Countering insurgency: Turkey's policy toward the PKK's transnational dynamics in Europe

Abstract

Insurgents often develop international connections and benefit from external assistance from a variety of sources. Support from diaspora communities has long been considered one of the critical external factors in the persistence of insurgent groups. Yet how the counterinsurgent state addresses external support from transnational ethnic communities and what factors influence the state's policies remain understudied. By focusing on the transnational political practices of the Kurdish community and the PKK in Western Europe, this paper examines how Turkey has addressed the diasporic support for the PKK since the 1980s. It shows that three major factors - the composition of foreign policy decision-makers, their ideological contestation over the Kurdish question, and the European political context - have affected Turkey's policy regarding the PKK's transnational dynamics in Europe.