Meet President Trump’s evolving foreign policy brain trust. There are the “America First” ideologues, led by Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. There is Vice President Mike Pence, a former congressman and Indiana governor who has generally focused on domestic issues. There is the Washington-outsider/White House-insider and proposed Middle East Peace negotiator Jared Kushner. There are representatives of the private sector with no backgrounds in government service, a category that includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and venture-capitalist-turned-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. And then there are the numerous generals: Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, and new National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who has just assumed the seat previously occupied by fellow three-star general Michael Flynn.

Potential risks come with Trump’s decision to stack his national security team with general officers, including the possible militarization of foreign policy and the erosion of traditional models of civil-military relations. The central problem with his advisory team, though, may have less to do with who is there than with who isn’t. Completely absent from the assemblage described above is a seasoned diplomat practiced in forms of statecraft that do not involve the application of military force. Flynn’s resignation created an opening in the inner circle for someone with such a profile, but Trump — consistent with his demonstrated predilection for military men and distrust of the foreign policy establishment — opted first for retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, who declined the job, and then for Lt. General McMaster.

McMaster’s new role consists primarily of coordinating foreign policy actions across the federal government and ensuring that the president is aware of the full range of policy options available to him in promoting U.S. interests abroad. These will not be easy tasks in what appears to be a highly chaotic administration. And to complicate matters further, McMaster will have to perform his duties without any prior experience wielding many of the non-military weapons in the U.S. foreign policy arsenal, including sanctions, the strategic distribution of foreign aid, and pressure exerted through various international fora. Straight-talking combat veteran, careful student of the Vietnam War, and innovative counterinsurgency strategist McMaster may be, but a practiced diplomat steeped in the workings of the non-military aspects of the U.S. foreign policy machine he is not.

Nor, perhaps more problematically, are any of his senior-level counterparts — none of whom, apart from the generals, has any true foreign policy experience at all.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could emerge to fill the diplomatic gap, but his capacity to do so is thus far unproven. His globe-trotting experience as the CEO of ExxonMobil may have given him a level of familiarity with various foreign leaders and parts of the world, but it has not given him practice negotiating and badgering with the weight of the U.S. government behind him or dealing with questions of war and peace. Since his confirmation, he has kept a relatively low profile — ducking reporters’ questions, attending a European security summit primarily “in listening mode,” according to aides, and facing mounting questions about his influence inside the administration.

Tillerson himself would likely appreciate the counsel and support of a more experienced foreign policy hand, an asset that he has been denied since Trump vetoed the proposed appointment of Elliott Abrams as Deputy Secretary of State. Abrams, who served as foreign policy advisor to Reagan and George W. Bush, appears to have been blocked based on his criticism of Trump during the campaign. A substantial number of other positions at the State Department also reportedly remain unfilled, and senior staff in several offices of the Department have been reassigned.

In the absence of diplomats, it should not be surprising that there have been diplomatic missteps, including Trump’s controversial phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. There are likely to be more such incidents, though McMaster’s appointment could impose a degree of order on the White House’s foreign outreach efforts.

A number of factors could lie behind the diplomat-free nature of the Trump administration. The diplomatic void may stem in large measure from a shortage of members of the striped-pants set willing to join the new administration or trusted by it. Steve Bannon’s reported efforts to expand and consolidate his foreign policy influence could also weigh against the recruitment of experienced diplomatic talent. A third possibility is that Trump himself has recognized that diplomacy, as traditionally practiced, is incompatible with his free-wheeling, reality-TV style and therefore has little interest in encouraging it.

Regardless of the cause, the result is a distinctly unbalanced foreign policy apparatus unlikely to serve U.S. interests well. On the campaign trail, Trump often veered between calls for disengagement from the world and calls for muscular applications of American military power. Now that he is in office, it may fall to the military men surrounding him to sell approaches that lie between these two extremes, despite their lack of expertise in such matters. There is no indication that the sober trio of Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster — hardened by their common experience of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — is disinclined to advocate this middle path, but their job would be easier with the support of a few civilians more practiced in these ways.

