Partition, Democracy, and Turkey's Kurdish Minority

Abstract

Scholars have argued that the outbreak of civil wars destroys the possibilities for ethnic cooperation and conclude that the most effective remedy for ethnic civil conflict is to redraw national borders. Building upon the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, this article shows that peaceful coexistence after ethnic civil wars is possible as long as the state sufficiently democratizes by respecting the political and cultural rights of the ethnic group. These in-depth interviews with members of the Kurdish political elite, together with other informal conversations with dozens of people, show that, despite decades of conflict, the respondents do not deem ethnicity to be a primary obstacle against a peaceful coexistence.