Abstract  Master's essay by Pawan Mostafa Autumn term 2017. Supervisor: Magnus Lindh.     A foreign policy analysis of influencing factors explaining Turkey's changed policy towards Syria                                                       This study searching an analytical explanation of factors of influence that possibly will have supported the way Turkey's foreign policy has changed in Syria. The study covers a main question and three different theoretical questions.      Charles F. Hermann's model for foreign policy change is used to produce results. In this context, the current study argues that the Arab Spring has been an important part of the changes in the regional security structure and made these changes the most important determinant of Turkish foreign policy. It further examines the leadership of Turkish foreign policy, the restructuring within the country and external shock as factors that perceive and convey change and lead to results. In this regard, this study focuses primarily on the explanation of the source of change and the intermediate step of the above-mentioned factors of influence.      The empirical purpose of this study is to develop an analytical explanation of the change in Turkish foreign policy in the context of the Arab Spring 2011, specifically focusing on the period 2015 to the now. By applying the explanatory model for foreign policy change in a qualitative content analysis, the study aims at contributing to the empirical studies of foreign policy change. In addition to the empirical goals, this study also has theoretical motives. The theoretical purpose is to contribute to the studies of foreign policy change. Taking into consideration previous literature on foreign policy change is an important dimension that gives the study a functional alternative, partly based on Hermann's three-step model. In addition, the study aims at contributing to the scientific literature, as it combines foreign policy analysis (FPA) with a focus on the actor's devices and analysis of international relations (IR) with a focus on system or structure. / Sammandrag        Magisteruppsats av Pawan Mostafa VT 2017. Handledare: Magnus Lindh. En Utrikespolitisk analys av påverkningsfaktorer bakom Turkiets ändrade policy gentemot Syrien       Den här studien söker en analytisk förklaring av påverkningsfaktorer som kan ha legat bakom hur Turkiets utrikespolitik förändrats vad gäller Syrien. Studien omfattar en övergripande forskningsfråga och tre olika teoretiskt ställda frågor.       Charles F. Hermanns modell för utrikespolitisk förändring används för att få fram resultat. I detta sammanhang hävdar den nuvarande studien att den arabiska våren har varit en viktig del av förändringarna i den regionala säkerhetsstrukturen och gjort dessa förändringar till den viktigaste determinanten inför den turkiska utrikespolitiken. Den undersöker vidare den turkiska utrikespolitikens ledarskap, omstruktureringen inom landet och extern chock som faktorer som uppfattar och förmedlar förändring och leder till resultat. I det avseendet fokuserar denna studie främst på förklaringen av förändringskällan och det mellanliggande steget i de ovannämnda påverkningsfaktorerna.       Det empiriska syftet med denna studie är att utveckla en analytisk förklaring av förändringen i turkisk utrikespolitik i samband med den arabiska våren 2011, specifikt med fokus på perioden 2015 till nutid. Genom att tillämpa den förklarande modellen för utrikespolitisk förändring i en kvalitativ innehållsanalys syftar studien till att bidra till de empiriska studierna av utrikespolitisk förändring. Förutom de empiriska målen har den här studien också teoretiska motiv. Det teoretiska syftet är att bidra till studierna av utrikespolitisk förändring. Att ta hänsyn till tidigare litteratur om utrikespolitisk förändring är en viktig dimension som ger studien ett funktionellt alternativ, delvis baserat på Hermanns trestegsmodell. Dessutom avser studien att bidra till den vetenskapliga litteraturen, eftersom den kombinerar utrikespolitisk analys (UPA) med inriktning på skådespelarens anordningar och analys av internationella relationer (IR) med inriktning på system eller struktur.

This thesis examines the transformation of the Kurdish national struggle in Turkey from a political movement to a social movement. The Thesis will argue that the Kurdish national struggle during the Twentieth Century in Turkey was largely a failure, and that the emergence of the Unions of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) has been a direct and concrete response to this failure. The thesis will track how the KCK has transformed a one-dimensional political nationalist struggle into a multi-dimensional one, including politics, culture and society for the Kurds living in Turkey. The focus here will be on the period from March 2005, when the KCK was established, until July 2011 when the KCK announced its Democratic Autonomy project. In order to explain how and why the KCK has emerged, the Thesis takes an approach based on social movement theories to analyse the KCK as a social and cultural nationalist movement that deploys various approaches and techniques. The KCK is shown to take this new and more popular and successful tact through a comparison of the discourse surrounding the Kurdish national struggle before and after the establishment of the KCK. The ‘new discourse’ of multi-dimensional struggle is, in particular, compared with the old unadulterated discourse of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was a straight reaction to the Turkish state policy towards the Kurds and their struggle. The analysis of this process is accomplished through an examination of numerous contemporary resources such as the PKK and the KCK policies and literatures, government intelligence reports, books, journals, and through conducting tens of qualitative interviews alongside comprehensive observation during my fieldwork for this thesis. Ultimately, the Thesis will argue that the transformation of discourse for the KCK from the PKK is evident in its “Democratic Autonomy model”. The KCK proposes this model as an alternative to the nation state model in Turkey.

