion, I follow Brubaker and Laitin in their call to pay more close attention to the significance attached to violence within dissident milieus. As the authors comment, in many cases, “ethnic entrepreneurs recruit young men who are already inclined toward or practiced in other forms of violence, and help bestow meaning on that violence and honor and social status.” I hold that recruiting specialists in rudimentary violence is one variety of this demand-side phenomenon. See Brubaker and Laitin, "Ethnic and Nationalist Violence," Annual Review of Sociology 24, no. 1 (1998). 603 Raymond McClean, The Road to Bloody Sunday (Dublin, Ireland: Ward River Press, 1983), 47-48.
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course, IRA men would dominate this role. In Turkey, as well, growing violence acted as
a magnet for young men, who, for the first time, had something indispensible to offer the
leftist movement: their aggression and physical prowess.
This opens new avenues for those seeking acceptance and advancement in a
dissident movement. Some may be able to perform multiple roles in the movement,
slugging it out with police during the day, while penning brilliant ideological tracts by
night, perhaps. But for many others, the role of specialist in rudimentary violence
represents an opportunity to attain status and rank that would otherwise be out of reach.
Eamon McCann, a writer and activist who lived through the Troubles, notes “the
unemployed youth of areas like the Bogside” became crucial “marching fodder” because
they were regarded by organizers as “energetic and instinctively aggressive.” 604 The
same can be said for the Turkish Worker’s Party (TWP), a non-violent and gradualist
socialist party that grew increasingly dependent on its youth wing for muscle during
conferences and rallies.605
Roles, of course, are not traits that are essential to certain individuals.606 Roles are
relational: disorderly violent repression makes available the inter-subjectively intelligible
604 McCann, War and an Irish Town (London, UK: Pluto Press 1993), 113. 605 TWP leader Mehmet Ali Aybar spoke in April 1972 of these exigencies in a speech to the Turkish parliament:
“Though it was communicated to the official authorities that we were going to be attacked, we did not receive protection. Those who were guilty were not caught, or if they were, their penalties were light. The attacks were carried out by organized groups. It was clear who was behind them. It was crystal clear that the intention was to disperse this newly formed party with brute force before it could grow in strength, to intimidate its leaders and members.”
Quoted in: Turhan Salman, Tip (Türkiye İşçi Partisi) Parlamentoda 1963-1966, vol. 5 (Istanbul, Turkey: Türkiye Sosyal Tarih Araştırma Vakfı (TÜSTAV), 2005), 490. These dangers encouraged the TWP to bolster its defensive capabilities. For examples, see: Ekinci, Lice'den Paris'e Anılarım (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2010), 343; Ergun Aydınoğlu, Türkiye Solu, 1960-1980, 3 ed. (Versus Kitap, 2011), 398; Demir, Kırmızı Günler: 68'in Liderlerinden Bozkurt Nuhoğlu Anlatıyor (Destek, 2009), 91; Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 73-74. 606 That a single sociological template does not easily fit across militant organizations is evident, for instance, in Reinares’ comparative study of ETA and IRA recruitment. As the author observes in an examination of data on social indicators of recruits over several decades from each organization, the two organizations differ sharply from one another in their patterns of recruitment, and how these patterns change over time. See, Fernando Reinares, "Who Are the Terrorists? Analyzing Changes in Sociological Profile among Members of ETA," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 27, no. 6 (2004).
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role of specialist in rudimentary violence to anyone who is able and inclined to perform
it.607 Anywhere dissidents engage in frequent clashes involving disorderly violent
repression, such role performances become legible. In Japan’s New Left movement
during the 1960s, for example “confrontations with the police were endowed with
performative value.”608 They cast the daring protestors as “agents of resistance,” whose
valor and commitment were displayed vividly and in public.609
In Northern Ireland, rudimentary violence affirmed the dignity and power of the
marginalized Catholic community. Shane Paul O’Doherty, who became involved in the
IRA while a teenager, recalled an incident in 1971 in which a British vehicle hit a child,
provoking an immediately local outcry. “This did not need to be expressed in words,”
explains O’Doherty, “it manifested in youths climbing onto armored cars and trying to
tear them open, trying to trap the Saracens with stone blockades, throwing stones and
petrol bombs at other army vehicles and setting fire to the death lorry.”610 In similar
fashion, after the military captured Gerry Adams, in July 1973, a crowd pelted the
soldiers in the area with stones.611
Frequent rioting in areas like Belfast’s Ballymurphy created a proving ground for
individuals wishing to become involved in the affairs of their community.612The same
607 I use the terms “socially sustainable” in the sense that Krebs and Jackson employ it in their theory of rhetorical coercion. Socially sustainable statements are those that are at least loosely intelligible within a rhetorical community. In my case, I conceptualize acts of violence as a form of performance in front of an audience. See, Ronald R Krebs and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, "Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric," European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (2007). 608 Yoshikuni Igarashi, "Dead Bodies and Living Guns: The United Red Army and Its Deadly Pursuit of Revolution, 1971–1972," Japanese Studies 27, no. 2 (2007): 123. 609 Ibid. 610 O'Doherty, The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man's True Story (Durham, CT: Strategic Book Publishing, 2011), 70. 611 Robert Fisk, "Belfast Provisionals' Commander among 16 Men Seized in Day of Arrests," The Times 20 July 1973. 612 Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 43.
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opportunities arose in Derry, whose defenders became the “unofficial police force” in
areas temporarily wrested from state control. “We had a lot of people who were involved
in the rioting,” explains Patrick Laurence Doherty, a leading figure in the Derry Citizens
Defense Association: “They needed a role and we had to create roles for people at the
time, you know.“613 Excelling at this role brought local standing that would have been
inconceivable had the threat of violence not weighed so heavily on the community:
“Young people, long-time victims of unemployment and institutionalized violence, were
overnight placed in a role in which the lives and property of others depended on their
performance,”614 de Baroid explains.
Role competition and inter-individual violence
Through these largely bottom-up collective processes, rudimentary violence became a
cultural idiom in the context of local politics, both in Northern Ireland and Turkey.
Fatefully, this code pertained to conflicts between local defenders just as much as it did to
conflicts with outsiders.
The community’s local heroes set an example of physical politics. Consider the
archetypical case of Joe McCann, who became a hero and martyr of the Officials. In one
story, McCann is said to have attended a Republican Club soiree at the elite Trinity
College in Dublin. McCann, a bricklayer by trade, found himself in a debate with a sharp-
tongued student radical. The argument heated-up and turned to blows.615 According to
Holland and McDonald, McCann was formally disciplined for the outburst, but the fact 613 Vinny Cunningham, "No Go," (Open Reel Productions Ltd). 614 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 25. 615 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 10.
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that this story is used to characterize his persona is significant. McCann was known as a
man who, in the words of OIRA head Cathal Goulding, “wove words in action with
greater power than any dreaming pedagogue with pen and microphone at his
command.”616 Of course, Goulding was alluding to McCann’s efforts as an activist and
neighborhood defender. McCann was never directly praised for using violence against
comrades, but like the heroes of Turkey’s radical left, it was implicitly recognized that
physicality reflected seriousness and ability; shying away from a fight, by the same
token, exposed one’s unsuitability for the role of a militant.
Indeed, there is an inherent tension in the role of a specialist in rudimentary
violence. On the one hand, its performers offer the needed muscle to maintain order and
security. Yet, those who perform the role make their reputation on vivid and expressive
violence. Turkey’s Revolutionary Youth of the late-1960s used their fists to show their
determined opposition to their erstwhile ally, the Turkish Worker’s Party (TWP).617 And
when fissures opened within the Revolutionary Youth, its militants trained their physical
tactics toward their former comrades during debates and other contentious gatherings.618
Mirroring the tactics they used against out-group enemies, rival factions began to disrupt
each other’s speeches, turning debates into competition over who could chant their
slogans the loudest, or occupy the meeting space at the expense of a rival.619 It was not
long before such encounters produced a ritualized practice of physical brawling.620
616 Ibid., 14. 617 Aydınoğlu, Türkiye Solu, 1960-1980, 3 ed. (Versus Kitap, 2011), 398. 618 See for example, Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 121,34,38,39,44,52-55,63-65,237,85,86. 619Zileli, Yarılma: 1954-1972 (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 291. 620Ibid., 305.
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Ragıp Zarakolu, a leftist activist of the late-1960s, recalls one such incident.
İbrahim Kaypakkaya, an icon of the ’68 generation, was at a public forum when a rival
speaker began to tout an ideological line that Kaypakkaya found irksome. It was clear to
Zarakolu that Kaypakkaya was growing restless: “I said to him, come on İbrahim don’t
do it,” Zarakolu says he admonished Kaypakkaya, “Let them alone, let them share their
own remarks.”621But moments later, a flash of violence broke out elsewhere in the
audience, and Kaypakkaya disappeared into the fray, later resurfacing, bloodied from the
fight.622
The rising cohort of radicals that took the mantle from the ’68 generation was
bequeathed with these codes. One instance of this cultural transmission is related by Ufuk
Bektaş Karakaya, a sympathizer of the Revolutionary Proletariat faction (a splinter of one
of the Revolutionary Youth factions).623 In 1977, various Maoist factions held an open
forum where they were slated to debate contending theories. Karakaya came along with a
large number of other youths, fresh from battles with the rightists in their local high
schools. Their purpose was not to take part in the discussion, but to beef up the physical
presence of the Revolutionary Proletariat faction at the conference.
As their rivals spoke, the youths began to loudly chant: “Damnation upon
international rightist opportunism!” A rival Maoist faction, provoked by the taunt, moved
against them, and soon, the sides were throwing chairs at each other.624Another practice
621 "Kirmizi Gül Buz Içinde," ed. Emrah Cilasun (Turkey 1998). 622 Ibid. 623 Akyol, Türkiye'de Sol Örgütler - Bölüne Bölüne Büyümek (Ankara, Turkey: Phoenix, 2010), 81.; Ufuk Bektaş Karakaya, Ölüm Bizim İçin Değil (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2011), 61-62. 624 Karakaya, Ölüm Bizim İçin Değil, 61-62.
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was brawling to determine which political faction would be entitled to conduct the
funeral of a fallen comrade, or to stage his or her annual memorial.625
3.3.2. Shaping organizations within the dissident movement The role of a specialist in rudimentary violence exerts a two-fold influence on rebel
organizations. First, as the above examples illustrate, those casting themselves into this
role are prone to sudden, unexpected outbursts of inter-individual violence. Second, these
individuals become advocates of their own violent methods for conducting strategy and
responding to immediate exigencies. After all, using rudimentary violence as a tool
comports with these individuals’ cognitive priors, and it advances their position in role
competition with others. Here, these individuals’ collective endeavors at sense making
and social construction shape their organizations.
Conceptualizing dissident organizations
Turning to concepts from the sociology of organizations provides some necessary
building blocks for understanding these changes. As with organizations more generally, it
is helpful define rebel organizations according to three constitutive features: (1) the
ultimate goals that provide justification for the organization’s existence; (2) a grand
strategy for achieving these goals; and (3) a set of social technologies (i.e., organizational
routines) that organizations possess for conducting themselves in their environments.
All three of these elements – goals, strategies, and organizational routines – are
mutually influencing. Most intuitively, goals influence strategies, which in turn, direct the
acquisition of tactics. Other routines develop in a more bottom-up fashion. Operators on
625 For a vivid example, see Ertuncay, Görülememiştir: Bir TKP/ML Sanığının Günlükleri (Istanbul, Turkey: Ayrıntı, 2015), 57.
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the ground are the ones who first experience responses from the state and local
communities, and with this feedback, they revise and innovate routines in a trial-and-
error fashion.626 The Serbian opposition movement that toppled Slobodan Milosevic,
Otpor, encouraged its members to invent their own protest routines on the ground. As one
member recalls, Otpor leaders told local activists that “if you create something good, put
it on the market.”627This local experimentation would sometimes then lead to new protest
routines that the national organization would apply in other localities.
Such repertoire changes can have systemic consequences on an organization.
When responding to novel challenges, organizations select from among the set of tools
they have at their disposal; organizations do not search exhaustively for the perfect
strategic response, and then attain the organizational technologies necessary for
performing this strategy.628 Instead, they tend to apply already familiar organizational
technologies to meet requirements of the situation.629 Put differently, what an
organization already knows how to do orders their schedule of options as they weigh how
to respond.630
Organizational sociology offers a host of theories to explain how these three
organizational facets interact and change. To specify organizational changes that are 626 Levitt and March (1988) review a large number of empirical studies on learning curves in manufacturing. Sonenshein observes in his study of the retail industry that employees creatively adapt their customer service routines across locations, to fit the location-specific conditions of their store. And in a military context, Allison and Zelikov suggest that ground level learning is common. See: Graham Allison and Philip Zelikov, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Second ed. (New York, NY: Longman, 1999); Barbara Levitt and James G March, "Organizational Learning," Annual Review of Sociology 14, no. 1 (1988); Scott Sonenshein, "Routines and Creativity: From Dualism to Duality," Organization Science 27, no. 3 (2016). 627 Olena Nikolayenko, "Origins of the Movement’s Strategy: The Case of the Serbian Youth Movement Otpor," International Political Science Review 34, no. 2 (2013): 152. 628 March and Olsen incorporate this fundamental insight from Herbert Simon into their theory of organizational change. See James G March and Johan P Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1989). 629 Ibid., 34. 630 For examples of studies that discuss the relationship between routines and strategy making in military affairs, see Allison and Zelikov, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Second ed. (New York, NY: Longman, 1999); Jack S Levy, "Organizational Routines and the Causes of War," International Studies Quarterly 30, no. 2 (1986).
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occasioned by disorderly violent repression, one theory is particularly appropriate: the
theory of organizational imprinting.
Organizational imprinting The theory of organizational imprinting, used widely in organizational sociology,
theorizes how environments leave lasting marks on the goals, strategies, and routines of
organizations. According to this theory, when an organization is first forming it is highly
impressionable from its environment, defined as the “specific physical, technological,
cultural and social”631conditions that surround an organization. This is true because
during an organization’s start-up phase, linkages among members, established notions of
efficacy, norms of appropriateness, and clear organizational hierarchies have not yet
settled.632
But the influence of the external environment declines over time as inertial forces
begin to take hold.633 Once set down, basic goals, strategies, and routines tend to persist,
even as the environment changes over time.634 Of course, established organizations are
not immune to outside influence. Exogenous shocks can unsettle shared assumptions and
scripts, and delegitimize incumbents and veto players. This makes it possible for internal
entrepreneurs to bring in new imprints.635
631 W Richard Scott and Gerald F Davis, Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural and Open Systems Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 19-20. 632 Johnson, "What Is Organizational Imprinting? Cultural Entrepreneurship in the Founding of the Paris Opera," American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 1 (2007). 633 For a discussion of HI approaches to institutional inertia, see David Collier and Gerardo L Munck, "Introduction to Symposium on Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies–Building Blocks and Methodological Challenges: A Framework for Studying Critical Junctures," Qualitative & Multi-Method Research 15, no. 1 (2017). 634 Zeki Simsek, Brian Curtis Fox, and Ciaran Heavey, "“What’s Past Is Prologue” a Framework, Review, and Future Directions for Organizational Research on Imprinting," Journal of Management 41, no. 1 (2015): 297. 635 For arguments regarding crisis and change, see Jane E Dutton, "The Processing of Crisis and Non-Crisis Strategic Issues," Journal of Management Studies 23, no. 5 (1986); Neil Fligstein, "Social Skill and the Theory of Fields," Sociological Theory 19, no. 2 (2001); Sally Maitlis and Scott Sonenshein, "Sensemaking in Crisis and Change: Inspiration and Insights from Weick (1988)," Journal of
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3.3.3. Imprints from disorderly violent repression
Applying this theory to the above case comparison, a simple categorization aptly
describes how dissident organizations in Northern Ireland and Turkey were imprinted by
disorderly violent repression
Low imprint
Organizations whose origins preceded the onset of disorderly violent repression, and that
also managed to preserve their institutional coherency (e.g. Nationalist parties in
Northern Ireland; the TKSP, Rızgari, and other DDKO-origin factions in Turkey) evinced
a low imprint from the change in their environment. While steering a rebel organization
is never easy, and acts of insubordination and disgruntlement were not absent for any of
these organizations, their leadership was, on the whole, able to cement a vision of goals,
strategy, and tactics – fending off challengers who were forced with the choice to either
step into line, or exit the organization.
Medium imprint
A medium imprint describes organizations that, similar to their low imprint counterparts,
carry elements of their past activities into the emergent environment of disorderly violent
repression. But they differ inasmuch as they are unable to prevent new tactics from
percolating upwards toward strategic concepts and into discussion about goals and
organizational identity.
Management Studies 47, no. 3 (2010); Soumodip Sarkar and Oleksiy Osiyevskyy, "Organizational Change and Rigidity During Crisis: A Review of the Paradox," European Management Journal 36, no. 1 (2018).
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This vulnerability of the organizational core results from limited
institutionalization, and relatedly, from the persistent efforts of internal discontents within
each organization. Here, recall the OIRA’s fraught attempts to navigate the dilemmas of
the Troubles and the TKDP/KUK’s failure to square rudimentary violence with its
ideological and strategic inheritance.
High imprint
Finally, organizations that first emerge while disorderly violent repression is an ongoing
concern are highly imprinted by this environment. From their inception, such
organizations must contend with the practical challenge of defense. Unencumbered by
prior institutionalized conventions, these collective experiences leave deep marks. In an
interview with Hakan Akçura, Abdülkadir Aygan (an early joiner of the Apocus who
later defected and cooperated with the Turkish state)636 gives an account of this
progression that is representative the PKK’s development more broadly. After drifting
onto the scene of violent leftist politics during his adolescence, Aygan came into contact
with the Apocus upon entering high school in Adana. There he participated in their small
group political discussions and joined with them in battles for control of the local
campuses and neighborhoods.
As fights intensified, his group decided to arm themselves with pistols.
Meanwhile, a leftist in the nearby town of Nizip, near the Syrian border, was killed in a
fight with a local rightist leader. Upon hearing the news, Aygan and his Apocu comrades
decided to mount a reprisal. They acquired a pistol and went looking for the enemy. On
636 White, Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers?: The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000), 193.
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the hunt, they sighted a different local rightist, who recognized them. Aygan and his team
instantly surmised that the rightist, upon spotting them, might head to the local police
station to report them, “so we reacted on the fly,” Aygan recalls, “taking a sudden
decision, I pulled my pistol and shot him.”637
Aygan and his friends, like many other early PKK cadres, grew together into
honed practitioners of rudimentary violence. Whatever inherent dispositional tendencies
for aggression that perhaps resided in young Aygan’s personality, these were allowed to
flourish in this setting, elevating him and his team to a place of importance in local
politics. Just as the PIRA in Belfast cultivated riotous neighborhood youths into well-
practiced violent defenders (and avengers), small Apocu groups across Turkey were
learning the coarse arts of local violence.
Figure 3.2. Environments of disorderly violent repression and organizational imprints
637 Abdulkair Aygan, interview by Hakan Akçura, 24 May, 2008.
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3.3.4. Rudimentary violence as politics
Importantly, this formative imprinting colors how these factions encode the nature of the
conflict. Getting a start in politics through street fights and neighborhood defense helps to
foster the shared assumption that a fundamental characteristic of the state is its
perpetration of this form of repression. It is easy to then conclude that hitting back against
the riot squad or counter-protestors is tantamount to effective strategic signaling. In
Northern Ireland, the PIRA explicitly made this determination, codifying in its strategic
plan that it would parlay community defense and resistance into insurgency against
British rule.
Meanwhile, the goodwill (or at least grudging respect) that these performances
elicit from community members serves as an influential source of early feedback for
rebels as they devise their strategic plans and encode their tactical routines. Lacking
already ingrained conceptions of the ‘appropriate way’ to conduct politics, such feedback
can more easily inform decisions about strategy.638 Symbolic gestures, such as when
PIRA men were publicly invited to tea with local clergy after repelling a Protestant attack
in July 1970,639 provide salient confirmation, in the eyes of these rebels, that rudimentary
violence is a strategic asset.
638 Norms of appropriateness regarding the selection of tactics are, not surprisingly, contentious matters in movements that use violence. As Crenshaw (2014, 294) remarks, “the process of radicalization is also about legitimizing selected repertoires of contention, not just legitimizing the resort to violence in itself […].” In this way, she argues that an “important driver of radicalization is the ability of users and supporters to justify the choice of a specific form of violence,” not just violence in general. As Horowitz (2009) demonstrates, such prohibitive norms against certain forms of violence (in this case, suicide bombing) are less constaining for newly emerging organizations. See: Crenshaw, "Conclusion," in Dynamics of Political Violence: A Process-Oriented Perspective on Radicalization and the Escalation of Political Conflict, ed. Bosi, Demetriou, and Malthaner (London and New York: Routledge, 2014); Michael C Horowitz, "Nonstate Actors and the Diffusion of Innovations: The Case of Suicide Terrorism," International Organization 64, no. 1 (2010). 639 Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 145-46.
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A closer look at one illustrative incident will help to establish how rudimentary
violence came to suffuse the conduct of politics for the PIRA. On 9 July 1972, a large
group of displaced Catholics arrived at the Lenadoon housing complex in
Andersonstown, in west Belfast with their belongings, expecting to be allowed to move
in to the unoccupied homes, only to encounter a UDA contingent blocking their entry. 640
Catholic and Protestant crowds entered a standoff.
As the crowds grew angrier, PIRA units from different areas of Belfast traveled
quickly to the area and set up firing positions. The British and the PIRA had agreed to
begin a truce several weeks prior to the incident (on 26 June),641 and PIRA leaders were
communicating with the British, in an effort to defuse the confrontation.642 But the
altercation worsened, and the British military resorted to using tear gas and rubber bullets
on the Catholics that had gathered. With Catholic civilians falling to baton blows, the
PIRA command decided to take action. According to Maria McGuire – then a member of
the PIRA -- the PIRA units on scene quickly cleared out the local crowds, and opened
fire on the British military units.643 The fighting soon spread across Belfast and lasted
into the following day.644
Lenadoon was a dramatic, and by no means isolated, incident in which the PIRA
was able to affirm its local prominence through the use of routines of rudimentary
640 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 396; De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 128. 641 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 182. 642 Tony Craig, "Monitoring the Peace?: Northern Ireland's 1975 Ceasefire Incident Centres and the Politicisation of Sinn Féin," Terrorism and Political Violence 26, no. 2 (2014); De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 128; Peter Taylor, The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2014), 145. 643 Maria McGuire, To Take Arms: My Year in the Provisional IRA (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1973), 160-61. 644 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 131.
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violence. With such performances, the PIRA pointedly announced its place as a defender
of Catholic lives and dignity.645 Furthermore, its hard power – demonstrated through
rudimentary violence – made the PIRA difficult to dislodge from the larger political
equation. In the early years of the Troubles, the British sought to marginalize what they
regarded as the radicals on both sides – the IRA among the Catholics and the Loyalist
hardliners among the Protestants. The British view was that bringing the ‘moderates’ to
the negotiating table (the Nationalist SDLP and the more center-aligned Unionist parties)
was the best way to set in motion a process of settlement.646 But incidents such as
Lenadoon served as a reminder that the PIRA could not be ignored; a lasting political
deal would prove impossible if it did not satisfy the PIRA, these actions signaled, since it
was the PIRA that ultimately controlled dynamics on the ground.
The PKK, too, showcases how a high imprint organization can find a niche in a
crowded field of competitors by making rudimentary violence the centerpiece of its
strategy. Moving beyond Ankara into the Kurdish majority east, the PKK was steeply
disadvantaged against its many rivals. But these weaknesses grew less debilitating when
the PKK played to its major strength – the rapid deployment of violence.
One critical juncture for the PKK occurred in the Hilvan district of Urfa during
spring in 1978,647 when a noisy PKK protest turned into a physical contest with a
powerful rightist-aligned tribe. Fights began when an Apocu unit in the area aggressively
attempted to hang signs commemorating the death of their most prominent martyr, Haki
645 McGuire, To Take Arms: My Year in the Provisional IRA (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1973), 161. 646 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), Chapter 6. 647 Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 79; Kucukozer, "Peasant Rebellions in the Age of Globalization: The EZLN in Mexico and the PKK in Turkey " (Doctoral Dissertation, The City University of New York, 2010), 210; Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 44.
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Karer. Supporters of the right-aligned Süleymancı tribe tore down the signs and
threatened the local PKK unit.
Soon afterward, a PKK sympathizer, Halil Çavgun, died in a hail of gunfire.648
“We were not the sort of movement to recoil, to pull back, in the face of such an attack,”
PKK leader Cemil Bayık remarked years later: “Quite the opposite, these sorts of attacks
bound us more tightly together, and we had learned that it was necessity to retaliate in the
severest manner. Our historical experience had caused us to comprehend this.” 649
Dispatching a set of commanders who had learned the art of organizing rudimentary
violence in their wars with the right in Ankara and Antep, the PKK directed a fast paced
campaign of hit-and-run attacks on the Süleymancı.650 The clashes soon escalated into a
full-scale inter-tribal war, after the PKK managed to bring the Süleymancı’s rivals, the
Paydaş clan, onto its side.651
It is of course debatable whether this emphasis on violence, both for the PIRA and
the PKK, was, on balance, a strategic advantage in the long run. The important point here
is not that rudimentary violence is necessarily a superior strategy, but rather that it will
tend to appear so when newly formed organizations receive positive immediate feedback
from audiences in their area of operation.652 If these same activities later come to pose
problems and danger for the community – eliciting negative feedback -- it will be too
648 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 51; Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 110. 649 Bayık, "Hı̇lvan-Sı̇verek Pratı̇ği ve Çıkarılması Gereken Dersler," (undated). 650 Parti Tarihi (1994), 51; Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 111. 651 Belge, "State Building and the Limits of Legibility: Kinship Networks and Kurdish Resistance in Turkey," International Journal of Middle East Studies 43, no. 1 (2011). 652 Della Porta (1995, 110) observes this sort of niche seeking activity in her study of dissident movements in Italy and Germany. She notices that SMOs tend to seek “niches in the environment in which they were more fit to face competition” over recruits and sympathizers. Indeed, much of the tactical and ideological activities of these SMOs, she suggests, is related to this competitive niche seeking, with organizations looking to accentuate their uniqueness and particular fit to a segment of the dissident milieu. Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
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late. Once a repertoire of organizational routines is established, it is resistant to dramatic
change. Becoming a “core capability,”653 cognitive and political barriers militate against
deep reform.
This resistance to change is further cemented because the goals, strategies, and
tactics of an organization are imbricated into the shared identity of its most socialized
members. The sense of purpose and competence that comes from membership reaches
deeper than instrumental concerns about strategic optimization. Put differently,
established notions of ‘who we are, what we do, and why we exist’ go to the heart of
militant selfhood and are thus hard to abandon. Just as the incumbent Kurdish parties,
imprinted by the DDKO years, recoiled at rudimentary violence, the conventional
wisdom of the PKK and the PIRA was decisively colored by its early experiences with
violence – leaving marks that faded only slowly.
Table 3.1. summarizes expected attributes of these varying levels of imprinting
from disorderly violent repression.
Table 3.1. Imprinting from disorderly violent repression
Imprint Core capability/mainstay routines
Grand strategy Shared conception of organizational identity
LOW N. Ireland SDLP Other Catholic Nationalist entities Turkey TKSP, Rızgari,
May include various forms of political violence – e.g. clandestine violence, rural guerrilla violence. Also, strategic non-violence. While routines of rudimentary violence may figure in the repertoire, they are
A consolidated and well-articulated strategy that connects the major goals of the organization with the modalities to be used to achieve these goals Notably, this strategy will not involve the use of routines of rudimentary violence as a device for attracting support or sending signals to the
Leaders and cadres have stable notions concerning the purpose of their organization, and how their efforts and skills contribute to this larger purpose. These shared understandings do not include descriptions of their organization as primarily concerned with rudimentary violence.
653 Michael T Hannan and John Freeman, "Structural Inertia and Organizational Change," American Sociological Review 49 (1984).
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Denge Kawa, TKDP
kept outside of the core.
state.
MEDIUM N. Ireland OIRA Turkey DDKD-KIP, Kawa Red, Ala Rızgari
The position of routines of rudimentary violence is ambiguous and contested. Some in the organization employ and promote the tactics, while others urge resistant.
Basic issues regarding grand strategy are contested. Competing visions, often turning over an incumbent vs. challenger divide, impede the implementation of a consistent strategy.
Camps and factions divide over the basic issue of the organization and its member’s wider place in the movement. ‘Who we are and what we do’ is a question that its members are unable to answer with one voice.
HIGH N. Ireland PIRA INLA Turkey PKK
Routines of rudimentary violence are a mainstay tactic; the organization evinces internal consensus regarding its importance. The tactic is used to address a variety of problems, from defense against attack, to offensive actions against state and out-group targets
Whatever its particulars, its strategy views community defense in rudimentary violent affrays as a matter of central concern. Involvement in rudimentary violence is conceived of as an intrinsic duty, and also, a means to enhance support and politicize the community under the rebel organization’s banner.
Of course, not all members of the organization need to be specialists in rudimentary violence. But there is solid consensus that a major purpose of the organization is to protect the community against attacks from the state and out-groups.
3.3.5. The hazards of routines of rudimentary violence Whatever its advantages, relying on routines of rudimentary violence comes with a major
downside. Incidentally, features of these routines are uniquely suitable for transfer
against rivals. Three defining features of these routines – (1) low planning inputs/cost, (2)
rapid deployment, and (3) performance in front of a relevant audience – all make this
form of violence uniquely tempting for use in conflicts with intra-movement rivals. It is
worthwhile to discuss each briefly.
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Cost
Routines of rudimentary violence are inexpensive, requiring little technical or military
skill. Usually, the physical and temperamental penchant for putting one’s body on the
line is more important than military training. And these routines do not require high
outlays of material or planning resources compared to other forms of violence.
In the spring of 1972, the British military recognized the prevalence of routines of
rudimentary violence in the PIRA tactical repertoire. Military reports noted that while the
most dangerous attacks came from “expert” snipers, a common form of assault was that
of the “yobo,” who appeared suddenly, from amidst the rioters, and “who shot without
prior planning or accuracy at short range.”654That these attacks were rapid and
extemporaneous does not mean they lacked an organizational logic. According to some
sources, the PIRA developed “a well-choreographed” routine of orchestrating riots “to
shield snipers” as they moved through urban terrain.655
By integrating with the locals in these activities, the PIRA increased its tempo of
attacks on the British military and deepened its ties in local neighborhoods. The danger
is that once specialists know how to perform these routines, they can apply them without
the need for elaborate structures of management and supervision. And due to their
minimal complexity, executing a rudimentary violent routine carries less danger of
capture and exposure of important operational nodes, compared with, say, sophisticated
terrorist-style attacks. Plus, specialists in rudimentary violence can quickly melt back into
654 Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 524. 655 Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 53.
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their communities after performing a routine, making it difficult for military forces to
pursue and destroy them.
Speed
Routines of rudimentary violence must be deployed rapidly, sometimes at a moment’s
notice. Speed is a crucial feature of routines of rudimentary violence, since incidents of
disorderly violent repression do not occur at the time of a militant organization’s
choosing. Armed counter-movement members or police can unexpectedly descend upon
a peaceful march, and vulnerable ethnic neighborhoods can face violent incursions
without warning. As such, routines of rudimentary violence are designed for quick
deployment. This comes with an unintended consequence, for it allows these routines to
be executed with an immediacy that, at times, outpaces the routines of deliberation that
leaders must conduct to ensure that their actions are strategically sound.
Location
Routines of rudimentary violence occur amidst others in the movement or the
community. They happen in front of an audience whose opinion matters for strategic and
social reasons. Of necessity, routines of rudimentary violence are executed in sites where
local audiences are present, from rival militants, to non-violent dissidents in need of
protection or community members vulnerable to attack. As rioting became a daily
occurrence in the months following August 1969, the line between ordinary rioters and
current or future PIRA recruits blurred.656 As part of this routinization of rioting, armed
656 Discussing the August 1971 internment riots, local historian De Baroid remarks, “All available weapons had been mobilized, and sentries posted in strategic positions. Many of these were young men and women who, until quite recently had been the ordinary boy
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PIRA gunmen deployed amid the rioters,657 or hid themselves in nearby buildings.658 For
sympathetic households, it was not uncommon to turn a blind eye to an IRA fighter
hidden in a back alley or crouched up in an upstairs crawlspace. In Ankara, leftist
factions marched together, kept watch over vulnerable neighborhoods, and were apprised
of one another’s battles against rightist foes.
The result of an executed rudimentary routine is, therefore, directly and
dramatically visible to the very community from which the militant organization seeks to
gain support. Moreover, it is common for competing militant organizations to perform
routines of rudimentary violence in close proximity to one another, in competitive
displays performed in front of this audience.659
3.3.6. Implications for interaction To sum up, particular causal pathways to fratricide begin to appear on the heels of two
developments: first, when movements germinate cultures that valorize specialists in
rudimentary violence; and, second, when organizations embrace tactical repertoires that
prioritize routines of rudimentary violence. The next two chapters explore and develop
these propositions through a close tracing of the intra-rebel wars that erupted in the cases
examined thus far.
and girl down the street. Now, with very little military training, they found themselves in the front line against loyalist snipers and the British army’s shock troops. Nervously, they fired whenever they thought they spotted signs of the enemy.” See, De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 84. 657 Dingley, The IRA: The Irish Republican Army (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), 130, 32. 658 Bell describes the relationship between rioting and PIRA offensive operations. See, Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 138, 215. 659 For discussions on how ecologies of space have effects on organizational forms and political identities, see Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Dingxin Zhao, "Ecologies of Social Movements: Student Mobilization During the 1989 Prodemocracy Movement in Beijing," American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 6 (1998).
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Chapter 4 will take an in-depth look at the early violent interactions between
rebels in both cases. It will then theorize the causes and consequences of these violent
eruptions, linking them to the characteristics of the insurgencies explored in the previous
chapters. Chapter 5 will then examine the turn to intra-rebel war in both cases and extend
the theorization of this process by discussing how violence and rebel misperception are
linked.
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CHAPTER 4
ENTERING THE PATH TO WAR
The next two chapters will examine how the organizational attributes identified in the
above chapters fostered dynamics of interaction that led to intra-rebel war in the two
cases compared in this dissertation. The below chapters will suggest, for starters, that
organizational type shaped strategic choices. Organizations whose repertoires were
suffused with rudimentary violence were more inclined to resort to violence as a method
of coercive politics toward fellow rivals. These coercive attempts, however, were seldom
effective when their rival was similarly imprinted, since the latter would incur a
reputation cost if it appeared to lose in a violent exchange.
Meanwhile, the rebel leadership on both sides had to contend with the disruptive
force of non-strategic violence. Sudden flashes of inter-factional bloodshed could break
out at any time during the course of daily political affairs on the streets of Belfast or in
the cities and towns of eastern Turkey. These bursts of violence placed leaders in a
predicament. They understood the hazards of escalating fratricide, but they were at the
same time aware of the liabilities of appearing weak. Plus, non-strategic violence also
called retaliation that, too, was non-strategic: small unit of rebels, primed for launching
violence rapidly and unflinchingly, could hit back against a rival before leaders or local
commanders could take the time to conduct a more sober cost-benefit appraisal.
The next two chapters will trace numerous episodes for which strategic and non-
strategic violence combined sequentially. That made for a dynamic that was far more
prone to escalation than if these logics had operated separately: strategic attacks could
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prompt strategic responses (strategic ! strategic), just as a non-strategic attacks
sometimes spiraled due to non-strategic defense and counter-attack (non-strategic ! non-
strategic). But their intertwining was especially potent. Very commonly, carefully laid
strategic assaults were met with unexpectedly stiff resistance and escalatory retaliation, as
defenders activated the same routines of rudimentary violence they honed in their
community defense efforts (strategic ! non-strategic). And, even when rebels
recognized that a violent outburst was ‘accidental,’ arising from non-strategic
interactions, they sometimes judged that it was necessary to strike back to show rivals
and publics that they were strong enough to defend themselves and their constituents
(non-strategic ! strategic).
As this chapter and the next will trace, these linkages made it possible for action-
reaction cycles to lengthen into concatenating chains of violent interaction, leaving
behind a raft of deaths and injuries before leaders could put a stop to the fighting. As the
collective memories of these battles accumulated over months and years, these rebel
dyads grew more suspicious and hostile toward one another, warping some of the
cognitive, affective, and normative constraints on fratricide, and thereby encouraging
greater violence, a development that Chapter 5 will explore in greater detail.
4.1. The Republican movement after 1969: early antagonisms, lasting animosity
Returning to the Republican movement in Northern Ireland, this section traces the
dynamics of violent interaction between the OIRA and the PIRA during the early years
after the split (1969-1974). Concretizing the causal mechanisms introduced above, this
section provides a focused account of the dynamics that set the stage for the major
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confrontation of October/November 1975, which will be covered in Chapter 5.
As the split in the IRA’s ranks solidified in the wake of the August 1969 inter-
communal crisis, it was not long before the prospect of violence among Republicans
materialized. A week after the August violence, a group of veteran IRA men met in west
Belfast, where they decided it was necessary to remove the existing top leadership of the
Belfast IRA, chiefly Billy McMillen and Joe Sullivan, and to reverse the Goulding-led
direction of the movement.660
A month later, on 22 September, this faction – numbering between eight and
sixteen in total, and including Billy McKee and Joe Cahill, appeared at an IRA Battalion
Staff meeting.661 At least two of them were carrying weapons. 662 Accounts differ
concerning precisely what transpired at this impromptu meeting. De Baroid claims that
Billy McMillen attempted to leave, and “a gun was produced and he was told to sit
tight,”663 while PIRA member Joe Cahill later denied this: “there was no running in and
producing arms,” recalls Cahill in his autobiography, “not that I remember anyway.” 664
The incident passed without bloodshed, 665 and the two factions came away with a shaky
compromise in hand. Per the agreement, dissident Republicans joined the Belfast
command and McMillen agreed to temporarily break contact with Goulding in Dublin.666
660 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 126. 661 Ibid. 662 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 180; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 137. 663 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 34. 664 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 180. 665 Taylor, The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2014), 60. 666 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 126.
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Very soon, each side was accusing the other of bad faith,667 and meanwhile, the
dissidents, led by Seán Mac Stiofáin, were gathering to challenge the Goulding faction
for control of the Republican movement. 668 By December, the split in the IRA was
cemented. Besides the formal reasons for the split, such as matters of ideology and grand
strategy, the dissidents criticized the Goulding leadership for failing to defend the
community in its hour of need. In a statement released in late-December, these dissidents
faulted the Goulding leadership for its “obsession in recent years with parliamentary
politics” that had led to a “consequent undermining of the basic military role of the Irish
Republican Army,” adding that “ the failure to provide the maximum defense possible of
our people in Belfast is ample evidence of this neglect.”669 Indeed, from the outset of the
split, pressure to show toughness on matters of community defense was at the center of
inter-factional competition. Going forward, these pressures did not abate -- and as will
become increasingly clear, they shaped the stakes of fratricide by sensitizing both sides to
the costs of appearing weak and vulnerable to attacks, whether from out-group foes or
other Republicans.
In January, Mac Stiofáin led a dramatic walk out from the Sinn Fein convention
in Dublin, announcing the split to the world. With the division in the IRA, competition
for resources began. Immediately, a controversy arose over funds. Ministers from the
Fianna Fail government in Dublin made contact with northern Republicans on both sides
of the split. Over a series of meetings, the details of which later became a matter of bitter
667 Former President of Provisional Sinn Fein, Ruairi Ó Bradaigh, later likened relations during the period to “a bad marriage” that was doomed to unravel. See, White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 150. Also see, De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 36. 668 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 137. 669 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999). 24.
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dispute, ministers in the Dublin government made offers of money to support the
Republicans’ defense efforts in the north.670 Goulding’s supporters were convinced that
the lion’s share of the money was being funneled to the Provisionals, going so far as to
allege a conspiracy against them. Goulding’s supporters in at least one instance
demanded at gunpoint that members of the dissident faction provide them with access to
the bank accounts storing the funds.671
Access to weapons, too, became a matter of dangerous confrontation. Each side
made a lunge for the arms caches that activists had begun depositing in the
neighborhoods in Belfast following the August violence.672 In Ballymurphy, for
example, accusations arose that local IRA dissidents were requisitioning guns from the
local dump without permission, and using them to train new recruits.673 At one point, the
OIRA attempted to arrest the IRA quartermaster in the area to prevent the area’s guns
from falling into the hands of the Provisionals.674 Similar tensions arose elsewhere in
Belfast, and in other cities.675 Competition for guns, naturally, involves the risk of
somebody getting shot. But during the weeks and months surrounding the split, threats
and close calls notwithstanding, the sides managed to avoid open gun battles for control
of arms dumps. As standard theories of rebel infighting expect, the competition for
670 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 141; White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 147. 671 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 139. 672 Ibid., 145. 673 Malachi O'Doherty, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life (London, UK Faber & Faber, 2017), 44. 674 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 39. 675 Ibid.; Rekawek, "“Their History Is a Bit Like Our History”: Comparative Assessment of the Official and the Provisional IRAs," Terrorism and Political Violence 25, no. 5 (2013): 690; Taylor, The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2014), Chapter 5.
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resources was a foremost concern. But, at the same time, the sides did not turn
immediately to war.
Indeed, that competition necessitated intra-rebel war seems to have been only one
of various perspectives in currency at the outset of the split. True, rumors and suspicions
swirled that the opposing side might lash out violently. Bishop and Mallie claim that
Billy McKee, the Belfast PIRA leader, approached Jim Sullivan, McMillen’s ally in the
Belfast OIRA, at some point during the autumn of 1969 and proposed toppling Millen --
and putting Sullivan in charge. Sullivan declined. 676 Investigative journalist Martin
Dillon wrote in 1973 that, as the split was occurring, Goulding and McMillen learned of a
plot within the dissident ranks to assassinate them.677 Likewise, according to Patterson,
Jim Sullivan implored McMillen to sanction hits on top Provisional leadership to collapse
the PIRA before it could find its footing.678 Anything was possible: violence had
accompanied past organizational splits, with the Irish civil war of 1922-23 standing as the
most famous, but far from the only, historical analogy.679 In a 2006 interview, Ruairí Ó
Bradaigh, who attended the December IRA convention, recounts asking rhetorically how
the Goulding faction planned to deal with the intransigent dissident Republicans,
implying that, as in the past, matters might eventually devolve into bloodshed.680
During the January 1970 Sinn Fein Ard Fheis worries were palpable of a sudden
eruption of violence. Goulding supporters were instructed to watch Mac Stiofáin closely
676 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 132. 677 Martin Dillon and Denis Lehane, Political Murder in Northern Ireland (Penguin Books Ltd, 1973), 248. 678 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 145. 679 For a detailed history of intra-Republican rivalry before the 1960s, see Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916-1979 (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1989). 680 White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 150.
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over fears that he might suddenly pull a weapon.681 The convention passed without
clashes, although during the walk out Mac Stiofáin was punched and some pushing and
scuffling broke out. 682 That weekend, a car belonging to Mick Ryan, a seasoned IRA
veteran who sided with Goulding, was stolen and discovered in the countryside riddled
with bullets.683 Maria McGuire, who spent a short time in the PIRA before becoming a
vocal (and controversial) critic of the organization wrote in 1973 that the bitterness
surrounding the split prompted PIRA leaders Daithi O’Connell and Ruairí Ó Bradaigh to
carry pistols for personal protection in Dublin.684
Yet, there were also strong reasons for avoiding a turn to violence. On a personal
level, violent feuding meant war between those who had, until recently, worked and
struggled together. Goulding and Mac Stiofáin, for instance, had in 1953 participated in
an IRA raid in England, where they were captured and put in prison together.685 For his
part, Billy McMillen was a widely respected figure among Belfast Republicans,
remembered for the days in 1964 when he battled to fly the Irish tricolor while
campaigning on an absentionist ticket for the Republican movement.686 For ordinary
recruits in Belfast, the OIRA-PIRA split ran through families and neighborhoods. Intra-
rebel bloodshed could mean killing friends, neighbors, and in some cases family.687
681 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 144. 682 Ibid., 146. 683 Ibid., 147. 684 McGuire, To Take Arms: My Year in the Provisional IRA (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1973), 30. 685 Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916-1979 (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1989), Chapter 3; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 8. 686 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 71; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 35. 687 For an analysis of the micro-level decision-making for IRA recruits during the split, see John F Morrison, "Trust in Me: Allegiance Choices in a Post-Split Terrorist Movement," Aggression and Violent Behavior 28 (2016).
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While those that participated in the split testify that over time the fighting soured many
friendships, and intensified latent personality clashes, images of the other as a
bloodthirsty enemy must have been difficult to fathom in the early days and months of
the split.
Besides, it was obvious that fratricide came with costs that had to be weighed
against the advantages of destroying one’s in-field rivals. Landing a swift and deadly
series of blows against the emergent PIRA “was discussed at one stage,” Billy McMillen
commented to a journalist in early 1972. But to McMillen the idea was unworkable for
military and political reasons. “If we did have an all out go on the Provos,” McMillen
explained, “the British Army would only be standing on the sidelines rubbing their hands,
we would have been doing their job for them.” And moreover, “it would have been
virtually impossible for us to explain in political terms to the people why we had felt it
necessary to kill 12 or 13 Republicans” (certainly a low estimate of the number of
killings that would likely be required to collapse the PIRA).688
And if violence came with unacceptable costs, there appeared to be viable
alternatives for defeating the nascent PIRA challengers. According to Patterson, the
Goulding leadership initially downplayed the severity of the PIRA competitive threat,
confident that with their superior experience and sophistication they would outcompete
the upstarts.689The Goulding circle held a preference for winning support based on the
merits of their politics. In Ballymurphy, later a site of considerable feuding, the local IRA
leadership met so that each side could present its case, allowing those present to make up
688 Sweetman, On Our Knees (London, UK: Pan Books, 1972), 197. 689 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 134.
