Opening a Door for Return to Home: Impact and Effectiveness of Turkish Repentance Laws

Abstract

This study analyzes the impact of the Turkish Repentance Laws in undermining the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Did the repentance laws increase the PKK surrender, thereby decreasing the PKK violence? Vector Auto-Regression analysis indicates that enactment of repentance laws did not have any significant impact on PKK surrenders, failing to significantly decrease PKK violence. Yet it does not establish any meaningful relationship between the use of force and PKK surrenders. Descriptive analyses show the significant number of surrenders took place in 1993–94, 2001, and 2003, while the highest number of penitents submitted to the “Return to Home Law” in 2003. These values relate to a specific context. This study, however, asserts that surrendered and applicant PKK members were too few to influence the overall conflict, concluding that, in addition to what these laws mean to the penitents, the success/failure of repentance policies are related to the nature of Turkey's counterinsurgency and their respective context. © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.