ABSTRACT
This chapter provides explanatory International Relation's (IR) representation, frameworks and concepts of ethnic conflict by employing a constitutive theory-grounded approach. It demonstrates that neither instrumentalism nor ethnicity as the independent variable, on their own, comprehensively explain the motives and behaviour of the actors determining the relations between the Iraqi Kurdish ethno-nationalist parties, Kurdish Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan. The chapter shows the historical excursus that Kurds in Iraq and Turkey are defined by their relations and boundaries towards different constitutive others – the Kemalist and Ba'athist regimes in Ankara and Baghdad respectively – and followed a completely different trajectory in their processes of becoming and being nationalist. It offers a solid and comprehensive deconstruction of the epistemologies, ontologies, models, frameworks and methodologies of explanatory IR's approach to ethnic conflict and state sovereignty at the theoretical and empirical level.