Trump could use some diplomats was originally published in global.ist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I n a letter sent to European heads of state at the end of January, a concerned European Council President Donald Tusk, head of the European Union’s highest policy-making body, called upon national leaders to rally against a set of “dangerous” challenges that render the EU’s future “highly uncertain.” Russian aggression, the rise of China, mounting nationalism, and a loss of confidence in European institutions all predictably appear on Tusk’s list of threats to European stability. Alongside these familiar dangers is a noteworthy newcomer: the US government.

Tusk’s classification of the US as a source of threat arises from “worrying declarations” by President Donald Trump that “put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy.” Among numerous departures from orthodoxy worthy of concern in Brussels, Trump has labeled NATO “obsolete,” indicated wavering commitment to the alliance’s collective defense provisions, and given signs of willingness to accommodate Russian expansionism. In addition, there is his espousal of trade protectionism, cheerleading of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, encouragement of further withdrawals from the bloc, and uncertain attachment to human rights. The list of his offenses only seems likely to grow with time.

In the face of present dangers that include Trump, Tusk reminded European leaders of the power of solidarity and urged them to “revive the aspiration to raise European integration to the next level.” Generally speaking, current conditions would hardly seem propitious for the European Union — widely viewed as an unresponsive, burdensome bureaucracy — to try to expand its mandate, particularly given the rise across Europe of right-wing parties seeking to reassert national sovereignty at the expense of pan-European governing institutions. But Tusk’s vision may not be altogether far-fetched, for features of the current moment — and Trump’s emergence in particular — recall the kind of circumstances that have given impetus to the European project in the past.

A popular but misleading analogy holds that European integration is like a bicycle that will fall over if it stops moving forward. Move forward it has, but the process of unification has never advanced in a smooth and steady glide. Pauses and backslides loom large in the history leading to today’s 28-country bloc with its common currency, single market, and diminished internal borders. While the European project is often thought of as a primarily economic endeavor, security fears have played a major role in giving the integrationist bike a push forward at critical points. As on these occasions, Trump’s transactional approach to alliance commitments, championing of policies at odds with European interests, and sheer unpredictability could again focus European minds on the necessity of intensified cooperation — perhaps especially in the domain of defense and foreign policy, an area where common effort has consistently failed to match longstanding aspirations.

Security concerns played a key role in the very birth of the modern European project following World War II. Established in 1950 by the governments of six countries, the European Coal and Steel Community, the first post-war experiment in European integration, was conceived in large part as a means of solving “the German problem,” the apparent tendency — as exhibited in both the World Wars — for Germany’s economic and demographic strength to give rise to aggression against its neighbors. The ECSC sought to bind the German and French economies together such that, in the words of then-French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, armed conflict between them would be “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.”

The success of the ECSC set in motion a gradual but expanding process of transnational integration involving an ever-widening number of fields and countries. In 1992, security considerations again contributed to a major leap forward with the establishment of the European Union, which bound its members closer together in a semi-federal structure. The reunification of Germany, which stoked renewed fears of German domination amid potentially declining US interest in Europe as the Soviet threat abated, was a key factor driving the shift. Concern about German resurgence prompted worried consultations between British and French authorities, and French President Francois Mitterrand took the lead in the subsequent effort to deepen European integration. As described by his British counterpart, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Mitterrand’s objective in promoting the EU was to “move ahead faster towards a federal Europe in order to tie down the German giant.” Germany, for its part, accepted the need to bind itself to a larger structure to reassure its neighbors that it did not pose a security threat.

In the decades since its establishment, the EU has settled in a kind of no-man’s land. Its member states and their populations have resisted further moves to a fully federal system that would create a true “United States of Europe,” and the resulting hybrid model of governance — with national governments deprived of policy autonomy in some areas and with collective policy-making often dependent on elusive unanimity among member governments — has struggled at times to meet the needs and demands of Europe’s citizens. Brexit, the unprecedented June 2016 decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the EU, is the clearest sign of popular disaffection with European governance.

To press for more integration in this environment is no easy task, but geopolitical uncertainty could give impetus to the European project now as it has in the past. The coincidence of potentially decreasing American commitment and increasing Russian aggression could prove particularly galvanizing. To European eyes, Trump and Putin appear to share an alarming preference for a world composed of individual nation-states engaged in zero-sum competition and bilateral deal-making — the very kind of order that gave rise to the two World Wars and then to the European project itself. Steps in any direction except defense or strengthening of integration threaten to thrust Europe back into this state of nature.

