The impact of Syrian Civil War on the Kurdish resolution process

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of the Syrian Civil War on the failure of the Kurdish Resolution Process in Turkey within the context of Contagion Process Approach. The main question of the thesis can be formulated as such: what is the role of the civil war taking place in Syria on the failure of the mentioned Resolution Process? In order to handle this question, by using Process Tracing and Elite Interview methods, the process whereby conflict in one country (Syria) spreads to another country (Turkey) has been presented. The first contribution of this study to the literature is, contrary to most studies in the literature focusing primarily on the domestic factors in Turkey and thus neglecting international and transnational factors, that it incorporates the mentioned absence into the study. The second contribution is that this study has included numerous individuals engaged in the process both directly or indirectly in the examination process through elite interviews. The final contribution is that this study has ruled out other studies in the literature that handle the failure of the Resolution Process in a descriptive way and examined the failure based on a theoretical framework. The result obtained from this study is that the Resolution Process was barred and clash environment was re-established because the Syrian Civil War with its spillover effects started working against the Turkish government and the expectations of the PKK increased when the Turkish government and the PKK, the main actors in the Resolution Process, re-evaluated the cost-benefit analysis.