The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: Limits of European Union Reform

In: South European society & politics, Band 16, Heft 2, S. 335-349

Abstract

The first half of the 2000s was characterised by unprecedented political reform in Turkey encouraged by the prospects of EU membership. These reforms helped to improve the quality of democracy as well as the cultural rights of the Kurdish minority in the country. Yet, the Kurdish problem remains far from being resolved. The paper argues that it is, at least partly, the European Union that bears responsibility for the failure of the government's Kurdish "opening", which, when launched in the summer of 2009, had aspired to solve the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Adapted from the source document.