Public Investment as Counterinsurgency: Turkish State Policies in Kurdish Region

• In Event: Subnational Comparative Political Economy

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive historical analysis of the Turkish state's use of public investment as a strategic tool to address Kurdish insurgency within its borders from 1960 to 2020. Despite the significance of public investment as a tool to garner local support and mitigate civil conflict, the literature is notably deficient in establishing a comprehensive link between public investment and civil war. In particular, the examination of this relationship within the context of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey is conspicuously absent. This research aims to bridge this gap by assessing the extent to which governments deploy public investments to win the hearts and minds of the local populace in conflict-ridden regions, shedding light on the underexplored dynamics of this strategic maneuver. Our research combines archival work, policy analysis, and econometric methods to investigate the relationship between public investment and Kurdish insurgency. We examine whether the Turkish state consistently allocated more resources to Kurdish-majority regions, aiming to promote economic development and social integration to resolve the conflict. We trace the evolution of Turkish state policies in response to Kurdish insurgency, focusing on public spending in areas such as infrastructure, education, healthcare, and economic development in Kurdish-majority regions. We also assess the impact of these investments on socio-economic indicators and their role in mitigating the grievances driving the insurgency. We introduce an original dataset of public investment, from Turkish archives, at district level which includes over 25000 documents that we extract via deep learning algorithms. By exploring the historical trends in public investment in Kurdish regions and their connection to insurgency dynamics, we aim to assess the efficacy of economic development policies as counterinsurgency strategies. Moreover, we investigate how the public investments in the Kurdish regions have had an impact of the local Kurds’ attitude towards the rebellion group, PKK.

Author

• Turan Keles