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their own minds on whether to choose the OIRA or PIRA.690Gerry Adams later recalls
that when he approached McMillen to announce his decision to support the PIRA, the
pair debated the matter civilly: “It wasn’t an acrimonious meeting,” Adams recalls, “we
parted on good terms.”691 These various recollections of the political environment in the
early days of the split suggest that while competition was fierce from the start, and the
danger of violence was ever-present, both sides harbored a strong current of opinion that
favored avoiding a turn to blows.
4.1.1. Physical competition
Yet, avoiding physical altercations proved impossible. Competition over resources,
recruits, and turf was waged in an ineluctably physical idiom. After all, both
organizations were by this point deeply shaped by their operating environment of
disorderly violent repression. Routines of rudimentary violence figured prominently in
their militant repertoire: unleashing groups of riotous teenagers against police; mustering
gunmen to attack British soldiers; or setting up road blocks and checkpoints to blunt an
attack from nearby Protestant neighborhoods – these were the daily occupations of both
IRAs. And this affected the character of dyadic relations between the OIRA and PIRA
from the start.
Strategically, each organization built its local reputation on its ability to defend
the physical integrity and honor of Catholic neighborhoods. Asserting a visible presence
in besieged areas was an inherent part of this strategy, and it was during the course of
these activities that physical encounters between the OIRA and PIRA first began. “The 690 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 38. 691 Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 127.
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Official IRA made an attempt to kill the Provisional IRA at birth,” Brendan Hughes, then
a PIRA member, later claimed: “It happened pretty regularly that people like me would
be put against the wall and searched for weapons.”692Tellingly, the attempt to ‘kill the
Provisionals at birth’ did not entail a sudden and deadly onslaught. Instead, as Hughes
recounts, these activities were carried out in measured strokes, under the pretense of
maintaining local law and order. Both sides applied against their rivals the same
techniques developed to defend their neighborhoods against outsiders, quickly
descending on rivals passing into their turf and apprehending them, sometimes roughly,
just as they would have done to outsiders intruding on their streets, thereby underlining
the claim that they, and nobody else, were the guarantors of the safety and security of the
local people.
In this context, initial physical encounters seem to have involved two kinds of
practices. First, searches and ‘arrests’ of rival militants – which soon escalated to
punishment beatings and kneecappings693 -- fit with a strategic logic of signaling. The
manner in which these acts were carried out suggests some level of planning and pre-
meditation, with many of these acts probably sanctioned by the local Official or
Provisional officer in charge. The effect of these acts was to demonstrate a power to hurt:
kneecapping and beatings attached a cost to joining the rival group or engaging in
whatever behavior the attacker wished to deter. It also signaled power and commitment to
the local residents in the area. Yet, that these acts were strictly limited in scope and scale
underlines that both sides were chary of excesses that might alienate locals or force
security forces to intervene. 692 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 61-62. 693 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 173.
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A second practice stemmed from the organizational and operational changes
shaped by the environment of disorderly violent repression. Flashes of infighting
sometimes occurred abruptly during neighborhood patrols, or simply during the course of
ordinary life when militants from opposing sides came into contact. As Gerry Adams
recalls, most of the violence between the OIRA and PIRA kicked off “simply when rival
groups or individuals ran into each other and one word borrowed another.”694 In the
densely populated Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast, members of rival groups often
recognized one another by face and name. They frequented the same social spots,
including nightclubs and bars, where conversations could turn into arguments, and
arguments to violence. Public political activities, especially selling the organization’s
paper (a method of fund raising and gauging support in an area) was a performance that
could attract an angry response from rivals in the area, sometimes leading to verbal
exchanges and then further escalations.
That these incidents were sudden and unplanned did not negate their political
ramifications. Anything that transpired in the lanes and public spaces in these Belfast
neighborhoods had a watchful audience looking on from their windows or spreading the
word through local gossip. For these reasons, letting a verbal or physical insult from a
rival outfit go unanswered meant a bruising loss of face that everyone was bound to hear
about. “Turf, territory and ego: and little else” were the key ingredients behind the PIRA
vs. OIRA fighting, Anthony McIntyre, a former PIRA member, later commented.695
694 Kevin Myers writes his observations of these activites in Derry and Belfast. Adams, too, recounts his memories of these activities. See, Kevin Myers, Watching the Door: Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast (London, UK Atlantic, 2006). Also see: Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 147. 695 This remark appears in the comments in Davy Carlin, "Means and Ends," The Pensive Quill, 20 July 2013.
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The pressures to up-the-ante in physical competition thus bore down heavily both
on the organizational and the individual level. For the organization, coming off the loser
in a violent encounter implied a lack of prowess at rudimentary violence. And for the
individual who received the beating, staying down called into question one’s fitness for
the role of specialist in rudimentary violence – a role that was for many their sole claim
to acceptance in the Republican movement.
4.1.2. Taking non-lethal violence to the limit
Every Easter Sunday, Belfast Republicans hold a procession to the Milltown cemetery to
honor Republican martyrs and commemorate the 1916 Rising. After the split, both IRAs
began to hold their own separate commemorations, with their leaders taking pains to
avoid an ugly incident on the grounds of the cemetery. But these public displays were
ripe for trouble, and at Easter 1970, onlookers witnessed angry contending performances
from the respective sides.696 Paddy Devlin (a local politician and vocal critic of the
PIRA) wrote in 1993 that he and other members of the CCDC interceded to prevent the
tense atmosphere from turning violent. He credits “cool heads among the Officials” for
averting “a full-blooded collision.”697
The already contentious atmosphere seems to have deteriorated further after the
Milltown incident. Over the next several weeks, the PIRA accused the OIRA of issuing
threats against the families of its sympathizers in contested neighborhoods.698A few
weeks after Easter, a fistfight broke out when the OIRA attempted to sell its paper, The
696 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 157. 697 Devlin, Straight Left: An Autobiography (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1993), 123. 698 "Two Injured in IRA Gun Feuds," Irish Press, 2 May 1970.
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United Irishman, in the Short Strand neighborhood699 and a PIRA member punched Jim
Sullivan over an argument at a pub.700 The OIRA hit back immediately, kneecapping
Sullivan’s assailant.701 A few days later, the PIRA attempted to kill Billy McMillen,702
strafing his car with gunfire as he drove through the outer environs of Belfast.703
Immediately, Belfast was convulsed with gunfire, as the two sides took aim at
each other in the streets.704 Amid the fighting, the OIRA attempted to assassinate a top
figure in the local PIRA,705 presumably a reprisal for the attempt on McMillen’s life.
Meanwhile, families in the Lower Falls area of Belfast began to receive threats from the
OIRA.706 In a matter of days, independent community figures brought McMillen and
McKee together to discuss a truce.707 Still, abrupt exchanges of gunfire continued at
intervals throughout the spring.708 According to Hanley and Millar, proposals for all-out
war on the PIRA were made once again within the Belfast OIRA, but McMillen
overruled the idea.709
699 Ibid.; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 157. 700 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 151. 701 Ibid. 702 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 173; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 157. 703 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 151. 704 Ibid. 705 John Paul Sawyer, "Competition in the Market for Political Violence: Northern Irish Republicanism, 1969–1998 " (Doctoral Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2010), 115. 706 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 157. 707 Ibid., 158-58; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 152. 708 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 173; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 158. 709 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 152.
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Even as violence flared and relations worsened, both sides remained keenly aware
of the downside of starting a major war. As J. Bowyer Bell, a scholar who observed the
Troubles first-hand over several decades, remembers it: “the further up the republican
totem pole the less the leaders wanted to fight each other.” Personal relationships had
soured, and competition had taken a violent turn, but the leadership “saw no need for
gunfights.”710 The continuous “scuffles and confrontations”711 between local units,
however, stymied attempts at steering competition away from a violent idiom.
4.1.3. Community defense and intensifying competition
Meanwhile, the environment of disorderly violent repression continued to influence the
strategic and organizational imperatives of both IRAs. In one notable episode, on 27 June
1970, Protestant parades led to inter-sectarian rioting, a common occurrence in Belfast
during the summer of 1970. That evening, 712riots in the north Belfast area of Ardoyne
turned into a battle between gunmen on either side.713Meanwhile, Protestant crowds
began to press into the Short Strand neighborhood of inner Belfast, burning homes.714
Rumors spread that the attacking crowds intended to press onward to the St. Matthews
Church.715
Acting fast, a group of PIRA men, led by Billy McKee, took up firing positions
nearby. The PIRA team fired volleys into the crowd and all through the night they traded 710 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 194. 711 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009). 712 Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 89. 713 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 46-47. 714 Ibid. 715 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 156.
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fire with their foes on the other side of the riot line.716 One of the militants fighting
alongside McKee was killed in the fighting, and McKee himself was wounded by
gunfire.717 On 3 July, after the inter-sectarian battles had died down, a unit of British
soldiers made an incursion into the Lower Falls neighborhood – a stronghold of the
OIRA718 -- in search of weapons.719 Before long, the troops were surrounded by rioters;
the small unit called for reinforcements, which arrived in large numbers, alongside
armored cars. The military saturated the area with CS gas, and helicopters flew overhead,
blaring from loudspeakers that the area was now under curfew and the residents were not
to leave their homes.720
The fighting revealed how rudimentary violence had become a medium of
competition between the two IRAs. In some instances, PIRA and OIRA units in the area
fought side-by-side in the running gun battles with British soldiers.721 But the battles also
left bitterness. The OIRA later professed a belief that the PIRA had intentionally sparked
the rioting in the area to draw in the British, leaving the OIRA to suffer the brunt of the
operation.722 As usual, weapons were at the center of the controversy. Joe Cahill, of the
PIRA, later claimed that his organization had offered to spirit the weapons out of the
area, and to return them later, but the OIRA refused the offer: “They said afterwards they
716 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 178. 717 Ibid. 718 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 10. 719 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 345. 720 For a recent account of the event, see Geoffrey Warner, "The Falls Road Curfew Revisited," Irish Studies Review 14, no. 3 (2006). 721 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 10. 722 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 160.
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preferred that it went to the Brits rather than to the Provisionals,”723Cahill claims. Though
fighting a common enemy, in some cases literally side-by-side, the OIRA and PIRA were
implacable competitors. And proving their ability in matters of rudimentary violence had
become a salient mode of competition.
Throughout the summer, rioting in parts of Belfast remained “a nightly
occurrence,”724 following a repetitive script: a provocative encounter, crowds gathering
and confronting each other, exchanges of gunfire, and the arrival of British soldiers
attempting to quell the violence.725 Though this trend appeared to be strengthening the
PIRA, Goulding insisted that using violence to preempt the rising challenger was out of
the question. “We believe that these groups will learn that their policies are wrong when
they try to put them into practice and that they will move closer to us,” he explained,
continuing in his insistence that the proper means of competition was “telling the people
by every means that we have what our differences are with them and why their policies
are wrong.”726 This line of reasoning is of a piece with the OIRA’s medium imprinting:
Goulding, commanding the OIRA from the headquarters in Dublin, expressed confidence
that the organization’s mastery of a wide repertoire developed over that 1960s gave it a
sizable advantage over its younger rival.727 Yet, reality looked different on the streets of
723 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 205. 724 Thornton, "Getting It Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in the Early Stages of the British Army's Deployment to Northern Ireland (August 1969 to March 1972)," Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (2007): 8. 725 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 42,54. 726 Foley, Ireland in Rebellion (Pathfinder Press, 1972), 25. 727 The parallel between this reasoning and that of the leadership of medium-imprint organizations in Turkey is noteworthy. Consider, for example, the following remark from the personal correspondence of Necmettin Büyükkaya, a Kurdish partisan who was active in the T-KDP, then the DDKD/KİP and later, in subsequent offshoots of the former:
“To members, sympathizers, and party organs: our chief enemy is imperialism, the goverments that divide our country [Kurdistan], and the Kurdish feudal comprador bourgeoisie and other treacherous collaborators that make common cause with [these governments]. We are political friends with any patriotic individual, fraction, and organization that fights [these enemies], theoretically, ideologically, with literature, with democratic or with military means. And we will not fire a single
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Belfast, where physical competition made restricting competition to these non-violent
modes very difficult.
As 1970 came to a close, a renewed cycle of clashes broke out. In late autumn,
fights between rival IRA teams selling their respective papers once again heightened
tensions. In one instance, OIRA members dropped concrete blocks on the hands of a
teenage seller of Republican News, a PIRA paper.728 In November, as Goulding sat with
supporters in a bar in Dundalk, near the border, someone burst inside and fired shots into
their midst. Goulding was unhurt.729 The following month, the PIRA abducted several
OIRA members, involved in local paper selling, from their homes in Belfast’s Ardoyne,
threatening them at gunpoint to cease operating in the area;730 the OIRA responded by
conducting paper sales en masse, bringing out units of over 100 sellers to provocatively
sell the paper in front of PIRA haunts.731An exchange of physical confrontations and
punishment beatings accompanied this flexing of strength.732That every altercation on the
street or insult in the pub could touch off a sudden burst of fighting clearly worried the
leaders on both sides of the IRA split, as evidenced by the decision by both sides to
bullet at those remaining neutral, that is, those who are neither with us nor opposed to us […] we will only impress our views on them with ideological struggle. Against our enemy, we stand alongside them. When our internal ideological war shifts to the political arena, our stance towards these groups must, too, shift toward amity – educational brochures and communiqués should be distributed [to our members] to admonish them on these matters.”
As these instructions show, Büyükkaya was insistent that inter-factional competition should be confined only to ideological debate and other forms of non-violent competitive activity. Though fierce rivals on matters of ideology, by his reckoning, rebels are supposed to band together when it comes to fighting the state and other out-movement foes. Büyükkaya was no passivist, but he was also part of a political tradition that had richly developed techniques for competition besides violence. That, combined with concomitant proscriptive norms against fratricide, made it natural for Büyükkaya to assign different tactics for use against rivals compared to out-group enemies – much as Cathal Goulding sought to do. See, Büyükkaya, "Personal Notes 20 June 1980 " in Kalemimden Sayfalar, ed. Büyükkaya (Stockholm, Sweden: Vate, 2008), 483. 728 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 161. 729 Irish Examiner, 3 November 1970; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 162-63 730 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 162. 731 "Police Silent on ‘IRA Feud’ Report," Irish Press, 14 December 1970; The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 162. 732 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 162.
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establish a three-man mediation team comprised of “older republican neutrals”733 to ease
tensions following violent incidents.
And indeed, it seems that strategic restraint on both sides, and efforts by informal
mediators, were able to prevent flashes of violence from escalating in many cases.734
However, every incident of violence risked provoking a sudden reprisal, which could in
turn spur escalation – and when fighting intensified, pressure reared on both sides to
show that they were strong enough to hold their own.
4.1.4. The Cracked Cup and the Burning Embers
This dynamic accelerated in the early months of 1971. By this point, even the PIRA was
growing concerned over the continuous rioting in Belfast’s Ballymurphy.735 That led to
private liaisons between the British military and PIRA leaders in January 1971. As these
talks proceeded, the British began to allow the PIRA to display themselves more
prominently in the area. If the PIRA’s calming of the rioting served the British
prerogative of restoring the appearance of internal stability, it also underlined the PIRA’s
claims to community authority.736 Meanwhile, the PIRA quickened the tempo of its
campaign against the British. PIRA bombings of security and economic targets in Belfast
733Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 194. 734 Brian Hanley, July, 2018. 735 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 187; Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 149-51. 736 The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 149-51.
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opened a new chapter in the war.737 On 5 February 1971, after months of shooting
attacks, the PIRA killed its first British soldier.738
In the eyes of many, the Provisionals’ power and influence seemed to be on the
ascent.739 As Krause (2017), argues, rebel organizations that eclipse their rivals in power
face incentives to assert control over the strategic direction of the movement, and the
PIRA appears to have attempted just this in Belfast, demanding that the OIRA refrain
from conducting operations against the British on PIRA turf, thereby allowing the PIRA
to determine the time and manner of violence.740 Local OIRA units, however, had little
interest in abiding by PIRA directives, and as Krause points outs, spoiling and outbidding
violence were important instruments of competition, used by both sides.
These rivalries failed, however, to confine themselves to the external enemy.
Strategic fissures were fought out in the usual way: confrontations throughout late-April
over paper selling and patrolling in contested areas became “too numerous to mention,”
according to the OIRA.741In early March, events came to a boil. Gerry Adams claims that
during these days Officials were threatening Provisional-aligned families to leave their
homes in Falls area of Belfast.742Against this backdrop, the local OIRA unit launched an
attack on a British base in Ballymurphy.743
737 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 161. 738 Ibid., 175. 739 English, Armed Struggle (New York, NY: Oxford, 2003), 134-47; Smith, Fighting for Ireland?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), Chapter 4. 740 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 161. 741 "Provisional IRA Tell of Feud Burnings," Irish Press, 18 March 1971. 742 Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 147. 743 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 195.
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The PIRA responded to the OIRA’s defiance by abducting a local OIRA member
and interrogating him for information on the location of weapons. During the
interrogation, they held the victim down and shot him in the neck, paralyzing him.744 The
OIRA continued to attack British soldiers, contravening the PIRA’s warnings, and so the
PIRA abducted and pistol-whipped the OIRA Ballymurphy commander on Friday 5
March 1971.745 As Sawyer (2010) remarks, these efforts at sending a costly signal “failed
to have the intended deterrent effect and instead sparked a spiral of increasing
violence.”746 The OIRA – a medium imprint organization – based its political standing, in
part, on its reputation for violence. It is thus hardly surprising that the OIRA retaliated
with the shooting of a Ballymurphy PIRA member in the arms and legs.747 The PIRA
then kidnapped two young members of the OIRA and beat them.748 The OIRA claimed
that the PIRA also attempted to take three OIRA members hostage, but they managed to
escape.749
Though some of these acts of violence were certainly non-strategic, executed on-
the-fly before time could be taken for discussion and weighing of options, other attacks
were seemingly planned and highly premeditated: the logic of rising violence was
imposing immediate strategic exigencies that ran at cross-purposes with both factions’
744 "Provisional IRA Tell of Feud Burnings," Irish Press, 18 March 1971; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 163. 745 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 195. 746 Sawyer, "Competition in the Market for Political Violence: Northern Irish Republicanism, 1969–1998 " (Doctoral Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2010), 127. 747 "Provisional IRA Tell of Feud Burnings," Irish Press, 18 March 1971; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 163. 748 See previous cite. 749 "Provisional IRA Tell of Feud Burnings," Irish Press, 18 March 1971.
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prevailing interest in avoiding a major collision. Together, the concatenating chain of
non-strategic and strategic acts of violence was running out of control.
According to the OIRA, on Monday, the PIRA continued its attacks with the
kidnapping of a group of its youth wing in the Clonard area, and the attempted killing of
a youth wing member in the Falls.750 Meanwhile, the PIRA received news that the OIRA
had abducted and beaten one of its youth members.751 When the PIRA sent two members
to ‘investigate’ the beating, the OIRA kidnapped the pair.752Brendan Hughes, then of
PIRA’s D Company, remembers spotting the OIRA dragging one of the abducted PIRA
members into the Cracked Cup,753a local drinking establishment. Seeing his imperiled
comrade, Brendan Hughes rushed over to Charlie Hughes, his cousin and the local PIRA
officer in charge, to ask him how they should respond. Hearing the news, Charlie Hughes
ordered his unit to mobilize for action.
Per his orders, Brendan Hughes pulled a set of rifles, pistols and grenades from a
weapons cache, while his cousin raced to other areas of Belfast to gather additional PIRA
units. By the time preparations were complete, perhaps about half-an-hour later, the
captured PIRA man had been released, after receiving a severe beating.754 According to
Brendan Hughes, his cousin then gave the order to attack and burn down the two nearby
bars where Officials were located, the Burning Embers and the Cracked Cup. Brendan
Hughes and his unit first entered the Burning Embers, where they encountered a group of
750 Ibid. 751 Ibid. 752 Ibid.; Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 216; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 163. 753 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 64. 754 Ibid.
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Officials and other local personalities. Brendan Hughes ordered the drinkers to disperse,
declaring that his team was about to burn down the bar, but the drinkers were defiant. “So
I went down and told Charlie that they wouldn’t move,” recalls Brendan Hughes: “We
had cans of petrol and Charlie gave the order ‘burn it.’ So the petrol was laid and the
match put to it.”755 Only then did the drinkers leave the bar.
The Cracked Cup was the next stop for the PIRA attackers. Brendan Hughes led
his unit as another PIRA group made an approach on the bar from another direction.756 At
that point, the PIRA crossed paths with an OIRA group that had mustered in response to
the PIRA attack.757 The two sides clashed in the street, for what Brendan Hughes recalls
seemed about 20-25 minutes, with two PIRA men falling wounded in the
fighting.758Meanwhile, Belfast PIRA leader, Billy McKee, dispatched units across the
city to capture and hold at gunpoint as many OIRA members as they could lay their
hands on.759 In an interview with Bishop and Mallie, Paddy Kennedy, a local politician,
claimed that McKee was threatening to summarily execute each and every OIRA member
that the PIRA had apprehended, “and he was certainly capable of doing it.” 760 Kennedy
and Jim Sullivan spent the night driving from house to house imploring the PIRA captors
to refrain from executing their hostages, but the danger of a massacre, to Kennedy,
seemed very real: “There were a lot of guns around and the Provos were getting very
755 Ibid., 64. 756 Ibid. 757 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 163. 758 "IRA Warfare as Milkman Shot in Daylight," Irish Independent, 10 March 1971; Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 64. 759 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 195; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 162; Sawyer, "Competition in the Market for Political Violence: Northern Irish Republicanism, 1969–1998 " (Doctoral Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2010), 127. 760 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 163.
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emotional about it all, asking ‘Why should these fuckers be released.’”761 At the same
time, according to Bishop and Mallie, Billy McMillen authorized hits on eleven top PIRA
leaders in the city, although the hits were not carried out.762Then, with the intervention of
local mediators, McKee and McMillen met and agreed to call off the fighting.763 News of
the ceasefire reached Brendan Hughes as he continued to fight with the OIRA on Leeson
Street, after the abortive effort to destroy the Cracked Cup.764 Brendan Hughes led his
fighters back to their safe houses, to await further instructions.765
In the early hours of the morning, a group of the leading PIRA figures in the city -
- including Billy McKee, Proinsias Mac Airt (Frank Card), Charlie Hughes and others –
left a house in which meetings had taken place with the local OIRA leadership to broker a
truce. Worried that danger had not fully abated, Charlie Hughes ran out ahead of the
group to give them cover from underneath a lamppost. Gunfire rang out, killing him. The
PIRA leaders fired into the darkness, but whoever shot Charlie Hughes was gone.766
“There was speculation going round at the time that it was Joe McCann, that it was
Hatchet Kerr,” recalls Brendan Hughes, “but to this day I really don’t know who shot
him.”767 At once, the two sides reconvened to prevent the killing from erupting into a
disastrous war.768 Brendan Hughes remembers the anger and emotion of the moment:
761 Ibid. 762 Ibid. 763 Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 147; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 162. 764 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 64. 765 Ibid. 766 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 216; Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 163. 767 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 65. 768 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 217.
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“obviously we were busting to go to town on these people, but we were ordered not to,”
he recalls.769
Sitting down, once again, the PIRA and OIRA leadership agreed to keep the
ceasefire in place. The sides seemed to have averted the danger of a worsening war, until
hours later, when a group of OIRA men, apparently not aware of the truce, sighted Tom
Cahill – Joe Cahill’s brother – as he made his rounds as a milkman. They shot him where
he stood, badly wounding him,770and then disappeared “across open country past playing
children.”771Immediately, the OIRA leadership offered an apology for this, its second
post-truce shooting, professing that the assailants were unaware of the truce orders. 772
According to Joe Cahill, the PIRA leadership convened after the attack to decide
how to respond. McKee asked Joe Cahill to recuse himself from the discussion, since it
was his brother who was shot. After debating the matter, the staff was split down the
middle over whether the strike back, so Cahill was called in to cast the deciding vote,
according to his own account. Cahill claims that while “I said that obviously I was
concerned about the attack on my brother,” strategic imperatives were more important:
“what was happening in the city was a diversion from our overall purpose,” he says he
explained to those present: “We should concentrate on the task we were established to
carry out and, to that end, we should try to end the feud without any further loss of
769 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 64. 770 "IRA Warfare as Milkman Shot in Daylight," Irish Independent, 10 March 1971; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 163. 771 "Another Man Is Shot in Belfast as I.R.A. Feuding Intensifies," New York Times 10 March 1971. 772 "Provisional IRA Tell of Feud Burnings," Irish Press, 18 March 1971; The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009).
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life.”773 This line of reasoning was agreed upon, says Cahill, and the PIRA decided not to
hit back.
Indeed, the merits of cooperation, or even mere co-existence, instead of further
bloodshed were easy to appreciate. The March issue of the OIRA’s United Irishman
featured a public call by Official Sinn Fein President, Tomás Mac Giolla, for Republican
unity. While he did not call for the two sides to reintegrate, he stressed that they must
focus their efforts on cooperation.774More locally, however, the violence was leaving a
lasting mark on the perceptions of leading figures on both sides.
As for the OIRA, Hanley and Millar discern in their interviews with OIRA
members a conflicted reaction to the killing of Charlie Hughes. On the one hand, there
are admissions that the bloodshed was senseless, but at the same time, some voices
expressed a sense of vindication: despite the OIRA’s ideology and reputation, it was no
less able to defend itself and its community than the PIRA. The PIRA was “so naïve, to
think you can just walk in and fire bullets at somebody and then they’ll run away crying,”
responded one OIRA interviewee, “it just doesn’t happen.”775 But this was not the salient
lesson that the local PIRA leadership appears to have taken from this and similar
incidents. “If any of my men are hit, I’ll hit back,” Billy McKee, the then-PIRA leader is
said to have once remarked.776 All told, it seems that both sides were committed to the
position that appearing to come off the loser in a violent exchange was unacceptable,
complicating the simple equation that weighed against fratricide. 773 Anderson and Cahill, Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (Dublin, Ireland: The O'Brien Press, 2012), 217. 774 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 144. 775 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 163. 776 This quote comes from a PIRA member interviewed by Ed Moloney Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2007), 167.
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4.1.5. Competition and containing the feud
The driving political and military events of the next year ensured that fierce competition
among Republicans would continue. In August 1971, the British government
reintroduced the policy of internment, which empowered security forces to arrest and
hold individuals on suspicion of IRA involvement without the conventional constraints of
due process. Whatever its net result, it is clear that this policy provided the Republican
movement with a fresh raft of new grievances for amassing support.777 And the continual
acts of disorderly violent repression that occurred during security force operations and
amid incidents of inter-communal strife kept alive the practical justifications for IRA
presence in Belfast and elsewhere.778
The familiar patterns of spoiling and outbidding continued as well. Goulding
continuing to decry the PIRA for leading the Republican movement toward disaster,779
while the PIRA taunted the Officials for their purported lack of commitment.780
Heightening these pressures, the niche for rudimentary violence continued to
disproportionately reward the PIRA. “In many Catholic areas in Northern Ireland the
Provisionals are revered as heroes and martyrs,” wrote an international journalist in May
777 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 223; Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 36; McGuire, To Take Arms: My Year in the Provisional IRA (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1973), 19-20. 778 The former PIRA leader, Seán Mac Stiofáin, later commented on the connection between galvanizing events and waves of recruits: “A lot of people came into the Movement in ’71-’72 as a reaction to certain events – you had the pogroms of ’69, you had the attacks on East Belfast and North Belfast in, say, June 1970, you had various acts of British repression, like the killing of civilians in that area [unclear], and then you had Bloody Sunday. You had internment, torture, Bloody Sunday, right? And always, every time these things happened, there would be a wave of recruits into the IRA.” White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 141. Also see Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 152. 779 Sweetman, On Our Knees (London, UK: Pan Books, 1972), 145. 780 In one anecdotal instance, on hearing the news that the OIRA had ended their offensive in May 1972, a PIRA leader in Derry reportedly quipped derisively, “When did they ever start?” See Van Voris, "The Provisional IRA and the Limits of Terrorism," The Massachusetts Review 16, no. 3 (1975): 420.
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1972, “because they alone stood up to the British Army when paratroopers went on the
rampage” (a reference to Bloody Sunday when British soldiers took deadly aim at
protestors and rioters).781
These conflicts had, by this point, insinuated themselves into the local politics and
culture of Republican Belfast, made manifest in the personal insults, violent tiffs, and
daily tensions that cemented the PIRA-OIRA divide. By the spring of 1972, “The IRA
feud had grown very bitter,” recalls J. Bowyer Bell. According to Bell, the daily invective
aimed at rival IRA members now evinced a bitterness once reserved for the British and
Unionist establishment.782It would, of course, be a mistake to infer that these negative
portrayals capture the sentiments of every Belfast Republican. Many friendships and
family bonds weathered the split, even in Belfast.783 But everyday experiences and local
narratives increasingly provided grounds for demonizing rivals.
All of this occurred against a backdrop of rising violence within the Catholic
community. Punishment beatings and kneecappings for ‘criminal’ behavior; executions
of suspected informers; and the public humiliation of women accused of consorting with
British soldiers had become common practice by this time.784 In May 1972, the British
government noted in its internal correspondence that violent interactions within the
Catholic community seemed have taken an upward turn. The government noted that
roughly half of the shooting incidents recorded by the military in recent times were
directed at “other Catholics.” As the British officials interpreted it, while “there was no 781 Denis Donoghue, "Ireland: The View from Dublin," Atlantic Monthly1972. 782 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 321. 783 In his autobiography, Gerry Adam discusses the effect of the feuds on his own family. See Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 224. 784 For ethnographical observations, see Allen Feldman, "Political Terror and the Technologies of Memory: Excuse, Sacrifice, Commodification, and Actuarial Moralities," Radical History Review 85, no. 1 (2003).
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open warfare” between the PIRA and OIRA at this time, there was a large amount of
intra-Catholic violence of opaque motivation.785
The IRA leadership took notice of the danger. In May 1972, Goulding held
meetings with the leaders of the OIRA youth wing, the Na Fianna Éireann, urging them
to exercise greater restraint in their dealings with the PIRA. Tempting as it was to hit a
troublesome local rival, Goulding cautioned that these fights were achieving nothing for
the struggle.786 These appeals to prudence, however, did little to lighten the strategic
pressures to demonstrate superiority at rudimentary violence. Nor would they do away
with both IRAs’ tactical reliance on routines of rudimentary violence – not to mention the
local cultural constructions associated with specialization in these practices.
In mid-June 1972, an incident of this sort led to another fatality. According to the
commonly recounted version of events, a veteran IRA man, Joe Lynskey, was involved in
an affair with the wife of a comrade. Serving as Belfast Brigade’s Intelligence Officer,
Lynskey decided to use his position for personal advantage, ordering a hit on the husband
of the women with whom he was having the affair.787 In the confusion, it was thought
that the OIRA had carried out the attack. Brendan Hughes immediately gathered together
his team and rushed, again, to the Cracked Cup. Bursting into the bar, Hughes fired
785 DEFE 11/789: Record of a meeting of the Northern Ireland Policy Group, Ministry of Defence, 1 May 1972. Cited in Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 520. 786 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 182. 787 Jim Cusack, "Disappeared IRA Victim and Provo ‘Love Triangle," Independent, 7 December 2014.; Keefe, Patrick Radden. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. New York, NY: Doubleday, 2019, 139.
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several shots into the air and ‘arrested’ the known OIRA men present, eight or nine in
total, he recalls.788
One of the drinkers, Desmond Mackin, was not a member of the OIRA, and had
family on both sides of the split.789 During the commotion, Mackin found himself in an
altercation with the PIRA invaders, who shot him in the leg. He quickly bled to death.790
The PIRA members, according to Hughes, then dragged the arrested OIRA members to a
nearby safe house and threatened to execute them if the OIRA refused to turn over the
their comrade’s killer (who they only later discovered was Lynskey, one of their own).
Dozens of local women poured from their homes and surrounded the safe house,
recalls Brendan Hughes, loudly demanding that the PIRA spare the lives of the captured
OIRA men. This local protest forced their release, “otherwise the attention that it was
bringing could have brought the Brits in,” says Hughes. 791And indeed, security forces
made several arrests following the incident.792Soon afterward, it was revealed that it was
not the OIRA, but Joe Lynskey, who was responsible for the attack. Hughes claims the
PIRA court martialed and executed Lynskey over the incident.793 The attack on the
Cracked Cup touched off another string of low-level clashes between the OIRA and
788 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 116. 789 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 182. 790 Cusack, "Disappeared IRA Victim and Provo ‘Love Triangle," Independent, 7 December 2014; Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 116. 791 Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 116. 792 Cusack, "Disappeared IRA Victim and Provo ‘Love Triangle," Independent, 7 December 2014. 793 Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2010), 114.
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PIRA. “You couldn’t let anything go,” recalled the member of the OIRA interviewed by
Hanley and Millar.794
Another confrontation erupted shortly afterwards, kicking off while the PIRA was
on a truce with the British military. While talks with the British proceeded, the PIRA
burnished its authority at home, setting up road blocks across the Catholic neighborhoods
-- an established routine that both IRAs had honed to display their ability to protect local
residents from Loyalist attackers. At one of these roadblocks, in Ballymurphy, the PIRA
opened fire and mistakenly killed a civilian.795 The OIRA publicly condemned the PIRA
for the act, prompting the local PIRA commander, Jim Bryson, to ‘arrest’ a prominent
local OIRA member, detaining him in a PIRA house.
Quickly, the OIRA mustered and descended upon the house, demanding the
release of their comrade. A tense standoff materialized, in which minor scuffling posed a
clear danger of sparking open battle.796 At around the same time, a similar standoff
occurred in Derry, when a PIRA member took a weapon from an OIRA cache. Both sides
mobilized for a confrontation, but once again, they managed to avoid a deadly turn.797But
with each incident, the stock of grievances between the sides mounted. For example, after
the attack on the Cracked Cup, allegations arose that the OIRA had intentionally
prevented medical aid from reaching Desmond Mackin.798 It is not difficult to see how
the local narrations of these events might have, over time, made it easier to frame
794 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 182. 795 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 20. 796 Ibid. 797 Ibid. 798 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 182.
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Republican rivals as malign and aggressive – recasting their image from one of well-
meaning, if wrongheaded, comrades to one of enmity and outrage.
4.1.6. The British military closes in
But no less than in the past, the urge for a violent reckoning had to be weighed against
the dangers of intra-rebel war. And if anything, these dangers only increased after
summer 1972. After negotiations between the British and PIRA broke down in early July
of that year, the PIRA decided to execute its biggest bombing operation yet. The PIRA
laid twenty-two bombs across Belfast on 21 July, killing nine people.799Public outrage
over the attack provided a political window for the British military to launch a massive
and heavy-handed operation on the ‘no-go’ areas in Belfast and Derry.800A surge of
soldiers into the region brought total troop levels to 21,000 -- the highest in any British
theater since the Suez Crisis of 1956.801
British soldiers inundated Republican areas of Belfast and Derry. While the
operation did not bring about the hoped for pitched battle with the IRA (which melted
away into the population), the operation did manage to establish a formidable state
presence across many previously lightly policed areas. Ballymurphy historian de Baroid
believes that Motorman was instrumental for enhancing British low-level intelligence
gathering, with the state building up intelligence files on roughly 500,000 people – a full
third of the entire population of Northern Ireland (a figure of roughly equal size to the
799 Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 63. 800 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 340; Bennett, "From Direct Rule to Motorman: Adjusting British Military Strategy for Northern Ireland in 1972," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33, no. 6 (2010): 513; Sanders and Wood, Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 62. 801 Times of Troubles Britain's War in Northern Ireland (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 64.
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entire Catholic population at the time).802 To solidify these gains, the military established
permanent checkpoints across the two cities, 803 as well as ever-shifting hidden
observations posts, where small units of British soldiers kept watch over the intersections,
streets, and alleyways.804 This unprecedented military presence forced the IRA to devise
ingenious methods of moving undetected through their neighborhoods.805
The concomitant increase in danger associated with infighting did not, however,
put an end to the practice. In July 1972, a man name Joseph Rosato was shot and
killed.806 Since his son was an OIRA member, it was supposed that the PIRA might have
been behind the shooting.807 In early August, the British captured a leading PIRA
member, Martin Meehan. Soon afterward,808 the OIRA accused the PIRA of raiding the
homes of three OIRA members.809 It was claimed that the PIRA attackers burst into the
homes to accuse the OIRA of responsibility for Meehan’s capture.810The PIRA soon
denied that it had made any such accusation, blaming the entire episode on “British black
propaganda” that was “designed to worsen friction” between the two IRAs.811 As this
episode suggests, it was common wisdom that infighting served the interests of the
802 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 139. 803 Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015), 68. 804 Ed Moloney and James Kinchin-White, "The Bryson Incident: A Misbelief Corrected, an Insight into Early IRA Cells," The Broken Bow2015. 805 For an ethnographer’s observations of these techniques, see Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 41-45. 806 "I.R.A. Perverting Noble Virtue of Patriotism – Priest," Irish Independent, 26 July 1972. 807 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 183. 808 "IRA in Feud over Meehan," Irish Press, 11 August 1972. 809 Ibid. 810 Irish Examiner, 12 August 1972. 811 Irish Press, 16 August 1972.
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enemy, and the sides strove to contain their violent fissures. But the dynamics that had
been fueling violent escalation did not abate.
4.1.7. Strategy vs. organizational routines
Despite the obvious dangers posed by the post-Motorman environment, the IRAs
continued to lurch toward ever more destructive violent infighting. The basic drivers
were the same: though the dangers of intra-rebel war were apparent, both IRAs continued
to see a utility in small applications of violence, if applied carefully and only when
strategically prudent. The problem was that since both dyads were imprinted by
disorderly violent repression, small incidents of violence – whether strategically
motivated or not – could always lead to unpredictable escalations. Meanwhile, non-
strategic forms violence became a constant irritant on relations, further adding to the
difficulty of maintaining a low-violence equilibrium. Feeding these pressures, a local
sub-culture that valorized rudimentary violence – Belfast’s own version of the specialist
in rudimentary violence – had become clearly discernable by the mid-1970s.
To make matters worse, a surfeit of guns in Belfast upped the stakes in contests
between these specialists in rudimentary violence. Both IRAs had procedures for keeping
access to guns restricted, but with the quickening pace of operations, these restrictions
began to loosen. “You would see people running around with guns in the early 1970s,”
recalled a former Republican interviewed by Thomas Daniel Leahy. Attacks, during these
years, were often opportunistic and extemporaneous. “I remember one time during a riot
situation coming home from school and there was no bus,” recalls Leahy’s interviewee:
“I went on down the Falls Road, and I saw this guy ... He just walked up to this street
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corner and started shooting at a British Army foot patrol and then walked away.”812
Those with the nerve to carry out these feats won acclaim among comrades. As a result, a
sub-culture emerged in which armed violence was a path to local status.
As a PIRA officer that V.H. Van Voris interviewed in the early 1970s explained,
“the republican movement was very strict” prior to the onset of the Troubles. Character
references and background investigations screened those with criminal background or
otherwise undesirable traits: “But after '69 people didn't give a damn as long as you were
prepared to man a barricade, throw a stone, learn how to shoot a rifle.”813
The result was that personal conflicts and juvenile contests for popularity and
local prestige now bore the constant prospect of triggering deadly gunfights. In Belfast’s
working class neighborhoods, violent prowess, expressed in the notion of the ‘hard man,’
had bestowed prestige long before the Troubles had begun. Bare-knuckle fighting to
settle disputes or collect debts had even lifted some to positions of local renown.814
Kevin Myers, an Irish correspondent living in Belfast during the 1970s, recalls a
conversation with one of Belfast’s most notorious ‘hard men,’ Silver McKee, who was
then in his sixties. After regaling Myers with stories of his fights over the decades, he
confessed that his era had ended, a realization that had first dawned on him when a
teenager pulled a gun on him instead of raising his fists. Allowing guns to fall into the
hands of large numbers of lightly supervised youths is naturally a risky business. But
812 Leahy, "Informers, Agents, the IRA and British Counter-Insurgency Strategy During the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1969 to 1998" (Doctoral Dissertation, King's College, London, 2015), 44. 813 Van Voris, "The Provisional IRA and the Limits of Terrorism," The Massachusetts Review 16, no. 3 (1975): 415. 814 Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 51-52.
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these specialists in rudimentary violence were important for carrying out the routines that
both IRAs used to protect their community.
Physicality and violence, thus, turned into a central idiom of political expression.
During the Milltown Easter commemorations of April 1973, the leadership was unable to
suppress jeering as the OIRA procession entered the cemetery and the PIRA departed.815
Holding down mass violence at Milltown was growing more difficult, despite the public
embarrassment it caused to the entire movement.
De Baroid, who was then operating a community center in Belfast, records that in
this atmosphere altercations between armed OIRA and PIRA youths had become a
significant problem. “Asking teenagers to go home and remove the pistol from their belt
was not uncommon,” de Baroid recalls.816 He suggests that with operation Motorman
suppressing opportunities to riot, youths began to turn their violent energies on each
other. 817 In one outbreak, groups from both sides arrived at the center armed with iron
bars, and began to battle one another. The local community workers were helpless to stop
them. Later that night, he remembers “running gunfights” that “blew up between the two
groups.”818 Local youth hangouts, such as discos, were another hotspot for such
confrontations. De Baroid recalls, for example, an incident in which altercations led to
the sides facing off, armed with Armalites and Thompsons.819
The British military took interested notice of this development. In 1973, the Royal
Green Jackets, a regiment deployed to Belfast, recorded in its internal journal that 815 "O’Connell Shows up in Belfast," Irish Independent, 23 April 1973. 816 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 103. 817 Ibid., 159. 818 Ibid., 103. 819 Ibid., 159.
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‘Security-Forces-Not-Involved’ shootings were rising by the week during the spring and
summer of 1973. This naturally piqued the “interested attentions” of the British troops in
the area, who found that violence aided them in weapons finds, and made it easier for
them to assert “their presence without receiving the normal acrimony associated with the
practice of ‘dominating’ the area.”820
4.1.8. Fighting in the vicinity of the British military
As tensions rose, Jim Bryson -- a PIRA leader notorious for his toughness821-- travelled
to Ballymurphy in late-August 1973 with the intention of bringing the local OIRA to
heel. Bryson pistol-whipped several of the Officials that the PIRA held responsible for
making trouble in the area.822 According to a version of events given by the British
military: “In one celebrated incident he lined several of them up at gunpoint against a
wall, inside a drinking club, and then proceeded to spray the roof with an Armalite on
automatic fire.”823 However embellished the British military’s version of events may be,
it is clear that Bryson’s attempt at disciplining the local Officials failed: the OIRA unit in
the area, instead of backing down, passed a death sentence on Bryson, 824 tasking one of
their members with finding and killing him. 825 News soon reached Bryson that the OIRA
820 R.G.K. Williamson, "The Bryson Incident," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle (1973): 121. 821 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 192; O'Doherty, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life (London, UK Faber & Faber, 2017), 79. 822 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 171. 823 Williamson, "The Bryson Incident," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle (1973): 121. 824 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 192. 825 Williamson, "The Bryson Incident," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle (1973).
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was intent on killing him, 826but instead of cutting his losses and slipping out of the area,
Bryson gathered his team and went looking for a confrontation.
As de Baroid recalls, on 31 August, news had spread through the area that a
confrontation was about to take place. “There wasn’t a child to be seen in the lower end
of Ballymurphy estate,” de Baroid recalls, “Officials and Provisionals were openly
carrying weapons.”827 Bryson took along with him three PIRA men – James O’Rawe,
Patrick Mulvenna, and Frank Duffy – piling them in a car, and driving openly through the
area, daring the OIRA to approach them. With this act, the PIRA was executing a routine
of rudimentary violence, first used against the British, which Brendan Hughes calls “a
float,” wherein rebels would cruise the neighborhood in a car and take aim at targets of
opportunity upon sighting them.828
According to de Baroid’s account, the Bryson ‘float’ came across a known local
Official, whom they called over and instructed to carry a message to the OIRA leaders
advising them to reconsider their challenge to the PIRA. Meanwhile, the man tasked with
killing Bryson (according to Ed Moloney and James Kinchin-White’s account, which
relies heavily on the RGJ version of events) developed cold feet, and after stalking the
area for a time, went home.829
Mustering units of IRA fighters like this was riskier than ever, because as the IRA
well understood, the entire area was dotted with British Army observation posts, where
small teams of soldiers kept a constant watch over the area, awaiting an opportunity for
826 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 171. 827 Ibid. 828 Peter Taylor, "Behind the Mask: The IRA and Sinn Fein ". 829 Moloney and Kinchin-White, "The Bryson Incident: A Misbelief Corrected, an Insight into Early IRA Cells," The Broken Bow 2015.
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IRA targets to appear.830 And sure enough, Bryson’s car soon came into view of a British
post that was hidden in the roof space of one of the houses. 831 The small British unit
opened fire on the car. In the ensuing firefight, Bryson was fatally wounded, Mulvenna
was shot dead, and O’Rawe was wounded and captured.832
In the confusion, word spread that the Officials were behind the killing of Bryson
and Mulvenna – the Officials even mistakenly claimed the attack that evening.833 Fights
broke out between the respective sides in the Crumlin Road Prison, in north Belfast,834
and the killing set off a chain of attacks in the area.835 De Baroid remembers, for instance,
Officials firing at two unarmed women, with ties to the PIRA, as they walked through the
neighborhood.836 According to the RGJ, this was only one of many such incidents that
occurred over the next two weeks.837 Violence died down as the top leadership on both
sides met in Belfast and Dublin to defuse the conflict.838
The episode resulted in a severe blow to the PIRA in the area. Bryson had a
reputation as one of the area’s most accomplished snipers, and held an overall reputation
as a fearsome operator. “There was a great deal of excitement, dare I say it, pleasure,”
upon hearing the news of Bryson’s death, remembered one RGJ soldier, who added that 830 Brian A Jackson, "Counterinsurgency Intelligence in a" Long War" British Experience in Northern Ireland," Military Review 87, no. 1 (2007). 831 Moloney and Kinchin-White, "The Bryson Incident: A Misbelief Corrected, an Insight into Early IRA Cells," The Broken Bow2015. 832 Williamson, "The Bryson Incident," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle (1973): 123. 833 O'Doherty, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life (London, UK Faber & Faber, 2017), 124. 834 "Four Hurt as IRA Men Clash in Belfast Prison," Irish Examiner, 4 September 1973. 835 Moloney and Kinchin-White, "The Bryson Incident: A Misbelief Corrected, an Insight into Early IRA Cells," The Broken Bow 2015. 836 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 171. 837 Williamson, "The Bryson Incident," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle (1973): 124. 838 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 172; Moloney and Kinchin-White, "The Bryson Incident: A Misbelief Corrected, an Insight into Early IRA Cells," The Broken Bow 2015.
