Strategically Ambiguous and Deniable: Paramilitary Violence and Psychological Warfare in the 1990s

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Yildiz, Yesim Yaprak. 2025. Strategically Ambiguous and Deniable: Paramilitary Violence and Psychological Warfare in the 1990s. In: Özlem Has and Ayhan Işık, eds. The Making of Paramilitarism in Turkey. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9781032435817 [Book Section] (In Press)

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Abstract or Description

The security network mobilised during the conflict with the PKK in the late 1980s and 1990s reveals a complex and intertwined system of formal and informal, official and unofficial, and legal and illegal units. The chapter examines how the simultaneous centred/de-centred and overt/covert nature of this paramilitary network, along with its strategic ambiguity and deniability, played a crucial role in the psychological warfare of the 1990s. In addition to the structure of the paramilitary network, its brutal, arbitrary, and unpredictable violence further exacerbated the repression in the region. Paramilitary violence manifested not only as overt physical violence but also as more
insidious forms of psychological violence, effectively blurring reality and instilling chaos, uncertainty, fear, and paranoia among the Kurdish population. This chapter argues that the Turkish state utilised paramilitary groups not only for the convenience of plausible deniability but also for other strategic reasons. The plausible and
implausible deniability of paramilitary violence served different functions for diverse audiences. The official denial of violence, clear as daylight, reinforced sovereign violence, stripping the Kurds of their epistemic and testimonial agency while simultaneously designating them as deserving of violence and unworthy of attention. For the wider Turkish society, this official denial along with the celebration of perpetrators created complicit, actively ignorant, and complacent subjectivities.

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