From Advocacy to Service Delivery: Changing Role of the Civil Society in Turkey’s Kurdish Question.

Research in different stages of conflict suggests that civil society plays a wide range of peacebuilding roles. It also suggests that the failure of certain functions at these stages prevents conflict resolution and transformation. These studies also point out for the increasing role played by different actors as well as the need for coordination among them. This paper aims to study the issues that come into play in every stage of the Kurdish conflict and analyzes the changing role of civil society in the peacebuilding processes on the basis of a joint analytical framework and a number of research hypotheses developed by Paffenholz and Spurk. The paper will first identify the country and conflict context, discuss the status of civil society actors working on the issue, and lastly analyze the role of the civil society actors in the peace processes. The data for the paper are drawn from the author’s fieldwork in the southeastern Anatolia where the armed conflict take place as well as in Istanbul and Ankara where most civil society actors function. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]