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the local unit believed Bryson to be responsible for some of the most effective sniper
attacks in the area.839 Mulvenna was the head of the Ballymurphy Active Service Unit,
according to Ed Moloney and James Kinchin-White.840 It is also possible that this episode
incentivized the rebels to turn to British intelligence as a proxy to hit at one another.
According to the RGJ, immediately after the attack, someone in the PIRA passed them a
tip on the whereabouts of a weapons cache, and when British soldiers raided the house,
they chanced upon the OIRA member they believed had been assigned to kill Bryson.841
4.1.9. Dangerous precedents, recurring patterns
After Bryson’s death, the two IRAs cooled the violence for a time, perhaps sobered by
the high cost of the episode. But the fundamental hazards of the relationship had been
established. As this section has detailed, competitive pressures and non-strategic
interactions combined to produce episodic spirals of violence. The leaders on both sides
were anxious of a worsening turn, but they had limited freedom to alter the fundamentals
of this dynamic.
Chapter 5 will return to Northern Ireland, tracing how these punctuated bursts of
violence eventually culminated in a major war. But first, this chapter turns to a parallel
investigation of violent competition in Turkey’s Kurdish movement during the 1970s,
focused mostly on the violent rise of the PKK.
839 Ken Wharton, Bloody Belfast: An Oral History of the British Army's War against the IRA (Gloucestershire, UK: Spellmount, 2010), 92. 840 Moloney and Kinchin-White, "The Bryson Incident: A Misbelief Corrected, an Insight into Early IRA Cells," The Broken Bow2015. 841 Williamson, "The Bryson Incident," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle (1973): 124.
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4.2. Revolutionary fratricide: the PKK’s early conflicts with Kurdish rivals
Important causal mechanisms involved in the road to war in eastern Turkey are familiar
from the above study of Northern Ireland. At the outset, however, the cases diverge in a
noteworthy regard: the TKDP/KUK and PKK did not face each other as opponents
immediately upon their emergence. Unlike the IRAs, which interacted competitively
from the first moments of their split, the encounter of the TKDP/KUK with the PKK
came after both sides had already competed with other Kurdish and leftist factions for an
extended period.
Thus, the mechanisms witnessed in the Northern Ireland case were, in Turkey, set
in motion by each side’s violent competition with other rivals. Yet, the results were
substantially similar: these competitive activities shaped the violent posture of each side,
habituating each to the use of rudimentary violence against in-movement rivals and
further hardening their conviction that it was vital to stand firm in the face of violent
attacks. And as this section will detail, through its violent expansion, the PKK earned a
reputation for fratricidal tendencies that preceded it when it finally did collide with the
TKDP/KUK.
4.2.1. The PKK’s early rivals: Turkey’s left
As discussed in Chapter 3, the PKK fully embraced rudimentary violence as a mainstay
organizational routine. The PKK prided itself for being an organization that “applied
what it said in practice, that held up its words,”842 a distinction that the PKK earned for
itself mostly through the use of rudimentary violence. In its early years, the PKK outbid
842 Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistan’da Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 108-09.
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its competitors in the use of transgressive styles of protest. According to Turkish
prosecutors, early PKK cadres tore down Turkish flags at local schools in villages and
dealt punishment beatings to petty criminals843-- surpassing their rivals in their will and
ability to use violence as a political tool. And of course, the PKK pushed to the front in
battles with rightists, striking them down with crude weapons and pistols.
This trademark high imprint repertoire went into action when the PKK found
itself in competition with rivals from the left and the Kurdish movement. The PKK
(initially known as the Apocus) first encountered these rivals during its formative years in
Ankara, and then later when it began to ‘return’ to the towns and cities of eastern Turkey.
Immediately facing rivals in the left as they entered these arenas, the Apocus
began to advertise themselves using the familiar physical scripts of competition. Perhaps
their most visible early debut came in May 1976, after a leftist in Ankara, Fevzi
Aslansoy, was killed by rightwing militants. The Apocus claimed Aslansoy as their own,
while a leftist faction, Halkın Kurtuluş (HK), insisted that he had been loyal to them.
Both sides declared that they alone were entitled to carry his body to its final resting
place in Suruç, in the province of Urfa near the Syrian border.
When the rival HK arrived in Suruç, the Apocus set upon them, haranguing the
HK cadres and forcing them to take down their signs and placards, which bore slogans
that the Apocus found ideologically repugnant.844 Amid the commotion, the police
swooped in and arrested some of the militants.845 Öcalan referred to it subsequently as a
843 For an enumeration of such accusations against the PKK, see Apocular (PKK) Suruç Grubu: İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı 1980/1537, 51-65 (1981). 844 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 306-07. 845 Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 109.
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“serious political display”846 and Yüce marks it as the first “mass action, march and
demonstration” that the Apocus carried out in the Kurdish region of Turkey.847 Hence,
from their very first public displays in eastern Turkey, the PKK were making a name for
themselves with physical politics. And they would only accelerate this style of
competition as they grew in strength.
Cemil Bayık, whose rise through the ranks of the PKK began in the 1970s, later
remarked that, these displays aside, the PKK at that time did not intend to use armed
force against leftist rivals.848 While accepting this assertion at face value is obviously
problematic, it is notable that the PKK did not launch a systematic armed onslaught
against its rivals at the outset. Instead, as will become clearer below, its wars with rivals
from the left and the Kurdish movement followed trajectories similar to those witnessed
in Belfast. And as the pressures of the Turkish security machine bore down on them,
Öcalan ordered local PKK units to avoid violence against rivals, not least because it was
causing the PKK to become dangerously conspicuous to security forces.849 Yet, for
reasons similar to those witnessed in Northern Ireland, in places where the PKK faced
rivals with similar organizational imprints, containing these conflicts was difficult.
Similar altercations followed the Suruç display, with the Apocus’ rivals in the left
accusing them of using public debates as pretense for attacking them.850Before long, such
competition turned deadly, mirroring the escalation in physical competition that was
846 Ibid. 847 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 305. 848 Bayık, "Hı̇lvan-Sı̇verek Pratı̇ği ve Çıkarılması Gereken Dersler," (undated). 849 Özcan, PKK (Kürdistan İşçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yöntemi (Ankara, Turkey: ASAM, Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yayınları, 1999), 45-46; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 360. 850 "Apocu Çeteyi Teşhir ve Tecrit Edelim," Devrimci Halkın Birliği no. 67 (December 1979).
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occurring within the leftist movement elsewhere in Turkey.851 On 8 March 1977, HK
killed Aydın Gül, an Apocu in Dersim/Tunceli. He was the first Apocu casualty in its
wars with the left, according to the PKK.852This set off a conflict with HK that the PKK
records as costing them over the next three years 7-10 of their members853 as the fighting
spread to Diyarbakır, Elâzığ, and Tunceli/Dersim, Kars, and Antep.854
4.2.2. The death of Haki Karer and the war with Sterka Sor
Two months after HK killed Gül, the PKK suffered its first fatality at the hands of a pro-
Kurdish faction. The backdrop of this escalation was a rise in left vs. right violence
across the country during the spring of 1977. Mass actions were increasing in tempo, and
so too was rightist violence. Its most notorious example was the Mayday violence in
Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which claimed more than 30 lives.855 That month, Öcalan
made his first organized tour of the Kurdish regions of Turkey, advertising the new group
to sympathetic students and other potential cadres.856
In mid-May, just as Öcalan was completing his tour of the region, one of his top
cadres, Haki Karer, met in Antep with a local revolutionary,857 Alaattin Kaplan (Kapan),
from a small rival organization, the Sterka Sor (Beş Parçacı), to face off in a political
851 For PKK members’ first-hand accounts of these clashes, see Akkaya, "Ateşten Tarih," (Dusseldorf and Brussels 2005). 852 Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 950; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 389. 853 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 46; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 303. 854 Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 952-53. 855Gunter, "Political Instability in Turkey During the 1970s," Journal of Conflict Studies 9, no. 1 (1989): 67.
856 Gül, "40. Yılında Lice’den Rakka’ya PKK’nin Ateşten Tarihi," Firat News Agency (ANF), 26 November 2017; Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 109; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 388. 857 Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), 130.
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debate. Not surprisingly, the argument heated up, and turned physical. Karer was injured
in the altercation, dying in hospital soon afterward.858The clash had followed the familiar
script, with Orhan (2016) holding it as an example of “how symbolic and ideological
discourses turned violent”859in the Kurdish movement during those years.
The Apocu blamed Sterka Sor for the killing, soon mythologizing Karer as a hero
of the Kurdish revolution.860 His death also prompted an internal debate on the use of
violence against rivals. According to Yüce, leading Apocu cadres called for revenge, and
Öcalan agreed that a violent response was required. However, Öcalan is said to have
instructed that the reprisals be calibrated to minimize exposure to state repression,861 and
also to serve a more far-reaching political purpose, while avoiding the appearance of a
traditional blood feud.862 As such, destroying the small Sterka Sor became a way to show
other revolutionary factions that the PKK would not roll over easily. As Jongerden and
Akkaya comment, PKK reprisals after Karer’s death “served an important function” by
demonstrating that the PKK “would not hesitate to wipe out an entire branch or
organization as a form of retaliation” and “ultimately patrolled its borders by means of
violence.”863 To send this message, the Apocu deployed small teams to find and kill
known members of Sterka Sor; these teams carried out several killings in the years
858 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 96. 859 Ibid. 860 "Proleter Ve Enternasyonalist Devrimci Haki Karer Anısına," (May 1978). 861 Gül, "40. Yılında Lice’den Rakka’ya PKK’nin Ateşten Tarihi," Firat News Agency (ANF), 26 November 2017. 862 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 398-405. 863 Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011), 12.
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leading up to the September 1980 coup. Because Sterka Sor was small, observers credit
these assaults864 with “totally wiping out”865 the faction.
4.2.3. The war with the left continues
Apocu violence spread to encompass the wide spectrum of other leftist groups active in
eastern Anatolia. And the police took notice. The Apocus, for instance, used force to
prevent a leftist organization, Aydınlık, from distributing its paper in the region.866In the
summer of 1979, Aydınlık began to publish detailed exposes of PKK involvement in
violence against other revolutionary organizations. In reply, the PKK resumed its
attempts to ban the sale of the Aydınlık paper in areas that the PKK sought to control.867
In one instance, recorded by Turkish state prosecutors, PKK units manned the roads
entering Pazarcık, in Maraş, to stop the trucks carrying issues of the paper into town.
Waylaying a truck, they pulled out the drivers and begin to threaten them. As traffic built
up behind the truck, the Apocu team grew nervous about drawing police attention and
fled the scene, running into nearby cotton fields. By that time, local security forces had
already spotted them and were in pursuit. This time, the PKK team escaped.868
Armed clashes with the rapidly fragmenting left continued until the September
1980 coup, with the PKK clashing with leftist rivals from Dev Yol, TKP, Halkın Birliği,
864 For a pro-PKK account, see: Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 406. 865 İbrahim Güçlü - Testimony before the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 19 January 2012. 866 Özcan, PKK (Kürdistan İşçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yöntemi (Ankara, Turkey: ASAM, Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yayınları, 1999), 44-45; Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 937. 867 Öznür, Hakkı. Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar. Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004, 923, 937. For subsequent recountings of events by Aydınlık members, see: "PKK'nın katlettiği Aydınlıkçı Zeki Ön." Aydınlık, 3 July 2013.; Yurtçiçek, Bayram. "PKK Nasıl ve Hangi Amaçla Kuruldu?" Aydınlık 25 December 2016. 868 İddianame - Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı (Tam ve Kısmı) - Görevsizlik Kararı ve Tefrik Kararı: PKK (Apocular) (Adana Adıyaman G Antep İçel Hatay K. Maraş Grubu), 1981/1222, (1982), 123.
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Devrimci Halkın Birliği, and others.869The PKK’s insistent policy of meeting in-
movement threats with quick and ruthless reprisal clearly followed from its commitment
to demonstrate that it was superior to its rivals in producing rudimentary violence. One of
the court indictments against the PKK relates a telling incident in this regard. In October
1979, a group of TİKP members beat up a pair of local PKK members in Pazarcık. In
response, the local PKK militants, armed with automatic weapons, swiftly descended
upon the home of a local TİKP member, dragging him in front of his house and wresting
a pistol from his hands. As a crowd gathered, a PKK member allegedly called out: “We,
as the PKK, will mete out the required punishment for any action taken against us,”
warning that if the TİKP in the area attacked them again, the “severest punishment”
would await them.870
Notably, Pazarcık, along with the province of Maraş more generally, saw
considerable anti-Alevi violence during the latter years of the 1970s. As such, an array of
leftist organizations was active in the area, acting as self-appointed defenders of the Alevi
community. The PKK’s rough treatment of these rivals sent a clear signal: not only was
the PKK prepared to stand up to attacks, but it was superior to its rivals in the conduct of
rudimentary violence of the sort in demand from the community.
4.2.4. The Tekoşin challenge
The PKK’s violent competition with other pro-Kurdish organizations intensified at the
same clip. After Haki Karer’s death, parts of the Antep branch of the Apocus grew
869 State and pro-state recounting of these conflicts include: ibid.; Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004). 870 İddianame - Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı (Tam ve Kısmı) - Görevsizlik Kararı ve Tefrik Kararı: PKK (Apocular) (Adana Adıyaman G Antep İçel Hatay K. Maraş Grubu), 1981/1222, (1982), 126-127.
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restive. The reasons for this discontent are not fully clear, and accounts differ on its
underlying causes. Subsequent defectors from the PKK claim that concerns had arisen
that Öcalan was allowing state agents into the upper echelons of the organization.871
Relatedly, some claim that there was dissatisfaction over the handling of Karer’s death,
including suspicion that Öcalan, Kemal Pir, and Cemil Bayık were not doing everything
in their power to avenge him and that perhaps they had ulterior motives.872Lastly, it is
claimed that some cadres had misgivings over Öcalan’s romantic ties with a female party
member, Kesire Yıldırım.873
These disagreements turned into a danger for the PKK when some of these
disaffected cadres made contact with a revolutionary from Dersim/Tunceli, named Seyfi
Cengiz, who had recently split from the Turkish leftist faction, Kurtuluş, 874 and was
setting up his own new organization, called Tekoşin.875 The dissident Apocus and
Cengiz’s newly forming organization merged. According to a PKK version of events,
Öcalan personally traveled to Antep to address the dissenters, and managed to win many
of them back into the Apocu fold.876
Those who stayed with Tekoşin soon found themselves in conflict with the PKK
over access to weapons,877 and armed clashes broke out in Antep, Tunceli/Dersim, and
871 Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz Ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001): 51. 872 Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 1173. 873 Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 42.; Ismet Imset, PKK Ayrılıkcı Şiddetin 20 Yili (Ankara, Turkey: Turkish Daily News Yayınları, 1992). 874 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 125; Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz Ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001): 51. 875 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 57; Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz Ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001); Tekoşin 1 (1978). 876 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 53. 877 Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz Ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001).
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Elazığ, with the Apocu carrying out hits on the top members of Tekoşin, many of them,
until recently, prominent Apocu members.878 As the clashes escalated, Tekoşin heaped
scorn upon the PKK in its propaganda as “a provocateur line that is seeking to divide the
patriotic [pro-Kurdish] and revolutionary front from the inside.”879 But the already small
Tekoşin organization suffered from its war with the PKK, and ended up isolated and
largely irrelevant as the September 12 coup approached,880 though its leader claims it was
able to mount small guerrilla resistance against the Turkish state for several years after
the September coup.881
4.2.5. Facing the incumbents: the PKK and the DDKD/KİP
Meanwhile, as the PKK pushed deeper into southeast Turkey it came into competition
with the incumbent pro-Kurdish organizations that had long been active in the area. In
May 1978, as the Tekoşin crisis boiled over, the PKK sought to make inroads in
Diyarbakır, where it began to encroach on the turf of the DDKD/KİP, among other
factions (including the TKDP/KUK). Unlike the PKK, the DDKD/KİP grew from
antecedents in the Kurdish movement that existed prior to the rise of disorderly violent
repression in the mid-1970s.
Its strategic stance on violence reflected these origins. While imagining violent
struggle as eventually inevitable, the DDKD/KİP strategists did not support a quick resort
to armed violence against the state and they did not support using violence as a means to 878 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer OlmadığI Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480 (1981); Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazla (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 1175. 879 "Kürdistan Devrimi Üzerine Toplu Görüşlerimiz," Tekoşin, no. 4 (September 1979): 183. 880 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 74. 881 Seyfi Cengiz, interview by Paul White, 19 May, 1992.
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spread propaganda or gather recruits.882 DDKD/KİP militants decried the PKK’s
scattered attacks on state and state-aligned groups.883 Using the same themes as other
organizations in the Kurdish mainstream, the DDKD/KİP accused the PKK of gathering
adherents that did not come from the working class, but from the “most backward
segments of society” such as unemployed thugs and criminals.884 And it charged the PKK
with lacking a “long term program to offer to the masses.”885 The PKK came from
outside the mainstream currents, the DDKD/KİP averred, implying that it was a
dangerous outsider.
Still, the DDKD/KİP itself was not immune to imprinting from disorderly violent
repression. Internal turbulence made the organization susceptible to new ideas and
routines. The organization underwent several schisms during the late-1970s. In 1978,
several important figures in the DDKD/KİP formed an opposition group within the party,
called Yekbun. The splinter was active in Siverek, but it did not remain effective for very
long.886 Necmettin Büyükkaya – a major figure in the movement whose political career
hailed back to his days working with Dr. Şivan – also broke from the DDKD/KİP.887 All
the while, the DDKD/KİP was active in mass organizing, where rudimentary violence
was an indispensible skill.
882 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 147. 883 Ibid., 198. 884 Jina Nu 5 (June 1980): 158. 885 Ibid., 155. 886 Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 312. 887 Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007), 35; Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 301.
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At times, the DDKD/KİP applied these same routines against rivals in the
movement. DDKD/KİP members occasionally engaged in low-intensity violent
encounters with other factions, often during competition for recruits in schools and local
associations. DDKD/KİP members were accused of using rudimentary violence to push
rival groups out of dormitories in Istanbul and Diyarbakır,888 and of attacking teachers
aligned with leftist rivals at contentious gatherings;889 they also allegedly brawled with a
Turkish leftist faction in Diyarbakır over a mass action in 1980.890
The DDKD/KİP’s competitive response to the arrival of the Apocus on its turf
involved these same forms of physical competition. In 1978, Apocu cadres attempted to
arrange a forum in the Diyarbakır Institute of Education to commemorate the deaths of
Aydın Gül and Haki Karer, killed over the previous year. According to the PKK, the
DDKD/KİP attacked them, and destroyed their posters.891 Meanwhile, as high school
students in the area began declaring sympathies for the Apocus, fights started to break out
on campuses between Apocu and DDKD/KİP sympathizers.
The DDKD/KİP vs. PKK dynamic soon turned more violent than the
DDKD/KİP’s relations with other rivals. This was because, though the DDKD/KİP did
involve itself in deadly violence against other rivals, the low/medium imprints of its
opponents more readily allowed for de-escalation. A deadly clash that occurred between
the TKSP and the DDKD/KİP in Diyarbakır is instructive in this regard: in December
1980, a clash between these two organizations resulted in the death of TKSP member, 888 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 55-56. 889 "UDG ve Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine," Xebat Special Issue (1980): 15; "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 33. 890 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 33. 891 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 49; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 116.
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Ramazan Çankaya. While the TKSP alleged that the DDKD/KİP had killed the victim in
a pre-mediated ambush, the DDKD/KİP insisted that events had transpired differently.
The background to the deadly incident, according to the DDKD/KİP, was a dispute
between members of the two sides in Diyarbakır that turned into a physical fight. During
the fracas, a DDKD/KİP supporter drew a pistol and shot Çankaya, who died soon
afterward. Almost immediately afterward, the DDKD/KİP, according to their own
account, approached the TKSP to convey that it “did not condone” the attack. The
DDKD/KİP further proposed publishing a joint statement to this effect, following a
practice that the TKSP, Rızgari and Ala Rızgari had used in the past when unwanted
clashed occurred between their members.892
This time, the TKSP did not accept the offer, and instead began to shame the
DDKD/KİP in public for the attack, which they said served as evidence of its ‘terroristic’
tendencies.893 Crucially, the TKSP (low imprint) refrained from mounting a violent
reprisal, despite its ability to have done so: instead the TKSP chose to impose costs on
the DDKD/KİP through alternative channels, namely, with propaganda that would
weaken their standing politically. Obviously not eager to incur further damage to its
reputation, the DDKD/KİP refrained from following on these exchanges with further
violence, instead seeking other ways to battle the rival TKSP.
In this regard, the PKK broke dramatically from the mold. The PKK established a
reputation for escalating physical contests with rivals far beyond the normative
892 See Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 76; Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 245; Ala Rızgari, Special Issue 1 (June 1979): 95-106. 893 For the competing accounts of this incident, see "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 33; DDKD/KIP. KIP/DDKD Davası (Kesinleşmiş Karar). Ankara: Jina Nu, 2006. 356, 61; "Özgürlük Yolu Mu Oportunizmin Yolu Mu? ," Devrimci Demokratlar, no. 11 (January 1982): 88.
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boundaries that governed the rest of the movement. So severe was the threat posed by the
PKK that the DDKD/KİP set up an armed unit for the dedicated purpose of preventing
the Apocus from taking over the area, according to Turkish state prosecutors.894 In an
incident in late-1979, recorded by Turkish state prosecutors, DDKD/KİP members and
PKK cadres held a debate at the DDKD office in Bismil, Diyarbakır. The debate took a
violent turn, and both sides ended up shooting it out.895 The same script was repeated
several months later, when the DDKD/KİP proposed holding a commemoration of a
fallen comrade in Siverek. A local PKK cadre opposed holding the commemoration, and
the two sides met to discuss the matter. Expecting violence, the DDKD/KİP
representatives turned up armed, and during the talks, they ended up firing their guns into
the air, alerting a nearby military patrol that arrived on the scene shortly after. Not long
after, the PKK member who had objected to the DDKD/KİP commemoration was
discovered dead.896
4.2.6. PKK fratricide that did not escalate
The PKK also clashed with rivals that were less involved in rudimentary violence.
Because the PKK confronted low imprint rivals, these conflicts were shorter in duration
and far less deadly. Though routines of rudimentary violence were becoming part of the
repertoire of all of the Kurdish factions by the end of the decade, organizations that
retained the features developed during the previous decade were better able to limit and
894 DDKD/KIP. KIP/DDKD Davası (Kesinleşmiş Karar). Ankara: Jina Nu, 2006. 252,57. 895 Ibid., 236. 896 Ibid., 217.
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discourage the use of these forms of violence, directing competition in alternative
directions.
Rızgari was perhaps the faction most committed to ideological work as its
mainstay output. The PKK did attack Rızgari members, raiding the Komal publishing
house and seriously injuring Abdullah Irmak, for example.897 But PKK attacks were less
frequent and did not result in any reported fatalities.898
Denge Kawa, another faction with seasoned organizers in its tier of top cadres,
faced deadly violence from the PKK, but avoided war. Denge Kawa had split from the
Kawa organization in late-1977 over disagreements on Maoist thought.899 In Siverek, part
of Urfa Province, a top Denge Kawa leader, Ferit Uzun, died under mysterious
circumstances in November 1978. The immediate suspicion for the killing fell on the
state-aligned Bucak clan,900 and the PKK launched a war against the Bucaks on the heels
of the killing. Later on, critics in the movement voiced suspicion that the PKK may have
been responsible for Uzun’s death all along.901
Over the following months, the PKK then openly attacked Denge Kawa across its
various organizing sites.902 Denge Kawa’s leadership, though capable of hitting back,
“did not consider a counterattack, so that fratricide would not develop in the Kurdish
897 İbrahim Güçlü - Testimony before the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 19 January 2012. 898 Ibid. 899 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 13; Gündoğan, Kawa Davası Savunması ve Kürtlerde Siyasi Savunma Geleneği (Istanbul, Turkey: Vate 2007), 26; Van Bruinessen, "The Kurds in Turkey," MERIP reports 121 (1984): 8. 900 Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 82-83. 901 İbrahim Güçlü - Testimony before the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 19 January 2012. 902 Küreken, Parçası, Tanığı, Mahkumu, Sürgünü Oldum (Istanbul, Turkey İletişim, 2016), 132.
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political movement,”903 as İbrahim Küreken later explained. This led to clear losses for
Denge Kawa. The PKK used violence in Mardin against the organization,904 boasting in
August 1980 that the “repeated blows” they landed on the faction swept from them the
area.905 Still, Denge Kawa did not mount reprisals against the faction, remaining attached
to their initial outlook, which saw the rise in PKK violence as serving the interests of the
movement’s foes.906
The TKSP figured alongside Rızgari as a pro-Kurdish faction with the lowest
imprint from the environment of rudimentary violent repression. According to the PKK,
competition with the TKSP in Ağrı (where both groups had attracted followings)907
intensified in early months of 1979. The PKK later insisted it had no intention of using
lethal violence against the TKSP; the PKK’s M. Can Yüce wrote in 1999 that “there was
no justification for such violence […] There were contradictions [between the
organizations], but there was no policy or understanding of escalating these to the level of
armed clashes, or of resolving conflicts with this method.”908 The proximity of specialists
in rudimentary violence, however, made non-strategic violence a constant possibility, and
during the second week of March, fights between the factions broke out at the high
school in Ağrı, soon spreading to other sites in the province.909
903 Ibid. 904 Ibid., 99. 905 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980:9. 906 "Siverek Olayı Hangi Sonun Başlangıcı Olacak," Denge Kawa (September 1979). 907 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 218. 908 Ibid. 909 Ibid.
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At this, the local PKK commander, without seeking permission from the
leadership, ordered fatal attacks on TKSP members, according to Yüce.910On 13 March,
the PKK launched an armed attack on a TKSP-aligned association in Ağrı, leaving a
young TKSP sympathizer, Ismet Yeğen, injured. The next day, the PKK ambushed a
group of TKSP members in Doğubeyazit, killing Mustafa Çamlıbel – the head of the
local TKSP civil society branch the Revolutionary People’s Cultural Association
(Devrimci Halk Kültür Derneği; DHKD), and injuring two of his companions.911 The
TKSP had a large following in Ağrı, and as TKSP leader Kemal Burkay notes, it was
certainly capable of mounting a violent response against the PKK in the area. But the top
leadership of the TKSP prevailed on the local units to refrain from armed reprisals.912 As
Burkay wrote in 1983, “we did not succumb to these provocations,”913 because they
realized that doing so would surely lead to a war causing “dozens” of deaths that would
“please the enemy [Turkish state]” and “alienate us from the masses.” 914
As the PKK’s Yüce admits, the TKSP’s disciplined response was effective. A
police response and local public outcry weakened PKK presence in the area.915Burkay
later commented on the policy of non-reprisal against the PKK:
“[…] we did not want a clash with the PKK. We knew that the state’s intelligence forces, the junta, were behind the terrorism that the PKK propagated […] So we
910 Ibid. 911 Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 160. 912 Ibid., 160-61. 913 "Devrimcilik Mi? Terörizm Mi? PKK Üzerine," Özgürlük Yolu (1983): 7. 914 Ibid. 915 In keeping with the PKK tendency for post-hoc narration of such incidents, Yüce suggests that the local PKK commander in the area, Mehmet Turan, launched the attack on the TKSP with just such an outcome in mind, as he was, Yüce suggests, disloyal to the PKK and affiliated with state agents. See Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 218.
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acted with caution. That is, we did not become involved in the terrorism. Not before 1980 and not after. We cautioned seriously our base on this issue.” 916
As this commentary shows, the TKSP, like the PKK, were deeply concerned about the
Turkish state’s infiltration of the Kurdish movement. But tellingly, the two factions drew
opposite prescriptions from this belief. That its rivals were supposedly in cahoots with the
enemy implied, for the PKK, that they must be liquidated. The TKSP, by contrast, saw
the state’s conspiratorial hand as mandating greater avoidance of violence, since
fratricide would only push the rebels into the trap set by the intelligence services. Imbued
with different environmental imprints, each faction interpreted events around them
through the prism of distinct organizational lenses.
4.2.7. Understanding variation in fratricide
In sum, violence became a dangerous commonplace in the PKK’s relations with rivals
during its push into the Kurdish-majority regions of Turkey. In places, the tendency for
competition to manifest as acts of violence redounded to the PKK’s advantage: if small
rivals, such as Sterka Sor and Tekoşin were willing to challenge PKK on its own violent
terms, PKK militants were ready to oblige.
Other rivals, by contrast, were less vulnerable to this escalatory pathway. Indeed,
the Turkey case provides an instructive set of comparisons. By the 1970s, multiple
Kurdish organizations were espousing similar ideologies and goals and faced virtually
identical structural conditions. Yet, most of these dyads avoided serious violent conflict
(though occasional violent incidents occurred across the movement). To wit, there is a
916 "Televized Interview with Kemal Burkay." (2011). CNN Türk
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striking congruence between dyad type and violent dynamics.
Dyads that did not evince a high-vs.-high917 or medium-vs.-high imprinting were
able to avoid escalations to war, in large part because they lacked attributes that favored
escalation: they tended to downplay the efficacy of rudimentary violence as a strategic
tool, and their rank-and-file were comparatively more constrained in their leeway for
acting out violence on the ground. And when violent incidents did occur, these dyads
were able to ease tensions by invoking norms of appropriateness, making strategic
calculations premised on a low confidence in the strategic efficacy of violence, and
drawing on a menu of tactics that featured various alternative means for competing, other
than fratricide.
This explanation may also be appropriate for explaining the interactive dynamics
between armed Republicans and Nationalist political parties in Belfast: the IRA
sometimes used intimidation and violence against these non-violent political parties,
which aspired to speak for the Catholic community but rejected the violent tradition of
the Republicans. Still, the IRA never mounted a one-sided systematic onslaught against
these non-violent rivals. That a mass assault against Catholic politicians would have been
politically ruinous for the IRA hardly needs gainsaying; IRA leaders probably never
seriously contemplated such an option, despite the political threat Nationalist parties
presented to Republicans.
Indeed, the peculiar matrix of opportunities and dangers of waging insurgency in
a strong state are clearly in evidence here. Orchestrating a clandestine war against a
powerful state whose forces were present across the battlespace, the IRAs had to take into
917 Admittedly, the Kurdish insurgency during these years does not feature any established cases of high-vs.-high dyads. The PKK’s wars with Tekoşin or Sterka Sor might perhaps qualify, but current materials are insufficient for a definitive coding of these organizations.
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account more than the balance of hard power that pertained between rebel groups. Local
public opinion and operational security were equally, if not more important. IRA
militants, after all, depended on local support to maintain access to concealment and
resources. That gave local non-violent actors, and local publics, a voice that they would
not have possessed had these intra-rebel conflicts been waged in zones of acute state
weakness or absence.
By this logic, understanding intra-rebel war in strong states requires attention to
patterns of violent escalation that cause rebels to transgress sound assessments of how
much intra-rebel bloodshed is strategically tolerable. Insofar as such violent escalation
only occurs when both sides are fueling an escalatory spiral, non-violent dissident
organizations are resistant to intra-rebel war.
Of course, it bears reiterating that even those dyads that were at risk of escalating
fratricide were not deterministically fated to such outcomes. Some medium imprint
organizations, such as the DDKD/KİP, were able to fight the PKK without their conflicts
spiraling to the heights witnessed in the TKDP/KUK vs. PKK war. Still, the DDKD/KİP
appears to have been subject to some of the same pressures that placed the TKDP/KUK-
vs.- PKK dyad at risk. Other intervening factors – perhaps including less severe
competitive pressures, disciplined leadership, or the fairly low level of militarization of
the DDKD/KİP – made it possible to avoid a turn to war.
4.3. Theorizing the path war: processes of escalation
The comparative work of this dissertation suggests that organizational imprinting had a
profound effect on rebel dyads’ relative exposure to the risk of fratricide. The
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comparative insights developed in this dissertation make it possible to elaborate
somewhat on the theoretical propositions introduced at the beginning of this chapter.
4.3.1. Strategy
In the case comparison, high and medium imprinting appears to have strongly influenced
how rebel organizations evaluated the strategic significance of rudimentary violence,
encouraging fratricidal actions in two main ways, discussed below.
Strategy: calculated aggression
First, because rudimentary violence was comparatively inexpensive and low risk,
organizations that had mastered this routine were more inclined to resort to it as a
political tool.918 Compare this to other forms of violence such as coordinated bombings or
sustained rural warfare. The long preparation times, complex operational requirements,
and attendant dangers of exposure to security forces make these kinds of violent
technologies less appealing as go-to coercive tools.
Strategy: cost of backing down
A small application of strategic violence against a rival is not inordinately risky, so long
as its victim is unlikely to hit back with equal or greater force. But to their surprise, rebels
often saw their calibrated strategic violence backfire: if the victim was a medium or high
imprint faction, it often struck back hard, and seldom backed down. One reason this
918 Here, I rely on the widely noted proposition from organizational theory that core routines tend to be transposed to novel situations, while unfamiliar routines are avoided, or confined to the narrow settings where their execution is unavoidable. Extreme instances of this tendency are sometimes referred to as the “competency trap.” See Weiping Liu, "Knowledge Exploitation, Knowledge Exploration, and Competency Trap," Knowledge and Process Management 13, no. 3 (2006); March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1989), 63.
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occurred is that medium and high imprint organizations regarded coming off the loser in
a public violent exchange as costly to their local reputation.
The context for this consideration was, of course, the political niche these
organizations sought to occupy: just as fleeing from a police baton charge or pogrom
attack would tarnish the brand of any one of these organizations, local publics might
construe visible defeat in a clash with a local rival as a sign of inferiority. While locals
hate to see their armed defenders fighting among themselves, they also cannot help but
notice which side comes out on top (Note that this matters less for an organization that
makes its name in the community through contributions that do not involve physical
defense against outside attackers).
4.3.2. Non-strategic violence
Compounding the difficulties of this already delicate situation were periodic blow-ups of
a non-strategic variety. Recall that the defining features of routines of rudimentary
violence are its low planning costs, its execution in spaces that intermingle multiple rebel
organizations with local publics, and its rapid deployment. All three of these features are
conducive to non-strategic incidents of violence.
Cost/operational simplicity
Local rebel units can execute routines of rudimentary violence without requiring inputs
from other sections of the organization. Whereas other forms of violence require multi-
stage decision-making and multi-stakeholder buy-in (which add veto points and players
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to any decision) local militants proficient in rudimentary violence can act independently,
or on kneejerk orders of a rebel leader.
Location
Furthermore, non-strategic fratricide is related to the spatial proximity with which
multiple factions conduct routines of rudimentary violence to defend their communities.
The PIRA and the OIRA often blended themselves in adjacent neighborhoods, fighting
shoulder-to-shoulder in their defense of Catholic areas of Belfast. In Turkey, specialists
in rudimentary violence gathered at public rallies and major marches, ready against
possible attack from police or counter-protestors. In effect, rival organizations, each
primed for violence, were often working in close quarters with one another under the
gaze of local publics whose opinion mattered.
In such situations, disagreements can quickly turn violent. In Turkey,
disagreements over slogans often turned to blows, and in Belfast public expressions of
Republican culture, such as the annual ceremony at Milltown cemetery, were
combustible events. Both individual and organization-level processes sharpened these
risks. An individual specialist in rudimentary violence is not the sort to turn the other
cheek. Per their role, they lose face if they back down after a shove or an insult. And
because these individuals work in teams, primed to execute violent routines quickly and
reactively, a fight that breaks out between two specialists from rival factions can
automatically scale-up into an inter-factional brawl.
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Speed
The speed of deployment built into these routines was a liability for reasons similar to
those associated with its low planning cost. When dissident communities are attacked,
defenders need to be on the scene in minutes or hours -- but never days or weeks. An
unintended effect of incorporating such routines into a militant organization’s repertoire
is that it equips a faction with the ability to retaliate against attacks before taking the time
for careful strategic deliberation. This downside was dramatically showcased in the PIRA
attack on the Burning Embers and Cracked Cup. The local PIRA team was able muster a
response to an OIRA attack quickly, while tempers were still running hot and adrenaline
pumping.919 And of course, the OIRA was similarly well-equipped for a rapid reaction,
meeting the PIRA offensive with a fierce counterattack.
Table 4.1. extends the logic and intuition of these cases into a breakdown of the
expected dynamics of interaction between the various dyad types. The fastidious reader
can inspect this table for specifics propositions regarding dyadic dynamics. But more
important than these details is the more general claim that certain inter-organizational
configurations (high-high and high-medium) give rise to interactive dynamics that were
conductive to violence.
4.3.3. Concatenating violence
Conclusively establishing which acts of violence were strategic and which were non-
strategic is rarely possible for these cases, given the dearth of information on the internal
decision making processes of rebel organizations. The sequences of violent events, 919 Research from several disciplines supports the conventional wisdom that a sense of urgency reduces the ability of individuals and organizations to make methodical, rational decisions. Sarker and Osiyevskyy (2018, 4-5) provide a review of this sizable empirical body of research. See Sarkar and Osiyevskyy, "Organizational Change and Rigidity During Crisis: A Review of the Paradox," European Management Journal 36, no. 1 (2018).
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however, strongly suggest that many of these episodes of violence unfolded as
concatenated strings of strategic and non-strategic violence, each incident calling the next
(e.g., strategic ! non-strategic ! non-strategic […] truce; non-strategic ! non-strategic
! strategic […] truce; and so forth). Gathering sufficient empirical detail to precisely
map such sequences of violence could prompt new discoveries and perhaps lead to a
sequential theory of rebel fratricide that is superior to the explanation that this
dissertation develops. For now, I simply propose that the combination of these two kinds
of mechanisms created more destructive spirals than would have occurred had rebels only
interacted strategically, or had they only interacted non-strategically.
The political and spatial dynamics that created this volatility are somewhat akin to
armies arraying on a disputed border. As Cho (2018) closely analyses, for example, the
Sino-Indian Border Conflict of 1962 was preceded by several years of border incidents.
Examining primary sources from both Chinese and Indian archives, Cho shows that
leadership of both countries had acknowledged, both in public and privately, that the
disputed territory was hardly worth fighting a war over. But the postures of their
respective militaries complicated the equation. As both the Indian and Chinese militaries
set up observations posts and conducted patrols over disputed patches of terrain,
occasional clashes broke out. Some of these were calibrated attempts at strategic
signaling, while others were almost certainly ‘accidental,’ the result of collisions and
local commanders breaching rules of engagement.
Irrespective of their cause, these incidents began to constrict the strategic menu of
leaders. Public anger and the hardening sentiments among the military establishments on
both sides pressured the political leadership, who were themselves exercised by the
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incidents. Accordingly, both sides turned to progressively more aggressive posturing,
which led to fresh clashes, in fits and starts of violence that further shaped the perceptions
and constraints of each side’s leadership.920 Exploring how episodic violence of this kind
gradually alters the perceptions and strategic stakes of intra-rebel fighting is the central
concern of the next chapter.
Table 4.1. Dyadic interactions and risks of intra-rebel war Dyad type Strategic dynamic Non-strategic dynamic Low-Low (low risk of intra-rebel war)
At carefully chosen moments, sides may use strategic violence. Either to land a crushing blow on a rival (rarely possible in areas of state strength), or to send a well-measured costly signal. If attacked, a low imprint faction does not face a strong incentive to retaliate simply to demonstrate its violent prowess. This is especially true for low imprint factions that specialize in non-violence.
Adapting to environments of disorderly violent repression, these organizations incorporate specialists in rudimentary violence that, at times, can cause non-strategic violent incidents. But, these incidents are relatively infrequent, and leaders will be more aggressive in discouraging these behaviors. Plus, when a non-strategic act of aggression occurs, it less likely to trigger a further non-strategic act of retaliation.
Low-Medium (low risk of intra-rebel war)
As with low-low dyads, rare moments may occur when strategic incentives for violence are decisive. Medium-imprint factions are conflicted over the place of rudimentary violence in their repertoire. While some will press for the tactic, an opposing camp will resist overreliance on it. But since low imprint factions rarely instigate or retaliate, the medium imprint organization’s hawkish voices have difficulty gaining traction. Plus, the medium-imprint faction involved in this dynamic, like the low imprint faction, possesses a wide enough repertoire for diverting competition away from fratricidal violence.
Medium imprint organizations are comparatively more likely to instigate non-strategic violent events, due to their more frequent practice of rudimentary violence. But the refusal of low imprint organizations to respond in kind discourages escalatory spirals.
920 Hyun-Binn Cho, "Tying the Adversary's Hands: Provocation, Crisis Escalation, and Inadvertent War" (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2018), 120-43.
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Low-High (low risk of intra-rebel war)
Besides instances where violence confers a decisive strategic advantage, a low imprint faction may find itself suffering predatory violence from high imprint factions. Yet, low imprint organizations are well-positioned to sustain a disciplined refusal to respond with escalatory violence (e.g. PKK-TKSP). If they can survive aggression from their high imprint rival, their tactics of public shaming, outbidding, etc. can be more effective than fratricidal responses.
High imprint organizations will commit non-strategic attacks on low imprint rivals. And at times, the low imprint rival’s teams of specialists in rudimentary violence might suddenly hit back. Low imprint non-strategic attacks on high imprint rivals are possible, too. But per its organizational features, the low imprint faction is less disposed to such responses, and it is easier for the leadership to exert control to avert further spiraling.
Medium-Medium (low risk of intra-rebel war)
Though both sides harbor advocates of fratricidal violence, each also possess the strategic leeway to steer their competitive interactions away from violence. While competitive pressures to prove superiority at rudimentary violence do exist, these are balanced against the sides’ proficiencies in other areas, such as non-violent organizing, ideological innovation, or clandestine terrorism. This makes it easier to react to fratricidal attack with a response from a different mode of politics. We can imagine, for example, faction Y responding to an attack from faction X with a scathing pamphlet or a mass protest. Indeed, Y might also strategically respond with an armed attack on a state target, in a strategy of outbidding. Such a response has political merits, as it allows Y to assert that while X spends its energies killing comrades, Y is taking the high road, while also proving its mettle against the shared enemy. Incidentally, a Kawa Red member claims that his organization did just this.921
The mutual imprinting of this dyad introduces heightened volatility in their everyday interactions. Ultimately, the capacity for these dyads to avoid war rests with the strategic responses of their leaderships, which often block further escalation. More specifically, such dyads are less likely to produce a chain of violent interaction with the sequence […] non-strategic ! non-strategic ! strategic […] In other words, amid a cycle of non-strategic escalation, both sides are able to steer their controversy away from violent methods. This prevents cycles from escalating beyond episodic bouts of low level skirmishing.
Medium- This dyad, along with high-high dyads, Non-strategic incidents of attack and
921 Published online interview with Heybet Açıkgöz. In "Kamışlı Katliam Üzerine," Newroz.com 2007.
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High (At risk for intra-rebel war)
are unique in their elevated risk of war. Both sides view routines of rudimentary violence as a core capacity and both face strategic pressures to respond in kind when attacked. While medium imprint factions are better placed to de-escalate by responding to violence with other forms of competition, a high-imprint faction is limited in its range of responses, since its repertoire of political tactics is narrow. Recurrent clashes with the high imprint faction places increasing pressure on the medium imprint faction to shift to a war footing.
response are a constant irritant for such dyads. This makes a lasting regime of non-violent interaction difficult to sustain – and it thus creates almost constant strategic pressure for further violence.
High-high (At risk for intra-rebel war)
This dissertation does not provide an in-depth analysis of a high-high dyad, but it stands to reason that this dyad type would be at the highest risk of intra-rebel war.922 Both sides are bent on establishing their superiority at routines of rudimentary violence, as they both stake their reputation largely on their position in this niche. As such, both are inclined to use violence liberally, and attach a steep cost to backing down after attack.
Probably more than any other dyad type, incidents of non-strategic violence will frequently occur between these factions.
922 In Northern Ireland, the PIRA and INLA qualify as a high-high dyad. Yet, during the period under investigation (1969-1980) they did not engage in an intra-rebel war. The strategic alignments of the period, with the OIRA in conflict with both the PIRA and the INLA, serve as a convincing explanation for this outcome. This dyad, though not studied in-depth in this dissertation, is useful for illustrating that dyad type does not determine an outcome, but rather creates discernable risk factors that through identifiable causal mechanisms can lead to intra-rebel war. Chapter 6 develops this point more thoroughly.
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CHAPTER 5
WARS WITHOUT WINNERS
The downsides of heightening fratricide became more glaring as clashes between rebels
grew more frequent. And yet, as this chapter will examine, rebel fratricide continued to
worsen, culminating in disastrous wars both in Northern Ireland and Turkey. This chapter
closely examines these developments. It first traces the escalation and course of intra-
rebel war in both cases. Then, based on this comparative tracing, it discusses potential
theoretical approaches for understanding how rebel threat perceptions might have
changed as a result of rising violence, thereby encouraging further and more dangerous
violence against rivals.
