Accession of Turkey to the European Union: The Changing Policy Towards Kurds

This paper aims to investigate the change in Turkey's approach towards the Kurds in the process of its accession to the European Union accession process. Europeanisation of Turkey is one of the most important factors in normalisation of the Kurdish issue by removing it from the security agenda and re-defining Turkish citizenship. It provided new opportunity for groups who are seeking peaceful solutions to the Kurdish conflict, leading to internalisation of Human Rights values and multi-culturalism. To test this hypothesis, we rely on literatures on Europeanisation to investigate EU’s policy on Kurds in the Republic of Turkey and assess the influence of Turkey’s accession process on normalisation of the Kurdish issue given EU’s compulsory, emancipatory, and de-securitisation processes. Normalisation of the Kurdish issue coupled with reduced role of the EU in past few years also suggest possibility of harsh encounter against Kurdish separatists.