ABSTRACT
The roots of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict can be traced back to well before the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. As a result of nation-building efforts in the early republican era, a number of harsh measures were implemented to suppress any kind of dissent against the newly emerging and fragile authority of the state, with the aim of creating a unified nation under one flag from an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically divided country. The Kurdish conflict, often coined as the 'Kurdish Question' in Turkey, can be understood as a constant resistance against the Turkish state's assimilation policies. The Erdogan factor and his expectations from a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish Question has changed over time. Once he realised he could no longer win elections on the basis of making peace with the Kurds, the only realistic option left to him was to go war instead.
