ABSTRACT
The EU’s interests in Turkey’s Kurdish question are driven first and foremost by Turkey’s geostrategic importance. Turkey has always been pivotal to European security interests, both during the Cold War, when it stood as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism; and thereafter, as it lies as a potential beacon of westernized democracy, peace and stability in the midst of the turbulent Middle East and Eurasia. As such, EU actors have had a long-standing interest in Turkey’s democracy and human rights, its internal stability and its foreign policy orientation, i.e. all issues which have been influenced by the Kurdish question. The EU’s specific concern with Turkey’s Kurds has also been fed by the Kurdish Diaspora in Europe, which since the 1990s has activated itself to put the Kurdish question on the European agenda. Fears of rising Kurdish and Turkish immigration further magnified EU interests in a peaceful stabilization of the Kurdish question. Finally and most recently, EU interests have resurfaced with the resumption of PKK violence in Turkey, the war in Iraq, the demography and status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and the role of the Iraqi Kurds in the survival or dissolution of the country.