The fact that the primary security concerns of the present stem from external sources — Russia, Middle Eastern turmoil that produces refugee flows, and US abandonment of its traditional orientation — rather than an alleged German tendency towards subjugation should facilitate closer cooperation. So, too, could the impending departure from the EU of the UK, long the chief dissenter with respect to ventures that infringe on sensitive aspects of national sovereignty.

In these two respects, conditions could be ripe for revitalization of an old debate: should the countries of the continent pool sovereign resources to establish Europe as a proper world power? Typically undertaken at French prompting, there have been several generally failed attempts over the decades to endow unified Europe with levels of military and diplomatic influence more commensurate with its standing as the world’s largest economy. The 1992 treaty establishing the EU created a Common Foreign and Security Policy, but coherent and meaningful action in this area has lagged, in part due to internal differences over how CFSP should relate to NATO and partly as a result of the same pattern of generally weak European defense spending that has drawn criticism from Trump.

In classic Gallic spirit and with additional impetus from the new US president, the French political establishment appears ready to have another go. French presidential candidates Francois Fillon, Emmanuel Macron, and Benoit Hamon — representing, respectively, the center-right, center, and center-left of the political spectrum — have all pronounced themselves in favor of a renewed European defense project. They could find a willing partner in Germany, whose government expanded its defense budget dramatically in late 2016. In mid-January, amid speculation concerning the intentions of President-elect Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated, “From the point of view of some of our traditional partners…there is no infinite guarantee. I’m convinced that Europe and the EU will have to learn to take on more responsibility in the world.”

Whether the French and German governments will be in a position to drive further European integration in any field will turn crucially on elections later this year. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, nationalist parties with virulently anti-EU platforms are mounting strong runs against establishment candidates more favorably disposed to European institutions. Far-right candidates in all three countries have threatened to organize Brexit-style referenda if elected. Withdrawal of even one of these countries could deal the EU a fatal blow. It remains to be seen if Trump’s election, coming on the heels of Brexit, will give further fuel to his fellow populists or strengthen the political mainstream by warning of the dangers of complacency and division in the face of a right-wing, nationalist challenge.

There is an irony at the heart of Trump’s emerging foreign policy: an “America First” approach to the world will almost inevitably speed the demise of American primacy. If Trump’s brief tenure in office thus far is indicative of his future course, unpredictability may emerge as the key characteristic of American policy and is likely to push others towards greater self-reliance, in the process undercutting the unparalleled ability of the US to shape global developments in its interest. There is no guarantee of success, but a new effort by the states of Europe to strengthen their cooperative bonds so as to better control their collective destiny would be in keeping with past responses to similarly uncertain circumstances. If he helps to inspire such a move, Trump could be providing the European bicycle with its most significant push in decades.

Could Trump help create a more globally assertive EU? was originally published in global.ist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The recent flood of refugees fleeing war and chaos for safety in Europe has largely overshadowed a series of much smaller human flows that reflect the continent’s long experience with conflict and disorder of its own. Drawing upon laws that award automatic citizenship to the descendants of men and women who lost their citizenship status due to political repression or forced exile, those involved in these more subtle movements are engaged in what many present-day refugees eventually hope to do: rebuilding ties with forcibly abandoned ancestral homelands. In some cases, the renewed connection leads to relocation. In many others, it extends only as far as the receipt of a new passport.

Legal measures establishing such rights of return for the descendants of select groups of former citizens are now on the books in Germany, Spain, and Portugal. The latter two countries adopted their laws only in the last decade — the same period during which Germany’s older measure has seen a spike in interest. All embody an effort at restorative justice that seeks to make amends for episodes of egregious government conduct or for the exposure of civilians to civil violence and hardship. That persons of Jewish descent are the primary beneficiaries of all but one of these laws reflects Europe’s extensive history of anti-Semitism.

