The Spillover Effect of the Syrian Crisis on the Peace Process in Turkey

Introduction

The Kurdish question in Turkey continues to be one of the most complicated issues in the history of the Republic and still calls for a political solution despite the continued and intense armed struggle. Following almost a century-long denial and suppression of Kurdish identity, the peace process between the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Worker Party (Partiye Karkeren Kurdsitan or PKK) and Turkey raised hopes for a peaceful and political solution (Dag, 2017: 22–36). Thanks to the peace process, securitization of the Kurdish question turned, at least during the peace process, into a part of the democratization process and socio-political perspectives dominated Turkey’s policy towards the Kurdish question. The gradual resumption of the armed struggle between the PKK and Turkey immediately following the 7 June 2015 general election degraded the political atmosphere and the subsequent killing of two police officers at their home in Ceylanpinar (sub-district of Sanliurfa Province) by the PKK-affiliated militant group Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (Tevgeraya Azadiye Kurdistan or ‘TAK’) effectively removed any hope for the continuation of the peace process. Since that incident, the question as to why the process failed has dominated the political and academic discourse.

A range of studies, associated with the ‘Kurdish Opening’ ¹ in 2009, is dedicated to answering the above question. Relying on the given cultural rights of the Kurds and the acceptance of Kurdish rights (not legally but discursively) softened the question pertaining to the deployment of rigid security measures. From this perspective, through an analysis of elite discourses focused on Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms, Al argues that the Kurdish question has been moderated since the early years of the republic to the present (Al, 2015: 94–112). Thus, he suggests there is a positive inclination to solve the Kurdish question from a historical perspective. Pusane (2014) emphasized the lack of central leadership on both sides (Turkey and the PKK) as a reason of failure of the ‘Kurdish Opening’ in 2009. In particular, Qandil, ² Abdullah Öcalan, TAK (Teyrbazen Azadiya Kurdistan-Kurdistan Freedom Falcons) and KCK (Koma Civakên Kurdistan – the Union of Communities in Kurdistan), pro-Kurdish political parties on the one hand, and opposition political parties, AK Party governments and Turkish Armed Forces on the hand, are used to show the divided power foci on both sides (Pusane, 2014: 81–99). Kardas and Balci (2016) utilized Paul Roe’s security dilemma as a theoretical background and adjusted the theory to explain why the Kurdish Opening failed. The adjustment conceived a concept of security trilemma amongst Islamists (AK Party governments), state party (bureaucracy and opposition parties) and nationalist Kurds (BDP, PKK, KCK). Their research argues that identity and security perceptions were driving forces of failure of the Kurdish Opening in 2009 and would also be for future initiations (Kardas and Balci, 2009: 155–180).

Furthermore, Çiçek suggests there is an inherited democracy deficit in terms of institutions and mentality and that is why AK Party governments were not able to solve the Kurdish question in legal and political terms (Çiçek, 2011: 15–26). Aydinli and Ozcan (2011), in their explanation as to why the Kurdish Opening in 2009 failed, emphasized simultaneously the employment of both conflict resolution and counterterrorism theories which led to a successful result in solving the Kurdish question. They essentially suggest that conflict resolution, turning the conflict into a socio-political issue and encouraging dialogue for disarmament and counterterrorism measures to reduce the armed capacity of the PKK, should all be in operation at the same time. They concluded that the Kurdish Opening failed because these two approaches were not the case in 2009 (Aydinli and Ozcan, 2011: 438–457).

The above-mentioned research mostly focuses on the Kurdish or Democratic Opening of 2009. They present a range of reasons for the failure, such as having no trust in each other (Nykänen, 2013: 85–101), the social memory of Kurds regarding the denial and suppression of Kurdish identity (Gourlay, 2017), an ontological power struggle over the Kurdish region or electoral politics (Geri, 2017), a lack of democratic understanding and not applying conflict resolution and counterterrorism strategies at the same time. At that time, the Syrian crisis had not yet erupted so none of the above research included it.

There is no easy way to challenge these studies because each focuses on a different aspect of the peace process or focuses on different actors. They mostly emphasize domestic rather than transnational dynamics such as the Syrian crisis or regional power politics. It is unlikely that the Syrian crisis has not been affected as both main actors of the process have their own agenda regarding the ongoing conflict in Syria. In this respect, there is a transnational dimension to the peace process which has to be taken into account. This is where the ‘spillover effect’ that simply means disseminating an insurgency in a state into a neighbouring state comes into play and provides an explanatory account with regards to the question of how the Syrian crisis affected the peace process in Turkey.

When it comes to the Kurds in the Middle East, it is better for grasping the spillover effect as their relationship and interactions did not cease even after the nation-state borders were set. In other words, political borders among the adjacent nation-states were able to cut all tribal, kin and trade relations that had historically transcended borders. In this regard, it would be wrong to claim that the spillover effect is limited to the Syrian crisis and thus the historical context should be explored in order to achieve a better comprehension.

