Erdoğan, Turkey’s Kurds and the Regionalisation of the Kurdish Issue

Bibliographic Data

ID6093371
AuthorsAnthony Derisiotis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume9
Issue1
Publication date2019-03-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Middle Eastern Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2051-0861 • E-ISSN: 2051-0861
PublisherUniversity of Leicester (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.29311/nmes.v9i1.3118
OpenAlexW2921980565
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited7

The AKP (Justice and Development Party) government in Turkey was committed from the very beginning of its rule to address the longstanding Kurdish issue in a conciliatory approach rather than a confrontational one, rejecting the Kemalist governments‟ dead-end conflict policies. However, the collapse of the Peace Process in September 2014, which followed the spill-over of the Syrian Civil War and the developments related to the Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria, have marked the end of this particular attempt to solve the Kurdish issue, probably ending any potential productive dialogue between AKP and the militant Kurds. The aim of this article is to study the AKP government policy towards Turkey‟s Kurdish population, from the early and ambitious years, all the way to the Kurdish referendum in Iraq and the effects of the regionalisation of Turkey‟s Kurdish issue. There are two questions to be addressed: To what extent is the Syria War to blame for the failure and the subsequent shift of the government‟s policy to the old, confrontational approach? How much of this could be a predetermined political decision, related to Ankara‟s internal politics, rendering the process Turkey‟s Kurds expendable

Middle East · Militant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Referendum · Regionalisation · Sociology · Historical Turkish Studies · Law · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics · Turkey's Politics and Society

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