With a population of around 40 million people, Kurds are considered the largest nation without an independent state. Indeed, since the geographical division of Kurdistan in 1923, Kurds have been the victims of various forms of discrimination and oppression by the nation states of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. They deprived Kurds of their legitimate political, social and cultural rights and they oppressed their demands for political and cultural freedom through violent means. With the eruption of civil war in Syria, the regime decided to withdraw its army from the Kurdish region of Rojava. The Kurds seized the opportunity and used the power vacuum to establish their interests and agenda through establishing a democratic structure in northern parts of the country. However, instead of building a Kurdish nation-state, the people of Rojava developed a hybrid political structure known as Democratic Confederalism. Today, this system functions through hundreds of councils and assemblies in northern Syria. In the course of my study, I conducted a content analysis to see whether the structure of Rojava’s political structure corresponds to a democratic model that can facilitate the development of human rights in general and the empowerment of women in particular.

The left-wing Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) began its violent insurgency campaign against the Turkish state in 1984, claiming that an independent Kurdistan should exist. However, the origins of this conflict can be traced back even further – to the inception of the Turkish Republic in 1923. This thesis begins by investigating the history of how the conflict between the Kurdish and Turkish political frameworks escalated, exploring the concept of “Turkishness” as an element of a homogeneous nation-state. The paper then assesses the effects of a range of exclusionary measures adopted by the Turkish state (beyond punitive military responses in southeastern Turkey and cultural discrimination policies). Ultimately, I argue that the ruling Justice and Development Party’s recent push for a more authoritarian style of leadership under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ostracized the Kurdish population and has created a climate for Kurdish terrorist organizations, such as the PKK and TAK, to prosper and expand recruitment.

This study is among the first studies that evaluate the social impacts of terrorism in a specific country for a 10 year period. It tests the effects of terrorism on domestic net-migration in Turkey, especially in the terror infected provinces of the Eastern and South Eastern regions of the country between the years 1992 and 2001. Terrorism has impacted people not only physically, but also psychologically. When faced with "future uncertainty" or the "fear of terrorism," it is natural for people to leave their home towns, and to migrate to somewhere else where they feel safe. In order to explore the real impact of terrorism on immigration, this study used "terrorism incident rate" per 10,000 people and the "rate of people and security forces killed" per 10,000 people as independent variables. It also examined the major economic effects of migration; unemployment rate and the GDP were used as control variables. In addition, the rate of killed terrorists, population density, and the distance to Istanbul and to Mersin were also added to the models. A control-series regression analysis was performed to relate the terrorist incidents' impact on the citizens' inclinations to leave their home towns in all provinces and in high terrorism incident provinces of East and Southeast regions of Turkey. Results show that the net-migration in high terrorism incident provinces is higher than the net-migration in other provinces. Findings also confirm that there was a positive relationship between net-migration and terrorist incidents and that relationship was higher during 1992-1995, when the number of terrorist incidents hit its all time highest level. Other than terrorist incidents, results moreover confirm that net-migration is positively related to the number of "people and security forces killed".In addition, results also confirm that population density and distance were related to net-migration. Economic variables, such as GDP and unemployment also related to net migration. However, their impacts varied from model to model. While the GDP was negatively related to net-migration in the models with all the provinces; unemployment was positively related to net-migration in the models with only high terrorism incident provinces.

This study deals with the question of what governmental policies and military methods were adopted in the 1990s in order to overcome the PKK (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, or Workers Party of Kurdistan) that was regarded mainly as a terrorist organization against national security for it challenged Turkish state establishment via its ethno-political discourse. Based on this question, this thesis analyses each government&rsquo / s approach and counterinsurgency policies as well as Turkish military&rsquo / s tactics and operations in order to curb the PKK threat that complicated the Turkey&rsquo / s Kurdish question, and challenged Turkish state from three directions / namely southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and Western Europe. Therefore, the thesis evaluates the PKK&rsquo / s armed and political activities / anti-terror measures in the southeast region and throughout Turkey / the social, political, and economic impact of these measures over the southeastern population / human-rights violations / each government&rsquo / s southeastern policies / the impact of the counterinsurgency policies on Turkey&rsquo / s foreign relations, particularly with Iraq, Syria, and the European Union. Although the anti-PKK policies during each governmental period did not differentiate much from each other, the aim is to show that Turkish civilian authorities failed to take the initiative on, and the military-dominated approach aggravated the social and political circumstances in the region, hence, strengthened the PKK&rsquo / s anti-state discourse that led to the rise of Kurdish nationalism.