Historical context of Kurdish questions in Turkey and Syria

When the First World War reshaped the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds were unable to form their own nation-state, either because of lack of human and economic resources or of international power politics, and were dispersed among four adjacent nation-states: Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. These newly emerged states were committed to forming and developing a nation-state with secular and ethnic-oriented social and political structures. During the process of the nationalization of language, culture, history and economy, distinct ethnic and religious identities were excluded from social and political arenas, which resulted in the Kurds reacting against the ruling elites of the four respective nation-states (Cleveland and Bunton, 2009: 171).

The Simko rebellion and the Mahabad Republic of Kurdistan in Iran, Sheikh Said, Dersim and Ararat insurgencies in Turkey, Barzanji Revolts in Iraq and Kurdish cultural movements in mandated Syria are all examples of the reactions of Kurds towards the nation-state structure between the First and the Second World Wars (Romano and Gurses, 2014: 5). All these insurgencies were suppressed for the sake of the consolidation of the nation-state structure. In cases of oppression by any of these four nation-states, leading Kurdish figures fled across borders and found sanctuary in another. For instance, members of Xoybun (a pro-Kurdish organization), such as Jaladat Badirkhan and Memduh Selim, escaped from persecution in Turkey and settled in the Syrian Kurdish enclave and later organized the Ararat revolt in 1927 against the Kemalist regime of Turkey (Tejel, 2009: 17–23). Following the failure in Ararat, pro-Kurdish members of Xoybun concerned themselves with the cultural affairs of the Kurdish language and literature in Syria. In addition, during and after the Second World War, Molla Mustafa Barzani was forced to emigrate from Iraqi Kurdistan to Iranian Kurdistan and then was granted an official position in the Mahabad Kurdistan Republic formed by Qazi Muhammed in 1945. Another Iraqi Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani secured his presence in Syria when he escaped from the Iraqi government’s oppression of the Kurds. Loose border controls and mountainous terrain facilitated these movements of personnel.

As mentioned above, the Kurds in Syria and Turkey were the main obstacles to the formation of nationalist and secular state structures. The principle methods used to eliminate this ‘obstacle’ involved changing demography, the banning of the Kurdish language, denying the existence of different ethnic identities and the dismantling of tribal and religious groups (Yildiz, 2005). In the single-party era of Turkey, secret reports on how to end the Kurdish question suggested the forced migration of Kurdish families to where they would be a minority and therefore likely to be assimilated (Yayman, 2011). In the Syrian case, when the Baath Party took power and subtly established its authority in Kurdish areas, Lieutenant Mohamed Talab Hilal’s study on the Kurds in Jazire in 1963 suggested a solution involving dispersing Kurds to where Arabs were the majority and moving Arabs to where Kurds had been removed. This report was not officially recognized but it was the case in Syria because some Arab tribes were given lands taken from Kurds and were assisted in establishing farms (Vanly, 2005: 120). This policy is known as the ‘Arab Belt’ and it prevented Kurds becoming majorities in certain enclaves.

The most prominent and influential political party of the Kurds, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), was established in Iraq in 1946, led by Molla Mustafa Barzani, Jelal Talabani and Ibrahim Ahmed. Their struggle against Arab nationalism affected all Kurds in other nation-states, and in the 1960s their party managed to form branches in Turkey and Syria (Anderson and Stansfield, 2005: 164). All branches of the KDP raised awareness of the distinctive nature of the Kurdish ethnic identity, the Kurdish language and their social and political rights together with the underdevelopment of the Kurdish regions. These grievances paved the way for an organizational development of Kurdish groups in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Encountering authoritative Turkish and Arab nationalism, pro-Kurdish legal and illegal organizations were regarded as ‘Trojan horses’ within the dominant nationalist systems.

This is especially true in Syria, because when Syria and Nasser’s Egypt combined to form the United Arab Republic (UAR), the KDP in Syria was under considerable scrutiny and its founders were arrested and their offices were closed in 1960. Rising nationalist sentiment in Iraq caused severe reactions to Molla Mustafa Barzani’s insurgency in 1961, which called for autonomy for the Kurds. Following that, some Iraqi Kurds were forced to immigrate to Syria where they were similarly treated with suspicion by the Iraqi government. The subsequent rise in the numbers of Kurdish activists in Syria who had migrated from Turkey and Iraq alarmed the Syrian government and a hasty census was conducted in 1962. Syrian officers went from door-to-door asking for proof of residency in order for Syrian citizenship to be acknowledged. As most of the Kurds were working as farmers for aghas and sheik landlords, they did not have their own title deeds, and therefore the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Kurds was effectively revoked. They became ‘aliens’ (ajanib) overnight and those who did not comply with the census were deemed ‘unregistered’ (maktumin). According to the Syrian government, a fundamental reason why the Syrian government took such an action was because most of the Kurds living in Syria were not deemed to actually be Syrian Kurds but were seen to have illegally come to Syria from Turkey and Iraq. Under these conditions those who fell into these two categories were deprived of their basic rights (Tejel, 2009: 49–52).