Article 116 of Germany’s Basic Law, adopted in 1949, appears to have served as a model for the other provisions of its type. It returns citizenship rights to the descendants of former German citizens who lost them during the Nazi era “on political, racial or religious grounds” — a population that is largely but not exclusively Jewish. Seldom invoked for most of its history, the law has contributed to a significant expansion in the country’s Jewish population in recent years. Berlin — the location of the world’s fastest growing Jewish population, according to the Associated Press — has been a leading destination for returnees. A significant number of these new Berliners are young Israelis reportedly drawn to the city’s bohemian vibe and low cost of living relative to Tel Aviv, according to Washington Post reporting.

The planned withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) has triggered a surge of interest in Article 116 from British citizens of German (particularly German-Jewish) descent keen to maintain their now vulnerable rights to reside and work throughout the EU. According to The Guardian, the German government expects approximately 500 applications for restored citizenship in 2016 (up from the typical 25) as a result of the “Leave” campaign’s victory in the Brexit referendum held in late June.

In the last nine years, Spain has adopted two laws inviting the return of former citizens’ descendants. The first of these — 2007’s so-called Law of Historical Memory — broke the country’s long official silence concerning the 1936–1939 civil war and the political repression that characterized the ensuing dictatorship of Francisco Franco. In addition to condemning the Francoist dictatorship and mandating the excavation of civil war-era mass graves, the law provides for the acquisition of Spanish citizenship by the children and grandchildren of citizens who fled the country during the civil war and its aftermath. Nearly 450,000 applications for restored Spanish citizenship were filed during the three-year window established by the law, with more than 95% of these from Spanish descendants resident in Latin America.

The second and more recent piece of Spanish legislation assumes a much older burden of guilt. In 2015, both Spain and neighboring Portugal passed similar laws facilitating the granting of their respective citizenships to descendants of Sephardic Jews exiled from the Iberian Peninsula after its reconquest from the Moors at the tail-end of the 15th century. The Spanish government has predicted that 150,000 or more could seek citizenship under the law. Portugal could experience a similar response. Long-standing Sephardi communities in Turkey and Venezuela have reportedly shown strong interest in acquiring passports as a hedge against political instability and/or anti-Semitism in their countries of residence. Applications have also reportedly been filed in significant numbers in Brazil and Israel.

What lies behind these partial restorations of broken state-citizen ties? On the side of the newly renaturalized citizens, the allure and convenience of a European passport — a document that greatly expands one’s life options — appears to be a powerful draw for many, with an interest in family heritage perhaps playing a role for some.

The motivations of the governments may be more complex. A sense of guilt appears to underpin the Basic Law and the measures encouraging the return of Sephardi to the Iberian Peninsula. Particularly in Germany, the restoration of citizenship is of a piece with a variety of other efforts to recognize and make amends for the crimes of the Nazi era. Spain and Portugal are newer to unflinching confrontations with the past, and their efforts in this area thus far fairly selective. It remains to be seen whether Spain’s recent attempts to redress domestic episodes of historical trauma nearly 500 years apart presage similar gestures connected to the intervening period of global empire-building.

The very willingness of these governments to try to atone for the sins of the past reflects, perhaps more than guilt, Europe’s broader evolution in the course of the 20th century from a place of periodic, large-scale war to a prosperous, stable community strongly committed to high-minded norms of state conduct — including those dictating the protection of civilians in wartime, the safeguarding of minorities, and (somewhat more erratically) the acknowledgement of past errors.

This fundamental taming of Europe is part of what draws new refugees from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa. It may also be central to the kind of reconciliation achieved when Israelis are willing to settle in Germany. “I think young Germans and young Israelis share a lot in common,” one of the latter told a reporter from The Washington Post. “We both grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. And in that sense, we understand each other.”

Amid rush of new refugees, some european governments welcome back the descendants of their own was originally published in global.ist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the last 15 years, as right-wing, nativist parties have gained strength across Europe with promises to expel immigrants and to ethnically purify their countries, Turkey has been fitfully engaged in an initiative that runs in the opposite direction. This effort, which has sought to broaden the prevailing definition of the national community in recognition of the country’s social diversity, marks an attempted return to older traditions of tolerance. It has faced no lack of opposition, however, and the arrest late last week of prominent Kurdish politicians provides the latest indication that this faltering venture to recast Turkey’s national identity may have run its course.

