Democratic reforms, the expansion of Kurdish cultural rights and the peace talks with the guerrilla organization PKK were at the heart of the reconciliation policy to transform the Turkish-Kurdish conflict under the AKP government. The conflict transformation seemed very promising when as part of the peace process a joint conflict resolution agenda was announced by representatives of the ruling AKP and the pro-Kurdish HDP. Subsequently the disarmament of the guerrilla organization PKK seemed to be within reach. However, shortly thereafter in July 2015, Turkey and the PKK were back in a state of war with the heaviest fighting since the 1990s. Since then, the AKP government has been reluctant to engage in dialogue and has been seeking a military solution to the conflict. Furthermore the Turkish state is once again fighting political parties and organizations of the Kurdish national movement. Based on fieldwork and interviews conducted in Turkey with civil society, NGOs and representatives of the AKP as well as the HDP this paper seeks to explain the failure of both the peace negotiations and the AKP's reconciliation policy to transform the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. Drawing on political opportunity theory (Tarrow 1998; McAdam et al. 1996; Tilly/Tarrow 2015; Gleditsch/Ruggeri 2010) and on theories of authoritarian rule (Svolik 2012; Pepinsky 2009) this paper argues that due to Iraqi Kurdistan’s strong pulling effect and the increasing institutionalization of the Kurdish national movement in the Middle East, the PKK reached out for its own state at an opportune moment, which caused the AKP to turn away from a policy of reconciliation. Furthermore, due to its changed position on the domestic front, the AKP government has not anymore entered into dialogue for conflict resolution. The paper aims first, to enhance our understanding of the interrelation between AKP‘s (non-)governance of diversity, the peace process and dynamics of national identities in Turkey under conditions of political and social transformations in the Middle East. Second, this paper seeks to offer an insight into the reasons why states abandon political solutions to ethnic conflicts under changing domestic and geopolitical settings.