Browsing by Subject "Syrian Civil War"

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Open Access
The impact of Syrian Civil War on the Kurdish resolution process
(2018-08) Akgül, Musa
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.
Open Access
Turkey and the Kurdish Question: Last Exit before the Bridge
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2016) Özpek, B. B.; Mutluer, O.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government initiated a peace process with the Kurds in January 2013 to become the first government since 1984 to systematically negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) instead of using the military against them. Nevertheless, a bloody war restarted after AKP lost its majority in the parliament due to the Kurdish backed Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) success in the 7 June 2015 elections. In the coalition negotiation process, the AKP, which is under the strict control of Erdoǧan, did not make a serious offer to any of the opposition parties, and Erdoǧan did not mandate other parties to form a coalition government. Thus, holding a snap election remained the only option. Erdoǧan's strategy to attract the nationalist voters worked, and the AKP re-gained the overall majority in the parliament by receiving the nationalist votes again. Nevertheless, this was a Pyrrhic victory for the AKP. In addition to the domestic polarization, the new AKP government has needed to deal with the Kurdish Question, which has turned into armed conflict since the 7 June elections, along with re-formulating its relations with the allies of the PKK in Northern Syria and in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Furthermore, increasing activism in the ISIS issue and the "jet crisis" experienced with Russia seems to have complicated Turkey's foreign policy and compelled the AKP to revise its approach towards the Kurdish Question. © 2016 Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.