Language has been central to the identity reform effort, which has insisted on linguistic diversity while also promoting new terms to support Turkey’s acceptance of a more heterogeneous sense of itself. Key to the latter push has been the replacement of the semi-ethnic identity of Turk with the civic identity of Turkeyish (Türkiyeli, meaning from the geographic entity of Turkey). By substituting place of birth for bloodline descent as the primary criterion for inclusion in the national community, this reframing has sought to present minority groups who do not identify as ethnic Turks — particularly but not exclusively citizens of Kurdish extraction — with expanded opportunities for self-expression and the assertion of compound identities. With Turkeyishness serving as a unifying umbrella identity, the idea went, people would be free to openly associate themselves with other ethnic and religious subgroupings to which they felt attached. Such a shift in thinking would normalize actions heretofore highly controversial or illegal, allowing citizens of Turkey to engage in the equivalent of labeling themselves Irish- or Italian-Americans without risking charges of sedition.

Political conditions since the attempted military coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this past summer have not been propitious for revitalization of the already weakened Turkeyish initiative. The November 4 arrest of the leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — the largely Kurdish political party that has come to most strongly represent the new, pluralistic vision of Turkey — deals a further blow to this effort to promote a more flexible and inclusive sense of national belonging.

An identity geared toward territorial defense

At the center of the traditional national identity of Turkey is a defensiveness that reflects the country’s origins. Formed in 1923 from what remained of the collapsed Ottoman Empire after World War I and a subsequent war of independence, the Turkish Republic inherited an ethnically diverse population descended from the successive civilizations and empires that had taken root in Asia Minor over the centuries. Beginning in the late Ottoman period, the tolerant incorporation of varied ethnic and religious groups into Ottoman society gave way to a belated effort to forge a common Turkish identity in order to bind the empire together and halt its loss of territory through conquest and revolt. The empire suffered further dismemberment as a result of independence movements and defeat in World War I, and the Turkish Republic’s founders emerged from the latter convinced that internal divisions left the country vulnerable to betrayal and external manipulation.

The Republican period saw an intensification of the Ottoman effort to create a unifying identity based on the denial of differences and encouragement of a fervent nationalism. This push included more thorough standardization of the Turkish language and an insistence on its exclusive use. Instruction, publication, and broadcasting in non-Turkish languages native to Anatolia, especially Kurdish, were forbidden. The mere existence of certain groups — particularly Kurds, who were believed to pose the greatest secessionist threat — was all but officially denied for certain periods.

This effort at forced conformity worked to a point, but the imposition of Turkishness undermined its appeal.* In addition, conflation of the official national identity with the majority characteristics of Turkish society — notably, descent from the Turkic conquerors of Anatolia and at least nominal adherence to the Sunni branch of Islam — left a number of populations seemingly outside the main Turkish body politic. Alongside the Kurds, who constitute nearly 20% percent of the population, these marginalized groups included Turkey’s small Jewish, Greek, and Armenian communities, and a sizeable Alevi population whose religious practices diverge from those of Sunni Islam. Within the Kurdish community, resentment at forced integration gave rise to an armed insurrection led by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has resulted in an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 deaths since 1984.

The rise and fall of Turkeyishness

Two factors created an opening for a reconsideration of Turkish national identity and minority rights in the first decade of the 21st century. The first was the launch of Turkey’s accession negotiations with the European Union, which encouraged the Turkish government to lift prohibitions on the use of Kurdish and other minority languages. The second factor was the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a pragmatic descendant of more radical Islamist parties consistently blocked from power by the traditional Turkish elite. The AKP scored a massive electoral victory in 2002 and took office with a mandate to pursue wide-ranging reforms. With strong public backing, the party successfully undercut the significant political power of the Turkish military — the constitutionally appointed “guardian” of certain core features of the Turkish Republic, including both strict secularism and insistence on a unitary national identity.

Carving out more space for the public exercise of religion may have been the AKP’s primary aim in pushing the military from the scene, but the party also showed early willingness to revisit Turkey’s officially recognized national character as part of its transformation of society. In the reformist zeitgeist of the aughts, the AKP encouraged discussion of a wholesale revision of the constitution that would include an overhaul of that document’s codification of Turkish identity. It was in this context that “Turkeyish” made its public debut, to acclaim in many minority circles but to mixed reviews more generally. Work on the new constitution never advanced very far, however, and Turkeyishness did not gain broad popular acceptance. Erdoğan and the AKP government nevertheless adhered, at least selectively, to the spirit of pluralism, taking significant steps to expand Kurdish cultural rights and making efforts to negotiate an end to the secessionist insurgency of the PKK. By 2009, Turkish state television had established a dedicated Kurdish-language channel.

