Dynamics of Communal Violence in the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict

Abstract

Since the 2000s, Turkish-Kurdish communal violence has emerged as a new mode of confrontation in the recent history of Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. Based upon contentious politics literature, this article traces two causal dynamics that have enabled communal violence as a new challenge in the recent history of Turkey’s Kurdish conflict: racialization and countermobilization. While racialization has already been underlined in the literature on the Kurdish conflict, I will argue, however, that a new analytical mechanism that is somewhat neglected in the literature, countermobilization, plays a crucial role in the onset and diffusion of communal violence, especially during high-intensity electoral competitions.