Alliansbildningsbeteende är ett viktigt och intressant ämne inom internationell politik och i internationella relationer.  Enligt den traditionella maktbalansteorin allierar sig stater med andra stater för att balansera mot externa hot. I Steven R. Davids ”omnibalancing-teori” hävdas däremot att statsledare i tredjevärlden allierar sig med stater för att bekämpa interna hot. I föreliggande examensarbete, som är en fallstudie, är ambitionen att visa att turkiska republikens relation med Kurdistanregionen i Irak är ett fall av ”omnibalancering” såtillvida att Turkiet därigenom söker hålla den kurdiska rörelsen på hemmaplan i schack. Därför står Turkiet emot ett kurdiskt självstyre i Västra Kurdistan, syriska Kurdistan (Rojava), som har ideologiska kopplingar till den kurdiska rörelsen i turkiska Kurdistan (Norra Kurdistan). Med hänsyn till andra faktorer i relationer mellan stater (t ex i Turkiets relation till Södra Kurdistan) kan man uppmärksamma ekonomi- och energifrågorna. Vidare visar resultaten av fallstudier att etniska problem som ett internt hot påverkar statens utrikespolitik och alliansbeteende.

KURDISH MUNICIPALITIES IN TURKEY (1999-2013) Case Study of Sur Municipality Abstract This Master's thesis focuses on the institutionalization of the Kurdish movement through municipalities in the Kurdish region from the late 90s. The framework is a Kurdish municipality, Sur, in the city of Diyarbakır, where the Kurdish movement is well organized. My argument is by taking part in the legal political system, Kurdish activists accessed resources that allowed them to expand their repertoire of contention and to create a counter-power through institutions. Becoming a institutional power gives Kurdish activists the opportunity to impose thein standards and practices. However, having become a norm-making powers, Kurdish municipalities' pathes cross those of other normalizing powers. Beginning with the study of the Kurdish population and identity in Turkey, this master's thesis analyzes the state-society relations in the Kurdish region of Turkey. Afterwards, in the framework of our case study, the thesis then identifies the change of Kurdish movement through the Sur municipality and the new Kurdish institutions emerging in the Kurdish region. Finally, it studies the process of standardization / normalization of the counterpower. In conclusion, bearing in mind that the municipalities are not the only entity...

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the role that political ideologies plays in determining the target of insurgency movements. In order to understand how these groups operate, I use Janowitz's military establishment to apply it on the three main revolutionary ideologies of the 20th century, Khomeinism, Marxism/Leninism and Fanonian. Based on these analyses, I hypothesize the three main targets by ideology based on the clarity of the indoctrination and on the level of bureaucracy entailed in the revolutionary texts. I then proceed to compare these theories to three case studies, the Hezbollah, the FARC and finally the PKK. I try to offer an explanation on why religious insurgencies target most of their attacks towards rival factions or why nationalist left-wing groups are mostly focused on attacking security forces. I argue that a well-structured hierarchy, a reliance on the civil society and a clear definition of the political and military targets are quintessential to prevent civilian causalities. But contrarily to most papers on the topic, I find that a strict military discipline has the reversed result that expected. For instance, the FARC and the PKK have such a strict internal code of discipline that it led the members to desert the organizations by thousands and have civilians as...

What leads a person to become an armed guerrilla? This qualitative case study utilizes select elements of a hermeneutic and existential phenomenology—through a lens of Freirean critical theory and transformative research—to investigate the commonalities in the material, psychological, artistic, and spiritual motivations behind Kurdish guerrillas in the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). Other key elements are the search for an incipient turning point in their early pre-guerrilla lives that placed them on the road to rebellion, and the grounded theory that there exists an ‘Guevarian Archetype’ (derived from Che Guevara) personified by those who are driven to join the PKK. Through an in-depth dissection of Turkey’s historical oppression of Kurds in occupied Northern Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey), and extensive use of direct quotations by those affected, the author hopes to provide practitioners in the discipline of conflict analysis a new holistic template with which to analyze the metastasizing components behind other armed insurgencies. This prism includes comparison of the testament dataset acquired through in-depth focused interviews with 20 veteran PKK guerrillas, against corresponding testimony of their opposition in the Turkish Army, an anecdotal narrative of episodic vignettes, and a literary exegesis of several metaphysical concepts with their own original definitions. Drawing on the ideas of diverse theorists, philosophers, and past revolutionaries, the author hopes to provide a revelatory milieu for exploring the PKK’s governing ideology of democratic confederalism as espoused by imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, and the emancipatory avant-garde impulses that counterintuitively lead compassionate guerrillas to defensively kill out of universal love.