Violence as a "dividing" and as a "unifying" factor

Abstract

Through a series of research hypotheses, this article proposes that for many decades the society in Turkey has been, at once, a producer and container of high-scale violence. Political, ethnic and linguistic violence does not only lead to divisions in the society; but it also offers to different strata of the society the possibility to imagine themselves in different camps with their specific sacralized symbols (historical narratives, cult of martyrs, flags...) and give birth to new, although fragmented, power structures. Throughout this process, some actors become "referential actors" for some segments of the society. The acquisition of such a status, however, requires, the capacity of using violence and legitimizing it by means of a discourse based on enmity, and restraining, at the same time, its impact on the represented groups.