The demand for recognition and accommodation of Kurdish nationalist political aspirations in Turkey is a pressing challenge for Turkey's ruling AK Party. Prior to the 2007 elections, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party government seemed ready to concede to some of these demands. After the headscarf debacle of 2008, the AK Party policy regarding these Kurdish demands has swung back to a less accommodating one. Within this context, I will compare the AK Party performance in the March 2009 by-election with the DTP, its most significant competition for the Kurdish vote. I will compare the performance of these two parties to see how voting patterns differ. Among the many factors that may affect voter party preference, I will focus on how the AK Party, with its stress on patronage politics, performed during the economic expansion year of 2007 and the recession of 2009. I will also analyze the DTP performance as its stress on ethnic politics has been increasingly radicalized from 2007 to 2009. In this dynamics mix of the pull of economic slowdown, which curtails patronage, and the push of increased demand for ethnic based politics by an increasingly more educated and youthful population, the AK Party government faces one of its most difficult challenges. The AK Party to date, while making certain concessions, such as broadcasting in Kurdish, has been unable to deal with the demands of Kurdish nationalism. It has sought to substitute economic development for political development. As long as the AK Party continues to believe that these two factors are fungible, the AK Party government will not be able to manage the challenge of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey successfully.