Abstract

The attack carried out by Daesh against Kobane in 2014 prompted the mobilization of worldwide media attention and of large crowds protesting all over Turkey’s Kurdish-majority Southeast and beyond. This paper examines the potentially transformative effects of this event on the popular geopolitical codes of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey. This is done through a qualitative content analysis of 36 op-ed articles published in the newspapers Evrensel and Özgür Gündem. Three core findings stand out: (a) a constant emphasis on Turkey’s alleged links with Daesh, even before Kobane; (b) a boundary deactivation with respect to the US and “the West”; and (c) a re-articulation of self-representative frames, which initially relied on post-materialistic arguments and later emphasized security and stability.