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From the EU Project to the Iraq Project and Back Again? Kurds and Turks after the 22 July 2007 Elections

Robert Olson is professor of Middle East politics at the University of Kentucky.

This essay argues that from the first of January 2007 to Turkey.s general elections on 22 July the ruling Justice and Development Party.s (AKP) major focus was on the .Iraq project. rather than the established .EU project.. The Iraq project refers to the challenge of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq represented by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the influence that these two parties could potentially have on the domestic politics of Turkey, especially the challenge from the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas ensconced in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq. The essay concludes that the landslide victory of the AKP allows the government to once again focus its efforts on gaining admittance to the EU and the necessary reforms to achieve that status. The fact that DTP candidates won only twenty parliamentary seats while the AKP won some fifty seats in heavily populated Kurdish regions also somewhat eased AKP concerns of the challenge of Kurdish nationalism within Turkey to the government and the state.