Electoral Behavior in Civil Wars: The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey

Abstract

This study analyzes the effects of political violence on electoral behavior by focusing on one of the longest lasting ethnic conflicts in contemporary times, the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. How do armed conflict and electoral institutions shape turnout in a civil war context? Building on an original data-set at the sub-national level, the study reaches two major conclusions. First, it shows rural displacement caused by political violence led to lower levels of turnout and severely hampered access to voting controlling for a wide range of socioeconomic and electoral system variables. Second, an unusually high electoral threshold aggravated this pattern of disenfranchisement and limited the avenues of nonviolent Kurdish political activism with negative implications for the resolution of the conflict.