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© Copyright 2013 Irfan Ciftci ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE ROLE OF SOFT-LINE GOVERNMENTAL POLICY INTERVENTIONS TOWARDS TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS DURING DEMOCRATIZATION PERIOD: A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY BETWEEN THE PKK AND ETA By IRFAN CIFTCI A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Global Affairs written under the direction of Professor Carlos Seiglie and approved by Dr.Felix Martin Dr.Kusum Mundra Dr. Alvaro Rodriguez Newark, New Jersey May , 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Role of Soft-line Governmental Policy Interventions towards Terrorist Organizations during Democratization Period: A Comparative Case Study between the PKK and ETA BY IRFAN CIFTCI Dissertation Director: Professor Carlos Seiglie In Today’s world, we have been witnessed several terrorist events originating from ethnic conflicts. In order to deal with ethnic violence, countries employ various policy interventions from hard-line to soft-line. Turkey and Spain have both suffered at hands of ethnically motivated terrorist organizations, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since 1984 and the Basque Homeland and Independence (ETA) respectively. Terrorist attacks undoubtedly occupied a significant proportion of both countries domestic and foreign political agenda. Thus, Turkey and Spain have implemented diversified policies, including hard-line, soft-line and mixed methods against the PKK and ETA. The main purpose of this dissertation was to examine the relationship between soft-line governmental policy interventions and the responses of the terrorist organizations by specifically focusing on the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) in Turkey and ETA (Euskadi Ta Alkatasuna) in Spain during the democratization period of each country. The democratic transition periods for each state (between 1975 and ii 1990 for Spain, and 1995 and 2010 for Turkey) were analyzed in the study. Therefore, I attempted to seek the answer to the question `what is the impact of soft-line Spanish and Turkish governmental policies on the level of PKK and ETA-initiated violence?`. In order to measure the effectiveness of these policies on the level of PKK and ETA initiated violence, descriptive statistic, Negative binomial and VAR (Vector Auto Regression) analyses were deployed in this study. Based on these analyses, I found that Spanish and Turkish soft-line policies had statistically significant and positive impacts on the level of PKK and ETA- inflicted violence during the democratization period of each country, rather than decreasing or neutral impacts. Moreover, I also found that democratization process of Spain and Turkey increased the level of violence in the short run, however, in the long run, the level of violence considerably reduced. Secondly, I examined the attack strategies of the PKK and ETA during the time period observed in this study. I found that both the PKK and ETA mainly targeted civilians rather than the military and government officials, and both terrorist organization aimed more deadly attacks against the governments by using bombing method in a small number of incidents. Three analyses employed in this dissertation revealed that when the country continued to implement its soft-line policies targeting the ethnic grievances, and reached the status of a well-established democracy, the level of violence considerably decreased in the long run since public support for the terrorist organizations was eliminated thanks to those governmental policies. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to first express my sincere gratitude to my dissertation committee chair Dr. Carlos Seiglie for his support, patience, encouragement and understanding. I also would like to thank you my dissertation committee members Dr. Felix Martin, Dr. Kusum Mundra and Dr. Alvaro Rodriguez for their friendship, time and precious input to my study. I would like to express my special gratefulness to Necmettin Alpay Kocak, who is a team leader at the Turkish Statistical Institute, and Manuel Rodriguez Garcia-Risco who is a police chief at the Ministry of Interior of Spain, for their close friendship and helpfulness. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family, my loving wife, Canan, my wonderful sons, Enes Berk and Erkam Ilyas, my parents and particularly my sister Kubra for their understanding, patience, tolerance and great self-sacrifice during my entire life, particularly the last three years during my PhD program. I also thank to some distinguished members of the Turkish National Police, my colleagues Ismail Onat, Umit Can, Tekin Akgun for their generous support on their area of expertise. Finally, I would like thank the Turkish National Police (TNP) for providing me such an opportunity and financially supporting me in every steps during my academic program. iv DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my lovely family and the Turkish National Police. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ....................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................... iv DEDICATION....................................................................................................................v TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................ vi LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ xii LIST OF MAPS................................................................................................................xv Chapter I: Introduction to the Study ..............................................................................1 Statement of Research Problem .......................................................................................1 Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................................8 Significance of the Study .................................................................................................9 Chapter’s Summary .......................................................................................................10 PART I: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................13 Chapter II: Conceptual and Theoretical Approaches to the Notion of Ethnic Conflicts ............................................................................................................................13 Defining Term: Ethnicity ...............................................................................................14 The Theories of Ethnicity ..............................................................................................15 Primordialism .............................................................................................................15 Constructivism ...........................................................................................................17 Instrumentalism .........................................................................................................19 Modernization ............................................................................................................20 The Theories of Ethnic Conflict Resolution ..................................................................23 Suppression ................................................................................................................24 Power Sharing / Consociationalism ...........................................................................25 vi State-Building ............................................................................................................27 Separation / Partition .................................................................................................28 Governmental Policies towards Ethnicity Based Terrorism ..........................................30 Deterrence (Hardline / Repressive) Based Governmental Policy ..............................30 Defiance (legitimacy/soft-line/desistance) Based Governmental Policies ................32 Democratization Process and Ethnic Terrorism ........................................................34 Chapter III: The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey ...............................................................40 The Historical Background of the Kurdish Conflict ......................................................40 Ottoman Era ...............................................................................................................40 The Republic of Turkey .............................................................................................42 The Emergence of the PKK .......................................................................................45 The Capture of the PKK Leader ................................................................................48 Financial Resources of the PKK ................................................................................49 Global Dimensions of the PKK .................................................................................51 Turkey`s Counter-Terrorism Policies and Actions towards the PKK .......................55 Democratization Process in Turkey ...........................................................................59
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