ABSTRACT
The Kurdish issue has been a problem for the Turkish Republic since its founding in the 1920s. 1 With the onset of the Syrian conflict, that problem, from Ankara’s perspective, has taken on a new dynamic and become larger and more complex, because the Syrian Kurds have emerged as an important new actor. This has sounded alarm bells in Ankara about the establishment of an independent Kurdish state on Turkey’s southern border. Meanwhile, the collapse of the peace process between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has sparked an upsurge of violence and a resumption of attacks against Turkish security forces that pose a serious threat to Turkey’s security, and to regional stability more broadly. Meanwhile, the military success of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has sparked a major debate between Turkey and its Western allies, particularly the United States, over what should be given the highest priority: the defeat of ISIS, or the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
