The Ebb and Flow of Armed Conflict in Turkey: An Elusive Peace

Abstract

This chapter offers an empirically rich analysis of violence, reform, and negotiations characterizing the Kurdish question in Turkey during the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) rule. It is organized as three sections. The first section offers an analysis of violence on the basis of a new events dataset. A military stalemate has ensued between the two centralized and disciplined political entities with opposing ideological visions. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) pursues a classical “war of attrition” with the goal of achieving substantial concessions from the Turkish state. In response, the Turkish state pursued a mixed strategy of concessions and punishments to erode public support for the insurgency. While both sides try to maximize their power consistent with a realist perspective, the dynamics of electoral competition and public opinion complicates their strategies. The following section discusses the electoral dynamics, the negotiation attempts, and the reforms of the AKP. It demonstrates that there is a strong negative correlation between the scope and intensity of violence and the continuation of negotiations. However, the negotiations are not effective in bridging the gap between the demands of the insurgents and the expectations of the Turkish state. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the literature on negotiated settlements to civil wars to identify the challenges to the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish question in Turkey.KeywordsSecurity ForceConstitutional AmendmentParliamentary ElectionTurkish StateNegotiate SettlementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.