In the case of Turkey, citizenship was not denied but Kurdish identity was attacked. It might not be a fair comparison but the socio-political conditions of the Kurds in Turkey, relatively speaking, has been better than the experience of the Kurds in Syria. Kurds were called ‘mountain Turks’ and those ethnically Kurdish did not assume their socio-political status as Kurds but instead masked their identity as Turks. It can be said that Kurds have been able to benefit from the basic rights of Turkish citizenship if they disguised their ethnic identity. From this perspective, demanding official or constitutional recognition of Kurdish ethnic identity has been a common objective of all pro-Kurdish legal and illegal groups in the four adjacent states relevant to the issue.

The ultimate aims of pro-Kurdish organizations have ranged from recognition of cultural rights at national level to the establishment of a separate Kurdish state at regional level. Thus, their struggles have evolved from national level, to regional and then international level. The competition between the Baath parties in Syria and Iraq, water disputes between Turkey and Syria, the Iran–Iraq War and the recent Syrian crisis are examples of using Kurds as leverage against each other at regional level. The leftist character of Kurdish groups in the 1970s, the Gulf crisis, human rights violations by Turkey against Kurds with respect to the conditional terms of membership the EU, the US’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 and again the recent Syrian crisis in which Russia backed the Assad regime while the US implemented a proxy war through the PYD/PKK are just several cases in which the Kurdish question has been internationalized.

Returning to the main focus of this paper, Kurds remained in the borders of Syrian and Turkish nation-states were used against each other at regional level. The Syrian Baath regime covertly invited all illegal leftist organizations to Syria as a response to Turkey’s massive irrigation project, the Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi (Southeastern Anatolia Project, or ‘GAP’), which would likely result in a water shortage for the Tigris and Euphrates rivers since the building of dozens of dams was planned. Hafiz Assad, then president of Syria, provided logistic and military support to the PKK, Dev-Genc and Dev Sol, which set up their training camps and headquarters first at the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and then in Damascus, overlooked the militants crossing the border and launched attacks in Turkey (Tejel, 2009: 75–79).

Syria also provided a safe haven for Abdullah Öcalan who relocated from Turkey to Syria in 1979 and stayed there until Syria extradited him in 1998 as a result of political pressure from Turkey. The strategic alliance of the Assad regime with the PKK against Turkey even caused allowance of pro-PKK figures to take seats in the Syrian parliament as independent candidates in the 1990s. Their strategic alliance was broken when high-ranking militants of the PKK were handed over to Turkey following the extradition of Abdullah Öcalan.

As a response, the PYD was formed in 2003 as a Syrian extension of the PKK. It did not adopt a regime-friendly position since the PYD resumed anti-regime protests which had not happened previously. The PYD was the one of the pro-Kurdish groups that attempted to enlarge and popularize Kurdish masses during and following the Qamishlo events ³ (Schøtt, 2017: 13).

While the PKK was fighting against Turkey initially for an independent Kurdish state, it did not have any socio-political forethought for Syrian Kurds. Despite the substantial citizenship issue of the Kurds in Syria, Abdullah Öcalan himself recognized Syria’s official argument that ‘Syria had no Kurds of its own and those living there were refugees from Turkey’ (Tejel, 2009: 78).

The historical root of the strategic alliance between the PKK and the Syrian regime was assured when the Syrian crisis erupted in 2011. While the other pro-Kurdish groups were in favour of a Syrian revolution, the PYD neither joined any oppositional groups nor fought against the Assad regime. Its status as one of the weakest pro-Kurdish groups following the imprisonment of many of its members in Syria was suddenly reversed as the PYD became powerful via logistic, military and human resources provided by the Assad regime. Following the withdrawal of Assad’s forces, the PYD/PKK militarily suppressed competing pro-Kurdish groups and took control of Kurdish cities in northern Syria from 2011 to 2014 (Savelsberg, 2014: 93–102).

The historical context of the Kurdish question not only in Turkey and Syria but also in Iraq and Iran clearly indicates that there has always been an interaction with nationalist sentiments since the First World War. Both the PKK and KDP have expanded their influence and have transnational features connecting their sympathizers and militants. This aspect of the Kurdish issue proves that the spillover effect has been in progress for a very long time.

