Sociologist Engin Sustam said that the Kurdish question, rooted in the issue of colonialism, is fundamentally a class issue. He emphasized that the most destructive impact on the Kurdish people has been carried out through assimilation.

We publish the fourth and final part of this lengthy interview.

Part one can be read here, part two here and part three here.

Assimilation policies have continued since the founding of the Republic. When we look at previous periods, it becomes clear that the current era is the most effective one in terms of assimilation. What kind of cultural policy should be pursued?

The strongest antidote to assimilation is to support the Kurdish language in all areas, to persistently demand and put into practice initiatives that contribute to the transformation of Kurdish into a language of education, commerce, daily life, and institutions. Take Kurdish-language books, for example. There is no issue with publishing them, but finding readers remains a problem. Of course, holding a book fair in Diyarbakır (Amed) is a positive step; however, this may ironically reflect the trauma of a language with few readers beyond the intelligentsia.

For this reason, cultural centers and municipalities must consistently offer written and spoken language courses and ensure that experts in the field are responsible for these efforts. Every possible support should be given to create space for them. Otherwise, activities like Kurdish cinema, books, art, and music will struggle to counter assimilation unless they are carried out within a broader societal language policy.

Everyone listens to music in Kurdish, names their children in Kurdish, or gives their apartment building a name like “Welat” to find some psychological comfort, but these actions do not truly operate at a subconscious level in the Lacanian sense. Freud, when speaking of instinct, referred to inherited, fixed tendencies. When he discussed drives, he described a motor impulse that pushes the organism toward a goal. As Deleuze noted, a drive is not an emotion, it is an impression in its strongest sense, not a representation. What we mean by drive here refers to institutional actions and social impressions.

So, how can we talk about children who have been subjected to racism, labeled with anti-Kurdish slurs like "Kıro" or "Hanzo," and whose lives have been interfered with since childhood? How can we heal that? Perhaps instead of opening “Institutes of Endangered Languages” or Kurdish studies centers in every university, establishing universities that offer education in Kurdish and allowing actors trained in alternative pedagogies to flourish would contribute much more to the process in Turkey. It would also help us confront certain historical reckonings more effectively.

Kurdish is a language under pressure, it must be free in public spaces

Establishing universities where Kurdish is the language of instruction, rather than merely opening departments of Kurdish studies or “institutes of endangered languages”, is clearly a more powerful step. This must happen in Turkey, not only in Germany, and be built upon alternative pedagogies. Of course, all universities must be free institutions, free from authoritarian pressure, without appointed rectors or imposed faculty. Throughout the assimilation process, three key moments can be identified: a return to the source, internal stimulation caused by colonial pressure, and the suppression of the mother tongue. The assimilated person is integrated into the dominant language and culture through instruments of gratification. This is not voluntary assimilation. Kurdish is a language under oppression. Through forced assimilation orchestrated by coercive powers, Kurds are being stripped of their language. Kurdish, like Turkish, must be able to exist freely in public spaces.

Kurdish musicians are constantly subjected to censorship. Kurdish film festivals usually take place in the diaspora, mostly in the West. Why shouldn’t Kurds be able to do this freely in their own regions? A Kurdish university is being established in Germany. Yes, it makes sense, since the diaspora consists of Kurds from all four parts of Kurdistan. But why are there no Kurdish-language schools or universities in Diyarbakır, Tunceli (Dersim), Van, or even in Istanbul or Izmir?

Having directly witnessed the layered violence imposed by the state, it is clear that the state must step away from policing the boundaries of my mother tongue. The racist parameters born of state and societal pressure must change. This process has serious psychological consequences. Even for my generation, raised in Istanbul, it has caused linguistic trauma. As someone who came to understand his mother tongue later in life, I have experienced the damage firsthand. In my doctoral research in art, I explored this damage ironically through the figure of 'Küçük Emrah'.

'Küçük Emrah', as a figure of post-coup Turkish pop culture and an actor of arabesque music, became a symbol of suffering projected onto the Kurdish body in Turkish cultural space. He represented trauma and victimhood. Of course, that symbol is no longer valid; there has been a shift from the victim subject to a subaltern subjectivity. But even so, the way in which the “child of sorrow” figure, shaped by poverty and displacement in popular culture, came to reflect the trauma of migrant Kurdishness later became evident.