5.1. The IRAs: a winding road to war
By 1974, infighting within the Republican movement had damaged both sides
considerably. Opportunities for cooperation were scuttled, important fighters were lost,
and the movement had politically exposed itself to attacks on its reputation from critics
and enemies. After the death of Jim Bryson in August 1973, covered in Chapter 4, the
PIRA and OIRA managed to hold down their conflict for nearly a year. Certainly, many
of the tensions that had recently led to infighting remained in place. The specialists in
rudimentary violence of the PIRA and OIRA continued to live and fight in close
proximity to one another. And the strategic pressure to demonstrate power to defend
Catholic areas did not abate.923
923 Indicative of this, Goulding, in an October 1973 interview, did his best at offering his own account of the events of August 1969. Claiming that from the beginning of his tenure as IRA Chief of Staff, he and his staff were “aware of the possibility of aggressive
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The ability of both IRAs to temporarily hold down their infighting is possibly
related to a combination of factors. First, chastened by Bryson’s killing, both sides
perhaps grew more careful to avoid conflict that might lead to a similar debacle. Plus,
around this time, according to Bell, the PIRA moved its top operators to safe-houses in
middle-class, Protestant areas, away from the Catholic ghettos, in an effort to curb the
growing number of arrests of its top leaders and operators.924 It is possible that many of
those with the authority to escalate violence were not in the area during this period.925
Finally, local IRA defenders on both sides were unusually busy during these
months in community defense activities. British-brokered talks between moderate parties
in the autumn of 1973 led to the inking of a local power sharing agreement in
December926 that excluded both the IRA and more radical Loyalists.927 Throughout the
spring of 1974, Protestant labor mobilization in opposition to the deal accelerated,
culminating in the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) strikes of 15 to 28 May. Loyalist
organizers – backed with paramilitary muscle – took over the utilities and manned
barricades across the city. That Loyalists paramilitaries were able to take control of much
of the city with the British military largely standing aside underlined a dangerous
capability. In response, the PIRA, as early as 1973, had begun to draw up contingency
attacks being made on the people.” As such, he claimed, the IRA had always had a policy of “using physical force only in defense of the people or their rights against aggressive attack.” Far from holding a naïve trust in British security forces, “we always recognized that forces of establishment would use aggression against people, therefore, there would always be a need for armed defense.” See: Whalen, Inside the IRA: Interviews with Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff IRA (Philadelphia, PA: Recon, 1975), 43. 924 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 404. 925 Bishop and Mallie describe the PIRA in 1974 as “tired, directionless and increasingly unpopular in the ghettos.” See Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 269. 926 "The Civil Rights Campaign - a Chronology of Main Events," CAIN Webservice, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm. 927 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), Chapter 6.
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plans in case of an all-out Loyalist attack on Catholic areas.928 As part of this contingency
planning, the OIRA and PIRA held conversations on joint operating plans that were to go
into action if a Loyalist onslaught seemed imminent, according to Robert Fisk.929
Operational resources and the energies of specialists in rudimentary violence,
thus, were stretched thin during these months. In 1974, six Catholics were killed in riots,
up from two in 1973. In 1974, 75 Catholics were killed in attacks considered to have
sectarian motivation, an increase over the 50 killings in 1973.930 The number of Loyalist
terrorist attacks increased to 41 in 1974, over 14 in 1973. 931If de Baroid is correct and
local specialists in rudimentary violence turned their energies against each other once
they were constrained from attacking the British after the Motorman operation, then the
heightened disorderly violent repression of 1974 may have had the reverse effect:
preoccupation with defense, perhaps, temporarily led to a decrease in violence between
the IRAs.
Whatever its causes, the detente did not last. By August 1974, the same
mechanisms that had brought the sides to blows in the past were again in motion.
Goulding continued to voice his preference for competing with the PIRA without resort
to fratricide. In an interview given in late-summer 1974, he identified “publicity, by
agitation” as the OIRA’s preferred methods for exposing the “follies of the Provisional
Alliance’s campaigns and policies.”932 But he added that, “I think from the physical point
928 Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 272; Martin Dillon, The Dirty War: Covert Strategies and Tactics Used in Political Conflicts (New York, NY: Routledge, 1990), 65. Also see, Irish Press, 22 July 1974. 929 Robert Fisk, "IRA Says Plans Were Civil War Contingency," The Times 15 May 1974. 930 Michael McKeown, "Database of Deaths Associated with Violence in Northern Ireland, 1969-2001," (2009). 931 Jan Oskar Engene, "Five Decades of Terrorism in Europe: The Tweed Dataset," Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 1 (2007). 932 Whalen, Inside the IRA: Interviews with Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff IRA (Philadelphia, PA: Recon, 1975), 19.
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of view we have proven to them and to everybody else that we are perfectly capable of
defending ourselves against them and anybody else.” 933 Once again, Goulding spoke as
the leader of a medium imprint organization. While emphasizing his preference for non-
violent competition, Goulding was obliged to add that the OIRA was not the PIRA’s
inferior when it came to violence.
On 3 August 1974, Martin Skillen – who had left the OIRA to join the PIRA – got
into a fight with some local OIRA members; he grabbed a gun from a local stash and
went looking for the Officials, only to be spotted and shot dead by British soldiers.934
Shortly afterward, the OIRA kneecapped two teenagers over accusations of PIRA
members’ involvement in stealing and burning cars. 935 The PIRA issued a stern warning
to the OIRA following the kneecappings.936 A few months later, in November, a fight in a
bar in north Belfast turned into a gun battle between the local OIRA and PIRA.937 There
was a flash of violence in the city, but it ended quickly.938
5.1.1. The OIRA-INLA war
Meanwhile, as violence between the PIRA and OIRA gradually escalated, a new violent
conflict erupted when a splinter broke away from the OIRA in late-1974. Since the
1960s, Seamus Costello had been at the center of a challenger current within the IRA,
and later, the OIRA. He stayed with Goulding during the PIRA split, but remained an 933 Ibid. 934 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 198; Evening Herald, 3 August 1974. 935 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 198. 936 Ibid. 937 Ibid. 938 Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 439.
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advocate of more aggressive military action. Voicing the frustration of a more militant
circle, Costello bandied accusations that the Dublin leadership was intentionally
withholding weapons from him and his affiliates within the OIRA. Tensions came to a
head in November 1974, with Costello facing an OIRA court martial. In December 1974,
he debuted the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), initially concealing the group’s
armed wing, which would come to be known as the Irish National Liberation Army
(INLA).939
Accounts differ on the OIRA leadership’s immediate reaction to the Costello split.
According to Bishop and Mallie, “The Official IRA could see history repeating itself,”
and they were determined to prevent another radical challenger from eroding their
support base. Accordingly, say the authors, McMillen was provided four assassination
squads “to strangle the IRSP at birth.”940 Goulding, speaking to Holland and McDonald,
denies such accusations. When the fighting broke out, it was “based on rivalries on the
ground,” he told the authors.941 Patterson contends that in Belfast, Billy McMillen
rebuffed calls for an immediate assassination of Costello, but he authorized members to
use lethal force on any INLA members attempting to carry weapons from the OIRA
caches.942Hanley and Millar report talk on the ground among Officials that the INLA
could be “wiped-out” if action was taken decisively enough.943 Seamus Costello claimed
in public that the OIRA had drawn up a hit list of IRSP members, and had shot at the
939 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994). 940 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 280. 941 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 42. 942 Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, UK: Serif, 1997), 164. 943 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 287.
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home of Ronnie Bunting, the former Ballymurphy OIRA leader who had sided with the
IRSP/INLA.944
In any case, it is clear that OIRA militants in Belfast immediately used non-lethal
force to scuttle INLA attempts at organizing in their areas. The OIRA broke up the first
IRSP meetings in Belfast, leading to a growing number of kneecappings and beatings of
IRSP/INLA members in December 1974/January 1975.945 On 20 February 1975, a group
of OIRA members attempted to kneecap Hugh Ferguson, a local IRSP leader with a
reputation for toughness. According to the OIRA, Ferguson resisted, and in the struggle,
he was shot several times and died.946
An important stratum of the top leaders and Belfast operators of the INLA were
militants whose entry into politics was occasioned by the Belfast violence of 1969. This
core of Belfast militants, working together as a network within the Officials, became
practitioners of rudimentary violence whose actions went beyond the strategic template
set down by the Dublin leadership. For these reasons, it is not unreasonable to consider
the INLA a high imprint organization, collectively shaped by the post-1969
environment.947
Pitting a medium imprint organization (OIRA) against a high imprint rival
(INLA) led to a spiral of violence of similar form, if greater intensity, than the previous
fighting between the PIRA and OIRA. Pubs were burned; houses were raided and
944Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 42.
945 Ibid., 41-42,58. 946 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 46. 947 For accounts of the INLA, see: Sawyer, "Competition in the Market for Political Violence: Northern Irish Republicanism, 1969–1998 " (Doctoral Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2010), 191-92; Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994); Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 260-90.
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attacked; and drive-by shootings were conducted in neighborhoods where the factions
competed for support. On 16 March, a local mediator brokered a ceasefire, but it broke
down almost immediately.948 The most severe blow to the OIRA came on 28 April, when
a young INLA member spotted Billy McMillen on the street in Belfast, and killed him
where he stood.949 By the time fighting waned in the summer, two INLA members had
been killed and three OIRA members were dead,950 with more than forty injuries.951
5.1.2. The 1975 Provisional ceasefire and escalating fratricide
While the OIRA battled the INLA, the PIRA attempted to steer the insurgency in a new
direction. Closed-door talks with British representatives convinced the PIRA leadership
that the British were ready to seriously negotiate withdrawal from the island. In late-
December 1974, the PIRA announced a short “Christmas ceasefire” 952 and the British
soon rewarded them with limited releases of PIRA prisoners.953 In mid-January, the PIRA
returned to hostilities, 954 but contacts with British officials finally led the PIRA to
announce an open-ended ceasefire on 10 February 1975.955
948 "Competition in the Market for Political Violence: Northern Irish Republicanism, 1969–1998 " (Doctoral Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2010), 164. 949 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 102; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 296. 950 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 280. 951 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 40. 952 Robert W White, "The 1975 British-Provisional IRA Truce in Perspective," Éire-Ireland 45, no. 3 (2010): 215. 953 Taylor, The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2014), 182. 954 White, "The 1975 British-Provisional IRA Truce in Perspective," Éire-Ireland 45, no. 3 (2010): 216. 955 Ibid.
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The ceasefire would crumble in fits and starts over the course of the year,956 but it
initially seemed like a watershed. A particularly visible element of the agreement was the
incident centers that the PIRA was permitted to set up across Northern Ireland. PIRA
leaders expressed concern that miscommunication over minor breaches might lead to a
repeat of the Lenadoon breakdown of July 1972, and the incident centers were pitched as
an instrument for quickly communicating grievances to British officials for resolution.957
Staffed by Provisional Sinn Fein members, these centers enhanced the visibility of
the PIRA in Belfast, burnishing their claim to represent the Catholics in Northern Ireland
as whole. The local magazine Fortnight commented that these moves gave “the Provos a
chance to opt for respectability,” undermining the OIRA’s longstanding efforts to portray
itself as the only serious political actor on the ground. As Fortnight saw it, this political
threat struck at the heart of the local OIRA, who “were forced more and more to resort to
physical force to reassert their strength.” 958The British military took note of the uptick in
OIRA-PIRA physical confrontations that surrounded the ceasefire. The RGJ unit
assigned in Whiterock, Belfast between November 1974 and February 1975 observed that
“the Officials and Provisionals were constantly battling each other for supremacy and
control.”959
Elsewhere, too, physical altercations associated with the changing political
circumstances were on the rise. In Lurgan, to the southwest of Belfast, the PIRA
956 Ibid. 957 Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2001), 167. 958 "The Republican Feud," Fortnight, 7 November 1975, 4. 959 "The Second Battalion Letter," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle, no. 10 (1975): 57.
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‘arrested’ two OIRA members in February of 1975.960 Meanwhile, since the beginning
of the year, 961 a violent conflict was brewing between the PIRA, who held sway in
Dundalk, and the OIRA, who were based in nearby Newry, just across the border to the
north. Fights in local dancehalls and nightclubs worsened these relations. 962 That same
month, the PIRA shot a leading Newry Official, Eugene Tremers. A week later, the
OIRA kneecapped two PIRA members in Dundalk.963
Belfast remained the epicenter of OIRA-PIRA fighting. The British military
looked on as relations between the two sides broke down: “[…] it shortly became clear
that the Provos were not in fact going to mount an all out attack against us,” wrote an
RGJ unit fresh from Belfast in early 1975, “as we soon discovered they were quite
incapable of this”:
“Instead the main excitement was as a direct result of the Official-Provisional feud which led to many weapons finds and even arrests when they became only too keen to put the finger on each other.”964
IRA members have since reflected on the period, some musing that the fighting worsened
because restlessness had set in among the rank-and-file who were suddenly barred from
attacking British targets. The violent energies so recently directed toward the British now
turned toward infighting, according to these testimonies.965
960 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009). 961 Evening Herald, 13 January 1975; , Irish Press, 22 February 1975. 962 "’Beating Hurt – Not 5 Bullets’," Irish Independent, 22 April 1975. 963 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009). 964"The Second Battalion Letter," Royal Green Jackets: Chronicle, no. 10 (1975): 56. 965 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 275; De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 159. Also see: White interview with Brendan Hughes in White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 140.
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Adding to this trend, Loyalist violence began to change in its complexion over the
year. After bringing down the Sunningdale government, mass action and rioting became
less common, while Loyalist sectarian assassinations, many of them entirely
indiscriminate, became a greater danger. Total shootings in Northern Ireland in 1975
went down to 1,803, the lowest since, 1971 – and far lower than the peak of 10,631 in
1972.966 Six people died in rioting that year, compared to 7 in 1974, 14 in 1973, and 20 in
1972 and 19 in 1971.967 But sectarian murders of Catholics were on the rise, claiming the
lives of 94 Catholics in 1975, the highest number these kinds of killings in the decade. 968
For the two IRAs, with their defensive capabilities predicated on routines of
rudimentary violence, this presented a difficulty. These sectarian killings were
exceedingly difficult to prevent with established methods: Loyalist teams abducted
Catholics at random and killed them, sometimes torturing them in the process.969
Routines of rudimentary violence worked well in defense against Loyalist mass attacks
on Catholic neighborhoods, or sharpshooters from adjoining neighborhoods. Even
Loyalist bombs could be prevented with barricades and roadblocks to search cars. But
these routines were less effective at stopping totally random killings, especially when
abductions occurred outside the fortified Catholic neighborhoods. Deterring violence
through reprisal, therefore, became the strategy of choice for the PIRA, working under
966 See Sydney Elliott and WD Flackes, Northern Ireland: A Political Dictionary, 1968–99 (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1999), 681-89. 967 McKeown, "Database of Deaths Associated with Violence in Northern Ireland, 1969-2001," (2009). 968 Ibid. 969 See for example, Dillon’s account of the Shankill Butchers. Dillon, The Shankill Butchers: The Real Story of Cold-Blooded Mass Murder (New York, NY Routledge, 1989).
249
names such as the ‘Republican Action Force’, to claim killings against Protestants,
sometimes chosen indiscriminately.970
Under these circumstances, small teams of assassins grew in importance, while
the larger bodies of specialists in rudimentary violence had less to occupy their time.
Meanwhile, frustrations over the direction of the struggle were evident in the earliest
months of the ceasefire. At the Easter commemoration of 1975, Seamus Twomey, of the
PIRA, described the truce as under “very severe strain,”971 perhaps in an effort to placate
the frustrated militants in Belfast. The first major breach in the truce came several days
later, when the PIRA bombed a travel agency in Belfast, justifying the attack as a
response to British violations of the ceasefire.972
Against this backdrop, fighting between the PIRA and OIRA worsened. Even as
the OIRA fought the INLA, it clashed episodically with the PIRA. The year’s Easter
commemorations were once again marred by skirmishes and scuffling between the two
IRAs.973 Clashes also continued in Newry-Dundalk.974 In Newry, the PIRA shot and
wounded a seasoned Official, Larry Carragher,975 and the OIRA apprehended five
members of the PIRA who were visiting a nightclub in Newry, meting out beatings to
970 Robert W White, "The Irish Republican Army: An Assessment of Sectarianism," Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 1 (1997).
971 "Most Wanted Man in Ireland Addresses Crowd at Provisionals' Easter Parade," The Times, 31 March 1975. 972 "The 1975 British-Provisional IRA Truce in Perspective," Éire-Ireland 45, no. 3 (2010): 235. 973 Sawyer, "Competition in the Market for Political Violence: Northern Irish Republicanism, 1969–1998 " (Doctoral Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2010), 164; Walker, "Most Wanted Man in Ireland Addresses Crowd at Provisionals' Easter Parade," The Times, 31 March 1975. 974 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 295. 975 Ibid.
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each of them.976 An OIRA member interviewed by Hanley and Millar later estimated
that a total of fourteen were shot during the episode.977 After capturing a group of PIRA
members, an OIRA member recalls being asked if he should execute any of them. “There
is nobody dead yet, so shoot them in the legs,” he claims to have replied.978
Throughout these weeks, the OIRA claimed it was facing an escalating series of
assaults from the PIRA.979In Belfast, PIRA gunmen burst into a bar in the Markets
district of Belfast and fired on Robert Elliman of the OIRA, injuring him and a
companion, who was an INLA member.980 That same day, the OIRA claimed that the
PIRA fired from a car at Anthony Maxwell, a member of the Republican Clubs.981He
escaped injury, but was soon picked up and arrested by the British military.982 In Derry,
too, tensions ran high. The OIRA lost several weapons to the PIRA in an attempted
robbery gone wrong. In response, both sides quickly abducted each other’s members.
Before anyone was killed, a truce was reached between the two sides.983
And even as the PIRA truce with the British fell under further strain,984 the OIRA
continued to see it as a political threat. Cementing these fears, the Officials’ political
wing performed poorly in the 1 May elections for a constitutional convention in Northern
976 "’Beating Hurt – Not 5 Bullets’," Irish Independent, 22 April 1975; The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 295. 977 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 295. 978 Ibid. 979 Irish Independent, 5 April 1975. 980 Holland and McDonald, INLA: Deadly Divisions (Dublin, Ireland: Torc, 1994), 62. 981 Irish Independent, 5 April 1975 982 Ibid. 983 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 313. 984 White, "The 1975 British-Provisional IRA Truce in Perspective," Éire-Ireland 45, no. 3 (2010): 238.
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Ireland.985 Held against the backdrop of the OIRA’s feud with the INLA,986 the OIRA-
backed Republican Clubs won only 2.2% of the vote.987 Just then, the PIRA seemed to be
taking decisive steps toward accepting the legitimacy of normal political process.
Yet, alongside these strategic fissures, a considerable layer of the violence that
erupted during this period was obviously disconnected from clear, premeditated strategy.
Impromptu clashes between youth wings, following the pattern that had emerged since
1970, plagued daily relations.988 The same cycle of escalation that had led to deadly
clashes repeatedly in the past was again at work: in the close-packed neighborhoods of
Belfast, clashes cascaded through both strategic and non-strategic mechanisms,
intensifying violence through a dynamic that the leadership on both sides found difficult
to tame.
Recognition of these dangers was insufficient for preventing them. Between
August and October, a rolling period of escalation drew the sides deeper into conflict. On
8 August 1975, an altercation broke out between the two sides in New Lodge, north of
the city center. In the fighting, the PIRA accidently killed one of its own, 17-year-old
Martin McMenamy.989A week later, conflict flared again. This time it was triggered when
the PIRA conducted an indiscriminate sectarian killing of a Protestant (revenge for recent
Loyalist bombing). The OIRA loudly condemned the act, and then physically confronted
985 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 292. 986 Irish Examiner, 2 May 1975. 987 "Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention Elections 1975," Northern Ireland Elections, http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/fc75.htm; Fermanagh Herald, 10 May 1975. 988 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 323; , Fortnight, 4 July 1975. 989 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 313.
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the PIRA, leading to further violent clashes.990 The following month witnessed a spiral of
kneecappings across Northern Ireland, with both sides accusing their victims of
‘criminal’ behavior. 991
Meanwhile, the PIRA truce with the British was crumbling further. On 20
September, the truce with the British all but came to an end. British officials denied that
there had ever been a bi-lateral agreement with the PIRA, and soon afterward, the PIRA
resumed its bombing campaign in Northern Ireland.992
As the PIRA regrouped for war with the British, the punishment shootings and
fundraising robberies of the OIRA continued disrupt PIRA’s effort at steering the
insurgency.993 To bridle the unruly OIRA, the PIRA launched “a wide series of assaults
on paper sellers and members posting and distributing leaflets,” according to the
OIRA.994 Amid the escalation, on 10 October, Sean McNamee, who though not a PIRA
member, came from a PIRA family, was shot by the OIRA during a robbery attempt.995
“No one thought that the shooting of Sean McNamee had been premeditated,” Fortnight
commented soon after the shooting, “but many were sickened at the apparently
hypocritical statements of the Officials about law and order in the Nationalist ghettos.”996
990 Ibid., 310. 991 Ibid., 313. 992 White, "The 1975 British-Provisional IRA Truce in Perspective," Éire-Ireland 45, no. 3 (2010): 242. 993 White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 138. 994 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 995 "The Republican Feud," Fortnight, 7 November 1975, 4. 996 Ibid.
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Over the next two weeks, beatings and violent confrontations continued,997 until by the
end of the month, the PIRA decided to embark on an unprecedented escalation.
5.1.3. The PIRA assault of 29 October
In the early evening hours of 29 October 1975, roughly one hundred PIRA gunmen
fanned out across Belfast. Simultaneously, they launched thirty-one separate attacks on
the OIRA, all in the span of about half-an-hour.998 The PIRA chose as their targets known
OIRA members, striking across the city, in Andersonstown, Turf Lodge, Ballymurphy
and Ormeau Road.999 The first hit occurred at McKenna’s bar in the Markets district. If
subsequent court testimony is to be believed, this hit was conducted using a routine of
rudimentary violence: the local unit was given orders to locate and kill known OIRA
men. They sent scouts across the neighborhood, soon spotting Robbie Elliman drinking at
the bar. Acting quickly based on this information, the unit dispatched a three-man
team1000 that entered the bar and shot Elliman (killing him this time).1001 Simultaneously,
PIRA men arrived at the doors of houses occupied by OIRA members, shooting them
when they came to answer.1002 In once instance, a PIRA team went to Bagan’s Bar, an
OIRA haunt on the Falls Road. Not finding anyone to shoot, they torched the bar.1003 In a
communiqué justifying the sudden, coordinated assault, the PIRA explained they were
997 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 998 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 197. 999 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 316. 1000 "Life for Man Who Covered in IRA Killing," Irish Independent, 9 November 1978. 1001 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 315. 1002 Ibid., 316. 1003 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 281.
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cracking down on a “hoodlum element” that was terrorizing the community.1004 The
evening left one dead and twenty wounded.1005
Initially stunned, some in the OIRA thought the attacks came from the INLA, a
resumption of the hostilities of the spring.1006 But before long, information filtered up to
the OIRA commanders confirming that the PIRA was behind the onslaught. Based on
interviews with OIRA members, Hanley and Millar remark that in the early hours of the
attack, the local OIRA command discussed a range of options. While some called for a
devastating counter-offensive, Malachy McGurran, in charge of the OIRA in Northern
Ireland,1007 was ultimately able to cement a consensus that the OIRA should mount
selective retaliatory attacks in Belfast, but not beyond. A propaganda offensive,
meanwhile, was agreed upon to exact a political cost on the PIRA for the violence. 1008
Once again, this decision reflects the OIRA’s medium-imprint. While the OIRA regarded
proving its mettle in violent encounters as essential, its leadership continued to look to
alternative dimensions of competition as well – and yet, the imperative of reprisal
foreclosed rapid de-escalation.
1004 Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 240. 1005 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 197. 1006 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 316. 1007 Ibid., 145. 1008 Ibid., 317.
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5.1.4. Two weeks of war
The next day, 30 October, the two sides positioned themselves for further clashes.
Fighters on both sides moved into safe houses and stayed away from their workplaces.1009
Their members avoided straying into areas held by the opposing side, 1010 quickly
militarizing the borders between their respective neighborhoods. Using the same tactics
for repelling Loyalist incursions, the sides now mounted armed patrols to keep rival IRA
teams out of their areas, and on certain fault-lines, gunmen set up fixed positions, training
their guns on rival positions across the way.1011
That evening, the PIRA launched a similar, though smaller, assault compared to
the night previous. In one of the raids, the PIRA broke into the home of an OIRA
member, John Kelly,1012 who according to Bishop and Mallie, dove under his bed to hide.
In the ensuing confusion, the PIRA shot and killed Kelly’s six-year-old daughter, Eileen
Kelly.1013 The OIRA immediately publicized the PIRA’s killing of the child.1014 In total,
the PIRA managed to shoot five people that day.1015 Meanwhile, the OIRA knee-capped a
female PIRA member, abducting her from her place of work.1016 Sporadic sniping from
each side’s respective turf pervaded daily life for local residents.1017
1009 Ibid. 1010 Ibid. 1011 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 197. 1012 The PIRA hitmen would later testify that they had raided the wrong house by mistake. See "Feud’s Victim’s Mother in Court Uproar," Irish Press, 5 October 1976. 1013 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 281. 1014 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1015 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975); Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 317. 1016 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 317. 1017 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 197.
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Fighting continued on the 31st of October in a combination of planned assassination
attempts and extemporaneous battling. Teenaged fighters were injured in sudden clashes
at bars and other hangouts, and bursts of gunfire struck crowds of youths thought to be
associated with one side or the other.1018 The assassination campaign, too, continued. The
PIRA fired shots into the home of OIRA member James Fogarty, narrowly missing his
wife.1019 On the same day, the PIRA tried several times to assassinate Malachy
McGurran,1020 with one of the attacks occurring as he was on his way from an appearance
on the BBC, he claimed.1021
With most top members on each side withdrawing into safe houses, the target rich
environment of 29 October gave way to a cat-and-mouse game. The OIRA accused the
PIRA of conducting another round of assassination attempts on the homes of OIRA
members. Had their members not gone into hiding, they surely would have been
assassinated, the OIRA averred.1022 That day, the OIRA managed to locate and kill
Seamus McCusker,1023 who directed the Provisional’s Sinn Finn incident center in North
Belfast.1024 Fortnight described McCusker as political wing member, who for that reason
should not have been targeted.1025 But Hanley and Millar identify him as the Provisional
IRA’s Northern Director of Intelligence and “one of the men [the OIRA] held responsible
1018 Ibid., 198. 1019 Ibid. 1020 "Two Die in Belfast Republican Feuding," The Times 1 November 1975. 1021 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1022 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 1023 "Two Die in Belfast Republican Feuding," The Times 1 November 1975. 1024 White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 244. 1025 "The Republican Feud," Fortnight, 7 November 1975, 4.
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for the attacks” on their members over the previous few days.1026 Meanwhile, an OIRA
member, Tom Berry, attempted to ambush a group of PIRA members in the Short Stand;
when his gun jammed, the PIRA reacted, killing him.1027
Fighting continued on 1 November, with the PIRA mounting similar attacks on
Official haunts and bars.1028Amid the fighting, local women marched to demand an end
to the bloodshed. It did not matter who was responsible for the fighting, the marchers
declared, all that mattered was that it ended.1029 Further underlining the political
dimension of the fighting, OIRA redoubled its efforts to turn the propaganda scales
against the PIRA. Mac Giolla made speeches in which he accused the PIRA of operating
in cahoots with the British to destroy the rebellion. He claimed that PIRA units were
launching assassinations from incident centers, indicating British-PIRA collusion in the
fratricide.1030
The OIRA further accused the PIRA of attacking the funerals of its members who
were recently slain in the fighting, proof of the PIRA’s utter moral destitution, they
attested.1031 “On behalf of the Six County Executive of the Republican Clubs,”
MacGurran declared as the fighting continued, “I call on all the people to show their
disgust and opposition to these so called Provo protectors and to expose their hypocrisy
by refusing to buy their papers, to attend their meetings or their collections.”1032 Firing up
1026 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 317. 1027 Ibid. 1028 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1029 Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 240. 1030 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1031 Ibid. 1032Ibid.
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its propaganda machine and grassroots infrastructure, the OIRA did precisely what
medium-imprint organizations are expected to do – naming and shaming their opponents,
while also fueling the war through their own violent reprisals. In the early days of the
fighting, local cleric Alec Reid (who was involved in many of the mediation efforts
between the sides, as well as in negotiations with the British) approached the OIRA to
probe their willingness to agree to a truce. The OIRA leaders told him to “fuck off,”
according to Hanley and Millar.1033
Attacks on the homes of known militants, and sudden drive-by shootings,
continued.1034 On 3 November, the PIRA made another assassination attempt on James
Fogarty, killing him this time.1035 The same day, they carried out a series of machine gun
attacks across Belfast,1036 and the OIRA claimed that the PIRA attacked the funeral of
Tom Berry.1037 Pubs and nightclubs were bombed or set aflame, enhancing the
impression of a total and consuming war between the two sides.1038
After a week of ferocious battles, “nerves in Catholic Belfast were shredded.”1039
De Baroid recalls that during the fighting local Catholics retreated indoors after dark each
night, “something that the years of loyalist terror had failed to achieve.”1040 Irish reporter
Kevin Myers visited the Falls that week: “The Markets were terrifying,” he remembers, 1033 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 320. 1034 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1035Ibid.; "Feud Killing on Funeral’s Day," Irish Press, 4 November 1975. 1036 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1037 Ibid. 1038 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 319. 1039 Ibid. 1040 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 197.
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“all lights were off, pubs were closed, the streets deserted and soldiers and policemen
everywhere.”1041 The intra-rebel war had brought daily life to a standstill in the very
neighborhoods that the IRA claimed to be protecting. And the constant violence gave the
security forces political cover to press harder on their intelligence gathering efforts,
taking witness reports, searching homes, and making arrests, no doubt without the same
degree of local resistance they would have faced under ordinary circumstances.
The PIRA made a public offer to amnesty anyone willing to formally disavow
their ties with the OIRA – something that the OIRA had done during its war with the
INLA in the spring.1042 As in the past, little came of the offer.1043 On 4 November, Ruairí
Ó Bradaigh voiced PIRA willingness to accept independent meditation,1044as he travelled
to Belfast in an attempt to salvage the public relations disaster that the fighting was
causing. But this public gesture did not bring an immediate end to the clashes, which
continued the next day without fatalities.1045
To further press the propaganda war against the PIRA, a delegation of female
OIRA supporters traveled to Dublin to urge the Provisional Sinn Fein office to make
peace,1046a move that Ó Bradaigh dismissed as “sheer gimmickry.” 1047 The OIRA had by
1041 Myers, Watching the Door: Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast (London, UK Atlantic, 2006), 205. 1042 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 319. 1043 Ibid. 1044 "IRA Feud Goes on – but Truce Hopes Rising," Irish Independent, 6 November 1975. 1045 Ibid.; United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 1046 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 318-19. 1047 "IRA Feud Goes on – but Truce Hopes Rising," Irish Independent, 6 November 1975.
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this time publicly declared its own willingness to accept mediation,1048 and the next day,
Ó Bradaigh announced that mediation between the sides in Belfast was underway.1049
But throughout the next week, violence continued. Bombs were thrown at bars of
the respective sides;1050sudden ambushes and drive-by shootings were carried out in
locations known to be frequented by the rank-and-file of one side or the other;1051and
assassination attempts continued at the homes of known militants.1052 In one such attack,
the PIRA confronted a workman at his job site, accused him of OIRA sympathies, and
killed him on the spot.1053 That evening, an OIRA member, John Brown, visited his
home against orders to see his pregnant wife; spotted by a PIRA team, he was killed in a
hail of gunfire. 1054 All the while, the British military maintained what the Irish
Independent referred to as a “low profile,”1055 observing and “waiting to see the
outcome,” 1056 while no doubt gathering additional intelligence on both groups. Locals,
too, were caught in the crossfire, or attacked mistakenly. One instance resulted in the
killing of Owen McVeigh, a man without any Republican connections. On 11 November
1975, an OIRA hit team burst into his home and shot him dead in front of his
1048 Ibid. 1049 Ciaran McKeown, "New Peace Hope in IRA Feud," Irish Press, 7 November 1975. 1050 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975) 1051 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 198. 1052 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 319-20. 1053 "IRA Feud Claims Its Ninth Victim," Irish Press, 12 November 1975; The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 339. 1054 Ibid. 1055 "IRA Feud: Army Watching from Wings," Irish Independent, 12 November 1975. 1056 Ibid.
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daughter.1057 As they left the scene, one of the gunmen is reported to have exclaimed:
“Christ I’m in the wrong house.”1058
On 12 November, the OIRA killed the head of the Falls Taxi Association,
Michael Duggan,1059 whom they believed to be associated with a PIRA. The FTA
transported Catholics in Belfast in special taxis, safe from the danger of Loyalist
violence. Killing the head of this institution sparked immediate local outrage.1060 The
FTA taxis went on strike and drove in a long procession through the city to demand an
end to the fighting.1061 A group of local priests released a statement condemning “with
every fiber of our being, the present campaign of murder, grievous bodily harm, terror
and subsequent retaliation.”1062 Without question, the political disgrace and operational
strains of the war were devastating both sides.
Thus, after two weeks of bloodshed, the two sides finally made a breakthrough.
Mediated by two local clergymen, Alec Reid and Des Wilson, negotiators managed to
break the ice and talks to end the violence began in earnest.1063 On the afternoon of 13
November, the OIRA and PIRA reached a truce, ending what historians regard as the
worst period of intra-IRA violence since the bloody civil war of 1922-1923.1064 The next
1057 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 320; Holland, Too Long a Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland since 1969 (New York, NY: Dodd Mead & Company, 1981), 141. 1058 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 320; Holland, Too Long a Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland since 1969 (New York, NY: Dodd Mead & Company, 1981), 141. 1059 "Taxi ‘Strike’ after Latest Feud Killing," Irish Press, 13 November 1975. 1060 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 320. 1061 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 198. 1062 "Taxi ‘Strike’ after Latest Feud Killing," Irish Press, 13 November 1975. 1063 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 320. 1064 Ibid.
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day, the PIRA released a worrisome statement, declaring that they were reluctant to enter
a deal “in the present emotion-filled atmosphere.”1065 But the sides did not return to
blows.
Eleven people died in the intra-rebel war, a small figure by comparison to
conflicts elsewhere, but a serious toll by Northern Ireland standards.1066 What is more,
even if the fatalities were low, the visible intensity of the fighting was dramatic. The feud
involved over one hundred armed attacks, and left more than fifty injured.1067It also led to
immediate and severe operational damage. Security forces brought charges against
twenty-four individuals for their alleged activities in the intra-rebel war.1068 Soon after
the fighting ended, the British military displayed 57 weapons obtained during the
October/November 1975 feud; they estimated that twenty of them belonged to PIRA, six
from OIRA. The rest were of unclear provenance, found in gardens, or discarded when
militants fled the scene.1069 Moreover, the sheer intensity of the fighting further deepened
the division between the sides. For years afterward, both rebel organizations felt the need
to divert their energies toward maintaining readiness for another intra-rebel war --
resources that could have gone to fighting the British.1070
And the political costs were equally severe. The fighting consumed Belfast,
paralyzing the very community that the Republicans relied upon for support. Austin 1065 Ciaran McKeown, "IRA War of Words Flares up Again," Irish Press, 15 November 1975. 1066 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 281; White, "The 1975 British-Provisional IRA Truce in Perspective," Éire-Ireland 45, no. 3 (2010): 255. 1067 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 321; Ciaran McKeown, "Ceasefire in IrA Feud," Irish Press, 14 November 1975. 1068 "Feud between IRA Factions Led to Capture of Arms," The Times 18 November 1975. 1069 Ibid. 1070 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 322.
263
Currie, a politician in the Nationalist camp, referred to the episode as only the latest
example of the “Mafia-type” activities of the Republican militants.1071 The British
government picked up this theme with gusto, as they moved to end their policy of treating
captured Republicans as political prisoners.1072
5.1.5. Sporadic clashes (1977-1980)
The two sides managed to avoid another war on the same scale. But periodic eruptions of
violence did continue. Only a few months later, the OIRA accused the PIRA of
physically assaulting some of its members in Ballymurphy, warning that it would
retaliate against further aggression.1073 It is likely that behind-the-scenes mediation de-
escalated this, and other similar crises.
Still, events could sometimes spiral beyond the capacity of mediators and leaders
to control. In the spring of 1977, a cycle of fighting was once again set in motion. In
Newry, the PIRA accused the OIRA of harassing and beating several of its cadres.1074
Then, on Easter Sunday, as the Officials assembled for their traditional parade, a bomb
exploded, killing a child and wounding three others. 1075 Believing that the bomb was the
work of the PIRA, the Officials raced to the Milltown cemetery, where the Provisionals
were just leaving their own ceremonies.1076 With British soldiers looking on, the sides set
1071 "Provisionals Demand," Irish Examiner, 5 December 1975. 1072 Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 278; White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 145. 1073 "Another IRA Feud Feared," Irish Independent, 4 February 1976. 1074 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 378. 1075 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 208-09; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 378. 1076 De Baróid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2000), 208-09.
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upon each other in hand-to-hand fighting.1077 British army helicopters hovered overhead,
watching the Republicans throw bottles and stones at one another and trade blows. “To
me this was craziness,” remembers Gerry Adams, who rushed “to see if we could get
someone to calm things down.”1078 But before the mediators could intervene, OIRA
gunmen began firing shots.
Mustering quickly, the PIRA ambushed a few hours later the uncle of the boy
who had died in the bombing, killing him and wounding his companion.1079 Once the
fighting cooled, the sides determined that Loyalist paramilitaries were, in fact,
responsible for the bomb1080 (Adams later remarked that he suspected British intelligence
had planted it).1081 For now, the sides put away their guns. Once again, routines of
rudimentary violence – brawling, rioting, and then deploying gunmen – had made it
possible to turn to blows before allotting sufficient time to scrutinize the facts.
Another cycle broke out that summer. Conflicts arising from skirmishing in
Newry were calmed without any fatalities.1082 But in July, weeks of low level clashes in
Belfast raised the danger of further escalation.1083 On 26 July, a major clash with fists and
knives broke out in west Belfast.1084 Seeking to calm the tensions, according to Hanley
1077 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 378. 1078 Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 255. 1079 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 378. 1080 Ibid. 1081 Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 255. 1082 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 380. 1083 Irish Examiner, 28 July 1977. 1084 Ibid.
265
and Millar, Trevor McNulty, a local OIRA leader, began to tour Belfast the next day,
speaking with local PIRA leaders. 1085 At one of these meetings, on the afternoon of 27
July, a burst of gunfire felled McNulty and wounded his partner.1086
Within forty-five minutes, the OIRA struck back with hits on three individuals
they believed were affiliated with the PIRA.1087 Battles broke out across the city.1088 That
night, a prominent PIRA militant, Tommy Toland, went out in search of Officials to kill.
He was ambushed and killed.1089 In total, four died1090 and about twenty were injured, as
fighting continued into the night.1091 The next day, the OIRA declared that “what we do
not want is a repeat of the 1975 feud,”1092 and the sides managed to prevent further
escalation. Not surprisingly, the British military and local security forces used the feud as
a pretense to increase the number of detentions of suspected Republican militants in the
coming months.1093
Small-scale clashes continued to occur periodically.1094 Hanley and Millar detect
that over time “a particular feud-resolution etiquette had developed” that ordered the
violence between the two sides. After a clash, the sides would call on mediators to broker
1085 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 380. 1086 "Belfast Feud Leaves Four Dead," Irish Press, 28 July 1977. 1087Ibid. One was unaffiliated with either group; the OIRA attacked the resident of the PIRA militant’s previous address. See: The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 380. 1088 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 380. 1089 Ibid. 1090 Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 127. 1091 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 380. 1092 "Four Killed as IRA Feud Flares in Belfast," The Times 28 July 1977. 1093 "Provisionals Demand," Irish Examiner, 5 December 1975. 1094 The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 380.
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a truce, but “the side that had been the victim of an attack did not take part in mediation
until after they had first responded in kind.”1095 Hence, over the next decades, there was
violence between the PIRA and the OIRA (later called the Workers’ Party), though never
on the scale of the October/November 1975 war.
5.2. Eastern Turkey: a rebellion at war with itself This chapter now returns to Turkey, picking up on the war between the PKK and the
TKDP/KUK. From the setting to the scale of the fighting, this war differed in many
respects from the Republican conflagration in Belfast. Yet, important causal mechanisms
are similar. In Turkey, the features of the TKDP/KUK vs. PKK dyad (i.e., medium-vs.-
high imprint) led to patterns of interaction and mutual expectations similar to those
witnessed in the Belfast case. Indeed, by the time the PKK and TKDP/KUK collided, it
was difficult to conceive of competition that avoided violent displays. As the below
sections will trace, escalatory tendencies inhering in the imprinting of this dyad fueled
these violent exchanges – leading to a recursive interaction between violent events and
shifting threat perception.
5.2.1. The TKDP/KUK: competition and violence
The TKDP/KUK was less aggressively expansionist than the PKK -- and it did not battle
rivals across the breadth of Turkey’s southeast, as the PKK did. Yet, as new violent
modes of competition took hold, the TKDP/KUK, too, became involved in physical
competition and violence. The TKDP/KUK boasted of its grit in the face of rightist
1095 Ibid., 323.
267
attacks1096 – and it was willing to prove its violent prowess in battles with other rebels
when needed. In 1978, Tekoşin’s leader, Seyfi Cengiz, traveled to TKDP/KUK
strongholds in Mardin, and heard reports that the TKDP/KUK had been clashing
violently with the Turkish leftist Kurtuluş organization in the area.1097 State prosecutors
record incidents of TKDP/KUK violence against members of the DDKD/KİP and Rızgari
in Diyarbakır.1098And throughout the TKDP’s fissuring, beginning 1977, there were
episodic outbreaks of armed violence between TKDP splinters,1099 though it is unclear
just how severe the violence became.1100
5.2.2. Alliance politics: The formation of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDG)
Meanwhile, the PKK was moving closer to the heartland of TKDP/KUK support. The
PKK’s initial efforts at expanding into Turkey’s Kurdish region consciously avoided
areas that the TKDP/KUK dominated. The PKK recognized that the KDP tradition was
strong in these areas – and that the TKDP/KUK was well armed and capable of defending
its turf.1101 But as the PKK grew, it began to press into TKDP/KUK territory. While
during the 1977 local elections there was little indication of PKK involvement in
Diyarbakır and other areas of TKDP/KUK influence,1102 it was not long before PKK
1096Xebat 3 (October/November 1978): 4. 1097 Zarek, "Tekoşin Gerçeği - Seyfi Cengiz ile Röportaj," Rasti (2001): 46. 1098 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 131 (1981). 1099 In one example of TKDP internal violence, the TKDP/KUK later claimed that a rightist splinter killed two of its important cadres, a father and son – Abdullah and Emin Bilen – in May 1979. See "Kürdistan Devletinin Kurulması İçin Canlarını Feda Eden Şehitler," BerfinKurdistan.com. 1100 Temel, 1984'ten Önceki 25 Yılda Kürtlerin Silahsız Mücadelesi (Istanbul, Turkey: İsmail Beşikçi Vakfı, 2015), 305. 1101 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 7; Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 30. 1102 Dorronsoro and Watts, "Toward Kurdish Distinctiveness in Electoral Politics: The 1977 Local Elections in Diyarbakir," International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 3 (2009).
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cadres began to gather support in these areas by absorbing local leftist groups1103 and
gathering local militants to their side.1104
Under these conditions, the TKDP/KUK warmed to the idea of a working
partnership with the DDKD/KİP and the TKSP, who were also exposed to the new
dangers of rising political violence and the growing threat of the PKK. Throughout 1979,
the TKSP had been casting about for partners to join a common front against the ‘fascist’
right.1105 The Turkish left had made such attempts several times before; the difference
was that the TKSP was a pro-Kurdish party, and it first courted other pro-Kurdish
factions for its partnership, with the intention of later expanding to include sympathetic
currents in the Turkish left.
Kemal Burkay, leader of the TKSP, had a large number of potential Kurdish allies
to choose from, but he dismissed many out of hand. He viewed Tekoşin as too small,1106
Kawa as ideologically incompatible,1107 and Rızgari as overly concerned with internal
intrigues.1108 This left the TKDP/KUK and the DDKD/KİP, both factions that the TKSP
regarded as presiding over large and active constituencies in the southeast.1109 Bringing
the sides together, however, would prove difficult. The TKDP/KUK and the DDKD/KİP
were inheritors of two rival traditions that had emerged from the clash between Sait Elçi
1103 For descriptions, see Apocular (PKK) Suruç Grubu: İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı 1980/1537, 22-65 (1981). 1104 The PKK claimed it began making inroads in TKDP/KUK zones in 1978. See: Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 7. 1105 Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 167. In July 1980, Tekoşin observed the leading role of the TKSP. See Tekoşin, "Ö.Yolu/DDKD/KUK/Rızgar/A.Rızgari Eleştirisi," no. 5 (June 1980): 71. 1106 Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 167-69. 1107 Ibid. 1108 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 39; Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 167-69. 1109 "The Kurdish Movement in Turkey – an Interview with a Representative of the Ozgurluk Yolu Movement," KNaC (December 1980).
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(of the TKDP) and Sait Kırmızıtoprak (of the T-KDP), in the period surrounding the
1971 military coup.