Recent developments in the cases of the PKK/KCK in Turkey and PYD/YPG in Syria in the early years of the second decade of the 21st century appear to be moving in the opposite direction because the PKK/KCK was in the middle of a peace process whereas the PYD/YPG was in the middle of a violent conflict in the early years of 2010s. Under historical circumstances, differentiating cases and taking them individually appear to be impossible as any single event relating to the Kurds in a state appears to affect others simultaneously. Thus, the peace process between Turkey and the PKK and PYD/YPG’s position in the Syrian crisis cannot be analysed separately. Yet, a theoretical explanation is still required to make sense of historical relations between the Kurds in Syria and the Kurds in Turkey. The spillover effect theory is employed in order to facilitate such understanding.

Theoretical framework: spillover effect of insurgencies

Since the First World War, a nation-state structure has become embedded in world politics. Most of the newly emerged states in the Middle East took the path of a centralized nation-state structure which was designed in accordance with identity-based social fabrics (Wimmer and Feinstain, 2010). These identities were mostly ethnic identities. Yet, not all the states had a homogenous society; most had ethnic minorities in their territorial borders. There have been attempts to resolve this issue through citizenship but this did not lead to satisfactory results in many cases. As a result, national liberation movements, ethnic minorities, religious groups, and sectarian or ideological differences have sporadically caused insurgencies and conflicts.

To date there has emerged a substantial literature in the field of diffusion of insurgencies into neighbouring areas. The research has presented distinctive factors affecting the diffusion of conflicts. The basic argument is that if there is a conflict in a state, it is most likely that the conflict will spill over to adjacent states. Most of the research on insurgency and civil war uses empirical analyses which are based on the data from specific conflicts, or regions or look at the issue from a global perspective (Bosker and de Ree, 2014; Gurses, 2015).

One prominent scholar of insurgency studies has stated that “[s]patial proximity increases the opportunity for conflictual and cooperative interactions between states as well as the willingness of leaders to engage in particular types of behaviour” (Gleditsch, 2007: 295). In other words, both good and bad economic and political relations are prone to occur among neighbouring states. This argument is also valid for conflicts and the risk of a conflict emerging in one state increases if a neighbouring country is experiencing conflict (Salehyan and Gleditsch, 2006). A substantial body of literature proves that there is a spillover effect of armed conflicts or insurgencies but they differ from each other in terms of instruments that create or facilitate the spillover process itself.

While Gleditsch (2007) suggests that transnational ethnic, economic and political linkages increase the potential of a conflict diffusing to a neighbouring state, Carmignani and Kler (2017) argue that the type of war in terms of intensity and scope, the quality of domestic polity in terms of having democratic institutions, and interaction opportunities in terms of ethnic ties and refugee flows can be key to explaining when and where civil wars will spill over. Carmignani and Kler conclude their work by stating that ‘a country with a warring neighbour is effectively exposed to contagion, particularly if their populations are ethnically tied and large refugee flows transit across (land) borders’ (Carmignani and Kler, 2017: 284). By the same token, refugees are considered to be significant by-products of internal conflicts and also a factor that encourages spillover effects. Trumbore’s (2003) approach to the refugees is interesting. He theorizes that refugees, whether they are victims or aggressors, are a catalyser of risk in terms of insurgency diffusion. To Salehyan and Gleditsch, refugees do not generally engage or participate in an armed conflict but their influx from a conflict origin state to neighbouring countries creates a natural channel through which there can be a ‘transnational spread of arms, combatants and ideologies’ (2006: 335). Providing cases from Palestine, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Ethiopia and empirical analysis based on these cases, Salehyan and Gleditsch prove that refugees can carry the issues causing conflict with them to their destination. In the case of domestic conflict, certain ethnic identities can be exposed to political and armed conflict as victims and then these identities can form a reason or rationale for external state intervention if there is a shared ethnic origin (Trumbore, 2003: 185–190). As a result, an ethno-political rebellion in one country might trigger the external intervention of a state which has a co-ethnic identity with the ethnic minorities in the origin country.

Geography is another aspect of the spillover effect. In their empirical analysis of conflict in space and time, Weidmann and Ward (2010) identified the border locations of municipalities in Bosnia as variables and were able to predict the location of the next conflict. At the same time, rough terrain, forested areas for hiding and cross-border infiltration, distance from the centre and available roads to the nests of insurgency are all relevant geographic aspects of the spillover effect (Dyrstad et al., 2011: 369; Fearon and Laitin, 2003: 80; Salehyan, 2007: 219). Moreover, Forsberg (2008) focuses on the idea that ethnic polarization in a society favours internal and then cross-border conflicts. She suggests that ethnically polarized states are more vulnerable to contagion from neighbouring states and that relative group strength is a key factor in enabling the initiation of armed conflict against central governments (2008: 297).

