SEPARATIST TERRORISM AND THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN SOUTH-EASTERN TURKEY

DERİN GÜRE P.

DEFENCE AND PEACE ECONOMICS, vol.22, no.4, pp.393-407, 2011 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 22 Issue: 4
  • Publication Date: 2011
  • Doi Number: 10.1080/10242694.2010.491727
  • Journal Name: DEFENCE AND PEACE ECONOMICS
  • Journal Indexes: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.393-407
  • Keywords: Economics of terrorism, Count data, Separatist terrorism, SERIES
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

This paper investigates the economic roots of separatist terrorism in Turkey. The political conventional wisdom is that poverty in highly Kurdish-populated, south-eastern Turkey is one of the most important causes of separatist terrorism and Turkish-Kurdish conflict in Turkey. Therefore, many economic policies have been implemented to improve the economic conditions in the south-eastern part of the country. Using the Global Terrorism Database and Vector Autoregression (VAR) methodology, I find that there is no causal relationship between economic conditions in southeastern Turkey and separatist terrorism. Therefore policy-makers should be cautious in using economic measures to prevent separatist terrorism in Turkey.