Still, the dangers facing the leftist and Kurdish movements provided ample
inducement for joining forces. And the return to power of a rightist government in late-
1979 only sharpened these incentives.1110 After months of wrangling, the three sides
finally produced a declaration of their common front, the Union of Democratic Forces
(UDG), in February 1980, just as competition between the TKDP/KUK and PKK was
turning increasingly violent.1111
The UDG manifesto did not include any explicit mention of the PKK. Its stated
purpose was to create a nucleus of leftist, pro-Kurdish factions that would stand as a
common front against “colonialism, imperialism, fascism, and feudal reactionary-
ism.”1112The alliance envisioned combining efforts in ideological production, as well as
working together in the southeast to orchestrate mass actions and labor agitation. It also
foresaw cooperation to defend against attacks from “fascist” and “reactionary”
opponents.1113
Here, it is clear that the PKK, too, figured implicitly in the array of threats that
justified the formation of the UDG. Burkay later remarked that including the PKK in the
UDG would have been unthinkable, because in the eyes of the TKSP, the PKK was “a
1110 Ala Rızgari Special Addendum (December 1979); "The Kurdish Movement in Turkey – an Interview with a Representative of the Ozgurluk Yolu Movement," KNaC (December 1980); Suat Bozkuş, interview by Erdal Er, 12 July, 2013. 1111 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 81; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377. 1112 Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 169. 1113 The declaration also called for working toward more concrete goals. These included ending the state of emergency; the release political prisoners; expanded rights for labor activities; Turkey’s exit from NATO; and breaking ties with international institutions like the IMF and OECD. See: "Ulusal Demokratik Güçbirliği (UDG) Deklarasyonu," Jina Nu (February 1980): 27-28.
270
provocateur organization in the service of the regime”1114 Likewise, several months after
the UDG was declared, the DDKD/KİP accused the PKK of using violence, not
defensively, but to attack anyone that the PKK regarded as “an agent.”1115 Its founders
later remarked that they saw the UDG as an instrument for weakening dangerous rivals,
with the PKK figuring among them.1116
For its part, the PKK reacted with hostility to the UDG, seeing it as an attempt to
block its ascendance. The PKK immediately called the UDG “a counter-revolutionary
front that the reformist-appeaser Kurdish reactionaries, acting under orders of the Turkish
colonizers, have formed against the Kurdistan Liberation Movement.” 1117 It added that
the UDG was a hapless attempt to regain power by groups that “had been unraveling over
the past year.”1118 Subsequently, the PKK would paint the UDG as a scheme backed by
Bülent Ecevit, the leader of the center-left RPP, to undermine the PKK.1119
Repurposing the logic of Realist theories of international politics, it might be
possible to regard the inking of the UDG as ushering in a stable balance of power within
the Kurdish rebel movement. In this view, the incumbent Kurdish powers combined into
the UDG to thwart the hegemonic aspirations of the PKK, and in so doing drastically
reduced the expected returns of fratricide for all parties. For the UDG alliance, mutual
commitments reduced vulnerabilities. As for the PKK, it was, by this point, too strong 1114 Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 166. 1115 Jina Nu 5 (June 1980): 157. 1116 "The Kurdish Movement in Turkey – an Interview with a Representative of the Ozgurluk Yolu Movement," KNaC (December 1980). 1117 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 11. 1118 Hewar 2 (September 1980). 1119 A PKK military history, attributed to Murat Karayılan, refers to the UDG as an “anti-PKK” bloc. See, Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 112. Also see: "“Ecevit Şahsinda Iflas Eden Türk Egemenlik Sistemi ve Kemalizmdir ...” ", Berxwedan, no. 44 (1987): 11; "Kurdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Problemi ve Çözüm Yolu: Kurdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Cephesi – Program Taslağı," Serxwebun (August 1982): 23.
271
and widely dispersed to be acutely vulnerable to a deathblow from UDG forces. As such,
neither side was strong enough to win a decisive advantage from a major war – nor were
any of the factions so vulnerable vis-a-vis their rivals that only a preemptive offensive
could give them a fighting chance at survival.1120 A major fratricidal war, thus, promised
little apart from exposing everyone involved to devastating state repression and political
costs. Yet, despite these strategic factors, the worst fratricidal violence was just over the
horizon. Here, as elsewhere, the strategic puzzle of intra-rebel war in strong states is on
full display.
5.2.3. Flashpoint: the Ceylanpınar State Development Farm
Just as the PKK’s rivals prepared themselves for the unveiling of the UDG, the violent
competition between the TKDP/KUK and the PKK in eastern Turkey began to escalate.
The site for this violent escalation was the state development farm at Ceylanpınar, in
Turkey’s Urfa province on the Syrian border. A locus of important economic activity
nestled in the imagined Kurdistan of the insurgents, the Ceylanpınar SDF was a major
prize for Kurdish revolutionaries.1121
For years, the Ceylanpınar SDF had been a site of militant labor activity,1122 with
two major left-aligned unions vying with one another for support: the Union of Land and
Water Agricultural Workers of Turkey (TİS)1123 affiliated with the DİSK federation, and
1120 Here I am referring, in particular, to Pischedda’s (2015, 2018) theory of intra-rebel war. Pischedda, "Wars within Wars: Understanding Inter-Rebel Fighting" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University 2015). 1121 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980; Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 81; Nadir Yurtoğlu, "Türkiye’de Kırsal Kesmin Kalkınmasında Önemli Bir Model: Devlet Üretme Çiftlikleri (1949-1960)," Tarih Okulu Dergisi (TOD) 11, no. 34 (2018). 1122 See for example: Özgürlük Yolu 25 (June 1977 ): 75; Özgürlük Yolu 24 (May 1977): 79; Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 67; Cumhuriyet, 3 July 1978; ibid.; ibid.; ibid. 1123 Türkiye Toprak-Su Tarım İşçileri Sendikası
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the Union of Forest, Land, Agriculture and Agricultural Industry of Turkey (Tarım-
İş),1124 affiliated with the TÜRK-İŞ federation.1125 Signifying its prized status, activists at
the Ceylanpınar SDF staged a Mayday rally in 1977, thought to have been the first of its
kind in eastern Turkey.1126 The Turkish state took notice, and on at least one occasion
dispatched a large military presence to the area.1127
As politics grew more violent across Turkey, militant factions in Ceylanpınar –
chiefly the PKK and the TKDP/KUK -- began to overshadow the formerly dominant
Kurdish mainstream and leftist parties. Ceylanpınar’s mayor at the time was Kemal
Öcalan (Turkish authorities later claimed that he was a relative of Abdullah Öcalan. I am
unable to confirm this claim).1128 In December 1978, militants fired a volley of shots at
his car, killing the driver.1129 Less than a week later, attackers killed one of his close
family members.1130 Following these attacks, Kemal Öcalan made a statement over the
municipal loudspeaker confessing that he had “been on the wrong path” but that he was
now committed to “working for the people.”1131 The statement was interpreted as his
capitulation to the new militants on the block.1132 Soon after, the PKK suggested that they
were behind the violence against Kemal Öcalan, whom they accused of initially
1124 Türkiye Orman Topraksu Tarım ve Tarım Sanayii İşcileri Sendikasi 1125 Cumhuriyet, 3 July 1978; , Özgürlük Yolu 25 (June 1977 ): 75. 1126 Özgürlük Yolu 25 (June 1977 ): 75; Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 67. 1127 Cumhuriyet, 3 July 1978. 1128 "Apo’nun Akrabasina 13 Yıl Hapis ", Milliyet, 28 March 1986. 1129 "İstanbul Ankara Adana Diyarbakır ve Urfa’da 5 Kişiyi Öldüren Sanıklar Kaçtı," Milliyet, 20 December 1978; Cumhuriyet, 3 July 1978. 1130 Cumhuriyet, 3 July 1978; "PKK Viranşehir Grubu," Milliyet, 19 November 1982. 1131 "Urfa’da Apocular Kırsal Alanları Tercih Ediyor," Milliyet, 9 August 1980. 1132 Ibid.
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supporting Denge Kawa. Using its trademark tactics of violent intimidation, the PKK had
gained a foothold.1133 Meanwhile, the TKDP/KUK remained highly active in the labor
organizing efforts at the farm, and its militants were clashing with rightists and
landowners across the region, albeit probably with less intensity than the PKK.1134
It was a dangerous trajectory: as 1980 approached, two organizations whose
prestige rested on their violent credentials were both contending for dominance over the
state development farm at Ceylanpınar. It bears emphasizing, however, that there was
nothing inevitable about the war that would soon break out between the TKDP/KUK and
the PKK. Indeed, the strategic folly of such a war was obvious, not least to those in the
Kurdish movement. Turkey’s military and security forces, though facing resource
constraints,1135showed little sign of relenting in their campaign against Kurdish
dissidents. Beginning in 1977, the Turkish police began snapping up top PKK cadres at a
dangerous clip. Finally, in spring 1979 one of the organization’s top leaders, Şahin
Dönmez, was captured and the PKK believed that he then began to divulge the locations
of its safe houses.1136 Abdullah Öcalan later claimed that he feared a shattering blow from
the security forces could be imminent.1137 The PKK began moving important cadres
across the border, including Öcalan himself, who left Turkey for Syria in July 1979.1138
1133 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 12. 1134 Xebat 4 (February/March 1979): 23.; TKDP pamphlet circulated 19 November 1979. Reprinted in: "Kürdistan 1977/1979 Bildiriler," Xebat (1979). 1135 For primary evidence, see Akar and Dündar, Ecevit ve Gizli Arşivi (İmge, 2008), 268-69. 1136 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 62; Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 113; Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 48. 1137 Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 127. 1138 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 71; Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistan’da Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 113,19; Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 127.
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From abroad, Öcalan instructed the PKK to commence operations with high
political impact – such as assassinations – and to use robberies to gather funds. He also
allegedly called on his cadres to continue to block Aydınlık from distributing anti-PKK
propaganda.1139 At the same time, however, he ordered the PKK to take measures to
avoid exposure to the increasingly dangerous state. He instructed his cadres to avoid main
roads, and to refrain from using vehicles that could be stopped at roadblocks. The PKK
made an effort to improve the security of its courier system, and Öcalan urged local units
to lower the tempo of armed operations, as well as to avoid clashes with rivals.1140 All
across the Kurdish movement, dissidents were noticing an uptick in search and seizure
raids in towns and villages.1141
That the TKDP/KUK vs. PKK war began at the very moment when dissidents
were seeking to insulate themselves from state repression underlines the puzzle of intra-
rebel war in strong states. As with Republican fratricide in Belfast, tendencies emanating
from the medium-vs.-high dyad imprint of these rivals helps to explain the quickening
pace of fratricide, leading to war, as the below sections will now detail.
5.2.4. Physical competition
Throughout 1979, labor agitation in the Ceylanpınar SDF sparked episodic physical
encounters between the PKK and the TKDP/KUK, carried out using the same styles of
rudimentary violence described in previous chapters.1142 A local union election held in
1139 Özcan, PKK (Kürdistan İşçi Partisi) Tarihi, Ideolojisi ve Yöntemi (Ankara, Turkey: ASAM, Avrasya Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yayınları, 1999), 44-45. 1140 Ibid.; Yüce, Doğuda Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 360. 1141 See for example, Kawa 3 (1979). 1142Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 81; Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377.
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the spring of 1980 intensified this competition, and led to the cycle of escalation that
brought the sides into war.
In the upcoming election, the TKDP/KUK threw its support behind the DİSK-
affiliated TİS. In response, the PKK supported Tarım-İş, affiliated with the TÜRK-İŞ
federation.1143 Competition was intense in the run-up to the election. The TKDP/KUK
claims that from the very start of the campaign the PKK used intimidation and violence
to coerce support for Tarım İş.1144 The PKK, naturally, accuses the TKDP/KUK of
instigating the violence.1145 According to Yüce, the TKDP/KUK’s attacks on the PKK
ratcheted upwards in late-February 1980: the TKDP/KUK, according to Yüce, raided the
TÜRK-İŞ office in Ceylanpınar and beat the workers; they assailed cars belonging to
TÜRK-İŞ workers, leading to brawls; they attacked and beat TÜRK-İŞ canvassers; and
they fired at a Tarım-İş branch leader.1146
Getting to the bottom of who threw the first punch or fired the first shot is less
important than recognizing how planned coercive violence concatenated with non-
strategic violence, in a string of clashes and rapid reprisals, contributing to an atmosphere
of growing threat. Compounding these dangers, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the
sides would have framed these incidents of violence against the backdrop the fratricidal
wars that the PKK was waging elsewhere. The PKK arrived on the scene in Ceylanpınar
with an established reputation for ruthlessness against rivals that opposed its dominance,
1143 See, Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 11; Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 81; Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 376-77. 1144 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 81. 1145 Hewar 2 (September 1980). 1146 Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 376-77.
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so it is not difficult to imagine that the TKDP/KUK would have seen them as an
aggressive predator.1147
And the PKK had been shaped by years of physical competition and fratricidal
war with rivals. The distinctive terminology that suffuses the PKK propaganda of the day
constantly implies that others in the left or Kurdish movement are members of the ruling
classes, and that this class character confers a tendency to collaborate with the state and
its local agents.1148 Without question, this discourse made it easier to cast rivals as
enemies, rather than as allies against a far-superior state adversary.
And indeed, as violent encounters between the two sides intensified, rumors
circulated within PKK circles that the TKDP/KUK was planning a devastating
coordinated assault, complete with bombings and a string of assassinations.1149 While
both sides appreciated the costs associated with fratricidal war, these threat narratives
must have influenced how they perceived and weighed these costs and dangers.
Moreover, shaped by disorderly violent repression, neither was in a position to turn the
other cheek after suffering a physical affront from a rival, making de-escalation in the
short term difficult to achieve.
Counterfactually, wise and disciplined intervention from the top leadership might
have averted a slide to war. But following on the violent patterns and perceptual shifts
that now defined relations between the two sides, changing course was more difficult
1147 See for example:"Siverek Olayı Hangi Sonun Başlangıcı Olacak," Denge Kawa (September 1979); "Kürdistan Devrimi Üzerine Toplu Görüşlerimiz," Tekoşin, no. 4 (September 1979): 183; Burkay, "Devrimcilik Mi? Terörizm Mi? PKK Üzerine," Özgürlük Yolu (1983). Also see: Jina Nu 5 (June 1980): 154-58. And "Private Letter Dated 24 August 1979," in Kalemimden Sayfalar, ed. Şerwan Büyükkaya (Stockholm, Sweden: Vate, 2008). 1148 See for instance: Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980; ibid., 2; Hewar 1 (August 1980). Also see "Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Problemi ve Çözüm Yolu: Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Cephesi – Program Taslagi," Serxwebun (August 1982). 1149 Both testimony from detained alleged PKK members and subsequent PKK accounts remark on this belief. See İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 157 (1981); Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 376-77.
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than ever. On 12 March 1980 an armed attack severely wounded Mustafa Göçmen, the
chairman of the local Tarım-İş branch (which the PKK backed).1150 Believing the
TKDP/KUK to be behind the attack, the PKK retaliated two days later by killing Mehmet
Akagünduz (father of the head of TİS, Mustafa Akagünduz) as he left his home.1151
Killing these locally important figures marked an escalation in what had before remained
a non-lethal, if steadily escalating, conflict. The war was now underway.
5.2.5. A widening war
The TKDP/KUK later claimed that after the killing of Akagündüz they immediately sent
intermediaries to try to stop the fighting from spreading.1152 This effort, if it was
attempted, was unsuccessful. Clearly in no mood for peace, the PKK moved quickly with
a battery of attacks on the local TKDP/KUK and its supporters in Ceylanpınar. Reeling
from the onslaught, the head of the local TİS branch, Gazi Taş, was forced to flee, the
PKK claimed.1153
Southeast Turkey was littered with zones where local rudimentary militarization
had emerged to meet the challenge of disorderly violent repression. Thus, there were
plenty of sites for the fighting to spread. And indeed, on the same day as Akagündüz’s
killing, the fighting began to diffuse, first spreading to the nearby town of Kızıltepe.
TKDP/KUK militants traveled between Ceylanpınar and Kızıltepe, preparing fighters for
1150 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980; Cumhuriyet, 12 March 1980; ibid. 1151 The KUK’s book of martyrs lists Akagündüz as being killed on 1 March. This contradicts the date of contemporary press reporting of the incident, which records the attack as occurring on 14 March. See: Cumhuriyet, 12 March 1980; Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002). 1152 Cumhuriyet, 12 March 1980; Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 44. 1153 Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377.
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the likely spread of hostilities, according to testimony obtained by state prosecutors.1154
In this testimony, TKDP/KUK member remarked that the TKDP/KUK Central
Committee ordered them to make preparations for a PKK attack.1155 The PKK, too,
quickly dispersed weapons to special teams tasked with conducting the war, according to
state prosecutors.1156
Per their instructions, a small TKDP/KUK team set out on a foot patrol of one of
their neighborhoods in Kızıltepe. They soon took fire from a PKK unit. In the ensuing
gun battle, a bystander was killed; an important TKDP/KUK member, Abdülkadir Umur,
was fatally wounded; and another TKDP/KUK member, Selim Aslan, was severely
wounded as well.1157 The shooting ended abruptly when fighters heard that security
forces were in the area.1158
Over the succeeding hours, a series of pitched encounters broke out in the
town.1159 Less than two hours after the initial clash in Kızıltepe, the TKDP/KUK
allegedly shot up a café where PKK member, Ali Arıç, was sitting, killing him along with
1154 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 185 (1981). 1155 Ibid., 157. 1156 Ibid., 185. 1157 The state indictment against the KUK and a subsequent KUK account are in broad agreement on this event. See, "Kürdistan Devletinin Kurulmasi İçin Canlarını Feda Eden Şehitler," BerfinKurdistan.com; İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 186 (1981); Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 72-73. 1158 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 186 (1981). 1159 It should be noted that descriptions of some of these incidents are based solely on testimony obtained by Turkish security forces, presented in indictments brought against these groups. Of course, events recorded in court indictments should not be accepted as reliable, unless corroborated by other sources. Still, the descriptions they contain, even when uncorroborated, are useful insofar as they chime with the descriptions of the styles of rudimentary violence recorded in other sources. Thus, even though the particulars of each allegation are potentially biased or inaccurate, for the purposes of this dissertation, they are useful complements for mapping the violent routines that were used during the intra-rebel war, all aforementioned disclaimers notwithstanding.
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two bystanders.1160 Soon afterward, another TKDP/KUK and PKK patrol chanced upon
each other, immediately launching into a gun battle. One militant was wounded, before
both sides fled the scene.1161
After several days the fighting lulled in Ceylanpınar1162 but then spread to Derik
and to Diyarbakır.1163On 15 March, the TKDP/KUK shot dead the PKK’s Musa Durak in
central Diyarbakır.1164Two days later, a TKDP/KUK member allegedly fired on a pair of
PKK supporters as they climbed the steps to enter the local high school.1165 Soon
afterwards, the alleged TKDP/KUK attacker, and two of his comrades, found themselves
in a gun battle with security forces, and surrendered.1166 That same day, TKDP/KUK and
PKK units battled on a busy market street in Diyarbakır. Police soon arrived on the scene,
resulting in a running gun battle and the capture of TKDP/KUK militants and weapons,
according to state prosecutors.1167 Fighting continued in Diyarbakır throughout the next
several weeks.1168
Simultaneously, fighting broke out in Derik, a district in the Mardin province. A
heated political debate between PKK and TKDP/KUK members at the local high school
1160 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 186 (1981); Albuma Sehîden, (Serxwebûn, Undated), 181. 1161 İbid, 186. 1162 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377. 1163 In subsequently published private correspondence, Necmettin Büyükkaya, a militant unaffiliated with either side, writes on 18 March of hearing a radio report of clashes in Ceylanpınar, Kızıltepe, Diyarbakır, and Derik. See Büyükkaya, "Private Letter Dated 18 March 1980," in Kalemimden Sayfalar, ed. Büyükkaya (Stockholm, Sweden: Vate, 2008). 1164 Cumhuriyet, 12 March 1980; Albuma Sehîden, (Serxwebûn, Undated), 105; Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 1208. 1165 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 135 (1981). 1166 Gönül Morkoç, "30 Yıldır Marş Duymak, Bayrak Görmek İstemiyor," Rudaw, 10 September 2014. 1167 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 137-38 (1981). 1168 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377.
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in Derik led to a brawl, with stones and clubs, and the drawing of pistols. Nearby
TDKP/KUK members soon joined the fray. Before long, the police were drawn to the
scene of the fighting, and the ensuing pursuit led to the capture of eighteen militants, and
the discovery of their weapons caches, according to official sources.1169 One PKK
militant died in the clashes, and three militants were injured.1170 Later that day, the PKK
and TKDP/KUK allegedly engaged in another deadly gun battle on the streets of
Derik.1171
The next front of the war opened in Batman, a short distance to the northeast of
Mardin. By this time, the PKK had implicated itself in Batman’s local politics through its
violent battles with the local, state-aligned Raman tribe. Dozens had died in these clashes,
and Batman would remain contested territory between local rightist-aligned forces and
the PKK for years to come.1172 On 25 March, the PKK wounded a TKDP/KUK member,
according to state prosecutors, and the TKDP/KUK dispatched a member of its military
committee to coordinate a response.1173
The details of these clashes are suggestive of a style of violence that shares certain
distinctive similarities to that observed in the IRA case. While carefully planned
assassinations and rumors of imminent bombings show that the sides saw themselves as
engaged in a major war, a sizable portion of the violence occurred more spontaneously,
1169 Cumhuriyet, 12 March 1980; İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 168 (1981). 1170 See previous cite. 1171 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 136 (1981). 1172 For a discussion, see Orhan, Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 83-84. 1173 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 150 (1981).
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with hastily planned hit-and-run assaults, defensive patrols colliding in contested
neighborhoods and political debates escalating to armed violence partly driving the
pattern of escalation. By availing themselves of these routines of rudimentary violence,
the sides were able to cause much more damage to each other, much more quickly, than
would have been possible had they been forced to rely exclusively on more sophisticated
forms of violence.
5.2.6. A failed ceasefire
Years later, the PKK claimed that it released a statement announcing a unilateral
ceasefire in late-March, and sent orders to halt all but defensive measures against the
TKDP/KUK.1174 The TKDP/KUK similarly records that at about this time the two sides
agreed to a ceasefire.1175 But the fighting did not end. The PKK admits that its units in
Mardin disregarded the ceasefire orders, and continued to attack local TKDP/KUK
units.1176 Then, on 2 April, the TKDP/KUK assassinated a PKK organizer at a brick
factory in Batman,1177 touching off a series of gun battles fought on the streets over the
next several days.1178
Fighting also continued in Kızıltepe. According to state prosecutors, the
TKDP/KUK at this time decided to assassinate Molla Davut Kurtay,1179 the PKK leader
1174 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 379. 1175 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 74-75. 1176 Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 380. 1177 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 151 (1981); Albuma Sehîden, (Serxwebûn, Undated), 129. 1178 Ibid, 377. 1179 Ibid, 187.
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for Mardin, according to former PKK-member Selim Çürükkaya.1180 Not only did early
attempts at killing Kurtay result in frustrating failures, but in the meantime, the PKK
managed to kill a TKDP/KUK member from the local high school in an
ambush.1181Finally, the opportunity to kill Kurtay presented itself in mid-April, when a
group of TKDP/KUK militants happened to spot him in public.1182 The court
indictment’s rendition of this incident demonstrates how routines of rudimentary violence
made acting on this opportunity possible: acting fast, the TDKP/KUK made a rough plan
of attack, moved into position, and shot him down with pistols. One of the alleged
assailants was captured shortly after the attack.1183
5.2.7. The war in the villages
By this time, violence had begun to slow on the fronts in Diyarbakır, Ceylanpınar, and
Batman.1184 But the sides failed to tame the violence in the Mardin province, especially in
the rural countryside and small villages.1185 Here, the war took a course that was quite
different from its parallel in Belfast. Indeed, routines of rudimentary violence, as
conceptualized in Chapter 4, played only a minor role in the fighting that occurred in
1180 Cürükkaya, Susmak Ölmektir! (Germany: Neopubli, 2016), 410. 1181 The state indictment against the TKDP/KUK and a subsequent TKDP/KUK account are in broad agreement on this event. See İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer OlmadığI Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 187 (1981); Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 71. 1182 The court indictment provides 11 April as the day of Kurtay’s death; contemporary PKK journals list it as 16 April. See: Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 9; İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 187 (1981). 1183 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 187 (1981). 1184 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 377. 1185 Ibid.
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Mardin’s countryside, a clear departure from the theorizing conducted thus far in the
dissertation.
This was because the strength of both organizations in rural areas was based on
rural tribal and family networks, which were already experienced in their own styles of
rural warfare. The TKDP/KUK had inherited family and clan networks from its
predecessor, the TKDP, which was organized atop traditional social structures of kin,
religion, and local commercial ties.1186 The PKK had only recently begun to incorporate
these local structures, but it was fast making inroads.1187
Thus, when the war spread to these rural zones, it fell prey to the calculations of
local families, clans and tribes, which in some cases quite obviously instrumentalized the
war to act on private enmities. This presented a political problem for the PKK and the
TKDP/KUK, alike, for both were committed in principle to emancipation from tribalism
and traditional parochial feuding. In local newspapers, the PKK named ‘reactionary’
structures of tribal authority as a primary target,1188 and the TKDP/KUK, perhaps to
compensate for its inherited reputation, was ferocious in its diatribes against tribal
structures in the region.1189
Contrary to their political precepts, these self-appointed modernizers now found
themselves deeply entangled in ‘traditional’ conflicts, fought in a similar fashion to the
blood feuds of old. To gloss over this uncomfortable reality, each side took to
1186 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 14; Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010). 1187 Güneş Murat Tezcür, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Risks: Participation in an Ethnic Rebellion," American Political Science Review 110, no. 2 (2016). 1188 See for example, Yurttan Haberler, 12 August 1980, 3; "Proleter Ve Enternasyonalist Devrimci Haki Karer Anısına," (May 1978): 2. 1189 See for example, Xebat 1 (August 1978): 1-2; Xebat 3 (October/November 1978): 6-10.
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proclaiming that the tribe or family that aligned with them was (for reasons that were
never really specified) ‘progressive’ and on the side of the revolution, while the tribe that
sided with their enemy, of course, bore all of the despicable stigma of tribalism.
Detailing each local conflict, and how it linked to the growing TKDP/KUK vs.
PKK war is not possible with existing sources. Several examples do, however, indicate a
general pattern, wherein actors in local conflicts used the intra-rebel war as an
opportunity to press their own private agenda (note: I have changed the proper names,
family/tribe names, and village names of these examples and removed citations).
The Akarsu village, located between Derik and Kızıltepe, became one site of this
widening war. By 1980, small followings from both the TKDP/KUK and the PKK
resided in this village. As the war escalated, a local PKK team attempted to push the
TKDP/KUK out, surrounding the village under cover of darkness, taking up fixed
positions, and raining gunfire on the homes of TKDP/KUK members throughout the
night. The attack failed to destroy or intimidate the local TKDP/KUK members. Quite
the opposite, the entire village turned against the PKK, as formerly neutral villagers,
incensed by the attack, turned against the PKK and tossed them out of the village. Soon,
the villages in the area were polarized between those aligned with either the PKK or the
TKDP/KUK. On the roads and rural expanses in the area, ambushes and chance hostile
encounters became a constant danger, with pitched battles breaking out on occasion
throughout the summer.
Nearby, the PKK’s conflict with the Demirli family of the Sor tribe became
another source of lasting hostility. As the PKK became more active in the villages located
in the district of Derik, it began to intimidate a local tribal leader, M. Demirli of the Sor
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tribe. When the war with the TKDP/KUK began, the PKK suspected the Demirli family
of siding with the TKDP/KUK. As the PKK saw it, the Demirlis were making a crude bid
to restore their ill-gotten clout in the area by siding with the TKDP/KUK.
In April 1980, a large PKK team ambushed leading members of the family as they
traversed a road near their home village. The attack killed several Demirli family
members, and also seems to have resulted in casualties on the PKK side. This escalation
prompted further clashes for control over villages in the region. At some point during this
conflict, a local rival of the Demirli family, the Hamurcu family of the Zer tribe, began to
fight on the side of the PKK against the Demirlis. Members of the Hamurcu family had
their own reasons for siding with the PKK: the Hamurcu family’s had been feuding with
the Kürkçü family of the Gewr tribe for decades, and the PKK openly pledged to wipe
out the Kürkçü.
The village of Tepebaşı in the Nusaybin district of Mardin was another place
where local feuds served to intensify the PKK vs. TKDP/KUK war. In July 1979, before
the war with the PKK had begun, members of the TKDP/KUK killed a man named S.
Aydın. The TKDP/KUK attackers accused S. Aydın of acting as an informant for Turkish
security forces, but the true motives behind the killing are unclear. Months later, on 19
November, an armed attack killed B. Doğan, a top TKDP/KUK leader in the area.
The TKDP/KUK surmised that the attackers must have been members of the
family of S. Aydın, exacting their revenge. As it happened, by killing S. Aydın, the
TKDP/KUK had made a formidable local enemy, as S. Aydın was related to the
Kalaycıs, a large family in the villages of Nusaybin. Convinced that two Kalaycı
members in particular – Akif and Seyfettin Kalaycı – were behind the killing of B.
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Doğan, the TKDP/KUK decided to hit back. Ten days after the B. Doğan killing, a local
TKDP/KUK team of about 20 gunmen (which included B. Doğan’s relatives) mounted an
assault on the Tepebaşı village, where Akif and Seyfettin lived. In typical fashion, the
TKDP/KUK gunmen opened fire on the village from a distance and were soon met with
rifle fire in response. They withdrew without killing their intended targets, but they had
damaged the village and killed several other villagers.
Soon after, in March 1980, the war between the PKK and TKDP/KUK spread
across the area. Before long, the Kalaycı family aligned with the PKK and the ongoing
blood feud folded into the PKK vs. TKDP/KUK war. The TKDP/KUK continued to
clash with its enemies at the Tepebaşı village and in the surrounding countryside
throughout the summer, viewing the local conflict both as a war with the PKK and with
the ‘reactionary’ Kalaycı family.
Anthropologists who have conducted fieldwork in the region note a distinctive
style of warfare among Kurdish tribes of the area. The commonly witnessed style of
warfare involves taking up fixed positions and firing off large quantities of ammunition,
sometimes for hours at a time. In minor feuds, these lengthy exchanges showcase the
fighters’ wealth, in the form of ammunition and weapons, as well as their courage and
martial ability, all without making an overly serious effort at killing opponents. But blood
feuds, if they take a deadly turn, sometimes lead to spirals of reprisal, giving rise to
attacks with more lethal intent.1190 It seems that that PKK vs. TKDP/KUK war caused
some local bloods feuds to deepen across the area, while also laying a political patina
over pre-existing local conflicts.
1190 Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, Tribe and Kinship among the Kurds (Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 1991), 103.
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For political and military reasons, the PKK’s top cadres had misgivings about this
‘tribal’ style of warfare. Though the PKK was responsible for instigating armed violence
against tribal leaders across the region, bringing weaker families, clans, and tribes to their
side, it was disappointed when these wars bogged down in the traditional way. The PKK
preferred rapid dislocating attacks against enemy leaders that would quickly collapse
local authority, allowing the PKK to arrogate local power to themselves1191 Descent into
inter-tribal war was inimical with these goals: it created as many implacable enemies of
the PKK as it did allies and it led to grinding stalemates, galvanizing the attention of the
Turkish military before the PKK could achieve solid gains on the ground. Still, the PKK
would find itself tangled in these sorts of local conflicts repeatedly over the course of its
decades-long insurgency, setting limits on its ability to forge a wider insurgent
coalition.1192
By the summer of 1980, the countryside and villages of Mardin had become an
early instance of this trend, polarized between PKK and TKDP/KUK aligned local
groupings.1193 With allegiances hardened as each side dug into its own villages and
neighborhoods, winning a decisive victory was impossible.
5.2.8. Making a ceasefire
As the fratricidal war wrought ever-greater costs on both organizations, the sides made
contact with leaders from the radical Turkish left to request mediation for a ceasefire.
1191 See "Apo Yaşadıkça Ben Ölümsüzüm," Serxwebun (July 1999); Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 40; Gül, "40. Yılında Lice’den Rakka’ya PKK’nin Ateşten Tarihi," Firat News Agency (ANF), 26 November 2017. 1192 Aydin and Emrence, Zones of Rebellion: Kurdish Insurgents and the Turkish State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 1193 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 275 (1981); Martin Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (Zed Books, 1992); Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 382.
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These overtures brought the involvement of Kurtuluş, a Turkish militant organization that
adhered to the THKP-C tradition of Mahir Çayan,1194 a hero of the 1968 revolutionary
cohort, highly revered by the PKK.1195 Kurtuluş was also regarded as having a
comparatively sympathetic position toward the Kurdish question in Turkey, in contrast to
other currents in the Turkish left that were insistent on subsuming ethnic cleavages
beneath class politics.1196
Kurtuluş’ mediation led to a ceasefire announcement that was printed on the
pages of its paper, Öncü, on 14 July 1980.1197 The text of the agreement offers some
revealing clues regarding how the sides perceived the fighting: for starters, the statement
contained an admission of how much the fratricidal war was harming the cause, and
hurting ordinary Kurdish locals.1198 Both sides recognized the political and strategic
liability that the war posed. This chimes with PKK retrospective accounts of the war,
wherein the PKK acknowledges that the war was a grave mistake (while, of course,
assigning most of the blame to the TKDP/KUK and to ‘traitors’ within the PKK’s
ranks).1199
The ceasefire announcement also suggests that both sides were having difficulty
constraining the local animosities that had accumulated over the course of the war. Both 1194 Akyol, Türkiye'de Sol Örgütler - Bölüne Bölüne Büyümek (Ankara, Turkey: Phoenix, 2010), 73. 1195 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 45; Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 59; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 384. 1196 Xebat 3 (October/November 1978): 5; Cengiz, interview by White, 19 May, 1992. 1197 Öncü, 14 July 1980, 3. 1198 Ibid. 1199 Alongside Yüce’s account, this recognition of costs and dangers is evident in a letter that the PKK’s top leader, Kemal Pir, supposedly sent to comrades only days after the ceasefire announcement was made. The letter was published in the July 1999 edition of the PKK’s flagship publication, Serxwebun (I am, thus, unable to verify its authenticity). Still, it is an intriguing artifact of the PKK narrative of the conflict. Interestingly, the letter implies that the local links that the PKK had established in Mardin had steered the organization toward erroneous tactics, and Pir warns that the war was creating an impression among some locals that the PKK was at fault in the conflict. See: "Apo Yaşadıkça Ben Ölümsüzüm," Serxwebun (July 1999): 14. Also see: Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 378.
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sides pledged in the statement “to educate” their members in order to dispel the “wounds
and effects” that the fighting had left on relations in the affected areas.1200
And while rural ‘traditional’ violence, quite different from routines of
rudimentary violence, had by this time come to constitute much of the fighting, judging
by the text of the agreement, both sides seem to have remained concerned about the
spoiler potential of non-strategic clashes in the towns and cities. The sides pledged that
the central leadership would henceforth act “quickly with urgency” to de-escalate
violence in the event of “clashes outside of our control.”1201 They similarly pledged that
violence was no longer to be used as a means for preventing rivals from performing
everyday political activities.1202 While this statement is relevant to the rural fighting in
Mardin, it is equally applicable to conditions in the towns and cities, where routines of
rudimentary violence posed a continual danger of sparking further escalation.
5.2.9. Breaking a ceasefire
This ceasefire effort, too, failed to bring the fighting to an end. The TKDP/KUK later
alleged that the PKK’s Mardin leadership reneged on the agreement and redoubled their
attacks on the TKDP/KUK, dragging the sides back to war.1203 The PKK account is
different, but highly unreliable: subsequent PKK accounts of the period are corrupted by
the fact that the apparent PKK negotiator of the ceasefire, Çetin Güngör (Semir), later
defected from the PKK. A PKK sympathizer murdered Semir in Stockholm on 2
1200 Öncü, 14 July 1980, 3. 1201 Ibid. 1202 Ibid. 1203 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 45.
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November 1985.1204 Ever since, PKK mythology has vilified Semir as the consummate
traitor and saboteur; hence, its treatment of this episode obviously twists the facts to
make his intentions appear malicious in every action he undertook. As such, a PKK myth
subsequently took shape which holds that Semir entered into the ceasefire agreement
without the proper authorization from the PKK leadership, going so far as to claim that
Semir did so with the ulterior motive of sabotaging the PKK’s reputation and military
position in the region.1205
Yüce provides a detailed version of this narrative. He claims that the content of
the ceasefire agreement prompted internal discussion within the central committee
concerning how to respond (Öcalan was not able to contribute in-person to these debates,
since he had already left Turkey). While there was wide agreement in favor of bringing
the war to an end,1206 a strong current of opinion took exception to certain terms of the
agreement.1207 The most problematic clause in the statement was a sentence that
attributed the war to “a pathological tendency of both the political movement in
Kurdistan and of Turkey’s left” to use violence, rather than “democratic debate,” to
resolve disagreements.1208 To Yüce and likeminded members in the central committee,
undersigning this clause was tantamount to admitting equal culpability for the war,
something they opposed in principle and believed would harm the PKK’s prestige.1209
1204 Martin Van Bruinessen, "Between Guerrilla War and Political Murder: The Worker's Party of Kurdistan," MERIP Middle East Report 153, no. August (1988). 1205 Bayık, Parti Tarihi (1994), 79; Öcalan, PKK’ye Dayatılan Tasfiyecilik ve Tasfiyeciliğin Tasfiyesi (Cologne, Germany: Serxwebun, 1993), 58; Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 386. 1206 Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 378. 1207 Ibid. 1208 Öncü, 14 July 1980, 3. 1209 Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 378.
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After discussing the matter, Yüce claims that the PKK decided to contact Kurtuluş again
to request another round of meditation. But the tightening pressures of state repression
disrupted this effort, as key PKK leaders, including Yüce, were soon captured. Others
fled and went into hiding, rendering a new round of talks impracticable.1210
5.2.10. The UDG unravels
As talks between the PKK and TKDP/KUK sputtered, the anti-PKK alliance of the UDG
was unraveling as well. Given that the rising threat of the PKK was one of the motivators
of this tri-partite alliance (and considering that this threat did not disappear over 1980)
one might expect that the UDG should have bound together ever more tightly over time.
Instead, precisely the opposite occurred. This turn of events is difficult to explain, but
two partial explanations might help to shed light on its causes: (1) the deep underlying
divisions between its members; and (2) the growing awareness of an impending military
intervention, which changed the strategic calculations of UDG members.
With regard to the first explanation, a theory of rebel cohesion that Pearlman and
McLauchlin (2012) propose may offer some guidance.1211McLauchlin and Pearlman
(2012) argue that the effect of external threats on rebel alliances differs depending on
whether its members are initially satisfied with the terms of the alliance. When rebel
alliances are marked by deep dissatisfaction over the distribution of power, external
1210 Ibid., 387-88. 1211 Theodore McLauchlin and Wendy Pearlman, "Out-Group Conflict, in-Group Unity? Exploring the Effect of Repression on Intramovement Cooperation," Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 1 (2012).
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dangers provide opportunities for the disaffected to press their claims against allies,
widening internal fissures.1212
The fractious relations between the UDG members (the TKSP, DDKD/KİP, and
TKDP/KUK) are indicative of longstanding dissatisfaction about movement relations.
Longtime rivals, the TKDP/KUK and the DDKD/KİP entered the UDG without resolving
the personal, ideological and political controversies that divided them. Accordingly,
matters for disagreement remained in plentiful supply. Three main points of tension
appeared throughout the UDG experiment.
First, the intra-Kurdish civil war in Northern Iraq sent reverberations across the
Kurdish movement in Turkey, prompting recriminations within the UDG alliance. The
immediate background to the controversy began in 1975, when Iran and Iraq struck a
deal, the Algiers Agreement, whereupon Tehran agreed to cease its support for the
Kurdish insurgency in Iraq, led by Mustafa Barzani’s KDP. Losing its safe havens and
supplies, the aging Mustafa Barzani fled and the rebellion collapsed. This shook the
Barzani movement’s prestige, and its rivals, led by Jalal Talabani and Ibrahim Ahmed,
took the opportunity to announce their own alternative party, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK). Before long, the two rival factions were at war with one another, and in
1978, a bloody clash occurred across the border in Turkey’s Hakkari province.1213
For the leftist-influenced elites of Turkey’s Kurdish movement, Marxist-Leninism
provided the schema for interpreting this discouraging turn of events. To be sure, the
Barzani family’s authority probably remained intact among many of the locals in eastern
Turkey. But interpreted through the ideological prism of the day, the political leadership 1212 Ibid. 1213 Ibid.
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of the Kurdish movement in Turkey read Barzani’s defeat as symptomatic of the folly of
entrusting the revolution to feudal forces (i.e., Barzani’s KDP and its tribal forces) and
imperialism (i.e., the United States, and for some, Russia).1214 The TKDP/KUK took
great pains to prove it had broken ties with the KDP,1215 but the DDKD/KİP never missed
a chance to remind the TKDP/KUK of its political heritage.1216The DDKD/KİP, on the
other hand, while consistently anti-KDP, was accused of holding these views for the
wrong reasons: Barzani was thought to be responsible for the execution of the
DDKD/KİP’s most prominent foregoer, Sait Kırmızıtoprak (Dr. Şivan). That their
hostility stemmed from a blood feud, rather than from principled Marxist
analysis1217singled them out for rhetorical attacks.1218
A second area of controversy involved the UDG’s planned outreach to the
Turkish left. The parties could not agree on which parties in the Turkish left were
ideologically compatible and politically appropriate for an alignment, leading to endless
accusations of bad faith. 1219
Lastly, the sides castigated one another for their stance on ‘feudalism’ in their
own community. While formally anti-tribal, the DDKD/KİP drew a portion of its
constituency from traditionalists.1220 For its part, the TKDP/KUK had only recently taken
1214 See for instance, Tekoşin 2 (1978): 8; Kawa (Undated), 65-71. 1215 "UDG ve Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine," Xebat Special Issue (1980); Xebat 2 (September 1978). 1216 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 39. 1217 Ibid., 23. 1218 The DDKD/KİP vehemently denied these charges. See "Özgürlük Yolu Mu Oportunizmin Yolu Mu? ," Devrimci Demokratlar, no. 11 (January 1982): 56. 1219 These controversies were rehearsed on the pages of the factions’ journals. See for instance Tekoşin 2 (1978): 17; "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 40,57; "Özgürlük Yolu Mu Oportunizmin Yolu Mu?" Devrimci Demokratlar, no. 11 (January 1982): 23. 1220 Maraşlı, "Rizgarî’nin Sosyalist Hareket ve Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluş Mücadelesindeki Yeri Üzerine Bir Deneme-I," Mesafe 4 (2010): 10.
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over the organization from the TKDP traditionalists, many of them connected with tribal
elites. The TKDP/KUK strove to prove its anti-tribalism,1221 but they nonetheless faced
criticism that certain wings within their party had not accepted this shift.1222
The TKDP/KUK and the DDKD/KİP constantly dredged up these disagreements
during their short-lived attempt at an alliance. In 1979, when the TKSP initiated the
dialogue that would lead to the UDG, the DDKD/KİP expressed an eagerness to ally with
the TKSP, but it held reservations about working with the TKDP/KUK.1223 At the top of
its list of concerns were doubts that the TKDP/KUK had genuinely detached itself from
the KDP in Iraq.1224
Not giving up, the TKSP then met with leaders from the TKDP/KUK, receiving a
similarly cautious reply.1225 The TKDP/KUK stipulated that it was willing to partner with
the DDKD/KİP -- but only if it met several conditions: first, the DDKD/KİP would need
to make a public self-criticism for the rhetorical attacks they had made in the past against
the TDKP/KUK. Second, the TKDP/KUK believed that the DDKD/KİP was consorting
with Jalal Talabani and the PUK in Iraq. They demanded an end to this suspected
relationship. Third, the TKDP/KUK demanded that the DDKD/KİP distance itself from
the TKP, a Turkish leftist faction that the TKDP/KUK found objectionable. 1226
1221 Xebat 1 (August 1978): 1-3. 1222 "Kürdistan Devrimi Üzerine Toplu Görüşlerimiz," Tekoşin, no. 4 (September 1979): 184; "UDG Oluşumu Gelişimi ve Bir Depresyon Üzerine," Devrimci Demokratlar (undated). 1223 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 39; "UDG Oluşumu Gelişimi ve Bir Depresyon Üzerine," Devrimci Demokratlar (undated): 6. 1224 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 39. 1225 The TKDP/KUK provides an account that is broadly similar to that of the TKSP. See "UDG ve Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine," Xebat Special Issue (1980): 6. 1226 Ibid.; "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 40.
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Shuttling between the sides, the TKSP decided that relaying these mutual
ultimatums would only further sour relations between the pair, and so they used softer
language when acting as intermediaries between the factions.1227 If doing so managed to
bring the parties into talks, it also allowed misunderstandings to fester.1228 These
controversies were still unresolved when, after months1229 of TKSP facilitation, and
desultory talks held in Diyarbakır, 1230 the sides agreed to announce a common front in
late-January 1980. As part of the deal, the DDKD/KİP pledged to release a public
statement renouncing its previous rhetorical attacks on the TKDP/KUK. It also promised
to cooperate in the UDG’s outreach plan to the Turkish left.1231
Both of these pledges became mired in controversy over the succeeding months.
As the UDG commenced its discussions with various Turkish leftist parties throughout
the spring of 1980, the TKDP/KUK and the TKSP suspected the DDKD/KİP was slow-
rolling negotiations with leftist parties that the DDKD/KİP wished to exclude from the
alliance.1232 And frustration set in as weeks turned to months without a DDKD/KİP
statement on its revised stance toward the TKDP/KUK.
