The role of soft-line governmental policy interventions towards terrorist organizations during democratization period: A comparative case study between the PKK and ETA

In Today’s world, we have been witnessed several terrorist events originating from ethnic conflicts. Millions of people have been killed and displaced because of violent ethnic conflicts. In order to deal with ethnic violence, countries employ various policy interventions from hard-line to soft-line. Turkey and Spain have both suffered at hands of ethnically motivated terrorist organizations, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since 1984 and the Basque Homeland and Independence (ETA) respectively. Terrorist attacks undoubtedly occupied a significant proportion of both countries domestic and foreign political agenda. Thus, Turkey and Spain have implemented diversified policies, including hard-line, soft-line and mixed methods against the PKK and ETA.;The main purpose of this dissertation was to examine the relationship between soft-line governmental policy interventions and the responses of the terrorist organizations by specifically focusing on the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) in Turkey and ETA (Euskadi Ta Alkatasuna) in Spain during the democratization period of each country. The democratic transition periods for each state (between 1975 and 1990 for Spain, and 1995 and 2010 for Turkey) were analyzed in the study. Therefore, I attempted to seek the answer to the question 'what is the impact of soft-line Spanish and Turkish governmental policies on the level of PKK and ETA-initiated violence?'. In order to measure the effectiveness of these policies, time series analysis was used in this study. This study also aimed to investigate the short-run and long-run impact of governmental policy interventions on the terrorist tactics and activities. To accomplish this purpose and address the problem, descriptive statistic, Negative binomial and VAR (Vector Auto Regression) analyses were deployed in this study.;Based on these analyses, I found that Spanish and Turkish soft-line policies had statistically significant and positive impacts on the level of PKK and ETA-inflicted violence during the democratization period of each country, rather than decreasing or neutral impacts. Moreover, I also found that democratization process of Spain and Turkey increased the level of violence in the short run, however, in the long run, the level of violence considerably reduced. Secondly, I examined the attack strategies of the PKK and ETA during the time period observed in this study. I found that both the PKK and ETA mainly targeted civilians rather than the military and government officials, and both terrorist organization aimed more deadly attacks against the governments by using bombing method in a small number of incidents.;Three analyses employed in this dissertation revealed that when the country continued to implement its soft-line policies targeting the ethnic grievances, and reached the status of a well-established democracy, the level of violence considerably decreased in the long run since public support for the terrorist organizations was eliminated thanks to those governmental policies.