Thesis advisor: Hiroshi Nakazato / Ethnic conflicts that lead to civil wars or other forms of internal turmoil elicit myriad forms of military intervention from the global community. Sometimes the United Nations decides to deploy peacekeeping troops to a region or authorize individual states to use their military resources to quell a conflict. Usually, a state will unilaterally decide to launch an intervention before the United Nations makes a decision, a situation that generally occurs when the state has a direct interest in the conflict. Although many external factors play into these decisions regarding intervention, four internal factors have been identified as having a strong influence on these decisions: the failed state status of the region in conflict, the duration of the conflict, a request for external help, and whether a major world power is already involved. The United Nations is more likely to intervene in a critically failed state whose ethnic conflict has been enduring for years, where a state will send its military in unilaterally if the conflict is new (months old) and a request for military help is made from one of the parties already involved. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

This PhD examines the role of the transnational media in articulating and mobilizing different political and identity positions for migrants. It explores the complex linkages between Kurdish and Turkish transnational ethnic media and migrant communities. It is based on 74 in-depth interviews and 6 focus groups with Kurdish and Turkish migrants of diverse age, gender, political affiliation, occupation and length of migration in London, Berlin and Stockholm. Drawing upon the concepts of “imagined community” (Anderson 1991) and “banal nationalism” (Billig 1995), it seeks to understand how migrants make sense of the media representations of the ethno-national conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurds and how they position themselves in relation to these media texts. The thesis explores how the media impact differentially on migrants’ views and ethnic identities in the three countries. This study argues that transnational media speak on behalf of the nation to the nation, even if the members of these imagined national communities live in different places, connecting people across different geographical spaces and thus building transnational imagined communities. They create a sense of belonging to a meaningful imagined community defined as “our” nation. The mediated Turkish-Kurdish ethno-national conflict has contributed to this transnational imagined community. The analysis of interviews found that the mediated conflict has hardened ethnic-based divisions and differentiation between Kurdish and Turkish migrants in Europe. Transnational media have contributed to deterritorialization, differentiation and division among migrants. Kurds and Turks have developed distinct identities in Europe and cannot be viewed any longer as a homogeneous group. The thesis concludes by suggesting a three-way framework for the analysis of ethno-national identities of migrants, taking into account firstly the country of settlement, secondly Turkish and thirdly Kurdish media as significant in constructing imagined national communities.

The aim of the master thesis is to determine factors that contribute to peace settlement of separatist conflicts. It compares two separatist conflicts with different forms of termination. The Indonesian government signed a peace agreement with separatists in province of Aceh and offered them greater autonomy, whereas the government of Sri Lanka decided on military suppression of Tamil separatists. The analysis of the conflicts is based on six factors that are built on the study of Barbara Walter about the concept of reputation building. According to the concept, governments are less likely to go for peace settlement when facing more imperilling separatist groups, seeing that governments have to invest in reputation building. The comparative case study is based on following factors: potential future separatists, value of land currently under dispute, proportion of total population and territory, balance of power between separatists and government, political system with focus on democracy, degree of centralization/ federalism. The evidence seems to be strong that the theory of reputation building does not apply to selected cases because the peace settlement was achieved in Indonesia which has far more potential separatist groups than Sri Lanka. In conclusion, the thesis identifies following factors...