Kurdish culture must break from its colonial ties

This is a psychic and masochistic process. Yet beginning in the mid-1980s, the trauma started to be shattered through opportunities for resistance. In the 1990s, Kurdish music emerged with fervor through the initiatives of Kom Music. The 2000s bloomed like a spring season. Of course, Arabesque music, while being the cultural expression of every Kurdish laborer forced to migrate from burnt villages to ghettos or city outskirts, did not merely represent a class position within Turkish popular culture. Rather, it reflected a deeper attempt to erase the memory of Kurdish-language music. Arabesques in Turkish contributed to the process of assimilation. But after the 2000s, a form of Kurdish arabesque emerged in response, sung in Kurdish.

As is known, Kurdish popular culture began to take shape in both Turkey and Iraq in the mid-1990s. Today, we are at a different point entirely. The context of struggle and creation has changed. Now, the dynamic lies more in decolonial struggle and creativity. These processes must be observed carefully and supported through developing cultural and artistic policies.

The Mardin Biennial, for example, is highly contested. Without generalizing, it must be noted that many of those coming from the West continue to reproduce a colonial biennialism, treating the Kurdish space as a newly discovered island, a touristic subject. This language, disconnected from a shared artistic and political context, fails to bring together the diverse dynamics of the Kurdish region. It is hard to understand why Mardin, which has the capacity to embrace the entire Middle East, does not do so in cooperation with Kurdish actors. Such biennials do not reflect the local political dynamics or conjuncture. Instead, they continue to operate within a Turkish nationalist framework.

Today, decolonial experiences in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, alongside the analyses of theorists like Walter Mignolo on “decolonial aesthetics”, could contribute immensely to the Kurdish context. Analyses like decolonial aesthetics now serve as connective frameworks across continents. More than anything, such biennials and artistic efforts must contribute to challenging the exclusionary nature of Republican modernity without ignoring the colonial and decolonial position of the Kurds.

Major cultural events like the Mardin Biennial should not shy away from confronting contemporary issues; rather, they should amplify them. At a time when there is growing global recognition of the need to decolonize museums, biennials too cannot remain exempt, something made clear in recent debates surrounding the Venice Biennale. The ethnic compartmentalization of pavilions and the failure to confront colonial memory are still apparent. Collective projects are clearly shaped by their local dynamics, and each conceptual framework evolves from these foundations. Artistic events, exhibitions, biennials, art centers, are expressions and outcomes of collective memory and debate.

Ultimately, while it is vital to establish the language of peace and dialogue over that of violence and coercion, healing the trauma of a child who speaks Kurdish at home but is forced to learn Turkish at school is not a matter of law alone, it is tied to the freedom of the Kurdish language. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s approach, it becomes clear that to build a pedagogy of the oppressed, a new political ethic must be developed, one that accepts this as a question of class-based colonial domination.

There are also risks in transitioning from a spiral of death to a life-centered existence. How can these risks be defined?

 What can most meaningfully support those who have joined guerrilla warfare, fought for years, and remained on the battlefield until now is the provision of institutional support to help them adapt to daily life. This is not merely psychological support, perhaps it is not psychological at all. These individuals have likely fought for a cause they believed in. Instead of threatening them with legal punishment or political incarceration, what they need is assistance that enables them to take control of their own lives. The first step must be pedagogical initiatives that help them integrate into urban life, and an absolute rejection of approaches based on punishment and discipline.

There may be traumas and pathologies on both sides. For someone who has been a guerrilla fighter for a long time, transitioning to ordinary life and integrating into urban society after leaving the mountains is far from easy. The same holds true for soldiers; those who have served for extended periods in Kurdistan often display symptoms reminiscent of the “Vietnam syndrome.” In France, there are neuropsychiatric archives concerning the Algerian War, and diagnoses such as “guerrilla neurosis” specific to that conflict have been documented. This is not my area of expertise, it falls within socio-psychology, but it is worth noting. As far as I know, suicide rates among soldiers have reached alarming levels. The suicide rate in the Turkish army has risen drastically, but this reality is not reflected in public discourse. We’re talking about depressive socio-psychodynamic conditions such as narcissistic collapse, feelings of weakness, libidinal regression, anxiety, fear of the future, death, and exposure to massacres.

Military service, as a militarist institution, is structured to eliminate the most fragile personalities through selection processes, excluding those with psychological vulnerabilities. Yet in Turkey, no one willingly joins the military; it is treated like a mandatory profession. This accelerates the visibility of psychological strain, particularly among those most vulnerable. The areas most heavily engaged within the military are those related to mental health, the RDM units. Without delving into theoretical diagnostic language, it is clear from the accounts of those who work in and observe the military that trauma levels are exceedingly high, and conflict and war only worsen the situation.