Worse, the TKDP/KUK believed that the DDKD/KİP was continuing to defame it
among locals in southeast Turkey, propagating rumors that the TKDP/KUK was on the
verge of disbanding due to internal turmoil and that it was making self-criticism for its
1227 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 40; Burkay, Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 169. 1228 The TKDP/KUK later claimed that the DDKD/KİP had reneged on its pledge to meet these these conditions. The DDKD/KİP replied that the TKDP/KUK was being dishontest and had never imposed such conditions. See "UDG ve Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine," Xebat Special Issue (1980): 6-7; "UDG Oluşumu Gelişimi ve Bir Depresyon Üzerine," Devrimci Demokratlar (undated). 1229 "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 37. 1230 Anılar Belgeler, vol. 2 (Istanbul, Turkey: Deng, 2010), 169. 1231 "UDG ve Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine," Xebat Special Issue (1980): 16-17. 1232 Ibid., 13; "Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine - UDG Neden Hayata Geçmedi," Özgürlük Yolu (1981): 20.
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former political and ideological misdeeds.1233 The conflict boiled over in early-June,
when the DDKD/KİP finally released its promised statement on the TKDP/KUK. Instead
of satisfying the TKDP/KUK, the statement enraged them: they saw it as a complete
violation of the spirit of their agreement – it was, as they saw it, not a recanting of past
criticisms, but a “screed of insults” against the TKDP/KUK.1234
Within weeks, the TKDP/KUK hit back with its own pamphlet attacking the
DDKD/KİP and lodging a thinly-veiled threat: “We advise the Revolutionary Democrats
[DDKD/KİP] that they need to be more serious, and make claims based on hard evidence,
not lies,” wrote the TKDP/KUK, warning darkly that: “otherwise punishments that are by
no means light” would be in store for them “from the people of Kurdistan.”1235 Soon
afterward, the DDKD/KİP delivered a riposte, repeating many of the same attacks that
had originally so incensed the TKDP/KUK leadership.1236 This war of words prevented
concrete cooperation on the ground, and ultimately, the UDG was unable to perform as
intended.1237 In the end, the UDG members did not allow their controversies to turn
violent, but neither were they able to reap the benefits of a common front.
A second possible explanation for this failure, though admittedly speculative, is
also worthy of consideration. By the summer of 1980, dissidents were beginning to
realize that the Turkish state was on the verge of launching an overwhelming crackdown
1233 "UDG ve Devrimci Demokratlar Üzerine," Xebat Special Issue (1980): 14. 1234 Ibid. 1235 Ibid., 15. 1236 "UDG Oluşumu Gelişimi ve Bir Depresyon Üzerine," Devrimci Demokratlar (undated): 8. 1237 Akkaya, "Kürt Hareketinin Örgütlenme Süreci Olarak 1970'ler," Toplum ve Bilim, no. 127 (2013): 14; Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 199.
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that would encompass the left and the Kurdish movement.1238 Anticipating this looming
shock, it is possible that rebel leaders decided that dangers from in-movement rivals
(whether the PKK or others in the UDG) were becoming increasingly irrelevant. In other
words, the dissident leaders may have calculated that self-interest dictated preserving an
independent political and ideological line to carry with them into exile, and that this
imperative superseded all other strategic considerations. Perhaps in the minds of dissident
leaders, this was more important than preserving the physical and operational capability
of their organization, which was a wasting asset by this point anyway.
Either way, the saga of the UDG underscores the problems that arise when taking
Realist theories of international politics off-the-shelf to explain rebel politics in strong
states. While such theories are easily suitable for weak state environments, strong states
do not feature the conditions of anarchy that serve as the basic permissive condition for
rationalist/realist theories of international politics. As these cases have repeatedly shown,
rebels in strong states are preoccupied not with the problem of anarchy, but with the
dangers (and opportunities) state strength and presence imposes on them. This was no
less true for the UDG, which was clearly more a product of the art of dissident politics in
a strong state than it was a device to cope with the problem of anarchy.
5.2.11. Scattered violence in the towns and cities
As the UDG broke down, the war between the PKK and the TKDP/KUK was reaching a
grinding stalemate. While their leaders intrigued and negotiated, the fighters in Mardin
dug in. Rural areas of the province remained militarized, while the towns continued to
1238 Apprehension of worsening repression, and the expectation that a military coup was perhaps on the horizon was widespread. More specifically, the TKDP/KUK claims to have been sensitive to the changing winds. See "Kurdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (KUK) Olağan MK Toplantısının Sonuç Bildirisi," Xebat Special Issue, no. 5 (January 1983): 14.
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witness sporadic violent clashes. For instance, the PKK alignment with the Kalaycı
family led to a clash near the town center of Nusaybin in April 1980.1239
On May 30, an armed attack was carried out against the Nusaybin mayor. It was
thought that the PKK had killed the mayor, believing he was backing the
TKDP/KUK.1240That same day in Kızıltepe, attackers riddled a Mercedes Benz with
automatic gunfire as it passed through the town center.1241 The victim was M. Emin
İlhan, a farmer who had risen to local prominence. İlhan had earned for himself local
clout, as suggested by the fact they he stood in primary elections as a center-right
politician,1242despite his lack of strong tribal connections. The PKK soon claimed
responsibility for the killing of M. Emin İlhan, and its account of the killing further
illustrates how local conflicts blended into the war with the TKDP/KUK.
The PKK claimed that İlhan was an abusive landowner, issuing threats and
violence against locals. In the past, local PKK units had intervened to resolve disputes
between local villagers and İlhan, the PKK claimed. And, for a time, this arrangement
held up. But with the formation of the UDG and the opening of the war with the
TKDP/KUK, the PKK grew convinced that İlhan saw an opportunity to restore his weight
in local affairs by siding with the PKK’s enemies.1243 This move, according to the PKK,
consigned him to his fate at the hands of PKK gunmen.1244
1239 Recall that I have changed the proper names of these actors and removed relevant footnotes. 1240 Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 1208. 1241 Milliyet 30 May 1980. 1242 Ibid. 1243 Yurttan Haberler, 12 August 1980. 1244 Ibid.
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Irrespective of its accuracy, this piece of PKK propaganda is indicative of how the
sides construed local politics and its links to the intra-rebel war. Both sides were ever
wary of their rivals gathering support from powerful local interests, leading to a self-
fulfilling prophesy, as each rushed to gather powerful local interests to their side before
their rivals did, and attacked those they believed had gone to the other side.
And still, routines of rudimentary violence provided a tactical basis for sustaining
the war. According to state prosecutors, a week later, a four-man TKDP/KUK team in
Kızıltepe spotted a suspected PKK member whom they had been instructed to kill on
sight. They immediately launched into pursuit -- eventually catching up to him, moving
into position, and shooting him down.1245 Two weeks later, the TKDP/KUK carried out a
similar attack on another suspected PKK member, catching him as he walked home from
the bakery where he was employed, according to state prosecutors.1246
As the sides attempted to cement a ceasefire in July, clashes in the towns
continued sporadically. On 28 June, a small team of TKDP/KUK members was traveling
through town to visit the home of another member, when they came across a PKK team.
A gun battle immediately broke out. The sides allegedly clashed for nearly 45 minutes
before security forces intervened, arresting three TKDP/KUK members who were unable
to escape.1247 In Nusaybin, too, there is evidence of similar fighting during the summer
months. Competition over recruits in the town led to a series of threats and violent
1245 İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 192 (1981). 1246 Ibid., 193-94. 1247 Ibid., 194.
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encounters, and on 21 July 1980, the TKDP/KUK managed to shoot dead an important
local PKK cadre, after spotting him near his place of work.1248
5.2.12. Military intervention and a shaky truce
The war in the countryside continued without any clear signs of strategic or political
movement. Cycles of reprisal and spontaneous clashes between rural units continued to
occur, though it is unclear how frequently. In one instance, the TKDP/KUK claims that
the PKK intercepted a bus, and dragged away a TKDP/KUK member for execution.1249
By mid-July, the Demirli family had managed to clear the PKK from many of the villages
in their former zone of influence.1250 Still, neither side was on the cusp of gaining a
decisive edge on its opponent.
With the PKK’s provisional leadership in Turkey unable to continue negotiations,
talks appear to have shifted to representatives located outside of Turkey, once again
relying on third-party mediators.1251 These talks led to a ceasefire agreement in August
that brought the war officially to a close.1252 More importantly, the Turkish military’s
accelerating clampdown on Kurdish militancy was decimating each side’s capacity for
sustaining a war. Systematic state repression reached new heights with the 12 September
1980 military coup, which initiated an unprecedented campaign of arrests, constraining
1248 Government and PKK sources are in basic agreement on this event. See ibid., 198; Albuma Sehîden, (Serxwebûn, Undated), 185. 1249 Şehitler Albumu - Nasnameya Şehidan, (Kista, Sweden 2002), 79. 1250 "Apo Yaşadıkça Ben Ölümsüzüm," Serxwebun (July 1999): 14. 1251 Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 388. 1252 Hewar 2 (September 1980); Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 198.
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movement and communication between dissidents in Turkey.1253 Targeting the grassroots
of the left and Kurdish revolutionaries, 667 associations and foundations were
banned.1254And cadres and sympathizers were caught in a wide net: within a year, the
military regime had arrested 122,600 people,1255 a figure that would rise to 650,000
before the campaign of repression died down.1256
In this maelstrom of state repression, the PKK and the TKDP/KUK were badly
exposed, with both suffering huge losses to arrests and exile.1257 Regrouping would take
time, energy and commitment – it would be several years before the PKK was able to
recommence sustained armed struggle in Turkey.1258 As for the TKDP/KUK, it would
never recover is former position in the Kurdish insurgency. Their fratricidal war is, of
course, not the only reason these organizations suffered from state repression. But it quite
obviously made it more difficult for these organizations to maintain operational secrecy
and coherence.
Even still, the fighting in Mardin did not come completely to an end after the 12
September coup. Members of the TKDP/KUK continued to clash periodically with
members of the Kalaycı family for some time. The PKK’s conflict with the Demirli
family has never ended: even after the TKDP/KUK diminished as a potential ally, the
Demirli family remained opposed to the PKK and its local sympathizers. Soon after the
1253 Gunter, The Kurds in Turkey: A Political Dilemma (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990). 1254 M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 69. 1255 Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2004), 279. 1256 Yavuz, M. Hakan. Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003: 69. 1257 Ercan, "Dynamics of Mobilization and Radicalization of the Kurdish Movement in the 1970s in Turkey" (Koç University, 2010), 198. 1258 Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 79.
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PKK returned to insurgency in 1984, M. Demirli was killed in an ambush, allegedly
conducted by the PKK (note: proper names altered). The Demirli family was convinced
that the Hamurcu family was behind the killing. It was during this period that the Demirli
family openly announced it was siding with the state by joining the village guard system
that Turkey’s military was scaling-up to meet the PKK threat. Joining the village guards
cemented the anti-PKK stance of the Demirli family and put them at permanent odds with
their longtime rivals, the Hamurcu family, who have ever since been regarded as pro-
PKK. Across the border in Northern Iraq, the PKK also allegedly engaged in occasional
attacks in the TKDP/KUK’s small guerrilla units, confirming, in the eyes of the
TKDP/KUK, that the war had never fully ended.1259
5.3. Theorizing fratricidal escalation In this chapter, the central puzzle common to the fratricidal wars in Northern Ireland and
Turkey looms large. Why, in both cases, did rebels seem to disregard the staggering risks
and costs of intra-rebel war? In Northern Ireland, why did the PIRA decide to launch a
systematic onslaught on the OIRA in October 1975, when it was plain to see that such an
attack was very unlikely to demolish its rival -- and certain to impose high operational
and political costs? By the same token, why did the PKK and TKDP/KUK permit a
localized contest to expand across the region and climb to new heights of bloodshed?
Future study of these cases might discover a single event or decision that explains
why this threshold was crossed (for one or both cases). I suspect, however, that a
compelling account is best sought elsewhere. Rather than emphasize a single turning
1259 "Kürdistan Devletinin Kurulmasi İçin Canlarını Feda Eden Şehitler," BerfinKurdistan.com; Öznür, Derin Sol: Çatışmalar, Cinayetler, İnfazlar (Ankara, Turkey: Alternatif, 2004), 1209.
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point or the decisive agency of a single protagonist, the turn to intra-rebel war is best
explained against the background of the increasing tempo of fratricidal encounters
(covered in Chapter 4), which, I argue, shaped the atmosphere of decision-making and
action going forward.
Below, I review several theories from the sociology of small groups and the
psychology of decision-making that might serve as useful departures for understanding
this shift. At this stage of theory development, I believe it is best to remain open to
various theoretical perspectives, if they seem relevant for understanding the link between
violence and changes in individual and collective perception. To organize this review, I
propose looking to changes under two complementary headings:
Changing boundary definitions: accumulating incidents of fratricide altered shared definitions of the social boundary that separated rebel organizations. Increasingly, notions of otherness, threat, and hostility were constructed to supplant or layer over previous boundary definitions.
Changing threat perceptions: past violence lent apparent credence to images of the rival as aggressive in its intentions and malign in its nature. Such characterizations relaxed normative proscriptions against making war on fellow rebels, deepened emotional investment in settling past scores, and bolstered perceived strategic rationales for destroying the dangerous rival.
Elaborating on both of these proposals will serve as the final component of the theory of
intra-rebel war developed in this dissertation. Following this discussion, the next chapter
will offer a general statement of the theory. It will then conduct a preliminary test of the
theory’s applicability to other cases. Chapter 7 will complete the dissertation with a wider
discussion of its contributions to scholarship and policy.
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5.3.1. Violence and boundary work Describing rebellions in terms of inter-group conflict (Kurds vs. Turks, Sunnis vs.
Shiites, etc.) can serve as convenient shorthand. But it is also a drastic simplification. As
scholars of ethnic conflict and insurgency are careful to note, individuals who live
through such conflicts are subject to multiple social boundaries, from economic class or
caste membership to economic occupation or past political affiliation. How these various
boundaries compare in salience is a variable, not a constant.1260 The efforts of elites and
ordinary people to make sense of the world around them and to gain political or social
advantage leads to the construction of conflict boundaries that are often cross-
cutting.1261Importantly, events that can be dramatized, and in particular, violent events,
are potent tools for those seeking to introduce, activate, or favor one set of social
boundary definitions over another.1262
Applying this perspective, the chasm that eventually came to divide the fratricidal
factions in Northern Ireland and Turkey can be viewed as peculiar manifestations of
social boundary formation. In neither case is it easy to find eminent underlying
differences in the composition of these factions’ membership. In other places, fratricidal
wars might reflect deeper cleavages, such as those based on sub-ethnicity, class, regional
affinities, or caste. At best, this was only partly true in the conflicts examined here.
Instead, the boundaries that came to define these factions were largely constructed over
the course of the conflict.
1260 Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Stathis N Kalyvas, "Ethnic Defection in Civil War," Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 8 (2008); Charles Tilly, "Social Boundary Mechanisms," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, no. 2 (2004). 1261 "Social Boundary Mechanisms," Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, no. 2 (2004): 212; Andreas Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks (Oxford University Press, 2013). 1262 Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1998), Chapter 2.
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The ideational building-blocks for fashioning these cleavages came about as the
rebels in these conflicts did what virtually all rebel organizations do: rebel ideologues
sought to depict political reality in a way that comported with their organizational
identity and attendant perceptions of strategic advantage. In its speeches and political
writings, the OIRA formulated the insurgency against the British largely as a class
struggle, condemning what they deemed the retrograde passions of the Provisionals.1263
Not surprisingly, the PIRA put this distinction in a different light, associating the OIRA’s
Marxism with foreignness and inauthenticity. In an October 1970 speech, Ruairí Ó
Bradaigh, speaking as president of Provisional Sinn Fein, praised the “true Republicans”
who “stood steadfast” during the August 1969 violence. This courage, he said, was
deserving of the “respect and appreciation” of the people, setting them in clear contrast to
the OIRA, 1264 who in the mythology of the Provisionals, had fled when the Catholic
community needed them most.
And yet, if the PIRA interpreted the OIRA’s restraint as a reflection of their
inauthenticity, the OIRA view was precisely the opposite. This position is expressed in
the September 1972 issue of the United Irishman, in which the OIRA blames the PIRA
for the rise in sectarian fighting that “plays into Britain’s hands,” declaring that the
Provos “must stand forever condemned in Irish history as the most criminally
irresponsible element that ever represented itself as a leader of the Irish people.”1265 In
sum, both sides were continually involved in attempts to draw boundaries around the
1263 John F Morrison, "‘The Affirmation of Behan?’ an Understanding of the Politicisation Process of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement through an Organisational Analysis of Splits from 1969 to 1997" (Doctoral Dissertation, University of St Andrews, 2010); United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 1264 The speech was delivered in Irish. See White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 162. 1265 United Irishman 26, no. 9 (September 1972).
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community that placed themselves firmly at the helm, while casting doubt on their rival’s
credentials as members, much less leaders of the community.
In Turkey, Marxian jargon provided plenty of ammunition for such activities.
Hewing to the ideological strictures of the day, the supposed class character of each
organization was paramount. Never mind that these intra-rebel class divides were often
fictional, based on ideological differences that were contrived so that rebels could
“distinguish themselves from others” and “justify splits,”1266as a former Rızgari leader,
Ruşen Arslan, later admitted.1267 Working in this vein, the TKDP/KUK made its debut by
claiming that it was the only organization that was both authentically Kurdish while also
poised on the Marxian cutting edge (see Chapter 3). The PKK, of course, never accepted
this assertion. To them, every one of its Kurdish rivals emanated from class roots that
disqualified them for inclusion in the revolutionary vanguard.1268
Taking these controversies onto the streets, these differences found their
expression in crude rituals. In Belfast, teasing and taunts added bite to the contending
ideological pronouncements of rival leaders. Youth culture reflected these concerns, with
for example, the Fianna wings of the two IRAs wearing different color bomber
jackets.1269 Social psychologists have found that such visual identifiers – however
arbitrary they may appear to outside observers – harden attitudes of group belonging, and
encourage positive feelings toward in-group members and negative affect toward
1266 Ruşen Arslan, of Rızgari, made these remarks. See, Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Istanbul, Turkey: Doz Yayınları, 2006), 162. 1267 True, the leadership tier of more established organizations, such as Rızgari, the TKSP, or DDKD/KİP hailed from more prominent families or higher economic strata. But the same can hardly be said for the rank-and-file of these organizations, who came from the same high schools and neighborhoods and often mixed and drifted from one faction to another. Plus, the TKDP/KUK and the PKK were probably the most similar in terms of these class and social features. 1268 See for instance: "Kuruluş Bildirisi," Wesanen Serxwebun no. 25 (1984 (first printing 1978)). 1269 Ibid., 208.
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outsiders.1270 In Turkey, name-calling, couched in Marxian argot, often preceded fights
and brawls among energized militants.1271
Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the mere presence of a social boundary
pushes groups toward violence. Theories of social boundary formation do not make this
claim, and neither do I. After all, similar boundaries divided many factions within the
Kurdish movement that did not fight one another. Low and medium imprint factions, too,
went to great lengths to portray their rivals as unfit to lead the Kurdish revolution,
showing little restraint in the polemics they directed at one another.
And true, minor incidents of physical violence in this charged atmosphere had
become an accepted reality, as a former Denge Kawa member, İbrahim Küreken,
recalled. Yet, as Küreken explains “[…] these minor [violent] incidents did not transform
into thoughts of mutually destroying one another.” 1272 One persuasive interpretation of
this phenomenon is that because leaders of low and medium imprint dyads intervened to
prevent violent outbursts from escalating, they prevented expectations of violence from
baking into the process of social boundary formation for these dyads.
This interpretation implies a crucial distinction: from the start, incidents of
fratricidal violence punctuated the construction of social boundaries for the dyads that
found themselves embroiled in intra-rebel war.1273 The PIRA and OIRA found
themselves in a war of nerves from the first moments of the split, with punch-ups and
1270 For a literature review, see: Henry E. Hale, The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Chapter2. 1271 Many examples can be founds in memoirs of the period. See for example, Karakaya, Ölüm Bizim İçin Değil (Istanbul, Turkey: İletişim, 2011), 66-67. 1272 Küreken, Parçası, Tanığı, Mahkumu, Sürgünü Oldum (Istanbul, Turkey İletişim, 2016), 126. 1273 For a theoretical treatment of how violence across networked clusters of individuals can promote such categorical schema, see: Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 63.
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armed standoffs some of their earliest interactions. The PKK’s first encounters with
leftist and Kurdish rivals involved brawls and clashes.1274 The walls that separated their
organization from rivals, thus, implied violence.
5.3.2. Threat perceptions
These hardening boundaries certainly appear important. But this perspective, alone,
seems insufficient for understanding why rebels would incur the strategic liabilities of
intra-rebel war. This is because, whatever their view on rival factions, rebels continued to
comprehend the imperative of avoiding war, if only for strategic reasons. To understand
how these hostile camps actually began to contemplate full-blown war, I believe it is
necessary to interrogate more directly how each side began to apprehend the motivations
and intentions of the other. Two strands of prominent scholarship are well suited for this
task: the (1) study of decision-making during armed crisis, and (2) theories of small
group decision-making in militant groups.
Leader perceptions
Basic strategic reasoning suggests that public knowledge of the costs of intra-rebel war
should have discouraged violent escalation both in Northern Ireland and Turkey. If not
obvious from the start, the operational and political costs wrought by initial clashes made
it impossible to remain oblivious to this logic. Each side, then, should have had reasons to
believe that its adversary would meet it halfway if it made overtures to ease tensions.
What caused this confidence to erode?
1274 Can Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 306-07.
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One possible reason is that the judgments of leaders were clouded by perceptual
distortions that often appear during bouts of crisis bargaining. Rebel leaders cannot
directly access the motives and intentions of their counterparts. They must instead rely on
indirect signals, such as verbal communications and behavior. Political psychologists
have discovered that individuals in these situations are susceptible to numerous cognitive
biases and emotional pulls.1275
One relevant psychological mechanism, that of selective attention, establishes that
instead of conducting a comprehensive analysis, leaders tend to fixate upon a small
number of vivid memories of past interactions with their adversary – inferring based on
these impressions the character of the adversary, and based on these inferences, guessing
what they will do in the future.1276
Sharpening this tendency, individuals in conflict are also susceptible to what
psychologists call “fundamental attribution error.” Individuals suffering this common
bias realize that their own actions are shaped by their circumstances, but have difficulty
appreciating the same when it comes to the actions of others. Instead, when interpreting
their adversary’s behavior, they tend to view it as arising from their very “nature,
character, or persistent motives.”1277
During violent crises, these influences can foster an image of the enemy as the
opposite of ‘us’: they are predatory, while we are concerned only with defending vital
interests; they are evil, while we are motivated only by principles and values; they are
1275 For a recent review, see: Jack S Levy, "Psychology and Foreign Policy Decision-Making," in The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S Levy (2013). 1276 See Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 1277 Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon, "Why Hawks Win," Foreign Policy (2007): 36.
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strategic masterminds, constantly outmaneuvering us, while we are simply trying to keep
up with the flow of events; they are inured to all influence except physical force, while
we are amenable to reasonable compromise.1278
Admittedly, for the two cases examined in this dissertation, available evidence
does not permit me to thoroughly evaluate these psychological factors. Still, it does stand
to reason that memories of particularly wrenching episodes of violence might have
shaped the perception of rebel leaders regarding the nature and motivations of their
counterpart. Asked years later if he had ever forgiven the Officials for killing Charlie
Hughes in 1971, Billy McKee, the PIRA leader during the October/November war,
replied: “How could I? In case you don’t know, it was me they thought they shot.” As
McKee saw it, the OIRA had broken a truce with the clear intention of treacherously
killing him. “That brought about the real feud. That was the start of it,” McKee
remarked.1279 The OIRA leader, Cathal Goulding, too, may have begun to entertain a
similar view toward the Provisionals. When asked in the summer of 1974 if he would
consider a violent attack against the PIRA, he offered a revealing answer:
“We see ourselves dealing with them in the same way as we see ourselves dealing with any other obstacles. At the moment our objective is to win the working class of the Six and 26 Counties – but particularly the Six, at the moment – both Protestant and Catholic to our objectives, to accept our policies. And where we feel that the Provisionals are an obstacle to us, we feel that any kind of physical force against them would be just as bad as any kind of physical force activity against the Protestant extremists. It would just make more Catholic working-class people antagonistic to the Republican Movement, just as the other sort of activity would make the Protestant working class more antagonistic to the Movement [emphasis mine].”1280
1278 Christopher J Fettweis, "Misreading the Enemy," Survival 57, no. 5 (2015). 1279 White, Out of the Ashes: An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement (Newbridge, Ireland: Merrion Press, 2017), 80. 1280 Whalen, Inside the IRA: Interviews with Cathal Goulding, Chief of Staff IRA (Philadelphia, PA: Recon, 1975), 19.
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Though Goulding stresses the downsides of war with the PIRA, he also implies that he
views the PIRA and Protestant extremists as equivalents. This perhaps indicates a highly
consequential form of analogical reasoning on Goulding’s part: the deep chasm of trust
that separated the Officials from Protestant militias did not rule out cooperation to avert
unwanted bloodshed, and Goulding insisted he had no special desire for an armed
reckoning with the Protestant armed groups. But these opponents remained enemies who
posed an enduring threat. If indeed an equivalent image of the Provisionals had taken
hold by this time, then the OIRA’s assumptions about the PIRA’s intentions and nature
would have led them to expect the worse from their rival.
Such mutually hostile imaging of Republican rivals was perhaps, in part, an
artifact of the violent history of their relations. Though fears of a violent collision
haunted the rivalry from its earliest days, framings of the opponent as an aggressive
threat seem to have hardened over time. Even as late as 1972, Seán Mac Stiofáin, then
head of the PIRA, spoke of Goulding with caveated fondness, alluding to their friendship
while imprisoned: “He used to be a great character,” Mac Stiofáin sighed before
remarking that his comrade had become “worn out and finished,” too weary to carry on
the needed militant policies of the Republican movement.1281
Replacing this sympathetic, if critical view, of the rival leadership, rebel leaders
on both sides seem to have begun entertaining images of their rival as inherently
untrustworthy, aggressive and malignly intentioned. How and under what conditions such
images of the adversary arise and influence conflict decision-making is an open research
1281 Sweetman, On Our Knees (London, UK: Pan Books, 1972), 154.
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agenda in the political psychology of international relations.1282 Further advances in these
areas of research may to hold promise for understanding war among rebels as well. I am
unable to find contemporary statements of top PKK leaders that might shed light on their
images of rivals, but it is possible that their threat perceptions were influenced in a
roughly parallel fashion.
Collective appraisals
Similar processes may also have been underway at the small group level. Witnessing
comrades die at the hands of rivals seems to have lent traction over time to shared
depictions of the rival side as malign and aggressive. In this way, collective appraisals of
rivals may have changed through dynamics of group psychology that resemble those
involved in group radicalization against governments or out-groups in society.1283
Suffering atrocities from an out-group or witnessing friends fall to state violence
alters the terms of debate within a dissident community – strengthening voices that call
for violence. The German extra-parliamentary left during the 1960s is an often-cited
example.1284 After a period of heightening confrontations between police and leftists in
Germany, a police officer killed Benno Ohnesorg, a university student, during a public
demonstration on 2 June 1967.
1282 For recent scholarship on the topic, see: Cho, Hyun-Binn "Tying The Adversary's Hands: Provocation, Crisis Escalation, And Inadvertent War." Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2018; Fettweis, Christopher J. "Misreading the enemy." Survival 57, no. 5 (2015): 149-72. 1283 Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011). 1284 Major essays on terrorism that use this case for the purposes of illustration include: Stefan Malthaner and Peter Waldmann, "The Radical Milieu: Conceptualizing the Supportive Social Environment of Terrorist Groups," Studies in Conflict \& Terrorism 37, no. 12 (2014); Della Porta, Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 37; Alex P Schmid, "Terrorism and Democracy," Terrorism and Political Violence 4, no. 4 (1992).
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If the necessity of taking arms against the German state had long been a point of
debate in the student clubs and leftist circles, now here was a palpable act of state
aggression. “This fascist state means to kill us all,” cried Gudrun Ensslin (who would
later help to establish the Red Army Faction) at a student meeting soon after the killing:
“We must organize resistance. Violence is the only way to answer violence.”1285 Many in
the movement saw through this facile line of reasoning. Yet dismissing it out of hand, as
might have been possible in the past, was suddenly more difficult. The violent fringe of
the student movement continued to invoke the killing of Ohnesorg as proof positive of
the Germany state’s fascist essence, and the consequent need for violent resistance.1286
In Northern Ireland and Turkey collective construal of rival groups may have
been colored by violence in a similar manner. Loss of fighters in fratricidal encounters
bred desires for vengeance and spawned material for rumor and gossip about the culprits
and their motivations. For example, the PIRA’s Jim Bryson died in a shootout with
British soldiers in August 1973 after being caught in the open during a feud with the
OIRA (see Chapter 4). Though a British soldier killed Bryson, some in the PIRA
continued to blame the Officials for his death.1287
According to O’Doherty, one item of gossip that circulated shortly after Bryson’s
death was that Micky McCorry, an OIRA member married to Gerry Adams’ sister,
Margaret, had pulled the trigger in the attack on Bryson. Another PIRA member who
died in the clash, Patrick Mulvenna, was married to another one of Gerry Adam’s sisters,
1285 Stefan Aust, Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF (Oxford University Press, USA, 2009), 27. 1286 For accounts of these events, see: Karrin Hanshew, "‘Sympathy for the Devil?’the West German Left and the Challenge of Terrorism," Contemporary European History 21, no. 4 (2012); Jeremy Peter Varon, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Univ of California Press, 2004). 1287 "The Republican Feud," Fortnight, 7 November 1975, 4.
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Francis. Hence, if this rumor were true, it would have meant that one brother-in-law had
killed the other.1288O’Doherty writes that after Bryson’s death Margaret received a parcel
from “one of her brother Gerry’s closest friends” containing a single round of a .357
Magnum pistol.1289 The Bryson incident is possible to detail because it has attracted
attention from journalists and biographers. But it is possible that many other such
incidents that punctuated the years between 1970 and 1975 lent themselves to similar
local myth-making, perhaps adding deeper contour to images of the other as malign and
pathologically aggressive. Indications of these processes went fully on display when the
October/November 1975 war broke out. The OIRA used the terms “inhuman” and
“vicious” to describe the PIRA attacks on them;1290 the PIRA characterized the Officials
alternatively as criminals preying on Belfast neighborhoods, or as Communist
invaders.1291
For the PKK, the killing of Haki Karer in May 1977 appears to have been a
watershed.1292 Though the PKK used violence in its dealings with outsiders from its
earliest days, Karer’s death become a point-of-reference to undergird the doctrinal belief
that the PKK was beset by enemies that were bent on physically annihilating them,
including other Kurdish organizations (see Chapter 4).
In fact, as violence worsened among rebel factions, rebels began to go so far as to
allege that their opponents were attacking them at the behest of the enemy state. To the
1288 Adams refers to the incident as a time when “the shadow of republican feuding fell briefly over our family again […]” See: Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1996), 224. 1289 O'Doherty, Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life (London, UK Faber & Faber, 2017), 125. 1290 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 1291 See for instance the remarks that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh made to reporters during the height of the war, quoted in Kelley, The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA (Westport, CT: Zed Books, 1988), 241. 1292 Karayılan, Bir Savaşın Anatomisi Kürdistanda Askeri Çizgi (Aram, 2014), 109.
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PIRA, the Officials stood among the “defeatist and deluded collaborators with fascism
and imperialism.”1293 For its part, the OIRA accused the PIRA of sidling up to the British
army in a common effort to destroy the Officials in Belfast,1294 pointing to journalists’
observations of PIRA attacks that were launched from Provisional Sinn Fein incident
centers, apparently without attempts by British military to intervene.1295 The October
1975 assault against OIRA members was “the most vicious attack ever on the Republican
Movement,” said Tomás Mac Giolla soon after the fighting got underway. He alleged
that the PIRA:
“[…] have prepared the ground well. They have protected their flank by making a dirty deal with the British Army and the British Governor General in Ireland, Merlyn Rees. Through their ‘Incident Centers’ and secret telephones they have constant contact with the Brits, with whom they are collaborating completely, to the extent that their leading members have been given license to carry weapons on their person in exchange for information about members of the Republican movement and their activities.” 1296
Once comrades, and in many cases friends, it was now possible for the OIRA to contend
that the PIRA were virtual agents of the British government.
For the PKK, the belief that its opponents were somehow aligned with the state
oppressor 1297 was easy to apply to the TKDP/KUK when violence broke out between the
1293 Republican News, 19 May 1973. 1294 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 1295 Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 318. 1296 United Irishman 11, no. 33 (November 1975). 1297 This belief is voiced in the private correspondence of PKK members as early as 1981. See Orhan Aydın, c. 1981. Öcalan further embellished the story, narrating it as part of a conspiracy to destroy the Apocu at birth, orchestrated by Turkish intelligence services. See: Küçük, Kürt Bahçesinde Sözleşi (Ankara, Turkey: Başak, 1993), 109; Öcalan, Devrimin Dili ve Eylemi (Weşanên Serxwebûn, 1996), 13. In constrast, Öcalan’s opponents have since advanced various assertions regarding the event, including the claim that Öcalan had Karer killed in hospital to eliminate a rival. See, for example, Imset, PKK Ayrılıkcı Şiddetin 20 Yili (Ankara, Turkey: Turkish Daily News Yayınları, 1992); Jongerden and Akkaya, "Born from the Left: The Making of the PKK," in Nationalims and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London, UK: Routledge, 2011); Bayram Yurtçiçek, "Haki Karer Cinayet," Aydınlık, December 2016.
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two organizations. The PKK declared at the height of its war that it had always been
aware that its leadership of the “Kurdish liberation movement” would face opposition
from “the social classes and strata that have become agents of the state (ajanlaşmış sosyal
sınıf ve tabakalar)”, and especially “the feudal compradors.” Therefore, “an initial duty
that befell the PKK was struggle against the structures that have become agents of the
state (ajanlaşmış yapı).”1298The TKDP/KUK, through its initiation into the UDG, had
become another element of this of counter-revolutionary compact.1299
Thus, the PKK applied the same terminology to the TKDP/KUK that it did to the
rightist and state agents that it had been battling since its earliest days. For instance, after
a clash with TKDP/KUK members in Mardin, the PKK reported that “the KUK agents
fled, leaving two of their dead behind [emphasis mine]”1300And referring to a different
clash, PKK reported that it killed two TKDP/KUK fighters and that “the agent
organization [emphasis mine]” also abandoned a Kalashnikov rifle, while “the
revolutionaries [i.e., the PKK] did not suffer any losses.”1301 Given the vagaries of this
language, the PKK could also at times soften these distinctions, suggesting that only
some within the TKDP/KUK were state agents. For instance, shortly after the sides
agreed to a ceasefire, the PKK summarized its policy toward the TKDP/KUK as:
“uncovering the structure and ideology of the ‘KUK,’ in an effort to persuade the community who have been led astray, and at the same time, punishing the effective agent-provocateur elements within the KUK”1302
1298 Yurttan Haberler, 12 August 1980, 3. 1299 Ibid. 1300 Ibid., 5. 1301 Ibid. 1302 Hewar, 2 September 1980.
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The multivalence of this discourse perhaps makes it easier to understand how PKK
militants were able to negotiate the cognitive dissidence of going to war with a rival that
the PKK, at times, conceded was battling on the side of the revolution.1303
5.3.3. Rhetoric, propaganda, and perception
A critical reader might fault me for exaggerating the significance of the rhetoric that I
have used as (admittedly fragmentary) indications of shifting perceptions among
insurgents. A strong version of this critique might dismiss this rhetoric as mere
propaganda intended for outside consumption. I concede that such considerations call for
a critical eye toward these rebel pronouncements. Still, I believe this rhetoric is
important, for it almost certainly reflected and influenced the talk of cadres and rank-and-
file on the ground.
In other words, the terms used in public to describe rivals must surely have
influenced to some degree how decision makers discussed, and thus construed, their
situation. This does not mean that discourse/ideology was an independent cause of
fratricide; this discourse was only meaningful against the backdrop of cycles of fratricidal
encounters, which were not caused in any direct sense by ideology (as discussed in
Chapter 4 and in this chapter). Yet, social construction of the meaning of this violence
cannot be ignored. This is because such constructions help to explain the linkage between
accumulating incidents of fratricide and organizational decisions to more concertedly
escalate conflict.
The invective that Republic factions aimed at each other makes it easier
understand how these organizations could conceive of and internally justify fratricidal 1303 Yurttan Haberler, 5 August 1980, 11.
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war as a social enterprise. For the PKK, early violent contests with leftist and Kurdish
rivals informed its taxonomy of the political landscape. Later on, this discourse lent
cogency to further attacks on Kurdish rivals. At times, this conceptual backdrop may
have been crucial. For instance, shortly before war erupted between the PKK and the
TDKP/KUK at the Ceyplanpınar SDF, it seems that a rumor went around that the
TKDP/KUK was preparing an all-out onslaught against the PKK.1304 Soon after, a quick
exchange of assassinations between the sides kicked off the war. The propensity of both
sides to interpret the actions of their rival as the opening stages of a major onslaught is
easier to understand in light of the kind of talk they used to depict their adversary’s nature
and intentions. And of course, this discourse was of great utility for those eager to settle
personal scores, since it dressed up their motives in more palatable language. This was
certainly the case for a portion of the violence both in Northern Ireland and Turkey.
To sum up, my goal in this section has been exploratory. I have proposed a
variety of relevant areas of scholarship that merit exploration for better understanding the
linkages between recurrent fratricidal violence and shifting perceptions of rivals. Given
the evidentiary gaps in my case studies, I am unable to amass systematic evidence to
adjudicate between or synthesize these various perspectives. Still, I believe there is
sufficient support for my basic contention: namely, that recurrent spirals of violence were
important for shaping changing threat perceptions at the individual and group level.
The next chapter begins with a succinct summary of the theory that the preceding
chapters have developed. It then conducts a preliminary evaluation of the theory with two
1304 It seems likely that such a rumor was circulating at the time. See İddianame ve Kovuşturmaya Yer Olmadığı Kararı - Kürdistan Ulusal Kurtuluşcuları (Diyarbakır-Mardin-Siirt Grupları), 1981/480, 157 (1981); Yüce, Doğu’da Yükselen Güneş (Istanbul, Turkey: Zelal, 1999), 376-77.
319
shadow cases. The final chapter of this dissertation, Chapter 7, will then discuss the limits
and contributions of this theory more broadly.
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CHAPTER 6
STATING AND EVALUATING THE THEORY
This chapter summarizes the theory developed in the previous chapters. It will then use
two shadow cases to probe the extendibility of this argument beyond Northern Ireland
and Turkey.
6.1. The rudimentary violence path to intra-rebel war
In the above chapters, I have relied on a “most-different systems” comparison of intra-
rebel wars in Northern Ireland and Turkey to shed light on the question of why rebels
sometimes go to war with one another in strong states. In drawing out this comparison, I
have taken a parallel and diachronic approach: I began with an examination of the
conflict environments of each case (Chapter 2) and then continued to an examination of
how these environments influenced organizational formation and change (Chapter 3).
Finally, I used the insights from these chapters to inform a close process tracing of the
unfolding fratricidal conflicts in both cases (Chapter 4 and Chapter 5).
From this approach, I identified a series of similar developments that based on
intuition or existing scholarship seem important for a comparative explanation. This
explanation is not intended as a general “covering-law” theory that will apply to all intra-
rebel wars in strong states. Yet, because it is constructed from general concepts, I believe
it is worthy of consideration when seeking to explain other similarly puzzling cases.
Fashioning this comparison into a general argument, however, requires caution.
Foremost, it is important to recognize that this argument is built from causal
processes that -- taken individually -- do not produce intra-rebel war. Instead, it is the
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sequential combination of these processes that is crucial for a satisfying explanation. For
this reason, I believe that understanding the general relevance of these case findings
requires a more nuanced view of causality. Here, an appropriate metaphor is that of the
“funnel of causality,”1305 a structuring analogy that has been used in studies that integrate
processes at multiple levels of analysis to account for an observed outcome.
Such approaches begin with major structural variables that furnish permissive
conditions for the onset of further processes at more fine-grained levels. Then, entering
the funnel, the actions of small groups and organizations come into play. Here still,
choice and contingency act as vital forces that promote or avert the outcome in question.
The funnel narrows if relevant macro-conditions remain in place and actors continue to
interact in a manner that pushes them toward the outcome. Conceptualizing the
rudimentary violence path (RVP) to intra-rebel war as a funnel of causality sensitizes the
explanation to the many ways that this outcome can be avoided – while also proposing
that its avoidance grows more difficult the further a rebel dyad advances on the RVP.
6.1.1. Disorderly violent repression
Applying this metaphor to the question of intra-rebel war in strong states, I look first to
macro-processes. Disorderly violent repression, a concept developed in Chapter 2,
describes a fairly common set of violent practices that arise through contests between
authorities and dissidents in strong states. I do not present a theory of the causes of
disorderly violent repression, although research in contentious politics has greatly
enhanced the arsenal of concepts for understanding the nexus of repression and dissent. 1305 Campbell, Angus, Philip E Converse, Warren E Miller, and E Donald. The American Voter. Ann Arbor, MI University of Michigan Press, 1960; James Mahoney and Richard Snyder, "Rethinking Agency and Structure in the Study of Regime Change," Studies in Comparative International Development 34, no. 2 (1999).
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My focus is on the potential effects of this environment. Disorderly violent
repression is indiscriminate and pervasive, imposing itself as a matter of foremost
concern for rebels and the communities they seek to represent. Yet at the same time, it is
limited in its systematic use of lethal violence. Because of this configuration, disorderly
violent repression largely backfired in the case pair explored in this dissertation. Of
course, there is no reason to believe that this will occur in all cases. Disorderly violent
repression may succeed in quashing dissidents, or rebels may turn to other kinds of
responses. Retreating from the streets but not from politics, they might pursue the legal-
institutional channels that are made available to them; or else, they might devote their full
energies to clandestine, terroristic violence, or perhaps attempt a transition to the
countryside for rural warfare. To return to the funnel of causality metaphor, at this stage a
myriad of pathways, many diverging from the RVP, are still wide open.
6.1.2. Movement continuity and change
If dissidents do manage to persevere with open, non-routine politics in the face of
disorderly violent repression, it becomes increasingly likely that their movement will
begin to reflect the rigors of this difficult environment. A diverse set of violent counter-
measures that I have grouped together under the heading of routines of rudimentary
violence will become a part of this new politics. Such routines, involving rapid and
simple violent performances, are not appropriate under many other circumstances. But so
long as state-dissident interactions remain in the realm of disorderly violent repression,
small groups that can quickly execute defensive violence are able to win for themselves a
luster of practical efficacy and demonstrate their commitment to the community.
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Even so, such change might not push a movement forward on the RVP. For
instance, if strategists of disciplined non-violence previously led the movement, they may
succeed in shoring up their hegemony, depriving violent innovators of material and
political support. Alternatively, the provocative tactics of specialists in rudimentary
violence might convince state authorities that a heavier hand is needed. The state’s
security forces are especially likely to gear up their attacks on groups that the state deems
a severe national security threat.1306 These and other eventualities would fundamentally
transform the conflict and result in an exit from the RVP. That does not mean intra-rebel
war becomes impossible -- just that if it does occur, it happens through different causal
mechanisms.
Moving forward into the RVP funnel of causality occurs if routines of
rudimentary violence become an important piece of the dissident movement’s repertoire.
Over time, if dissident cultures are thoroughly transformed by these developments, it
becomes appropriate to speak of the role of a specialist in rudimentary violence, a locally
intelligible social role that is available to militants who are able and inclined to cast
themselves as such. These specialists work in groups, and they are initiated into these
roles through collective, fairly spontaneous, practices of collective learning.
Within a dissident community, small bands of comrades and friends, whose main
social asset is their proficiency in violence, begin to carve out a place for themselves in
rebel politics. Some may leave the movement if the political winds change and violence
dies down. Others may drift away for personal reasons. But if a niche for these defenders
remains available, some will join established organizations to ply their trade and lobby
1306 Butt, Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy against Separatists (Cornell University Press, 2017).
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for more ‘action,’ per their own unique definition of the term. Meanwhile, others will set
up their own organizations, premised on rudimentary violence.
6.1.3. Organizational imprinting
If allowed to progress, the movement-level processes enumerated above stand a good
chance of influencing the organizations active in a movement in a predictable and
systematic manner. This dissertation applies the theory of organizational imprinting to
specify the nature of these effects. According to this view, outside environments
influence organizations in a different way, depending on the organization’s age and
degree of institutionalization.
As such, organizations are insulated from the influence of disorderly violent
repression when they: (1) existed prior to the rise of disorderly violent repression and (2)
maintain institutional coherence. Rather than evincing a significant imprint from
disorderly violent repression, such organizations will continue to reflect the imprints of
whatever environmental conditions pertained in the past (when the organization was first
forming). These features might involve other forms political violence and/or non-violent
organizing, institutional or protest politics. What matters is that these capabilities and
attendant notions of strategic action and identity are not tailor-made for the dangers and
opportunities that arise in environments of disorderly violent repression.
I designate this condition as a low imprint from the environment of disorderly
violent repression. True, these organizations may recruit specialists in rudimentary
violence into their ranks and incorporate routines of rudimentary violence into their
repertoire. But they will also succeed at keeping these activities outside of their core
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capability set, so that central notions of ‘who we are and what we do’ remain separate
from rudimentary violence.
Of course, holding together a rebel organization in the face of the dislocating
shocks brought about by disorderly violent repression is difficult. And the challenges can
become overwhelming when corners within the organization gain traction by espousing
competing visions for what the organization’s goals and strategy should be. When
incumbents are unable to discipline or expel such challengers, these organizations fall
into crisis. What I refer to as a medium imprint organization experiences internal turmoil
and resulting strategic incoherency. The wall of consensus that once held off specialists
in rudimentary violence cracks, leading to a contest over vision and tactics within the
organization.
Finally, high imprint organizations are those that form within an environment of
disorderly violent repression. While some rebel organizations that form under this
condition may diverge from this expectation – e.g., going fully underground or devoting
themselves to legal politics – I believe that disorderly violent repression will profoundly
influence many newcomers. Strong pressures will shape these organizations. Violence is
a vivid and recurrent feature of the immediate formative surroundings for these
organizations. In their everyday practice of politics, these newly organizing groups find
themselves working together on the practical matters of defense.
