This paper assesses the evolution of political demands by the Kurdish community of Turkey from secession to devolution in the context of the most recent negotiations between the Turkish state and Kurdish leaders. "Democratic confederalism" is a novel institutional design proposal that has emerged out of new political experimentation in Kurdistan spanning from Turkey to Syria. Assessing the potential of this innovative approach to decentralization and territorial autonomy requires both an examination of the history from which the proposal emerges and the technical experiments with implementing it under Kurdish rule. The paper begins by offering some background on the context out of which demands for decentralization amongst the Kurdish community in Turkey. Next the paper offers a close reading of the so-called reconciliation process in Turkey between 2009 and 2015 and its impact on Kurdish leaders’ views on devolutionary modalities for greater autonomy. In the third section, the paper engages with published manifestos and political tracts detailing the theory of democratic confederalism that has emerged over the last decade largely in the political writings of Ocalan and his followers. The final section of the paper considers from the perspective of the comparative literature on federalism and devolution innovative approaches to decentralization as a form of self-determination that have been generated by the political experimentation on the ground related to the concept of democratic confederalism.

This paper aims at understanding the hybrid transformation of an armed ethno-political movement which moderated in ideology but not in tactics: The pro-Kurdish movement in Turkey is institutionalized both in the form of a political party and a guerilla organization, yet it went through a paramount ideological transformation from the early 1990s to present. This paper divides this transformation process into three phases: First, during the period of 1991-2000, the movement was a hard-core guardian of separatism with an exclusivist focus on Kurdish nationalism. Second, during the period of 2000-2013, the movement moderated its ideological stance, moving from separatism to regionalism and yet continued to emphasize the narrow and unpopular appeal of Kurdish identity-politics. Third, since 2013 until now, it started campaigning as a democratic socialist party with an aspiration to end religious, gender and ethnic discrimination in Turkey. Despite this ideological moderation, though, the movement did not cease to abandon its violent tactics and the guerilla organization associated with the party continued insurgency. Relying on interview evidence conducted with the pro-Kurdish party activists in the summer of 2018, this paper argues that this hybrid transformation is closely associated with the state policies which changed the form of excluding Kurds from politics over time but not the exclusion itself.

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.