By focusing on the period from 1945 to 1999 and collecting relevant data from certain databases, Fearon and Laitin conducted empirical analyses with the multivariables per capita income, ethnic and religious composition, ethnic war, democracy and civil liberties, linguistic and religious discrimination, inequality, political instability, population, natural and human resources and foreign support. The research suggested that the risk of experiencing a civil war or insurgency might be due to numerous factors facilitating its onset. Fearon and Laitin suggest that insurgencies, civil wars or internal conflicts are not confined only to religiously and ethnically diverse states. They actually depend on factors facilitating the process of conflict development, such as poverty stemming from economic weakness, the ease of militant recruitment, political instability, rough terrain and having a large population (2003: 75).

Collier and Hoeffler’s work explains the different aspects of insurgency diffusions. They emphasize greed and grievances as reasons for internal and regional conflict but they instrumentalize all aspects (2004: 576–79) as variables because they present them as opportunity structures facilitating the outbreak of an insurgency.

Rather than taking an approach that covers vast time periods and attempting to draw conclusions from multiple conflicts within long time periods, there are several works that focus on single cases or specific regional conflicts. For instance, Koktsidis (2014), while analysing how the Kosovo war re-surfaced political grievances of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, argues that opportunity structures such as uncontrolled borders, political instability of minority affairs and the influx of refugees changing or enlarging demographic composition turned political grievances of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia into an armed conflict. In addition, financial and organizational resources transmitted from ethnic nationalist groups in Kosovo via refugees, encouraged Albanians in Macedonia to demand greater political rights through an armed struggle against the central government of Macedonia (Liotta, 2003). By disaggregating factors leading to internal conflict and spill over into neighbouring states, Liberia et al. (2009) employed factors of distance to capital, national borders, population density, diamond deposits, political instability and ethnic affiliations in their study. They discovered that ‘rebel groups tended to recruit from the same, relatively wealthy regions’ and ‘aggrieved and greedy rebels have an incentive to target the wealthy locations where hostilities will pay off’ (2009: 619–20).

In the post-Soviet era, Central Asia and the Northern Caucasus also experienced internal conflicts. Cross-border ethnic, religious and tribal collective identities encouraged the deterioration of state sovereignty in rural areas, especially on the Afghan and Pakistani borders. The culminations of these variables were taken into account by Meirav Mishali-Ram (2011) when investigating how civil strife developed transnational features and how Islamist insurgencies spilled over into other regions. Toft and Zhukov (2012) studied the effectiveness of ‘denial insurgency’ and the punishment of insurgents while O’Loughlin and Witmer (2011) published a study focused on Chechnya where ethnically clustered and forested areas were demonstrated to be more prone to internal conflicts and to be the source from which conflict can spread elsewhere.

Much of the recent research dealing with the latest peace processes includes the Syrian crisis in their analysis using different theories. One of the most recent studies by Dal, not totally deals with the peace process but focuses on the conflict spillover effects of the Syrian civil war into Turkey through the cases of the PYD/YPG ⁴ and ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Damascus). In summary, it first analyses whether the spillover effect is intentional or unintentional and then looks at how ISIS and PYD/YPG diffused into neighbouring countries and accelerated transnationally (Dal, 2016: 1396–1420). Another study, by Weiss (2016), suggests a re-securitization of the Kurdish question because of three aspects: (i) the deteriorating EU accession process; (ii) electoral competition between the AK Party and pro-Kurdish political parties (BDP and then HDP), ⁵ and (iii) the spillover effects of Syria’s civil war. According to Weiss, these three factors led to Turkey taking a re-securitization stance towards the PKK/KCK and PYD/YPG and eventually brought about the failure of the peace process (Weiss, 2016: 567–598). Ünal’s article on the recent peace process between 2013 and 2015 in Turkey offers distinctive insights by utilizing Zartman’s theory of ‘ripeness’ as a part of conflict resolution theory (Zartman, 2016: 253–272). He asserted that the reason why Turkey and the PKK entered negotiations was because they arrived at a mutually damaging stalemate. In the same token, due to the fact that they regarded the Syrian crisis as a means of breaking this stalemate, the peace process negotiations ended (Ünal, 2016: 91–125). In parallel, in 2013, Tezcur argues that the Syrian crisis created the conditions for the PKK to establish armed forces in the four adjacent nation-states and each of them acts as a safe haven for the others. So it appears that there was no stalemate when the peace process was initiated in 2013 and that there will not be in the near future (Tezcur, 2013: 69–84).