Given the pressing importance of rudimentary violence, and the relatively minor
barriers to entry for those who are physically and temperamentally able to perform it,
many within the budding organization will be eager to cast themselves as specialists in
rudimentary violence. Together, these teams of violent practitioners will develop shared
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operational knowledge through their performance of group violence. Further reinforcing
the imprint, the immediate feedback they elicit from their communities will often appear
positive – as the loudest voices in the neighborhoods or towns where they work will
clamor for protection and revenge, while those unsettled by these trends will have a more
difficult time making a case for prudence and restraint. Encouraged to fill the expanding
niche for defense, it is easy for these newly forming organizations to conclude that
superiority in rudimentary violence can make up for the liabilities of newness (such as
lack of sophistication on established metrics of prestige, initial obscurity, and limited
access to resources and manpower).
Attending to these imprinting outcomes is important for understanding intra-rebel
war because differently imprinted rebel dyads are disposed toward different patterns of
interaction. More specifically, high-vs.-high and high-vs.-medium dyads are prone to
interactive dynamics that can escalate into worsening bloodshed.
Still, it should not be presumed that all rebels facing these pressures will careen
forward on the path to intra-rebel war. Incumbent organizations may restore their
political control over their movement and community. That would mean a population of
medium and low imprint organizations, yielding dynamics of competition that are not
conducive to fratricidal escalation. Likewise, high imprint newcomers might rise to
hegemony without having to use violence, as older organizations gather behind them into
a common insurgent front.1307
1307 Mendelsohn discusses this possibility, though he also points to political barriers to its attainment without the use of violence. Barak Mendelsohn, "The Battle for Algeria: Explaining Fratricide among Armed Nonstate Actors," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2019).
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Alternatively, exogenous shocks, such as a sudden shift to new forms of
repression, might knock the conflict off the RVP. A massive state dragnet might drive
dissidents underground or to the mountains, a foreign invasion might reshuffle the
strategic deck, or the state might suddenly collapse under the weight of popular
opposition. These and other structural transformations mark an exit from the RVP. If
subsequent rebel fratricide does occur, it happens for reasons separate from those
theorized in this dissertation. Of course, imprints from rudimentary violence can still
influence rebels in new environments, such as after state collapse or sudden regime
change. These connections, however, lie outside of the scope of this dissertation.
It is only when the vicissitudes of insurgency place high-high or high-medium
dyads into protracted competition with each other that a funnel of causality narrows
further. By now, the structural and relational processes introduced above have produced
and positioned actors that are uniquely exposed to spirals of fratricidal escalation. As the
case pair examined in this dissertation demonstrates, rebels in this difficult position are
not doomed to intra-rebel war. Leaders and cadres are able to comprehend the dangers of
violent competition and they often do seek out means for defusing these tensions. Yet,
worsening violence strengthens countervailing forces – strategic pressures to hit back,
organizational priming for defense, and psychological pressures – all of which promote
continued fratricide and bolster voices calling for more systematic fratricidal attacks on
rivals. Chapters 4 and 5 explored these factors in-depth, but it is worthwhile to provide a
short re-cap.
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6.1.4. Strategic violence
Just because rebels wish to avoid intra-rebel war does not mean they will abstain from all
forms of fratricide. High-imprint rebel organizations, in particular, are inclined to use
routines of rudimentary violence as a means of signaling power and ability to rivals. In
fact, there are rare moments when this proficiency can deliver conclusive victories, such
as when a rival is weak and the state is temporarily indisposed.1308
Often, too, rebels seek to use violence in tempered strokes because the state
remains dangerous and/or their rival is too strong to be cleanly eliminated. Here, rebels
must balance the gains from violence against the expected costs of prolonged exposure to
the gaze of security forces. This delicate balancing act hits a wobble when defenders also
specialize in rudimentary violence. This is partly because rebel organizations of this type
stake their reputation on their ability to defend the community from low intensity violent
attacks from the state. Backing down in the face of an attack from a rival organization
signals weakness where it counts: in performing the sort of violence that the community
depends upon for its safety and dignity. Organizations with a low imprint are not subject
to this incentive, while high and medium organizations are.
6.1.5. Organizational routines
Another dynamic that complicates efforts at maintaining this strategic equilibrium stems
from the organizational character of these dyads. Both sides in such rebel dyads are
endowed with the ability to carry out attack and reprisal quickly, before either has
adequate time to carefully evaluate the costs and benefits of escalating the conflict. What
1308 Pischedda, "Wars within Wars: Understanding Inter-Rebel Fighting" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University 2015).
329
is more, the presence of rebel contingents versed in these violent techniques can lead
suddenly and unexpectedly to deadly skirmishes. This tendency is further reinforced by
emergent cultures that signify violence as praiseworthy and practical.
6.1.6. Concatenating spirals
I argue that it is not the separate operation of strategic and non-strategic violence that
heightens the dangers of war, but their sequential intertwining. I propose that acts of non-
strategic and strategic violence tend to concatenate into lengthening strings. For example,
a non-strategic attack from X can force Y to calculate that while retaliation is costly and
dangerous, failing to retaliate is more costly, because of harm to its reputation associated
with appearing weak. Y then retaliates, only to face stiffer than expected resistance from
X, because its teams of specialists in rudimentary violence are primed to automatically hit
back ferociously. The point is not that all episodes of violence follow this precise
sequence; many unique chains of attack and response can grow out of these strategic and
non-strategic mechanisms. The point is that these chains are able to grow faster because
of the interaction of strategic and non-strategic mechanisms, a logic that I belabor at
some length in Table 4.1. (See section 4.3.4., Chapter 4). Therefore, even against the best
efforts of rebel leaders, episodic spirals of concatenating attack and reprisal can
increasingly come to define rebel relations over time.
6.1.7. Group and individual psychology
The immediate costs incurred from fratricidal encounters – loss of fighters, exposure to
state intelligence machinations, expressions of revulsion of the local community, and so
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on – serve as a startling reminder of the downsides of intra-rebel war. But fratricide also
promotes countervailing mechanisms. As incidents of violence mount, group and
individual psychological mechanisms begin to warp the simple formula that dictates
avoiding of further violence.
Trying to make sense of the causes of the bloodshed, rebels may fall under the
sway of any number of psychological mechanisms (reviewed in section 5.3.2. of Chapter
5) that make it easier to imagine the other as malign and incorrigibly aggressive. The
more these threat framings change, the more concerted attack on a rival begins to appear
strategically justified.1309 Although the prospect of exposure to state repression remains
as dangerous as ever, a unilateral truce at this stage appears tantamount to permitting a
grave danger to remain unchecked.
From here, a sober reckoning of the downsides of intra-rebel war must vie with
emotion and fear that encourages further bloodshed. Meanwhile, individual score-settling
and local feuds are easily enflamed, or dressed in political garb, further complicating the
task of slowing the violence. When rebels decidedly pull out all the stops in their wars
with each other – as the PIRA and OIRA did in Belfast in October/November 1975 and
the PKK and TKDP/KUK did in Mardin in 1980 -- the RVP lurches forward toward
several possible terminuses. The state might seize decisively upon the intra-rebel war,
leading to the destruction of one or both parties. Alternatively, the costs of the fighting
might ultimately overwhelm all other considerations, and a lasting truce or a simmering
cold peace might hold.1310
1309 The role of crisis and changing threat perceptions in Senese and Vasquez’s ‘steps to war’ model is similar. See Paul D Senese and John A Vasquez, The Steps to War: An Empirical Study (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 1310 The reasoning here follows loosely the steps to war model of inter-state war that Senese and Vasquez develop. See ibid.
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Lastly, through brute force (and good fortune) one side might totally destroy its
rival. That some RVP wars result in victory to one side – to the long-term benefit of one
party – does not efface the ex ante inadvisability of embarking upon such wars. In fact, it
stands to reason that a selection effect may determine the population of strong state intra-
rebel wars available for scholarly study: many budding rebellions that embroil
themselves in intra-rebel war become easy prey for state authorities, and thus are possibly
destroyed before journalists and conflict watchers can learn much about them. Figure 6.1.
depicts the basic reasoning of the RVP model in diagrammatic form.
Figure 6.1. The rudimentary violence path to intra-rebel war
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6.2. Preliminary process tracing tests: the Sinhalese left and the Algerian Independence Movement This dissertation does not provide a systematic test of the RVP model’s generalizability
across the large sample of cases. Instead, to gauge its broader applicability, this chapter
now discusses a pair of candidate cases for the RVP explanation. The cases chosen for
additional comparison are: 1) the ‘Café Wars:’ an intra-rebel war waged within the
Algerian independence movement; and 2) intra-rebel war during the Sinhalese Marxist
insurrection of 1987-1990.
6.2.1. Case selection
These cases are selected on three criteria: First, they meet the scope condition of state
strength -- that is, they are both insurgencies operating in a zone of state strength, per the
definition offered in Chapter 1. Second, the outcome variable, intra-rebel war, is present
in each case: both conflicts feature costly and protracted fratricidal war in zones of state
strength. Third, these cases evince the antecedent condition of disorderly violent
repression. These criteria make this pair suitable for process tracing tests. If the RVP
model is useful for linking state repression to intra-rebel war in strong states, then we
should expect processes similar to those witnessed in the main cases of this dissertation to
have also occurred in these intra-rebel wars. Thus, these are not tests of the general or
average causal effect of disorderly violent repression on intra-rebel violence. Rather,
these investigations represent an effort to probe whether the logic of the theory is useful
for explaining cases where both the antecedent condition and the outcome are present. At
this stage in theory development, I believe this is the most appropriate initial step toward
further refinement and testing.
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To make this assessment, this case comparison is organized similarly to the main
case study chapters. It involves the following steps: first, this chapter will introduce these
cases, and demonstrate their fit with the scope condition. Then, it will canvass the rise of
disorderly violent repression in each case. Next, process-tracing tests will seek to identify
certain important mechanisms that the RVP model posits as driving intra-rebel war. The
first of these tests looks for evidence of strategic competition; the next test seeks evidence
of organizational imprinting from disorderly violent repression; and lastly, the final test
will trace the sequence of intra-rebel violence, with an eye for indirect evidence that non-
strategic mechanisms contributed to escalation.
The JVP: a war within the Sinhalese Left (1987-1990)
While the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka is familiar to students of political violence,
historians and researchers have paid less attention to uprisings in Sinhalese-majority
regions of Sri Lanka. These insurgencies were led by the Sinhalese People’s Liberation
Front (Janatha Vimukti Peramuna), or JVP, a radical leftist faction with mostly Sinhalese
membership 1311 that attempted to overthrow the Sri Lankan state, first in 1971 and then
in 1987.1312 The latter insurrection, which lasted until the JVP was (temporarily)
destroyed in 1990,1313 was unique in that the JVP devoted a considerable portion of its
1311 John Richardson, Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict, Terrorism, and Development from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars (Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005), 249. 1312 Mick Moore, "Thoroughly Modern Revolutionaries: The JVP in Sri Lanka," Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 3 (1993): 605-13. 1313 Niloufer Abeysuriya De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 96.
334
violent energies toward killing members of other factions within the Sinhalese left that
could have served as potential allies in its campaign to topple the state.1314
This case is especially interesting because this period of intra-rebel war marked a
stark contrast from the JVP’s 1971 uprising which restricted its targets mostly to state
police and military, avoiding violence against rival leftists (despite the JVP’s
unconcealed hostility toward others in the highly fragmented leftist movement).1315 This
difference presents an opportunity for added empirical leverage, with a ‘before-and-after’
comparison between the JVP of 1971 and that of 1987.
The Café Wars: Intra-Algerian bloodshed on the streets of Paris (1956-1962)
The Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) is an often-cited example of intra-rebel
war. The National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale), or FLN – which by
1960 would dominate the Algerian independence movement – gained its supremacy in a
ruthless contest for rebel hegemony waged mostly against its main rival the Algerian
National Movement (Mouvement National Algérien), or MNA. Much of the fighting
occurred in the rural countryside of Algeria, where the presence of the French state was
fleeting. But interestingly, the two sides also carried their war to the streets of Paris.
Algerian militants were at war with each other on French soil by 1956, two years before
they began their campaign of violence against French soldiers and police in mainland
France.1316 Intra-rebel fighting would not fully come to an end until the war of
1314 Moore, "Thoroughly Modern Revolutionaries: The Jvp in Sri Lanka," Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 3 (1993): 614; Bryan Pfaffenberger, "Sri Lanka in 1987: Indian Intervention and Resurgence of the JVP," Asian Survey 28, no. 2 (1988): 139. 1315 C Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 37. 1316 Amit Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 143.
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independence was over. In Paris, thousands died in clashes between the two factions as
part of what became known as the “Café Wars.”1317
6.2.2. Scope condition: intra-rebel war in the shadow of a strong state
What makes these cases interesting is that, in both instances, intra-rebel war occurred in
the shadow of state that had the ability not only to defeat insurgents in open battle, but
also to pursue them with a formidable intelligence apparatus and the institutional ability
to influence the political course of the conflict.
A costly war in Paris
Militants in the Algerian independence movement clashed in gun battles on the streets of
metropolitan Paris, not just on occasion, but with enough frequency between 1956 and
1962 to leave thousands dead.1318 And they did all of this under the watchful eye of the
French police and intelligence establishment. 1319 During the 1950s, the security forces in
Paris were pioneers in intelligence gathering and monitoring techniques, many of which
they developed with the explicit purpose of spying on the North African community in
Paris. The French security system included a unit with the sole mandate of watching
North Africans suspected of subversive activities.1320
1317 Martin Evans, Algeria: France's Undeclared War (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 190. 1318 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 161. 1319 Neil MacMaster, Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 21. 1320 Rabah Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 234-35; Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 147-48.
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Staffing this force were French officers newly returned from the colonial wars
who attempted to apply to metropolitan Paris tactics developed abroad to monitoring,
infiltrating, and sowing discord within the urban networks of the Algerian independence
movement.1321 It was only thanks to the “constant and dynamic adaptation”1322 of the
rebels that the movement was able to survive; the more details the Algerian rebels
divulged to the French state on their membership and operations in Paris, the more
vulnerable their financing and recruitment networks became. The MNA collapsed under
the combined weight of French repression and the FLN’s onslaught,1323 while the FLN
managed to survive, but only after sustaining extreme damage. For both rebel
organizations, it can hardly be denied that their long internecine war in Paris was a
dangerous gamble.
For starters, the direct casualties from the fighting depleted both sides of valuable
fighters and resources. During the early stages of the conflict, MNA attacks depleted the
still-nascent FLN ranks.1324 Later, when the tides turned in the FLN’s favor, Messali
Hadj, the MNA’s leader, made a desperate call for peace.1325 The call went unheeded as
FLN militants continued to pursue their rival, which was already disintegrating under
French police repression.1326
1321 See previous cite. 1322 Neil MacMaster, "The Algerian Café-Hotel: Hub of the Nationalist Underground, Paris 1926–1962," French Politics, Culture & Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 72. 1323Rabah Aissaoui, "Algerian Nationalists in the French Political Arena and Beyond: The Etoile Nord-Africaine and the Parti Du Peuple Algérien in Interwar France," The Journal of North African Studies 15, no. 1 (2010): 235; "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 3. 1324 MacMaster, "The Algerian Café-Hotel: Hub of the Nationalist Underground, Paris 1926–1962," French Politics, Culture & Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 67. 1325 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 235. 1326 Ibid., 236-39.
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The fighting in Paris bloodied both sides. With the benefit of hindsight, it is
possible to credit the FLN’s violence for its subsequent hegemony over the anti-colonial
insurgency. Indeed, the FLN-MNA fighting in the rural hinterlands of Algeria, where the
French state had less reach, may very well support such a thesis. Fighting in Paris,
however, was different. The FLN leadership was ambivalent about the benefits of
violence in metropolitan France. Leaders worried that violence in Paris might intensify
French repression against the local Algerian community to unbearable levels.1327 And
FLN leaders realized that attacks on other Algerians in plain sight would erode sympathy
for the FLN in the French left,1328 as otherwise sympathetic French leftist leaders reacted
with disgust to the internal conflict.1329
Also of serious concern was the advantage that intra-rebel war conferred to the
French security forces. Studies of the French state’s internal correspondence during this
period attest to the security force’s pleasure at the FLN-MNA infighting. The French
police regarded the intensifying war as “facilitating their repressive role” against the FLN
and MNA, and as opening up new avenues for weakening the nationalist movement.1330
After all, incidents of violence left clues about the identity of the participants, and any
violent disturbance in the Algerian ‘micro-ghettos’ of Paris gave police grounds to raid
homes and businesses in search of information on the insurgents.1331 That the French state
1327 MacMaster, Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 8. 1328 Ibid., 48-49. 1329 Evans, Algeria: France's Undeclared War (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 190. 1330 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 234. 1331 MacMaster, Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 71.
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kept scrupulous incident reports on Algerian infighting further indicates that the state was
keenly following this internal war and the opportunities it presented.1332 Some accounts
even suggest that the French police in Paris propped up the beleaguered MNA to sustain
the intra-rebel war.1333
Intra-rebel war and implosion in Colombo
Although the Sri Lankan state lacked the material resources of the French, it too was a
formidable threat to insurgents, especially in well-policed areas, such as in Colombo,
where a portion of the JVP violence occurred. Despite its growing strength, the JVP was
never in a position to confront the Sri Lankan state in open battle. A year into the JVP
insurrection, Sri Lanka remained “one of the Third World's best armies,” according to
Bryan Pfaffenberger.1334 More importantly, the Sri Lankan state was adept in the methods
of tracking urban guerrillas and imposing domain control over contested urban zones.
Soon after the JVP insurrection began, the Sri Lankan military set up a special task force
to defeat the JVP, the feared “Operations Combine” unit.1335 At the height of its anti-JVP
campaign, the military arrayed units across urban points where it deemed there was a risk
of JVP attacks against civilian or military targets.1336
1332 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 234; MacMaster, Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 73. 1333 Constantin Melnik, "The French Campaign against the FLN," (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1967), 67. 1334 Pfaffenberger, "Sri Lanka in 1987: Indian Intervention and Resurgence of the JVP," Asian Survey 28, no. 2 (1988): 138. 1335 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 299. 1336 Ibid., 300.
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The military also went on the offensive, pursuing JVP militants to their hideouts
across the country in a dirty war of extra-judicial killings, often conducted by vigilante
groups with shrouded connections to the state.1337 Indeed, no organization was in a better
position to appreciate the repressive power of the state than the JVP itself. In 1971, the
Sri Lankan state suppressed the JVP’s first uprising, turning the country upside down in
its search for suspected militants and arresting tens of thousands, many of whom died at
the hands of security forces.1338
During the JVP’s subsequent 1987 uprising, local intelligence was far more
important than military hardware. A typical JVP attack entailed a rapid assault on a
victim with small arms, sometimes only with sticks and knives, before the militants then
disappeared out of sight.1339 For security forces, knowledge of such plans in advance, and
intelligence leading to the capture of these urban guerrillas was the chief weapon. The
conflict was, in other words, “a hit job war,” in which advantage was won with “accurate
information and the element of surprise.” 1340
This made infighting costly. The JVP’s violence against rival organizations
created many enemies out of potential allies, and according to journalists’ accounts,
resulted in a loss of local support, which advantaged the state in its efforts to gather fine-
grained intelligence.1341 Overwhelmed by JVP violence, leftist rivals and locals began to
pass information regarding JVP safe houses to Sri Lankan security forces.1342
1337 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 117-18. 1338 Ibid., 106. 1339 Gamini Samaranayake, "Patterns of Political Violence and Responses of the Government in Sri Lanka, 1971–1996," (1999): 115. 1340 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 287. 1341 Ibid.
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JVP violence against rivals in the left put it at odds with numerous other
militarized actors in Sri Lanka, from the state and state-backed militias to leftist
organizations that until then had been committed to fomenting class revolution.
Thousands of JVP members were brutally slain in attacks that came from every corner, so
that it became difficult, even for experts, to keep track of whether a hit came from a
Marxist rival or a state-backed militia.1343 Reeling from this “island-wide onslaught” the
JVP found itself running out of places to hide.1344 Top JVP cadres began to fall into the
hands of state authorities, and then authorities captured the JVP leader, Rohana
Wijeweera. He died in state custody shortly thereafter. By January 1990, the JVP was
devastated,1345with perhaps tens of thousands of its members killed.1346
6.2.3. Antecedent condition: the onset of disorderly violent repression
Both of these cases qualify for process tracing tests because they not only fit relevant
scope conditions, but also feature the antecedent condition of the RVP model – disorderly
violent repression. In both cases, the factions that engaged in intra-rebel war emerged
from dissident movements that were frequent targets of violence from the state and actors
aligned with the state. Though differing in its manifestations, both French and Sri Lankan
1342Ibid.; Rohan Gunaratna, Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution?: The Inside Story of the JVP (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Institute of Fundamental Studies, 1990), 26. 1343 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 239; De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 117-18. 1344 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 302. 1345 Ibid., 312. 1346 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998).
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state violence during the formative years of the FLN and JVP meets the criteria of
disorderly violent repression.
In both cases, state violence struck at dissident communities indiscriminately and
in a widespread manner. But at the same time, the violence that beset these communities
was haphazard in its execution and/or subject to political constraints. While it resulted in
many deaths and injuries over time, it was not extreme enough to destroy or demobilize
the dissidents. It rather provoked a constant sense of insecurity and anti-state sentiment,
while at the same time encouraging dissident organizations to develop simple methods to
counteract these state-backed acts of violence.
Violence and democracy in Sri Lanka
The crushing defeat of the JVP after its first attempt at an uprising in 1971 left its top
leadership in prison or languishing in the political wilderness. A political amnesty in
1977 allowed the JVP back to the political arena, and it was officially instated as a
political party in 1982 (although the JVP would once again face a ban in 1983 over
accusation of participation in the anti-Tamil riot of July 1983).1347 Upon entering the
political arena in 1977, the second iteration of JVP -- whose members and organizational
features were almost entirely ruptured from the prior decade -- found itself in an
environment that was quite different from that of its first iteration during the late 1960s.
Politically, Sri Lanka had become a very different place, and no change was more
palpable than the rise of state violence.
1347 Ibid.
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Sri Lankan politics since independence in 1948 had largely been a contest
between the country’s two leading Sinhalese parties, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP). The JVP returned to politics in 1977, just
as the SLFP was facing defeat and the UNP was returning to power, led by President J.R.
Jayawardene. While the early history of democracy in Sri Lanka offers plenty of
examples of violence at the labor rally or the voting booth,1348 historians of modern Sri
Lanka agree that the UNP government that came to power in 1977 marked a watershed in
the prevalence of these forms of violence in Sri Lankan politics and society.1349 It was
during this period that violence became more than ever before a regular feature of
electioneering and labor organizing.
The escalation began in 1975 when the Marxist labor unions broke from the
governing coalition and began to agitate with strikes and demonstrations. This set the
scene for the 1977 general election, when violence -- in the form of intimidation, arson,
and politically motivated attacks -- “became more intense than during any previous
election period.” 1350 It was this election that marked a shift in violence, from “being
contained in pockets of local constituencies” to becoming a feature of politics as “a
nation-wide phenomenon”.1351 The UNP played a key role in fostering this style of
politics. Immediately upon taking power, it turned the police forces against public
demonstrations against the government. Police dispersed labor marches and tore up
1348 Richardson, Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict, Terrorism, and Development from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars (Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005). 1349 Ibid., 272; Seema Kiran Shah, "Intra-Ethnic Electoral Violence in War-Torn, Divided Societies: The Case of Sri Lanka" (Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 2012), 35. 1350 Richardson, Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict, Terrorism, and Development from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars (Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005), 274. 1351 Shah, "Intra-Ethnic Electoral Violence in War-Torn, Divided Societies: The Case of Sri Lanka" (Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 2012), 54.
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posters and pamphlets that criticized the government.1352 In 1982, the party prevailed in a
constitutional referendum that featured “unprecedented use of intimidation and fraud.”1353
Communal violence, too, got worse. In 1977, severe violent rioting between
Tamils and Sinhalese erupted for the first time in nearly two decades.1354 In July 1983,
Tamil communities in the predominately Sinhalese southern regions suffered a pogrom
that was the worst in recent memory. Sinhalese militants smashed and burned Tamil
homes in an apparently systematic manner, leaving a still unknown death toll.1355
Although the UNP government blamed the JVP for the ethnic violence, many observers
were convinced that it was the government’s own agents that orchestrated the attacks.
And it was not just poor laborers and vulnerable Tamils that were exposed to
violence during these years. State violence also began to touch prominent members of
society, including students at Sri Lanka’s prestigious universities. Before the mid-1970s,
the leading universities of Sri Lanka were to some degree protected enclaves from police
violence and could engage in political actions without serious fear of a violent state
backlash. In November 1976, police killed a student leader when they opened fire on a
student demonstration, an incident that journalists viewed as an alarming escalation.1356
1352 Ibid., 59. 1353 Jonathan Spencer, "A Nationalism without Politics? The Illiberal Consequences of Liberal Institutions in Sri Lanka," Third World Quarterly 29, no. 3 (2008): 617. 1354 Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 13. 1355 Nikolaos Biziouras, "The Political Economy of Ethnic Mobilisation: Comparing the Emergence, Consolidation, and Radicalisation of Ethnic Parties in Post-Colonial Sri Lanka and Malaysia," Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 51, no. 4 (2013): 491; Spencer, "A Nationalism without Politics? The Illiberal Consequences of Liberal Institutions in Sri Lanka," Third World Quarterly 29, no. 3 (2008). 1356 Gunaratna, Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution?: The Inside Story of the JVP (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Institute of Fundamental Studies, 1990), 47.
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In the decade ahead, firing into student demonstrations would become a more regular
occurrence.1357
Alongside the police, much of the violence was dealt out by semi-official
militants, often on the payroll of a political leader. All of the major parties amassed their
own “private armies,” dubbed “goondas” in local parlance.1358 The ruling UNP, of
course, had the most powerful street presence. A major arm of this force was the Jathika
Seva Sangamaya (JSS), a pro-government labor union that acted as shock troops to
repress opposition marches and other demonstrations.1359 JSS militants plied the streets in
state-owned vehicles, descending upon opposition forces with sticks, knives, clubs and
swords – and occasionally with more deadly weapons. 1360 Opposition activists soon lost
their faith in the police, who commonly would “stand by or simply fail to respond to
pleas for help while government thugs beat up government opponents.”1361
While Sri Lankan governments in the past had made use of such violent actors for
similar purposes, “no previous regime had been so apparently dependent on the illegal
tactics of its own supporters for its survival.”1362 In sum, Sri Lanka had become a country
in which violence was a feature of daily politics --and daily life -- by the mid-1980s.
Insecurity was pervasive. Writing in 1988, Bryan Pfaffenberger noted that “political
protection and a gang of thugs” had become essential to maintaining a business in Sri
1357 Ibid., 47, 151-52. 1358 Jonathan Spencer, "Collective Violence and Everyday Practice in Sri Lanka," Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 3 (1990): 617. 1359 Mick Moore, "Thoroughly Modern Revolutionaries: The JVP in Sri Lanka," ibid.27 (1993): 606. 1360 Shah, "Intra-Ethnic Electoral Violence in War-Torn, Divided Societies: The Case of Sri Lanka" (Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 2012), 58. 1361 Ibid., 60. 1362 Spencer, "Collective Violence and Everyday Practice in Sri Lanka," Modern Asian Studies 24, no. 3 (1990): 617.
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Lanka.1363Everyone, it seems, felt threatened from these forms of violence, in which the
state often appeared complicit.
A colony on the Seine: state violence and the North African community in Paris
State repression during the years surrounding the Café Wars in Paris also created an
environment of disorderly violent repression. In postwar Paris, Algerians (or any North
African immigrant) countenanced the ever-present possibility of facing violence from
police or state-aligned practitioners of violence. As early as the 1920s, the growing
Algerian migrant community in Paris became concentrated in a small number of “dense
‘micro-ghettos’ or urban enclaves.”1364 Community life in these neighborhoods was
centered on the inexpensive cafés and hotels where locals socialized, engaged in black
market commerce, and talked politics.1365Certain currents of public opinion, as well as
the security forces, saw these locations as hotbeds of crime and subversive political
activity.1366 The pressure on French police to monitor and control these neighborhoods
grew in tandem with the accelerating momentum of the Algerian independence
movement during the early 1950s.
French police efforts at gaining access to these locales often lapsed into sheer
brutality. The police conducted mass campaigns of detainments and arrests in these
neighborhoods, ostensibly to reduce crime, but with the clear effect of netting intelligence
on upcoming political actions and demonstrations. These campaigns involved random 1363 Pfaffenberger, "Sri Lanka in 1987: Indian Intervention and Resurgence of the JVP," Asian Survey 28, no. 2 (1988): 146. 1364 Jim House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 63. 1365 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 87. 1366 Ibid.
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searches of dark-skinned men on the street, searches that could at any moment turn into a
physical beating.1367The racial bias used to inform these searches, detentions, and arrests
was impossible to miss.1368 Relations between the French state and these communities
had so deteriorated that observing one of these neighborhoods in 1961, a British
journalist noted its division into “two violently-opposed cliques: the public and the
police.”1369
On the occasions that locals were able to fight back, the political implications
were clear. On 30 July 1955, for instance, a riot broke out in the 18th arrondissement
after a police van collided with a watermelon stand while officers attempted to apprehend
a North African man selling allegedly stolen clothing on a street corner. Local residents
poured into the street, near two cafés that were recognized as centers of political
organizing. Suddenly, a battle with police broke out.1370Although there was no evidence
that the MNA instigated the riot, the party seemed eager to take the blame. According to
Sarah Howard, the MNA, by implying that they were somehow involved in the fighting,
managed to grasp “a much-needed opportunity to demonstrate its leadership of the
community.”1371In an environment where locals lived in insecurity and often harbored
vividly-experienced grievances, there was a clear political payoff to gaining visibility
1367 Sarah Howard, "Three Cats and a Watermelon: Summer 1955 and the Arrival of the Algerian War in Paris," French History 27, no. 3 (2013): 408; Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 96. 1368 Howard, "Three Cats and a Watermelon: Summer 1955 and the Arrival of the Algerian War in Paris," French History 27, no. 3 (2013). 1369 Francis Fytton, "War in the 18th Arrondissement," London Magazine, December 1961. 1370 Howard, "Three Cats and a Watermelon: Summer 1955 and the Arrival of the Algerian War in Paris," French History 27, no. 3 (2013): 415. 1371 Ibid., 417.
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during efforts to defend the community, and to strike back. 1372Of course, these
occasional incidents of collective violence did not put an end to these police practices,
which the Algerian dissidents viewed as worsening as the war of independence, which
began in 1954, intensified.1373
Taking to the streets to protest these actions and to voice other political demands
was dangerous as well. Participating in the noisy politics of protest was particularly
hazardous for North African dissidents. As Algerian parties became increasingly
involved in the leftist movement during the 1930s, their contingents joined the street
marches and strikes that roiled the country during that decade. And as the Algerian
independence movement began to strike out on its own, it continued to rely on the mass
march as part of its contentious repertoire.1374
During the early 1950s, Parisian police met these mass marches with arrests and
violence.1375 When North Africans marched with others in the left, it became common
practice for other marchers to surround the North Africans, to shield them from police
attack.1376 Beginning in the early 1950s, as Algerian dissidents began to more frequently
conduct their own marches, incidents of the police firing indiscriminately into the ranks
of Algerian marchers occurred, 1377with controversy over whether Algerian militants
1372 That police brutality was a politicized grievance during these years is evidenced by the political protests against police brutality that the FLN and other dissident groups organized. See for instance the account in House and MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1. 1373 Ibid., 40. 1374 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 94. 1375 Ibid., 95. 1376 MacMaster, Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 88; Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 97. 1377 "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 97.
348
provoked the firing by first attacking police, or whether police attacked first.1378 That
marchers would have seen these incidents as further confirmation of the state’s hostility
is not hard to imagine, whatever the reality. The worst of these incidents occurred on 17
October 1961, when police fired upon an FLN-backed march, killing scores in the streets
of Paris.1379
At the same time, there were limits to the severity of state violence that could be
perpetrated against Algerian dissidents in Paris. Just as the Sri Lankan state could not
raze entire sections of Colombo to destroy its enemies, the French state was limited in its
repressive repertoire by the conditions of Paris. Officers newly returned from the colonial
small wars brought with them a set of tactics and doctrine that they sought to apply to
urban Paris,1380only to realize that many of these tools were of limited application. While
much of the French public was only dimly aware of the conduct of the state in the small
wars of the colonies, unbridled acts of repression were more likely to provoke outrage
when carried out right under their noses. As Jim House and Neil MacMaster comment,
“Paris was not Algiers, and the constraints on state repression were far more significant
in metropolitan France.” 1381 Destroying entire sections of the city to eradicate
problematic areas, or indefinitely denying due process to dissidents was simply off the
table, “unacceptable if deployed in metropolitan France.”1382This left authorities with a
more constrained set of repressive practices to draw upon. Some accounts of French
1378 House and MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 40. 1379 For a detailed account, see ibid. 1380 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 5. 1381 House and MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Memory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 28. 1382 Ibid.
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policing suggest that despite the state’s knack for innovation, control of these urban zones
presented a vexing challenge.1383
Disorderly violent repression - an appraisal
State repression both in Sri Lanka and Paris feature all three elements of disorderly
violent repression. First, state or state-backed agents used violence in a manner that was
often indiscriminate. State and state-backed repression not only threatened those who
carried guns or used violence. Anyone attempting to engage in peaceful political action
was forced to consider the possibility that they might become victims of violence.
Second, state repression became a common feature of dissident life in both cases. Violent
incidents were not a rare aberration. The frequency and temporal-spatial dispersion of
violence made it appear a persistent danger for dissidents and vulnerable communities.
Marching in public, distributing pamphlets, or even engaging in a noisy debate in public
at all carried a risk of provoking violence from the state or its unofficial agents. As
violence grew worse, the state became increasingly discredited as a venue for protection;
the perpetrators of the violence were either state agents seemingly immune to disciplinary
action, or else non-state militants that appeared to enjoy support from the state.
Third, the violence failed to meet a degree of lethality that would have made
resistance appear utterly futile. State attacks provoked outrage but tended to be
ineffective as a means of killing large numbers of dissidents in a single encounter.
Violent incidents injured large numbers and led to a growing death toll over time. But
attacks were not systematic or ruthless enough to make evasion, resistance, or revenge
1383 Howard, "Three Cats and a Watermelon: Summer 1955 and the Arrival of the Algerian War in Paris," French History 27, no. 3 (2013): 409.
350
unthinkable. In Sri Lanka, the UNP government between 1977 and 1987 did not
slaughter entire protest marches. Violence instead came in the form of beatings by JSS
thugs, or smatterings of rifle fire into protesting crowds. And while the Parisian police
attempted to bring methods of colonial control to metropolitan France, they did not have
a free hand to inflict wholesale massacres against entire groupings of dissidents.
6.2.4. Process tracing tests
Now that the scope and antecedent conditions for both cases are established, it is possible
to turn to a process tracing evaluation of the disorderly violence path. Considering the
limited empirical depth of this case comparison, these tests are brief and admittedly
cursory. The operation of three relevant processes will be tested: strategic competition,
organizational imprinting, and violent escalation that appears to feature an interplay of
strategic and non-strategic mechanisms.
Process tracing test: strategic competition
For starters, it is clear that strategic competition was intense in both cases. Factions
competed for resources, recruits, and for a dominant voice in the political direction of the
movement. The intensity of this competition fits with the scholarly consensus that
competition drives rebel infighting, and it also suggests that the strategic element of the
rudimentary path was operative in this pair of cases.
In Sri Lanka, when the JVP re-emerged following the political amnesty of 1977, it
entered a crowded field of Sinhalese leftist radical politics. Campuses, labor unions, and
government positions were already the domain of well-organized and entrenched rivals
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that met the resurgent JVP with hostility and condescension. To survive and grow, the
JVP needed to draw recruits and funds from the same pool of students and Sinhalese
locals that other leftists had already begun organizing.
The Café Wars in Paris, too, was a conflict to capture resources. Fundraising in
Paris was an important element of financing for the Algerian war. Algerians in France
had overall higher earnings than those in Algeria, and access to these sources of support
and finance were important for sustaining operations against the French in Algeria.
Insurgents realized that control of the café-hotels of Paris were “key to the creation of
clandestine networks” that would facilitate the underground logistical efforts of
mobilizing resources and moving them to the battlefield in North Africa. In each case,
then, an organizational interest in survival and growth made capturing resources and
gaining political predominance from rivals a strategic imperative.
Process tracing test: organizational imprinting
Two additional mechanisms distinguish the rudimentary violence path from dominant
explanations of intra-rebel war. Organizational-level change that renders rebel dyads
more vulnerable to initiating and escalating fratricide that, over time, shapes threat
perceptions of erstwhile allies. An assessment of secondary sources suggests that
organizational imprinting likely did occur in both cases. The FLN and JVP, though both
coming from clear pedigrees, were in important respects newly forming organizations
when disorderly violent repression intensified in these cases. Coalescing in this
environment, they incorporated rudimentary routines of violence as a mainstay. Also,
each faced rivals that had similarly absorbed these routines in a similar, if perhaps less
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dramatic, fashion. Accompanying these organizational learning processes, the formation
of a cultural role -- that of the specialist in rudimentary violence -- is evident in both
cases.
The JVP: violence and organizational development
Returning to politics in 1977, the newly resurgent JVP in Sri Lanka was faced with the
blunt reality that without the ability to defend itself, carrying on in politics would be
difficult. Like the PKK during its push into southeast Turkey, JVP members suffered
rough treatment at the hands of government agents and rival organizations. JVP rallies
were dispersed with police baton charges, or attacked by pro-state or rival organizations.
As the JVP soon witnessed, brawls and riots were interwoven with speeches and marches
in the repertoires of the leading political parties. A physical style of politics, similar to
those closely detailed in the main cases of this dissertation, was clearly a major factor
influencing the formative environment of the JVP of the late-1970s.
To survive, the JVP in its early years appears to have gone to considerable lengths
to avoid offending the ruling UNP government, which held the greatest power to repress,
both through disorderly violent repression, and with arrests and legal sanctions. But these
attempts at staying in UNP’s good graces did not shield the party from state-backed
violence. Pro-UNP attackers pelted JVP rallies with stones during the late 1970s and
early 1980s and police violently dispersed JVP canvassers.1384
By the time the JVP entered the presidential race of 1982, its long-time leader,
Rohana Wijeweera, who was on the ticket, seemed eager to show that his party would not
1384 Gunaratna, Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution?: The Inside Story of the JVP (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Institute of Fundamental Studies, 1990), 173-76.
353
capitulate to these forms of violence. As the party issued complaints of violence against
its members, Wijeweera began to declare in public that the party would defend itself.1385
Rohan Gunaratna, who covered the movement during these years, comments that these
experiences furnished the leadership with a belief that “the JVP had to be capable of
fighting” if its was “to survive” in the cauldron of Sri Lankan street politics during the
1980s.1386
By some accounts, the JVP by 1984 had already decided to mount another armed
insurrection, after the UNP declared the JVP was to be banned from legal politics owing
to allegations of its involvement in the anti-Tamil pogroms of July 1983. But until 1987,
the JVP was not conducting a concerted insurrection. Rather, it was developing through
learning and perfecting routines of rudimentary violence, making this style of politics a
mainstay, much as the PKK and PIRA did in their early years as competitive newcomers
to a movement facing disorderly violent repression.
Of course, the JVP was not the only group to face the imperative of adapting to
state repression. Reacting to state violence, some leftist factions went deep underground,
conducting their activities in secrecy to avoid state abuse, and awaiting a chance to
confront the state more directly. Other parties resembled the JVP, becoming more adept
at defending themselves in the violent melees that so often marked public politicking
during those years.1387
By the mid-1980s, the JVP was doing both. On the one hand, the JVP, according
to some accounts, began to establish secret rural guerrilla camps, clandestine preparation
1385 Ibid., 176. 1386 Ibid., 159. 1387 Ibid., 132.
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for an armed insurrection, as it had done in 1971.1388 At the same time, the JVP also
began to make its reputation as a radical party prepared to go further than its competitors
in wielding violence on the street. Beleaguered by government attacks and legal bans,
many of the previously leading opposition labor unions were in crisis by the mid-1980s.
The JVP stepped in to prove it could stand up to these forms of repression.1389 By the
mid-1980s, it was vying for a leading spot in radical student protests, labor actions and
other contentious activities that would often involve state violence.1390 The JVP’s turn to
transgressive politics brought student contingents to the fore as shock troops for use
against pro-UNP attackers.1391
Taking the lead in these confrontations became a means for the JVP to attract
supporters and grow as an organization. The JVP was opportunistic, turning episodes of
spontaneous violence to its political advantage. The group “tended to seize upon certain
spontaneous incidents” of violent unrest, taking credit and attempting to steer the chaos in
their favor.1392 The JVP’s 1987 insurrection, itself, was occasioned by such opportunism:
the JVP climbed atop an outpouring of Sinhalese anger against the Indian peacekeeping
intervention1393 and declared that the time had come to overthrow the UNP, which, the
JVP said, had become a stooge of ‘Indian imperialism.’ All the while, the JVP uprising
1388 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 117-18. 1389 Emmanuel Teitelbaum, "Can a Developing Democracy Benefit from Labour Repression? Evidence from Sri Lanka," The Journal of Development Studies 43, no. 5 (2007): 109. 1390 Gunaratna, Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution?: The Inside Story of the JVP (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Institute of Fundamental Studies, 1990), 151-52. 1391 ibid., 115. 1392 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 134. 1393 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 110; Shelton U Kodikara, "The Continuing Crisis in Sri Lanka: The JVP, the Indian Troops, and Tamil Politics," Asian Survey 29, no. 7 (1989): 716.
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against the state included mass actions, such as marches, boycotts and curfews, to
complement its more direct forms of anti-state violence, such as bombings and
assassinations.1394
The physical demands of politics during these years were reflected in the forms of
individual political participation that manifested during these years. Across the Sinhalese
left, parties began to include members with a reputation for toughness and fighting skill –
individuals whose involvement in the dissident movement was predicated on their role as
specialists in rudimentary violence. For instance the Independent Students Union (ISU),
an organization that would become a deadly rival of the JVP, was led by students with a
reputation for toughness. In fact, the ISU made contacts outside of the university with
individuals that held a reputation for hand-to-hand fighting skills.1395
Yet, the JVP was arguably more imprinted by disorderly violent repression than
any of its rivals. With the exception of a small number of top leaders, the JVP that
emerged after the 1977 amnesty had an entirely new membership. Most of its members
were too young to have participated in the 1971 insurrection. True, as in the past, the JVP
of the mid-1980s attracted those with conventional military skill, such as military
deserters.1396But close observers of the JVP during these years were struck by the
differences between the two cohorts: the cadres of 1971 were subjected to a rigorous
program of indoctrination and only those who had completed the full course of political
education were supposed to be promoted to important military posts. They were chosen
1394 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 113. 1395 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991). 1396 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 109.
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carefully for their discipline and demonstrated political commitment. By contrast, during
the 1980s, JVP membership appears to have grown more diverse and fluid. Instead of
skilled military experts and political commissars, the JVP ranks were filled with street
militants adept at wielding “a motley assortment of arms” that included knives, axes,
swords, homemade bombs, and simple fire-arms.1397
Compared with 1965-1970, when “the JVP movement was infused with the
greatest degree of idealism,”1398 the JVP of the late 1980s was more often noted for its
ferociousness in street fights and campus melees.1399 It seems that political knowledge
and sophisticated military expertise were no longer the only ways to rise in the JVP.
Those who sought to cast themselves as specialists in rudimentary violence could find a
welcoming embrace in the JVP, as well as in other rival leftist militant organizations.
Further indication of this trend is evident in the JVP’s contacts with violent actors
that had little apparent interest in politics. Prominent journalistic accounts assert that
during these years the JVP made contacts with elements of Sri Lanka’s criminal
underground. So urgent was the need for actors that could use violence unflinchingly that
the JVP took these members on board with little concern for their political credentials.1400
1397 Ibid., 116. 1398 Ibid., 94. 1399 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 171. 1400 Ibid., 190; De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 80.
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Militant milieus in Paris
The various forms of disorderly violent repression, from police oppression to protest
violence, were increasing from the late-1940s onwards,1401 just as fissures in the Algerian
independence movement were widening, leading ultimately to the emergence of the FLN.
As the French state became more aggressive in its repression of the independence
movement, the Algerian dissident organizations took measures to adapt and survive. In
July 1945, a protest in the Algerian town of Setif turned into a major spasm of violence
that left hundreds dead.1402 The fallout from the Setif incident gave rise to opposing
views of how the movement should proceed. While some saw it as confirmation of the
futility of armed struggle, others saw as proof that the French could only be moved with
violence.1403 To accommodate those favoring violent struggle, Messali Hadj’s opposition
party at the time1404 established the Organisation Spéciale (OS), a clandestine
organization that was to operate across Algeria and mainland France to prepare the
movement for armed struggle.1405
Although the French security services landed repeated blows on the OS, it
reappeared throughout the Algerian insurgency, and operated in careful secrecy in
France. After the FLN was established in 1954, it carried on the tradition (many of its top
1401 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 96. 1402 Rachid Tlemcani, State and Revolution in Algeria (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1986), 67-68. 1403 Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace (New York, NY: New York Review of Books, 2006), 73-74; Jeffrey W Mott, "The Road to Algiers: The FLN Challenge and the French Response, 1954–1957" (Masters’ Thesis, University of New Brunswick, 2010), 22. 1404 The Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques; MTLD) 1405 Mott, "The Road to Algiers: The FLN Challenge and the French Response, 1954–1957" (Masters’ Thesis, University of New Brunswick, 2010), 25.