This was perhaps the high-water mark of the diversity drive. The AKP’s electoral strength steadily grew, and its success in neutralizing the political force of the military left no effective checks on its power by the turn of the decade. The pace of accession talks with the EU slowed to a crawl, reducing external pressure for progressive change. Freed from political constraints and moderating influences, Erdoğan — the one-time poster boy of reform-minded democracy in the Muslim world — increasingly abandoned his broad-minded agenda to pursue projects of narrow or personal interest, flirted with traditional Turkish nationalism to continue building the AKP’s vote-share, and drifted into a creeping authoritarianism. The Turkish government’s harsh response to protests, in 2013, inspired by Erdoğan’s plan to bulldoze a historic Istanbul park to make way for a shopping center crystalized the extent of this drift for much of the outside world. The peace process with the PKK also meandered and frayed. In late 2015, the PKK declared an end to its ceasefire and resumed hostilities against the Turkish state.

The vulnerability of the HDP

The idea of Turkeyishness has clung to life among ethnic/religious minorities and certain urban, liberal segments of the population. Many members of the latter gave strong support to the AKP during its reform phase but have more recently transferred their allegiance to the HDP, the latest in a long line of parties established to represent Kurdish interests — and now the de facto standard bearer for what is left of the Turkeyish cause. In the past few years, under party leader Selahattin Demirtaş, the HDP has evolved from its Kurdish roots into a catch-all reform movement championing expanded rights for all minorities (whether defined by ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation), consistent respect for civil liberties, and environmentalism. An influx of hipsters, leftist intellectuals, ethnic Armenians, and others swelled the mainly Kurdish ranks of the party in the June 2015 general election, pushing the HDP to the largest ever representation in parliament for a Kurdish party and briefly raising hopes in progressive and minority circles of a change in Turkey’s political trajectory.

A year and a half later, prospects for a revival of the Turkeyish project appear dim given a dramatic reduction in the space available for political debate. On July 15, 2016, high-ranking military officers allegedly affiliated with Fethullah Gülen — a charismatic religious leader living in rural Pennsylvania — launched a failed coup against Erdoğan. The action appeared to justify the latter’s concerns about internal enemies and the threat that they posed to his political monopoly. In the weeks and months that followed the coup, the government embarked on a purge of staggering proportions, decimating the ranks of judges, university professors, teachers, and military officers to root out alleged Gülen followers. A wave of arrests has accompanied the mass dismissals. Liberal intellectuals, journalists, and politicians with no likely ties to the attempted putsch have been swept up by security forces. Other would-be reformers have gone into exile or are keeping a low profile. A broad range of media outlets has been shut down.

The political crackdown, along with a recent surge in fighting between the PKK and Turkish state security forces, leaves the HDP in a position of high vulnerability. This was underscored by the arrest last Friday of HDP leader Demirtaş, his co-party leader Figen Yüksekdağ, and seven other HDP members of parliament. The nine face charges related to alleged membership in, and support of, the PKK — familiar charges for political advocates of Kurdish interests. In protest, the HDP officially withdrew its delegation from parliament on Sunday. A PKK-attributed car bomb blast that killed 8 and injured more than 100 occurred shortly after the HDP detentions, underscoring the likelihood that foreclosing options for inclusive politics can lead only to further divisive violence.

The long list of previous Kurdish parties banned based on alleged PKK ties suggests that the very existence of the HDP is now at risk — and with it, perhaps, any continuation of the Turkeyish experiment in the foreseeable future. The potential demise of this project comes at an awkward time given the recent flood into Turkey of 2.5 million Syrian refugees, at least some of whom could end up staying in permanence and would benefit — along with other minority groups — from a more expansive notion of what it is to be a Turk.

*A parallel and similarly heavy-handed effort to push religious identity to the margins of public life also encountered increasing headwinds as the 20th century advanced.

An end to Turkey’s experiment in turkeyishness? was originally published in global.ist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.