Lawson’s article concerning the diffusion of ethnic civil wars in one state into adjacent states specifies how the Syrian Kurdish uprising influenced the Kurds in Turkey and focuses on the relations between the peace process in Turkey and the Syrian crisis (Lawson, 2016: 478–496). His paper systematically dismantles the ethnic civil war literature and provides significant arguments to further the comprehension of how ethnic conflicts spread from one state to another. He summarizes the way ethnic conflicts in one country spread into the neighbouring country as follows; (a) when demonstrations are taken as an example, (b) when a neighbouring state contains a certain percentage of a co-ethnic community and they live clustered in a region, (c) when the neighbouring state is poor, (d) when adjacent states are non-democratic or autocratic, (e) when there is a fear of what was happening to individuals’ co-ethnic kinships in one country would lead to an exodus to their own country and (f) when adjacent states do not have sufficient enough state authority to maintain social and political order.

Point (b) above can be considered a core factor of the spillover effect in two ways because the Kurds in Turkey and Syria are both concentrated in certain regions and demonstrate a clustered character. Point (d) can be applied in both cases of Syria and Turkey as the former is autocratic and the latter has shown authoritarian tendencies. Regarding point (a), this factor may also be applicable in both cases. Additionally, points (c), (e) and (f) can be attributed as features of Syria so they can be causes of the insurgency spillover effect from Syria to Turkey. Each consideration seems to clarify in one way or another how Kurdish gains in any of the four adjacent nation-states (Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria) transcend political borders.

All these studies can be key to understanding why the peace initiatives in Turkey failed. Yet, they partially and indirectly include spillover effect theory and their common flaw appears to be the assumption of a ‘spillover effect’ occurring from Syria to Turkey rather than the other way around. First this paper can be considered a qualitative explanation of quantitative results that are available in the extensive literature on the topic. To clarify, the PKK terrorist organization has its own affiliated branches in four adjacent states which are sharing extensive border lines. Their borders are mostly covered with rough terrain such as high mountains, forested areas and deep valleys. This geographic harshness offers advantages to PKK militants in terms of offering a safe haven which is not easy to access by central governments and also facilitates the crossing of borders without detection. The PPK’s known headquarters in the Qandil Mountain region located in between Iran, Iraq and Turkey means the group can organize attacks to any of each state’s security forces and quickly extract from the attacked state’s sovereign territory. In addition, economic and political stability has always been an issue in all the concerned nation-states and as the Syrian crisis worsens on a daily basis and the Iraqi government suffers from ISIS and PKK presence in its own sovereign area. Moreover, in each country, ethnically Kurdish people are clustered in certain geographical space where they constitute a majority. Nonetheless, spatially clustered areas where ethnic Kurds live are principally along state borders. As a result, cross-border interactions have always been common. This includes official trade but also armed smuggling, illegal transpassing, the forming of communication networks and offering opportunities for potential recruitment. In summary, this paper contributes to the literature as a detailed qualitative analysis of empirical findings.

Another contribution this paper can make to the literature is a distinction between philosophical spillover effects from the Kurds in Turkey to the Kurds in Syria and the practical spillover effect from the Kurds in Syria to the Kurds in Turkey. These two aspects will be dealt with in the subsequent sections.

The final contribution of this paper regarding any peace process in the four adjacent relates to the transnational features of the Kurdish question. It is difficult to distinguish events associated with Kurds and the Kurdish question in one country from events in another. As the PKK has its branches in all four adjacent states and also substantial numbers of sympathizers in its diaspora, especially in Europe, all actors involving in a peace process would be wise to consider the idea and the reality of the transnational character of the Kurdish question in mind.

The ‘philosophical spillover effect’ from the PKK/KCK in Turkey to the PYD/YPG in Syria

Since having been captured and imprisoned in 1999, the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, has been deeply influenced by Bookchin (Stanchev, 2016). He formulated the idea of the democratic confederalism. His ideas on a new political philosophy were adopted and coded into a contract by the PKK (Yegen, 2016: 338–365). The spillover effect, in terms of philosophy, originates from the KCK Contract announced by the PKK in 2005. By this contract, the KCK was institutionalized as an umbrella organization encompassing all pro-PKK legal and illegal institutions in the four adjacent nation-states and the Middle East and Europe. ⁶ The KCK is not just a controlling and coordinating centre and in the contract it lays out a political philosophy rejecting nation-states and advocating a self-rule democratic autonomy for each nation in the Middle East, beginning with the Kurds. In the preamble of the contract, the evilness of nation-state structures are stressed since it is this which causes all the problems in the Middle East. The preamble goes on to define democratic confederalism as not a nation-state but a people’s democratic system. Under these circumstances, it can be said that the transnational feature of the PKK has already been formulated and since 2005 had provided a road map for all its affiliated branches.

According to the contract, the KCK executive council is the supreme council for finalizing all matters but, based on a self-ruling strategy, it suggests the establishment of councils starting from street level to regional level (including districts, villages, municipalities, provinces). At each level, these councils would form their judicial courts and legislation. Because the starting point for the decision-making process is from the bottom (streets) to the top (KCK executive council), some might regard this project as radical democracy. Within this kind of radical democracy, the establishment of an economic system together with protection units is prescribed (öz savunma-self-protection).

