The ultimate test of the success of a housing development is the level of satisfaction that it engenders for its residents. It has been found, in much research carried out in the developed countries that the lack of detailed knowledge about users' needs and the failure to predict user behaviour were mainly unsatisfactory housing environments. Housing the external open spaces around dwellings were shown to be crucial satisfaction to blame for in multi-family and between the overall user. This study based In Iraq investigates users' satisfaction with the environment of recently constructed multi-family housing. It aims to identify the elements of the external environment associated with the residents' overall satisfaction in relation to these new environments. This study uses a range of factors which have been identified in many studies elsewhere in the world as having a bearing on users' satisfaction with their housing environment to examine people's reaction to their housing environment. It considers how such factors influence users' satisfaction in Iraq, and also identifies the Iraqi housing designers' intentions in relation to the external environment and examines their success in meeting user requirements. Various were used to systematic obtain information-gathering the information needed techniques for the evaluation. These included structured interviews of 183 households in three new housing projects, general observations as well as unstructured interviews with the designers and planners. The results of this study has shown to a large extent that the application of Western research in Iraq is valid. It is suggested that if Iraq used the knowledge available 1n the Western studies, it could avoid repeating the mistakes made in Western Europe and the U.S.A., during its transition from a rural to a more urban society. In particular this study has highlighted some essential social and cultural differences which indicate that Iraq must develop its own special approach to housing. It is hoped that this study may be used both to influence the drawing up of future housing policies in Iraq and the planning of new housing estates. In addition to providing the basis for rearranging the external environment of existing housing estates to meet more closely the needs of the residents.

This thesis examines how the ‘terrorist’ label affects those that are labelled by this designation, particularly with reference on a subsequent choice to use violence in the context of an ethno-nationalist conflict. Drawing on the PKK as a case study, the study asks: what effect did the labelling of the PKK as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by the Turkish government have on the use of violence by Kurds in the Turkish-Kurdish ethno-nationalist conflict? The invocation of the label terrorist in any conflict often means both the labeller and the labelled are predisposed to use violence. This study argues that this process of labelling leads the labeller and the labelled to frame one another as an existential threat. To date, the effects of using the label ‘terrorist’ in an ethno-nationalist conflict context remain relatively understudied in both social and political sciences. The period under analysis extends from 1992 to 2015, corresponding to the period during which the Turkish government continuously designated the PKK as ‘terrorist’. In conflict discourse, belligerents use demeaning labels against each other to gather support, legitimacy or simply to increase combatants’ morale. The study argues that the label terrorist is a constituent element of the conflict. The Turkish government uses the label terrorist as a tool to securitise the Kurdish-Turkish ethno-nationalist conflict. The Turkish government’s labelling of the PKK as ‘terrorist’ places the Kurdish issue in the broader framework of securitisation, a theory in International Relations. While securitising the Kurdish issue has bestowed more powers to the Turkish government to combat violence described as ‘terrorist’, the resolution of the ethno-nationalist conflict became increasingly more complex leading to protracted waves of violence. Analysing data collected through semi-structured qualitative interviews with Kurds from Turkey, the study reveals that the impact of the label terrorist is far more complex than previously assumed in the existing academic literature. The specific effects of the label terrorist on any given conflict, however, are the subject of an empirical question to be settled through rigorous research. Drawing on the Labelling Theory of Deviance fathered by Howard S. Becker and complemented by discourse analysis, this study finds that the application of the label terrorist against the PKK increases the perception of victimization among its wider Kurdish community. Secondly, the research demonstrates that the invocation of the label terrorist against the PKK places the group’s actors and sympathizers in a situation that makes it harder for them to engage in peaceful means of resolving the conflict. The interplay between these two consequential effects of victimisation and political exclusion leads to the conclusion that there is an indirect relationship between designating an ethno-nationalist armed group ‘terrorist’ and the choice to use violence.