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leadership had been members of the OS).1406 In Paris, its members were elite operators
who lived in strict isolation from other Algerians to avoid state detection.
But militant organizations in Paris did not melt entirely into the shadowy world of
clandestine operations. Mobilizing the Algerian immigrant community required
engagement in the North African neighborhoods where these communities were
concentrated. As such, both factions sought to harness the communities in these places.
The café and hostel owners in these neighborhoods became the crucial nodes for
organizing in these locales. The cafés were sites of socializing and political conversation
-- a venue for black market trading, drug dealing, and sex trafficking, in addition to
political debates -- and it fell to the café owners to keep order in their establishments,
using violence if necessary. In neighborhoods where the police were distrusted for their
racism and arbitrary violence, local residents relied upon such informal enforcers. These
local strongmen – in part, by dint of their roles as specialists in rudimentary violence --
became the backbone of MNA and FLN efforts at instituting tax collection, logistics, and
the construction of a parallel justice system in these areas.1407
Becoming more adept at rudimentary violence, the Algerian dissident movement
seems to have grown more resistant to the French security forces that had for so long
spread fear and anger among the residents of Paris’ North African arrondissements. A
1959 French attempt to conduct a detailed census of all Algerians living in France offers
clues as to the extent to which rudimentary militarization was underway. To conduct this
census the government enlisted about eight hundred members of various militia-style 1406 Benjamin Stora, Algeria, 1830-2000: A Short History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 36-37; Janet Dorsch Zagoria, "The Rise and Fall of the Movement of Messali Hadj in Algeria, 1924-1954" (Columbia University, 1974), 321. 1407 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 231; MacMaster, "The Algerian Café-Hotel: Hub of the Nationalist Underground, Paris 1926–1962," French Politics, Culture & Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 65.
359
organizations, including the Service d’Action Civique (SAC), a pro-state paramilitary
“notorious for its tough street fighters and body guards.”1408 Completing the census, it
seems, would require more than polite knocks on the doors of Algerian residents. The
census was abandoned in 1960, perhaps in part as a result of FLN intimidation of census
workers.1409
Additionally, both factions brought into their ranks contingents of “young,
physically tough men” to steward marches and rallies.1410 Similar to Belfast and Ankara,
young, physically strong militants were needed to stiffen the backs of ordinary marchers
as they braced for the likely response of French riot police to their attempt at taking to the
streets.
Process tracing test: fratricidal escalation and the interplay of strategic and non-strategic mechanisms The RVP model describes intra-rebel war as culminating from a process of fratricidal
escalation that is driven by a combination of strategic and non-strategic mechanisms.
Militant organizations of all varieties will occasionally see a strategic payoff in limited
applications of violence against rivals, but organizations adept at routines of rudimentary
violence will be especially prone to experiment with fratricide. Additionally, such
organizations are more prone to commit acts of non-strategic violence against in-
movement rivals. A dyad in which both organizations evince these features is at risk of
violent spirals. Unless arrested early, spirals create ever-worsening threat perceptions of
1408 "Identifying ‘Terrorists’ in Paris: A Political Experiment with Ibm Machines During the Algerian War," French Politics, Culture & Society 28, no. 3 (2010): 32. 1409 Ibid. 1410 Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 45.
360
in-movement rivals, encouraging sides to become more risk-acceptant in their attacks on
each other.
The cursory nature of this shadow case comparison does not permit an in-depth
assessment of these mechanisms. Yet, there are indications that these mechanisms are
useful for explaining the scale and nature of intra-rebel war in both cases. Fratricidal
violence began, in both cases, as desultory exchanges of low-level, usually unarmed
violence. Over time, the violence began to take on more organized and deadly forms. At
first killing only small numbers, the incident count and death toll mounted over several
years. At their peak, these conflicts became very deadly, and they dragged on until either
one side was destroyed (as occurred with the JVP) or the broader political conflict came
to a negotiated conclusion (as occurred with the FLN-MNA).
The road to war in Paris
The Algerian dissident movement was by the mid-1950s developing the ability to
perform sophisticated and coordinated violent operations, both in Algeria and mainland
France. With these abilities, the opening salvoes of the MNA-FLN war could have
manifested with a coordinated string of assassinations, or a devastating onslaught of
bombings against rival party buildings. But instead, the two sides clashed initially in
scuffles that caused limited damage to adversaries. The initial fighting between the two
sides occurred as mostly unarmed brawls between the two sides amid the fissuring of
Messali Hadj’s MTLD into various factions, including the MNA, under Hadj, and the
FLN, under the leadership of less prominent cadres, many of whom had previously
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served in the OS.1411Throughout 1955, heated debates in the Algerian cafés of Paris were
prone to physical altercation,1412as exemplified in an episode in which an Algerian café
owner was punched in the face after he apparently “made fun” of one of the factions.1413
Over several months, the infighting violence grew more organized as the MNA
used intimidation squads to punish and deter locals from joining the FLN.1414 MNA
militants, for instance, grew more aggressive in their enforcement of an alcohol ban, a
measure that allowed them to use violent enforcement measures against cafés that had
aligned with the FLN.1415 Almost certainly, a portion of these early brawls were
spontaneous. Still, many of these limited applications of violence sent a costly signal that
the MNA was powerful enough to punish defectors to the FLN.
What the MNA apparently did not anticipate, however, was how fiercely the FLN
was prepared to hit back. Instead of folding under MNA pressure, or making a call for
unity and renouncing intra-Algerian fratricide, the FLN showed itself more than ready for
a fight.1416 It, too, used violence to coerce Algerians in Paris to support the FLN over the
MNA.1417FLN attackers began to rake MNA cafés with machinegun fire and toss
1411 Horne, A Savage War of Peace (New York, NY: New York Review of Books, 2006), 84. 1412 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 229. 1413 Howard, "Three Cats and a Watermelon: Summer 1955 and the Arrival of the Algerian War in Paris," French History 27, no. 3 (2013): 411. 1414 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 230. 1415MacMaster, "The Algerian Café-Hotel: Hub of the Nationalist Underground, Paris 1926–1962," French Politics, Culture & Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 67. 1416 Peter Krause concludes that “[…] by late 1955 the mood in the FLN had shifted to supporting direct strikes against its Algerian rivals”(113). Krause, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017). 1417 Howard, "Three Cats and a Watermelon: Summer 1955 and the Arrival of the Algerian War in Paris," French History 27, no. 3 (2013): 400.
362
grenades through the windows.1418 As the RVP model expects, since both factions were
shaped by disorderly violent repression, neither was in a position to maintain a firm
policy of non-retaliation when rivals attacked.
In the early months of summer in 1956, Messali Hadj reportedly ordered his
militants to begin to “take down” rival FLN operators in France. MNA hit teams began to
shoot down FLN members by the dozens, bursting into FLN cafés with guns blazing.1419
The FLN responded in kind,1420and the death toll began to mount, with 4 killed and 86
injured in France in July, and another 20 killed and several hundred injured over the
following two months.1421 By this time, both sides had set up “death squads” 1422
reassigning members of their clandestine OS units into the new fight. At the same time, a
considerable portion of the daily fighting was led by the café owners who had long held a
reputation as the neighborhood’s brokers in violence. Indeed, these violent specialists
“constituted the core of the defensive and offensive actions” of the FLN against the
MNA.1423
It was not until 19571424 that the FLN made a concerted decision to use violence
1418 Fytton, "War in the 18th Arrondissement," London Magazine, December 1961. 1419 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 147. 1420 MacMaster, "The Algerian Café-Hotel: Hub of the Nationalist Underground, Paris 1926–1962," French Politics, Culture & Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 67. 1421 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 234. 1422 Prakash, "Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975)" (Doctoral Dissertation, Columbia University, 2010), 143. 1423 MacMaster, "The Algerian Café-Hotel: Hub of the Nationalist Underground, Paris 1926–1962," French Politics, Culture & Society 34, no. 2 (2016): 66. 1424 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 232.
363
to physically decimate the rival MNA.1425 By the summer, the tide had turned clearly
against the MNA1426, which was suffering from arrests of its leadership and from political
isolation as smaller Algerian parties gathered under the FLN tent.1427 With the MNA
disintegrating, Messali Hadj called for an end to the infighting in September of 1957,1428
but it was too late, as the FLN continued the offensive. In 1957, more than 800 had died
in France as a result of FLN-MNA infighting, 114 of them in August alone.1429Fighting
continued, eventually claiming an estimated 4,000 lives,1430 flaring on and off even after
Algeria gained independence.
From brawls to bombs in Sri Lanka
Like in Paris, the JVP’s first violent encounters with rivals in the Sinhalese left were low
intensity clashes, mostly without resort to firearms. As the JVP sought to reestablish itself
as a force in radical university politics, it found itself having to contend with the
Independent Students Union (ISU), a Marxist student organization that sought to compete
with the JVP for a reputation for toughness in the violent atmosphere of radical politics
that prevailed in Sri Lanka during the Jayawardene years.
1425 MacMaster, Inside the FLN: The Paris Massacre and the French Intelligence Service (Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, 2013), 44. 1426 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 235. 1427 French authorities estimated in January 1958 that 1,700 MNA supporters and 40,000 FLN supporters remained active in Paris and its environs. See Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, and Lawrence J Butler, Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe's Imperial States (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015). 1428 Aissaoui, "Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA) and the Front De Libération Nationale (FLN) in France During the Algerian War (1954–1962)," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): 235. 1429 Ibid. 1430 Evans, Algeria: France's Undeclared War (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 190.
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As the resurgent JVP soon discovered, without “a strong will, and stronger limbs,
one would not get very far in campus politics.”1431 Reflecting the countrywide wave of
political violence, the universities, too, had become arenas where “a certain amount of
thuggery was necessary” 1432 just to hold one’s own in student organizing. In an early
encounter in 1980, as both the JVP as ISU vied for influence at the University of
Colombo, the JVP was accused of attacking an ISU cadre and severely beating him. The
ISU responded by sending its militants to deal punishment beatings to JVP members, in
what C.A. Chandraprema cites as the worst clash yet between the two sides.1433
Throughout 1980, the ISU appeared to be getting the better of the JVP, winning the
student council elections amid the skirmishing.1434 Both the stakes of these rivalries and
the style of physical competition employed display clear similarities with the campus
violence that spread across Turkey during the late-1970s.
This sort of violence remained characteristic of campus competition going
forward. In one such example, in 1986, the JVP-backed student organization on Colombo
campus gathered in the gymnasium and announced that it was instituting a protest
demonstration. The gymnasium was, at that time, the turf of the ISU, and thus, the move
was seen as “deliberate provocation” for which the ISU leader demanded an immediate
explanation. But rather than heed ISU remonstrations, the JVP supporters launched into a
noisy rally on the premises, only to have the rival ISU regroup against them and begin to
chant so loudly that the JVP slogans were drowned out. Soon the two sides were once
1431 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 148. 1432 Ibid. 1433 Ibid. 1434 Ibid.
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again brawling, and the JVP was forced to retreat from ISU turf. Later that night, an ISU
leader was suddenly attacked and beaten by a group of suspected JVP supporters.1435
As the JVP became increasingly involved in the violence of labor organizing and
election contests outside of the campus, it accelerated these same forms of violence
against leftist student rivals. In December 1986, this infighting in the Sinhalese left took a
deadly turn when the JVP allegedly assassinated the ISU’s leader, Daya
Pathirana.1436Months later, the JVP openly shifted its objective to violent insurrection,
claiming that an uprising was a necessary reaction to the government’s acquiescence to
the arrival of Indian forces tasked with preventing further Sinhalese-Tamil violence.
Henceforth, the JVP’s war grew against both its enemies across the left – in the
student and labor unions and in rival political parties – as well as against its declared
enemies in the state.1437 Between late 1987 and 1990, JVP fighting with rivals in the left
escalated from low level brawling to intense and deadly fighting, in which perhaps
thousands died.1438 And the fighting was far from one-sided: the JVP’s enemies,
including its rivals in the Sinhalese left, struck back against the JVP, with assistance from
the Sinhalese state, according to some accounts.1439 The result engulfed Sri Lanka in
violence, and the JVP, pressed upon from all sides, was crushed.
1435 Ibid. 1436 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 112. 1437 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 200. 1438 Ibid., 156; De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 85. 1439 "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 117-18.
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The JVP of 1965-1971: rebellion without fratricide
The JVP also provides a useful comparative case of insurrection in an environment
lacking disorderly violent repression. The JVP insurrection of 1971 was similar to the
1987 insurrection in multiple respects. Rohana Wijeweera was in charge of the JVP
during both insurrections, although during both periods he was frequently in hiding or
government custody. The UNP was in power for most of duration of both periods of
JVP activity, with UNP governments serving in (1965-1970) and (1977-1994). Also, both
insurrections relied upon the Sinhalese youth as their backbone of support. While JVP
ideology changed over the years, on the whole, it remained similar in its commitment to
Marxist and anti-systemic themes.
The JVP uprising of 1971, however, did not begin with attacks on rival leftist
factions, although such targets were plentiful, as was the JVP’s enmity towards its leftist
rivals. The Marxist left in Sri Lanka throughout its history has been deeply fractured, and
other factions in the movement distained the JVP as upstarts lacking sophistication.1440
For his part, Wijeweera’s public diatribes against these rivals laid bare his hostility.
According to one account, Wijeweera may have even envisioned systematically
executing the leaders of these rival organizations upon taking power. During the planning
for the 1971 insurrection, he reportedly drafted a list of political enemies slated for
execution upon JVP victory, a list that included the names of certain rivals in the left.1441
1440 AC Alles, The JVP, 1969-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lakehouse Publishers, 1990), 20. 1441 Chandraprema, Sri Lanka: The Years of Terror. The JVP Insurrection 1987-1989 (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Lake House Bookshop, 1991), 37.
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Within the JVP, too, there were also competing splinters, each vying for control
over resources and strategy. 1442 Reportedly, Wijeweera was told that a rival commander,
G.I.D. Dharmasekera, was planning to kill him. 1443 In short, the strategic rivalries and
inter-personal hostilities often invoked to explain intra-rebel war were present in 1971.
Nonetheless, the JVP did not act on these motivations during its first attempt at armed
insurrection. Rather, internal competition within the JVP movement seems to have
manifested in other behaviors -- poisonous gossip and violent outbidding, which appears
to have played a role in the timing of the uprising.1444
Relevant for the RVP model, the repressive environment in which this uprising
occurred differed substantially from that of the positive cases examined in the rest of the
dissertation. The years 1965-1971 (the years during which the JVP emerged and
organized its first rebellion) marked a low ebb in disorderly violent repression. Although
the SLFP government that governed Sri Lanka between 1956-1965 had presided over an
unpredicted rise in urban political violence and instability in Sri Lanka, the UNP
government that came to power in 1965 achieved a temporary reversal of this trend. The
UNP government under Dudley Senanayake quickly established a reputation both for a
willingness to decisively repress unwanted forms of dissent, but also, to strategically
accommodate demands of various dissident factions. Unruly labor protests and riots took
1442 Ibid., 34; De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 105-06. 1443 Gunaratna, Sri Lanka, a Lost Revolution?: The Inside Story of the JVP (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Institute of Fundamental Studies, 1990), 8. 1444 Ibid., 10,89-92.
368
a dip almost immediately.1445 In other words, the antecedent condition for the
rudimentary violence path was largely absent prior to the first JVP rebellion.
The JVP’s strategy and membership qualities seem to reflect this environment.
Unlike the JVP of 1977-1990, which coalesced in the rough and tumble street violence of
the period, the JVP’s first rebellion grew in isolated jungle hideouts and villages, away
from the cities.1446 This cohort of JVP conspirators saw the power of Sri Lankan state and
the terrain of the small island as rendering traditional guerrilla war impractical. Instead,
they aimed to win with the element of surprise.1447 As such, their strategy was premised
on total secrecy and an avoidance of violence until the time was ripe. Its organizational
dispensation reflected these conditions. In terms of its membership, strategy, and
repertoire, it was a different organization from the JVP of 1987. While it shared the same
top leadership and a broadly similar guiding ideology,1448 unlike the JVP of 1987, the
JVP’s first iteration was an organization that place a premium on political knowledge and
commitment in its recruitment and promotion,1449 and its violent repertoire was learned
through clandestine preparation for coordinated assault on state installations, not during
spontaneous street violence.
Obviously, this single negative case does not provide strong comparative support
of the general explanatory power of the rudimentary violence path. However, it is
1445 Richardson, Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict, Terrorism, and Development from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars (Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005), 217,20,43. 1446 Moore, "Thoroughly Modern Revolutionaries: The JVP in Sri Lanka," Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 3 (1993): 600. 1447 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 98-99. 1448 Mark D Hamilton, "The Young and the Restless: Dynamics of Violent Youth Mobilization in Sri Lanka and Nicaragua, 1960–2010" (Doctoral Dissertation, American University, 2012), 126; Kodikara, "The Continuing Crisis in Sri Lanka: The JVP, the Indian Troops, and Tamil Politics," Asian Survey 29, no. 7 (1989): 717; Bruce Matthews, "Sinhala Cultural and Buddhist Patriotic Organizations in Contemporary Sri Lanka," Pacific Affairs (1988): 627. 1449 De Silva, "Anti-State Militant Mobilization, Sri Lanka, 1965-1991" (Doctoral Dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998), 73.
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plausible to contend in this case that the absence of disorderly violent repression
foreclosed the mechanisms of the RVP, and that this absence helps to explain the lack of
intra-rebel war in this case, which otherwise shared many contextual similarities with the
JVP insurgency of 1987. In this way, the cross-temporal comparison provided by the JVP
complements the cross-sectional comparisons of Kurdish factional dyads in Turkey
during the 1970s, where dyads with imprintings that were not high-medium or high-high
avoided intra-rebel war.
6.2.5. Conclusion
The shadow cases explored above suggest that the RVP model may help to shed light on
puzzling cases of intra-rebel war in strong states beyond the main case pair of this
dissertation. It is worth reiterating however that these tests do not establish that this
model is the only, or even a major pathway to intra-rebel war in strong states.
Conceptualized as a funnel of causality, a series of structural developments,
relational processes and contingent events are required for the RVP model to advance to
its conclusion. Thus, it is natural to expect that many cases that initially resemble Paris,
Colombo, Diyarbakır or Belfast will never see an intra-rebel war. In the next chapter, I
will discuss this more thoroughly, and other qualifications of the RVP model, while also
highlighting its strengths against alternatives for explaining the cases examined in this
dissertation. The next chapter will then conclude the dissertation with a discussion of its
broader contributions to scholarship and policy.
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CHAPTER 7
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
7.1. Evaluating the argument 7.1.1. Summary of findings Inspired by Realist scholarship in the field of International Relations, recent theories of
rebel infighting have helped to elucidate the strategic logic of rebel fratricide. These
theories identify the conditions under which self-interested rebel organizations may judge
it beneficial to use violence against fellow rebel organizations.1450 Yet, there remains a
subset of cases that are not easily understood within this rubric. Namely, rebels that battle
one another for extended periods in zones of state strength defy plausible ex ante strategic
rationales. In this dissertation, I have explored commonalities across two dramatic
instances of this phenomenon: intra-rebel war in the Republican Movement in Northern
Ireland and the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey (as well as less in-depth examinations of
two shadow cases: the Algerian independence movement in Paris and Sinhalese Marxists
in Sri Lanka). That these otherwise very different cases of intra-rebel war waged within a
strong state nonetheless display a set of similar processes, I argue, holds important
theory-building implications.
Noteworthy case parallels begin at the level of state-dissident interactions:
dissident movements, in both cases, were exposed to a similar form of repression, which I
term disorderly violent repression. This violence, carried out by state security forces as
well as non-state actors aligned with local authorities, was pervasive and indiscriminate.
Yet, it was also ad hoc in its application, and therefore limited in its systematic lethality. 1450 For a review, see section 1.7.1.
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This style of violence, thus, stimulated emotional and practical demands within
threatened communities for actors capable of contending with this dangerous, though
manageable, threat. These pressures encouraged rebels to improvise violent responses to
disorderly violent repression, instigating practical learning that shaped the cultural field,
as well as the tactical and strategic menus of rebel organizations. In this way, disorderly
violent repression, over time, transformed both the rebellion in Northern Ireland the
Kurdish movement in Turkey in a broadly similar fashion.
Notably, organizations within these rebellions were not influenced uniformly by
these environmental changes. Older, more highly institutionalized organizations were
able to install these new violent techniques into their tactical repertoires without
compromising their basic strategic visions and organizational identities. By contrast,
learning these styles of violence fundamentally shaped organizations that were either
crisis-stricken, or newly forming.
These changes bore important downstream implications. If both sides in a rebel
rivalry evinced significant imprints from disorderly violent repression, a distinct set of
strategic and organizational pressures made it difficult to avoid initiating and escalating
fratricide. Strategically, these rebel organizations were more inclined to rely on violent
routines as a tool for coercing rivals and signaling strength. And when attacked, they
faced stronger incentives to strike back, as their local reputation depended on publicly
visible metrics of violent proficiency.
Yet, I propose that had these strategic liabilities been the only issue, rebel leaders
would still have been well positioned to keep this infighting to a minimum: though
violence would have become a language of strategic signaling, the hazards of fratricide
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mandated its judicious application, implying a mutual interest in a low violence
equilibrium.
Upholding this balance became difficult, however, because each side was also
prone to ‘non-strategic’ acts of violence. The routines of rudimentary violence that rebel
organizations learned for use against the state and out-group enemies were not just re-
purposable for strategic attacks on rivals: more dangerously, they could be executed
quickly without traversing the ordinary channels of deliberation and planning required for
considered, rational decision making. This is because routines of rudimentary violence
are, of necessity, designed for speed and simple implementation, and they are conducted
in areas saturated with locals and rival organizations. Thus, when rivalries turned bloody,
targets were easy to find, and rebels had tools readily available for striking these targets
quickly, without needing much planning and coordination.
By closely detailing the progression of violence in both cases, I find evidence that
cycles of fratricide were severe, at least partly because strategic and non-strategic acts of
violence strung successively together. Sometimes strategic attacks beckoned
strategically-considered retaliation. Likewise, non-strategic execution of violence could
activate a rival’s non-strategic defensive routines. But strategic violence could also to call
forth non-strategic reactions, just as non-strategic assaults could motivate strategic
reprisals. All of this made lengthening spirals of bloodshed even more more difficult to
halt.
Interestingly, in both cases, rebel leaders remained cognizant of the hazards of
allowing these bouts of fratricide to go on unchecked. And yet, leaders were unable to
undo the basic causes of this violence, since these causes inhered in the strategic and
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organizational workings of the organizations that made up these dyads. Worse, as violent
eruptions accumulated, rebel leaders and rank-and-file, alike, seem to have grown more
hostile toward their rivals. Recurrent violence shaped collective images of the other. If
early on the prevalent framings of rivals painted them as errant allies, misguided but not
necessary hostile, over time, darker images gained traction. Rival rebel organizations,
eventually, were cast as enemies, hardly different from the state and out-groups. As a
result, justifying ever risker fratricidal acts became easier, while hawkish voices within
each organization – whether acting out of political conviction or simply eager to settle
personal scores under the cover of a ‘political’ war – saw their space for maneuver
greatly expanded.
Both in Northern Ireland and Turkey, rebels voiced their abhorrence at the
fratricidal bloodletting.1451 Indeed, rebels themselves have groped for answers concerning
how such a disaster could have befallen them. Some have chalked it up to the
bloodthirsty aggression of the opposing rebel side or to agent provocateurs working for
the enemy state.1452 My argument sounds a cautionary note toward any such highly
voluntaristic, agent-centric narrative. Whatever the misdeeds of rebel leaders or the
meddlings of state agents, they were working within conditions that were not of their own
making and which they had limited power to shape. Underlining this contention, my
approach attends to how emergent processes set in motion during violent insurgency
determined the matrix of opportunities and threats confronting actors and generated the
organizational and collective identities that ordered their perceptions and motivations.
1451 See Section 1.5. 1452 See the following sections: 4.2.2., 4.2.4, 5.2.2.,5.3.2.2.
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In fashioning an explanation of strong state intra-rebel war from this ‘most
different’ comparison of Northern Ireland and Turkey, I have attempted to strike a
balance between seeking comparative insight and attending to the specific details of each
case. This approach has been fruitful for orienting the investigation towards hypotheses
that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. However, interpreting the findings of this
dissertation is also less straightforward. This is because unlike purely deductive
arguments or theories built from examining patterns across large numbers of cases, it is
not obvious to what extent, if any, this dissertation’s comparative insights are suitable for
travel to other cases. At the outset of Chapter 6, I provide my thoughts on this issue and
offer a full statement of the Rudimentary Violence Path (RVP), phrased for applicability
to other cases.
In this theoretical statement, rather than propose a constant conjunction of the
antecedent condition (disorderly violent repression) and the outcome (intra-rebel war), I
argue for a more nuanced approach to applying the RVP. I then offer an initial probe of
this explanation’s usefulness in other cases, looking at fighting within the Algerian
Independence Movement in Paris and war within the Sinhalese left in Sri Lanka. In these
probes, I call attention to important causal mechanisms that seem to have operated in the
manner expected by the RVP.
All told, this dissertation has been an attempt to shed light on important general
processes that were at work in the intra-rebel wars both Northern Ireland and Turkey.
More tentatively, it has offered proposals concerning how this pathway might also appear
in past and future intra-rebel wars in strong states. Therefore, while the RVP is not a
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‘general theory’ of intra-rebel war in strong states, I believe it might serve as a building
block in a typological theory that maps various causal categories of intra-rebel war.
7.1.2. Alternative arguments
If nothing else, the RVP model advances understanding of the two main cases of this
dissertation, as well as to a lesser extent, the shadow cases investigated in Chapter 6.
Returning to the major alternative arguments, initially discussed in Chapter 1, brings the
value-added of the RVP into starker relief.
Strategy
To be certain, competition for resources and recruits figured centrally in the rivalries
between warring rebels in every case examined in this dissertation.1453 The prospect of
coercing and/or deterring rivals, weakening their ability to pose a threat in the future, or
signaling strength to outside audiences provided important incentives for violence.1454
But placing the emphasis squarely on strategic competition leaves unanswered the
crucial theoretical question of “why some groups and movements engage in one type of
competitive behavior [e.g. fratricide] more than another [e.g. non-violent competition, or
violence against out-group enemies].”1455 Particularly in strong states, the option of non-
fratricidal competition remains viable: activists can steer their strategic competition onto
the pages of their journals, toward mass non-violent organizing, or even toward
1453 See Chapter 1 for a review of strategic theories 1454 Cunningham 2014 discusses these strategic incentives. See, Cunningham, Kathleen Gallagher. Inside the Politics of Self-determination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014, Chapter 6. 1455The brackets are mine. See: Krause, Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2017), 192.
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outbidding in their attacks on the state, instead of directly killing one another. Small
flashes of violence might serve strategic ends, but as these cases demonstrate, the
strategic efficacy of violence quickly dissipates when fighting escalates. Unlike an
exclusively strategic model, the RVP model shows how the organizational level-of-
analysis helps to explain this variation.
Ideology
The cases under investigation provide limited support to the view that ideological
proximity and favorable views on violence combined to raise the odds of intra-rebel
war.1456 Appealing to the same communities of support (and while not admitting it,
offering few genuinely novel ideological innovations) the PKK constantly feared that its
rivals would draw away the constituency it sought to cultivate. What is more, the PKK’s
early ideology has some affinity with the ideal type that Mohammed M. Hafez credits
with encouraging fratricide.1457
But if ideological proxidistance is primarily responsible for violence, why did the
PKK not go to war with all of its proxidistant rivals? The PKK attacked low imprint
rivals, but these attacks did not escalate into full-blooded wars. The RVP, by delineating
the escalatory processes of intra-rebel war, is able to show why this was the case.1458 A
1456 See Chapter 1 for a review of the ideological proxidistance argument 1457 Hafez, Mohammed M. "Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars." Terrorism and Political Violence (2017): 1-26.
1458 True, the PKK used some violence against virtually every organization that posed an ideological threat, but the amount of bloodshed it inflicted varies drastically across rivals: against the low-imprint TKSP and Rızgari, the PKK used violence only sparingly; meanwhile, the PKK frequently skirmished with the medium-imprint DDKD/KİP, but avoided all-out war; in contrast, PKK attacks were relentless against Tekoşin and Sterka Sor (whose imprints are difficult to determine); and of course, the war with the TKDP/KUK (medium imprint) far exceeded all of its other intra-movement conflicts in terms of violent intensity.
The RVP model is important for understanding this variation in violence. The PKK’s rivals that were not imprinted by disorderly violent repression (most obviously, the TKSP and Rızgari) were better able to restrain themselves from carrying out reprisals and accidental escalations, precluding the violent spirals that drove war elsewhere. That the PKK did not carry out one-sided campaigns of sustained, high-scale violence against these ideologically dangerous foes lends credence to a central assertion of the
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similar dynamic may explain relations between Republican organizations and their rivals
in the Nationalist camp in Northern Ireland.
Additionally, the ideological proxidistance view fails to explain the cross-
temporal variation of the JVP case. The ideology of the JVP remained broadly constant
between its first uprising, in 1971, and its second, in 1987. And yet, it was only in the
latter case that the JVP found itself deeply embroiled in wars with its rivals. The RVP
model, put to work above, is able to uncover the causes of this variation.
Collective pathology
The collective pathology explanation is clearly inapplicable for these cases.1459 Quite
different from the expectations of this perspective, militant organizations did not become
isolated from urban populations as a result of violence, precipitating a concomitant loss
of the ability to reason strategically. On the contrary, disorderly violent repression
brought these militant organizations closer to their local communities, as cadres and
militants became specialists in rudimentary violence, winning cachet for themselves and
RVP model: that state strength encourages organizations to use violence carefully, only for limited strategic purposes, and thus, that full-fledged intra-rebel wars are not the product of a farsighted strategic design, but rather of an escalatory process.
By the same token, Republican organizations refrained from launching full-scale onslaughts against non-violent dissident parties, such as the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), whose support base overlapped with that of the Republican movement. At most, SDLP members charged Republicans with intimidation and occasional violent attacks. Yet, as a non-violent political party, the SDLP did not face the same strategic and cultural incentives to respond to these actions with violence of their own (though some of its members were prepared for self-defense). In parallel to the PKK’s relations with the low imprint TKSP and Rızgari, the basic conditions for escalation were absent in these cases, keeping violence to a low intensity equilibrium. For information on Republican relations with Nationalist parties, see: Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press 1993), 388; Bew and Gillespie, Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (Dublin, Ireland: Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 1999), 296; Devlin, Straight Left: An Autobiography (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1993), 151.; Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 358; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 134.;, see, Republican News, 25 August 1973; , Republican News, 19 May 1973. 1459 See Chapter 1 for a review of the collective pathology argument.
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renown for their organization through involving themselves deeply in local life.1460 That
rebels turned to fratricide because they had lost touch with the sentiments of their wider
community, thus, is highly implausible in the cases examined here.
Organizational failure
In its broad strokes, the RVP model shares certain commonalities with the organizational
failure explanation of intra-rebel war.1461 That organizational behaviors sometimes
contravene the wishes of their leaders – violating the expectations of strategic models – is
an important proposition of the RVP model.
Yet, insofar as major theoretical approaches in this tradition tend to draw their
insights from a combination of the greed school of rebellion and the principal-agent
framework,1462 they misdiagnose the organizational pathologies at work in these cases.
Clashes outside the chain-of-command were generally not the work of militants eager for
the spoils of war or enticed by the opportunity to indulge in sadistic violence (though this
may have been the case at times). Instead, participation in the insurgency conferred
militants with social identities and collective skills that disposed them to using violence
as a means of self-assertion within the movement. Put differently, the practices that
encouraged fratricide were social performances, not asocial deviance.
Furthermore, the organizational pathology at work in these cases did not always
involve agents defying the instructions of principals. In some instances, the proper chain-1460 For examples, see Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London, UK: Corgi Books, 1987), 277-78; Coogan, The IRA (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 378; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (London, UK: Penguin UK, 2009), 325. 1461 See Chapter 1 for a review of the organizational failure argument. 1462 Exemplars of this approach include Johnston, "The Geography of Insurgent Organization and Its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone," Security Studies 17, no. 1 (2008); Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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of-command sanctioned escalatory attacks, but these decisions were made under
conditions that were not conductive to reasoned decision-making because both sides were
relying on routines of rudimentary violence.
Private violence
Lastly, a perspective that was not addressed in Chapter 1 is worth touching upon briefly.
Kalyvas (2006) argues that some of the violence during civil wars arises from private,
non-political motivations.1463 A full understanding of violence in war, thus, requires
mapping the micro-conflicts in the locales of the conflict. More grounded empirical
research into these cases would undoubtedly deliver strong confirmation of this claim.
Very quickly, the violent competition between PKK and TKDP/KUK became embroiled
with local tribal and familial conflicts in rural Turkey. In the intra-rebel war in Belfast,
too, it is very likely that some of the victims were chosen by local militants for personal
reasons that only in-depth ethnographic, journalistic or police investigation can reveal.
Detailing these patterns, however, is not sufficient for explaining the causes of
intra-rebel war. That is because it was only once intra-rebel war was underway that new
opportunities arose for those wishing to settle private scores (in line with Kalyvas’
distinction between theories of violence during war and theories that explain the causes
of war).1464
As such, the RVP model explains the causes of intra-rebel war, while greater
attention to private motives would help to better elucidate the dynamics of violence
within this intra-rebel war. Understanding these dynamics is certainly a worthy endeavor. 1463 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York, NY: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2006). 1464 Ibid, Chapter 1.
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Closer attention to private violence could prove useful for understanding the geographic
spread of violence, its micro-patterning, and why war termination was more difficult in
some locales than others. Yet, the analytically prior task of explaining war onset is best
achieved with the RVP model.
7.2. Discussing implications
7.2.1. Contributions to scholarship on insurgency
Besides offering a sound explanation of the cases under investigation, the research
conducted in this dissertation also offers various broader contributions to scholarship.
Since the aim of this dissertation has been to explain concrete outcomes, I have
drawn on a wide range of theoretical tools, culled from across several disciplines.1465
Some of these materials are familiar to scholars of political violence. I used a rationalist
perspective to clarify what an explanation of intra-rebel war must explain; I employed a
structural perspective to identify macro-level shifts in political opportunities that, in both
cases, set in motion state-dissident conflicts that led to disorderly violent repression; and I
favored a relational lens in my analysis of how these interactions constructed and
positioned the rebel actors involved in conflict.
Going further afield, I also looked to ideas that are less prevalent in current
scholarship on political violence. Three strands of theory, in particular, were pivotal in
the explanation developed in this dissertation. Because I believe they may prove useful to
1465 Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms: Analytical Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
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other research questions in political violence, I will briefly return to each of them: (1)
organizational imprinting; (2) role theory, and (3) organizational routines.
Organizational imprinting: its wider applications
Of late, interest in how the ‘past matters’ for understanding the behavior of insurgent
organizations has grown. Research in this agenda has, for example, explored the
influence of prior social structure,1466 local institutions,1467 the pace of territorial
conquest,1468 and resource endowments1469for understanding rebel performance and
related conflict outcomes. Theories of organizational imprinting offer a promising
addition to the inventory of models that shed light on the temporal dimension of
organizing rebellion.
Just one example of an area where theories of imprinting might travel fruitfully is
the study of post-insurgency transition. Consider for example the case of South Africa:
imprinted through its decades of battling the apartheid state, the Congress of South
African Trade Unions (COSATU) mastered the tools of labor agitation.1470After victory,
this imprint persisted, with COSATU continuing to lean heavily on this repertoire of
mass action. But now, instead of facing a repressive government foe, COSATU’s task
was to influence a friendly government on the detailed matters of policymaking. A
1466 Staniland, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). 1467 Ana Arjona, Rebelocracy (Cambridge University Press, 2016). 1468 Johnston, "The Geography of Insurgent Organization and Its Consequences for Civil Wars: Evidence from Liberia and Sierra Leone," Security Studies 17, no. 1 (2008). 1469 Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 1470 As Wood (2000) notes, this set of tools was optimized for use in the environment of apartheid oppression. While the apartheid state was militarily formidable, its economy was dependent on labor participation. Thus, the state could not suppress mass labor actions as severely as it could other forms of dissent. See: Elisabeth Jean Wood, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
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mismatch between old tactics and a new strategic environment helped to sour COSATU’s
relations with the post-apartheid government.1471 Beyond this case, there are many
instances across the world of insurgent organizations working to adapt to post-conflict
realities. Imprinting theory seems a promising lens for making more systematic assertions
concerning these challenges.
To be certain, the application of organizational imprinting theory used in this
dissertation is highly schematic. Making the imprinting framework work elsewhere will
require greater care – including attention to which precise elements of an environment act
on organizations, better specification of when and to what degree organizations become
vulnerable to imprints, and how imprints layer and interact over the lifespan of an
organization. Thankfully, organizational sociologists have developed a sizable literature
that addresses these questions and more.1472
The social theory of roles: rebel culture and politics
Scholars of terrorism and insurgency have found considerable merit in the study of the
small group dynamics of insurgent groups.1473 Moving this agenda forward, scholars have
explored the social theory of roles as a means of elucidating the workings of groups
1471 See Brian K Grodsky, Social Movements and the New State: The Fate of Pro-Democracy Organizations When Democracy Is Won (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). 1472 Christopher Marquis and András Tilcsik, "Imprinting: Toward a Multilevel Theory," Academy of Management Annals 7, no. 1 (2013); Johnson, "What Is Organizational Imprinting? Cultural Entrepreneurship in the Founding of the Paris Opera," American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 1 (2007); Simsek, Fox, and Heavey, "“What’s Past Is Prologue” a Framework, Review, and Future Directions for Organizational Research on Imprinting," Journal of Management 41, no. 1 (2015). 1473 For an application, see: Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). For a review, see: Justin Reedy, John Gastil, and Michael Gabbay, "Terrorism and Small Groups: An Analytical Framework for Group Disruption," Small Group Research 44, no. 6 (2013).
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involved in the production of violence.1474 That roles are a relational category – not an
attribute inhering in individuals – is a central tenet of this approach, one that sets it apart
from prevalent ontologies in the study of insurgent organizations.
My attempt to apply this conceptualization acknowledges the three-fold operation
of social roles. First, roles serve a functional purpose. They enable orderly interaction to
achieve common purposes. Second, roles serve as a socializing device. They emerge
through interaction, but as they congeal they present individuals with a template that
stipulates criteria for acceptance and advancement in a group. And yet, roles never fully
congeal: they remain open to contestation and re-interpretation. And so, third, roles are a
medium for competition and contestation within small groups, as individuals vie to
outshine others in a valued role, or else, to revise, combine, alter, denigrate, or elevate a
role (see Chapter 3, section 3.3.1.).
The construction and performance of roles, thus, is a social process wherein
making sense and seeking advantage are intertwined and collective activities. Group
members use their social skill to work within and shape their immediate social field.
Often, combinations of individuals playing different roles will join together to leverage
role complementarities. At other times, a single person may wish to cast herself in
various roles at once.
Taking this interpretive lens offers promising new departures for the study of
insurgency and political violence. In this dissertation, I have sought to show how role
structuration helps to contribute to the inter-organizational production of intra-rebel war.
Future research might use this lens to address other dependent variables that are of 1474 Sarah Elizabeth Parkinson, "Organizing Rebellion: Rethinking High-Risk Mobilization and Social Networks in War," American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (2013); Sarah E Parkinson and Sherry Zaks, "Militant and Rebel Organization(s)," Comparative Politics 50, no. 2 (2018).
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interest to scholars of political violence, including sexual violence in war, civilian abuse,
bargaining intransigence, or the internal contests of rebel movements during transitions to
non-violent politics. The unique contribution of role theory to such agendas comes from
its openness to the hypothesis that certain apparently deviant, asocial behaviors, in fact,
have a discernably social basis.
Other disciplines have used a variety of methods to conduct systematic studies of
the role structures of fields, such as economic industries and social groups.1475 Research
on the study of insurgency might find it useful to emulate this work. Role sets are
locally-defined and thus context specific, but researchers might begin the task by relying
on their case knowledge as well as usual suspects for making categorical distinctions
within a group, such as class, gender, regional background, and so forth.1476 More conflict
specific roles might relate to distinctions such as diaspora leaders/local activists;
technical specialists/political leaders; fighters with formal military background/those who
lack such training, etc.
Organizational routines
In his landmark study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Graham Allison shows meticulously
how the standard operating procedures that states and militaries rely upon for
coordinating complex tasks can, at times, produce outputs that are strongly at odds with
the strategically devised plans of their leaders.1477 By applying an organizational lens to
1475 Baker and Faulkner, "Role as Resource in the Hollywood Film Industry," American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 2 (1991). 1476 For recent theoretical treatments on category making, see Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks (Oxford University Press, 2013). 1477 Allison, Graham. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Little Brown, 1971.
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the study of rebel groups, the scholarship on insurgency has recently begun to incorporate
these insights.1478
Following this approach, this dissertation has identified the unique features of
routines of rudimentary violence and shown how these features promote violence that
contravenes the strategic prerogatives of an organization. Going further, it might be
worthwhile to seek parallels between high imprint rebels and other kinds of armed
organizations, perhaps including organized criminal actors, or armed political parties.1479
A major advantage of this perspective is that it problematizes the assumption that every
act of violence that such organizations produce stems from a deliberate strategic
calculation, while also steering clear of unhelpful caricatures of actors as ‘crazy,’ ‘evil,’
‘thuggish,’ and so forth.
Besides the routines examined in this dissertation, studying organizational
routines in insurgency has vast applications. This is because violent organizations, like
organizations more broadly, cannot escape a reliance on routines. As Allison and Zelikov
put it, organizational routines “are easy to criticize, yet they are indispensible to efficient
organizations,”1480because they make otherwise complex problems tractable for
individuals. Rebels use routines not just in their production of violence, but also for
political and administrative activities.1481 Scholars have recently begun to systematize
1478 For a review, see Parkinson, Sarah E, and Sherry Zaks. "Militant and Rebel Organization(s)." Comparative Politics 50, no. 2 (2018): 271-93. 1479 Armed politics in Karachi is one such example. See: Huma Yusuf, "Conflict Dynamics in Karachi," US Institute of Peace 82 (2012); P. Staniland, "Militias, Ideology, and the State," Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (2015). 1480 Allison and Zelikov, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Second ed. (New York, NY: Longman, 1999), 152. 1481 Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), Chapter 4.
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disparate observations about routine activity in conflict settings into theoretical
statements on the concept of routinization during insurgency.1482
Routines also bring a fresh perspective to study of the intra-organizational politics
of rebellion. In this dissertation, I have suggested that small teams of specialists in
rudimentary violence are inclined to press for more ‘action,’ in accordance with their own
unique construal of what that term entails. To observers of bureaucratic politics, this sort
of phenomenon is quite familiar, and scholars have found similar tendencies in other
rebel organizations. Jacob Shapiro, for instance, has found that wrangling between the
political and operational units of Russian revolutionary organizations made strategic
control difficult at times.1483 This lens can be usefully applied to other debates in the
study of political violence, such as the strategic logic (or lack thereof) of claiming
terrorist attacks,1484 and the discussion on terrorist pursuit of chemical and biological
weapons.
7.2.2. Policy implications
While the primary motivation of this dissertation is theoretical, it yields some lessons for
policymakers and activists. At first blush, one might glean from the RVP model that
states ought to inflict disorderly violent repression on dissidents, since this form of
repression increases the odds that rebels will eventually turn violently upon each other.
That would be a woeful misreading of the perspective that I have sought to develop in
this dissertation. If any bottom-line emerges from the theory and empirics of this
1482 Francis O'Connor, "The Spatial Dimension of Insurgent-Civilian Relations: Routinised Insurgent Space," (2019). 1483 Shapiro, The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), Chapter 6. 1484 Max Abrahms and Justin Conrad, "The Strategic Logic of Credit Claiming: A New Theory for Anonymous Terrorist Attacks," Security Studies 26, no. 2 (2017).
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dissertation, it is that violence follows a highly unpredictable course once it is allowed to
become a part of the language of political claim making in a society.
Without wading into the ongoing debate over whether/when violence is a superior
insurgent strategy, this dissertation suggests some of the complications that arise when
dissident movements and states begin to tolerate violent activities from their respective
sides. After taking hold, practices of violence in these cases unleashed new dynamics that
surprised and overwhelmed their originators. Initial experiments with violence proved
impossible to tame; this sidelined the incumbent leaders of dissident movements, and
pulled the state eventually into costly and unwanted counterinsurgency campaigns. A
resultant lesson for strong states and dissidents, alike, is that whatever their political
differences, they share an interest in circumscribing the tactical repertoire (something that
is admittedly easier to recommend than to achieve in highly divided societies). This is
not a moral judgment concerning the permissibility of violence but rather a practical
prescription that speaks to the interests of non-violent dissidents and state actors.
7.2.3. Conclusion
Diverse cases of insurgency across space and time -- the Republican movement in
Northern Ireland, the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey, the Algerian independence
movement in Paris, and the Sinhalese Marxists in Sri Lanka – all share common contours
in their respective paths to disastrous fratricide. This dissertation has underscored these
commonalities. The basic comparative insight to emerge is that state repression can shape
insurgencies in profound and unexpected ways. In these cases, learning to combat ad hoc
violence perpetrated by the state and state-aligned actors molded rebel organizations in a
388
manner that rendered them vulnerable to fratricidal violence, through a combination of
strategic, organizational and cultural shifts that this dissertation elaborates in detail.
I have fashioned these comparisons into a general statement of a pathway to intra-
rebel war, while not presenting my findings as a deterministic stage theory or covering
law. Further work to clarify the reasoning of this theory, point out its errors and
inconsistencies, and apply it to other empirical cases will, I believe, promote a fuller
understanding of rebel fratricide, as well as shed light more generally on the internal
politics of rebellion.
389
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