Forschung
Promotionsprojekt
(Non)Managing Ethnic Conflicts: The United Nations and Türkiye’s Kurds
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Türkiye is a founding member of the UN and has signed and ratified almost all international human rights treaties. The empirical literature on the UN’s involvement in conflicts concerning the Kurdish minority and the Turkish government is scarce to non-existent. This is remarkable given Türkiye’s sharp illiberal turn, the volatilegeographical region and the intractable conflict history. Existing studies on determinants of UN involvement in conflicts have focused on peacekeeping and mediation, overseeing the wider array of conflict management tools. While recent studies tackle this research gap, the case of the Kurds is not in any of these datasets. Importantly, the UN system is complex and there do exist means beyond mandated UN missions to address conflicts. I aim to contribute to this research area by conducting a Grounded Theory analysis and reconstructively assessing how the UN has addressed the Kurdish conflict in Türkiye between 2002 and 2018. Central foci are determinants that have led to certain UN strategies over time and the interaction between UN officials and Turkish representatives amidst regime change in Türkiye.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Helmut Breitmeier
since 2022