Representation of ethnic interests has important implications for democratization, minority rights, and conflict resolution. A conventional argument posits that democratization and increased representation will ease ethnic conflict. Kurdish political parties have been active and ethnic representation channels remained open in Turkey since 1990s. This presents a puzzling case, because ethnic violence has not eased despite increased political representation in the Kurdish conflict. To provide an answer to this puzzle, the study asks two related questions: Does ethnic representation reduce violent conflict? How does prolonged ethnic conflict affect ethnic representation? Thorough analysis of parliamentary questions, parliamentary texts, newspaper coverage, and background characteristics of members of Turkish Grand National Assembly during different episodes of ethnic conflict in Turkey, the authors explore how descriptive and substantive ethnic representation interacts with the violent conflict during the 1983-2011 period. The authors provide an empirical assessment of these rich data to test several hypotheses about the two-way relationships between ethnic violence and representation. The preliminary results show interesting synergies between different modes of representation (descriptive and substantive) and ethnic conflict. First, descriptive representation does not necessarily increase or decrease ethnic violence to the extent that the data reveals a weak association between the number of Kurdish representatives and the trends of conflict. The content analysis of parliamentary questions, speeches, and newspaper coverage, however, shows that when Kurdish representatives engage in substantive representation by pursing social and economic demands of their constituency in the parliament, ethnic violence becomes less prevalent.