Looking at the historical trajectory of the Algerian War, the Vietnam War, and more recently perhaps the developments in Palestine, subjects of numerous theses, there is a recurring pattern of multiple psychological disorders. War is not only a public health issue; it is a traumatic force that can turn paranoia induced by violence into a permanent psychological state. It can lead to lifelong anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder in some individuals. These conditions eventually reflect onto society, giving rise to processes marked by social insecurity, isolation, and even suicide.

Post-war periods must be closely monitored

A person’s mental structure is not shaped solely by upbringing or learned experiences. It emerges from multiple layers, lived experiences, exposure to violence, subjection to authoritarianism. Education, psychology, family, the law, or life experience cannot prepare someone for the realities of war. In war, a person becomes a machine, absorbed into an entirely different zone of trauma. War renders individuals emotionally numb, shaped by layers of fear, violence, and conflict.

Most functional psychoses and character or social imbalances arise in those who have been directly involved in combat zones, while neuroses often become permanent fixtures in their lives. All of these are reasons why post-war periods must be observed with careful attention. However, this does not mean that the process should be left solely in the hands of psychologists or psychiatrists. On the contrary, the situation requires a multi-layered and collective approach.

A political psychoanalysis oriented toward the poor is necessary

My university friend Florent Gabarron-Garcia, in his book The Popular History of Psychoanalysis, reflects on the fascist era, drawing on Wilhelm Reich to discuss the pedagogy and discourse of the time, offering critical reminders for us today. He emphasizes the need to speak of a political psychoanalysis oriented toward the poor, instead of a psychoanalysis shaped by the dominant ideology of power. What we need to focus on is not institutional psychoanalysis caught in the spiral of reactionary politics, but rather a psychoanalytic formation that contributes to healing the traumas of the Kurdish people, one that emerges through language, daily life, and the law.

Florent notes that, even at the beginning of the last century, institutions were founded with a focus on the poor and concerns for social justice. There is a clear need today for scientific efforts to heal the present moment. The wounds of war cannot be addressed through institutional psychoanalytic interventions alone; on the contrary, there must be a shift toward popular psychotherapy. For example, the creation of psychology or sociology departments in the Kurdish language is not the sole issue. It is equally important to contribute to the production of alternative pedagogies that enable Kurds to establish counter-institutional initiatives in their own language and geography.

This is not to suggest that the responsibility lies solely with psychoanalysts or psychologists. Rather, it is to say that institutional efforts to overcome this era of authoritarianism and violence must be separated from the language and the body of authoritarianism itself. What is required is the rejection of punitive frameworks and the construction of a language of dialogue. In place of the masculine, Oedipal figure of the “Father State,” what is needed is a democratic, foundational structure that quietly fulfills its institutional role from the background.

The trauma experienced by a generation that has been forced to abandon its language and identity finds expression in the melancholic codes of arabesque music, this itself is a psychoanalytic narrative. Perhaps it is through interactions that bring the unconscious to the surface and mend these psychological barriers that a real contribution to peace and reconciliation can be made.

The Kurdish question and colonialism are matters of class

So the question is this: In a militaristic country that has never been able to implement a democratic constitution or a participatory democracy, who will respond to the traumas, depressions, and voids experienced in the aftermath of war? Who will do this? The state? Psychologists? Sociologists? Politics? Or the “oppositional” Republican People's Party (CHP), whose leader Özgür Özel merely acknowledges the Kurdish question in passing during rallies?

Who can restore friendship between the two peoples? I do not say brotherhood, because brotherhood is founded upon hierarchy, defined by older and younger siblings. Instead, we must speak of the freedom of a people who have been oppressed by precisely this kind of anti-democratic, hierarchical structure. Equality is related to liberation and the realization of justice. What we need is not brotherhood, but equality, reconciliation and cleansing ourselves of racism through genuine dialogue.

It is now abundantly clear that this process is evolving into a time when these questions will multiply and sharpen, and it is absolutely necessary for the process to move forward with a critical approach. As things continue in such an insecure fashion, it is impossible for anyone to address this issue in a “Turkish” manner or under the veil of secrecy, unless steps are taken to dismantle the trustee regime, criminalize racism, abolish the village guard system, and establish dialogue with the families of the disappeared. (The 2013 peace process was a failed experience in this regard.)

On the contrary, only when peace becomes fully socialized and takes to the streets can we make this desire for reconciliation permanent through political support. Just as some leftist groups in Turkey in the 1970s failed to seriously engage with the question of women’s liberation, preferring to defer the issue until after the revolution, which ultimately forced Kurdish people to organize independently, there is no place now for politics rooted in resentment, patronizing “big brother” attitudes, or masculine revenge. What we need instead are urgent steps to be taken immediately, here and now. Because the Kurdish question and colonialism are fundamentally questions of class.