Soner Yalcin: The National Solution Process overlooks economic reality
Journalist Soner Yalcin argues that the "National Solution Process" focuses too heavily on identity politics while ignoring the deep-seated economic roots of the Kurdish issue.
Editor
WISE NEWS PRESS / ISTANBUL, TURKEY — DEC. 09, 2025
In his latest column, journalist Soner Yalcin critiques the ongoing "National Solution Process," initiated by Devlet Bahceli, for sidelining economic issues in favor of identity and regime debates.
Yalcin argues that Turkey has inherited structural features from the Ottoman Empire, including geopolitical pressure and a strong central state tradition, but has persistently failed to address the economic roots of its conflicts. "Economic problems are interpreted by connecting them to power debates rather than cause-and-effect relationships," Yalcin writes, noting that topics like capital class, income distribution, and land ownership are absent from the current solution agenda.
The Neoliberal Underpinning of Migration
Yalcin highlights a study by academics Erdem Yoruk and Enes Sari, titled "The Internal Displacement of Kurds and Class Structure in Turkey," which offers a class-based perspective on the Kurdish issue. The study posits that the forced displacement of over 3,000 Kurdish villages in the 1990s fueled Turkey's informal economy by creating a large pool of cheap, precarious labor.
"Kurdish forced migration formed the invisible class infrastructure of 'neoliberalism's success' in Turkey," Yalcin states, citing the academics. This migration wave facilitated a shift from organized labor to a subcontracted, informal workforce, effectively replacing the old unionized working class.
A Multidimensional Problem
While praising the economic lens applied by Yoruk and Sari, Yalcin also notes limitations in their analysis, such as the omission of external factors like US imperialist policies and regional energy dynamics. He questions the causality: "Did the neoliberal transformation shape the Kurdish issue, or did the Kurdish issue change the course of neoliberal transformation?".
Yalcin concludes that the Kurdish issue cannot be grasped solely as an identity problem. "It is at the very center of Turkey's neoliberal class regime," he asserts, warning that if the diagnosis is incorrect, the solution will be designed incorrectly.