To crystalize the philosophical spillover effect, Forsberg’s work is rather meaningful, suggesting ethnic kinships can be utilized as transnational transmitters (Forsberg, 2014: 143–165). In this regard, the common ethnic kinship of the PKK/KCK and PYD/YPG and organizational relations (Stein and Foley, 2016) facilitated the political philosophy of the KCK contract being transmitted into the cadres of the PYD/YPG. In this sense, regardless of the socio-political conditions in the neighbouring nation-states, the KCK executive council proposed alternative administrative and political systems for all Kurds and other peoples in the Middle East and a co-ethnic identity fulfilled the function of transmitter over political borders. However, this transmission has been profoundly philosophical diffusing from the centre (KCK) to its affiliates in the neighbouring country. As the PYD/YPG is KCK’s Syrian division (Acun and Keskin, 2016), developments bringing the unilaterally declared Rojava cantons in Syria to light are more likely based on the this philosophy and political theory which ultimately stems from the 2005 contract. When analysed from the perspective of the KCK contract and the Rojava constitution, it is explicit that the same philosophy infuses both. Ranging from the formation of self-protection units to the executive, legislation and judiciary systems from bottom to top, they are almost identical to each other.

Chronologically tracing the political and military steps towards democratic autonomy and then regional confederations can be illustrative of the philosophical spillover. For instance, in Turkey this philosophy has been illegally conducted by the PKK since 2005 through street and local council and people’s courts (Sandıklı, 2011) and legally declared by the DTK (Demoktarik Toplum Kongresi – Democratic Society Congress) in 2011 (Akkaya and Jongerden, 2012: 1–18). In legal terms, the DTK’s then president, Hatip Dicle, stated that democratic autonomy could be a solution to all problems in the Middle East (Al Jazeera, 27 December 2015). The declaration demands that all social services, economic issues and security services are left to the jurisdiction of local councils, which are the basic unit of the KCK contract if not exactly the same.

On the other hand, in Syria, the socio-political conditions have been radically changing since the beginning of protests against the Assad regime. A central authority vacuum created since 2012 has been gradually filled by the PYD/YPG in the northern Syria. As a result, fertile grounds suitable to unilaterally establish PYD/YPG’s own socio-political administration have emerged in accordance with the political philosophy borrowed from the KCK contract. Rojava cantons were unilaterally declared by the PYD consisting of three self-ruling units – Cizire, Afrin and Kobani – in January 2014. They have all formed their local administrative councils dealing with their own issues in terms of judicial courts and legislation. Sheppard (2016), referring to the administrative structure of Rojava cantons, states ‘Power is as decentralized as possible, rising up from village assemblies and communes to the legislative councils and commissions that run the economy, defence, and justice ministries’. Based on this administrative structure, an autonomous federation was, again, unilaterally declared in northern Syria in March 2016 (Al Jazeera, 2016). This chronological picture demonstrates that the initial spillover effect occurred at a philosophical level and transmitted from the Kurds in Turkey to the Kurds in Syria long before the Syrian crisis.

The rationale behind the actions of human beings constitutes philosophy providing a clear pathway in a complicated context. In this regard, what is meant with philosophical spillover is actually a worldview that offers a guidance of what to do in the next step. The philosophical spillover effect is not a totally new concept in the literature because it can be favourably compared with certain variables which are taken into consideration in an empirical analysis. For instance, Weidman’s recent work (2015) adds a new variable in the spillover effect suggesting that communication networks, be they technological or social-level interactions, are increasing the diffusion of ideas and experiences. Given that the PKK’s cadres are full of militants from the four adjacent states, they appear to have assimilated multiple philosophical ideas in order to formulate new ones. In addition, the same process is valid for refugees moving from one nation-state to another and become bearers of a certain understanding or ideology (Salehyan and Gleditsch, 2006: 342).

Offering such an administrative and political structure that supersedes nation-states in the region might be acceptable, but in the 2005 contract there is no single indication as to what instrument PKK/KCK will use to accomplish that. In other words, it is not overtly mentioned whether this project would be operational through negotiations with the nation-states in the Middle East or by fighting with them. This brings up the question of the practical spillover effect, a concept this paper will now turn to. This deals with the means by which PKK/KCK and its branches could reach their final target, which is believed to be democratic autonomy.

The practical spillover effect from the PYD/YPG in Syria to the PKK/KCK in Turkey

‘People may simply start to believe that if it can happen there, why couldn’t it happen here?’ (Bosker and de Ree, 2014: 207).

Within ethnic conflict studies, it is commonly argued that ‘transnational ethnic groups are similar in terms of their shared identity, but they are also often faced with similar structural conditions. Under this condition, groups are likely to make similar choices and generate similar outcomes’ (Forsberg, 2014: 148). If an ethnic group decides to rise up against a central government, co-ethnic groups living in a neighbouring country might decide to act in the same manner, but they may do so without facing the same structural conditions.

