Fieldwork in Turkey

The CST funding granted in 2015 was used for the fieldwork in Turkey. The funding was vital to complete one of my two cases of my dissertation.

The purpose of my research is to analyse the role of political, non-violent resolution attempts to bring ethno-nationalist conflicts to an end. In order to draw an understanding on conflict resolution approaches, the aim was to make a comparison between two major cases: the Northern Ireland and Turkey peace process.

The fieldwork in Turkey has contained semi-structured interviews with representatives of political parties, semi-official peace commissions, political actors who played a role in either unofficial or official peace negotiations. I also interviewed intermediaries and officials who joined secret talks in order to end the Kurdish question of Turkey. The interviews were also conducted with deputies of the major parties in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. During my fieldwork, I conducted twenty-five interviews in Istanbul and Ankara. Interviews in Turkey were the only way to collect the primary data for my research.

The fieldwork was a great chance for me to obtain required data for the Turkish case and to develop my professional contacts in relation to my field thanks to the CST.

Aytac Kadioglu, Doctoral Researcher