The structural conditions in Turkey and Syria that the Kurds have to face have been different. Thus, making the same choices might not give rise to the same results in practical terms as in the case of the PYD/YPG in Syria. These choices made in Syria and Turkey, as will be discussed in the following paragraphs, appear to have been the same in nature but it is apparent that they did not result in the same outcomes. A comparison will be made with three structural conditions, namely, the central authority vacuum, popular support and international legitimacy.

These structural conditions are essentially connected to the variables that most of the spillover effect scholars consider as being key. The central authority vacuum, the initial one, relates to the weak state that, according to Collier and Hoeffler (2004), is one of the key facilitators in the eruption of ethnic conflict or of being vulnerable to conflict diffusion from nearby countries. Popular support, as a second structural condition, resembles the democratic institutions that are critical in meeting demands of ethnic minorities. The last structural condition is somewhat complicated but, again, it can be considered in the category of democratic institutions at international level. This is because, while democratic institutions represent legitimacy at a national level, international legitimacy refers to rightfulness in the eyes of the international community.

Conclusion

As spillover effect literature suggests, ethnic conflicts tend to diffuse from the country of origin to neighbouring countries, especially when the borders of these countries are long and ethnic minorities are clustered on the each side of the border. Relying on the basic assumption of the spillover effect, this paper has argued that the Syrian crisis is one of the major reasons why the peace process in Turkey failed.

This paper classifies the spillover effect into two categories: philosophical and practical. Initially, the diffusion of ideas streamed from Turkey to Syria in terms of the philosophical background of actions. This can be equated with ideological similarities as to how issues are defined and what is offered as a solution. In terms of political philosophy, the KCK’s branches share a common stance. The means by which the PYD/YPG formed its local de facto sovereignty was based on principles that stemmed from the KCK contract. It mainly concerns self-rule of people without a nation-state, which is perceived to be the evil causing all problems in the Middle East. This philosophical spillover effect found an opportunity to transform from ideational to practical level in Syria where the PYD/YPG raised a self-rule revolutionary political entity but not a nation-state in northern Syria. Compared to not having any tangible results for almost four decades of armed conflict in Turkey, the PKK/KCK saw how its sister organization, the PYD/YPG in Syria, put into practice a unilateral ‘de facto’ (as they call it) democratic autonomy. In this regard the PKK/KCK, uncertain as to whether it was intentional or unintentional, followed the same path in Turkey ignoring the structural differences with Syria. That is the exact moment when the practical spillover effect or spreading ethnic civil war from the PYD/YPG in Syria to the PKK/KCK in Turkey began.

Following the military and political gains of the PYD/YPG in Syria, a roadmap presented itself as showing how such local authority within such a short time for the PKK/KCK in Turkey could be achieved. Political and military gains of an ethnic insurgency in one country make its affiliates in a neighbouring country feel invulnerable. This argument is supported by Barkey, as he states ‘the fact is that both the group [PYD/YPG] and its parent organization [PKK/KCK] are in a far better political position than they were at the onset of the crisis’ (Barkey, 2015: 126). Taking the long survival of the PKK/KCK in the region into consideration, the PYD/YPG might feel as powerful and encouraged as its counterpart in Turkey to continue fighting rather than sitting at the negotiation table.

It is this which is called as practical spillover effect with three phases, namely, central authority vacuum, popular support and international legitimacy. However, structural differences between the Syrian and Turkish cases prevented the same result occurring in Turkey. To substantiate the argument of this paper, three structural determinants are set in order to explain the way in which the PYD/YPG established its own democratic autonomy and this process is compared with the practices of the PKK/KCK in Turkey. In this way, the socio-political and military conditions of Syria are not equivalent with the conditions in Turkey. Thus, the philosophical spillover effect has been rather influential but the practical spillover effect appears to have been a great failure.

In summary, the PKK/KCK dreamed of the same ‘de facto’ political and military power in Turkey once they had been inspired by the PYG/YPG’s gains in Syria. Due to the fact that the structural conditions in Syria and Turkey were not the same, the strategy of following the example set by the PYD/YPG clearly did not deliver the same results. That is why the main argument of this paper is that the peace process in Turkey was sacrificed in favour of a unilateral democratic autonomy in Turkey.

Kurdish cases are a fertile ground for detailed qualitative research because they contain practically every aspect of the spillover effect. If the process by which this spillover effect works is formulated, then that would offer a breakthrough in the field and also offer great assistance in seeking a peaceful solution to the issues of the region. This paper solely focuses on the peace process but the literature required further specific studies with regards to the spillover of the Kurdish question in the four adjacent states.