How Much Does the Compellence Theory Explain?

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the case of Turkey against the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party; PKK) in 1984–1999, which involves a democracy conducting a counterinsurgency campaign on its own territory against its own populace. Elite accommodation in Turkey took the form of government support for the great Kurdish landowners of the southeast, providing impunity for illegal smuggling and other accommodations in exchange for the provision of organized violence, controlling civilians to cut the flow of resources to the insurgency. The militia and military campaigns cleared vast areas of the region of their inhabitants. Indeed, the campaign defeated the PKK threat militarily. It captured and imprisoned its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, with U.S. assistance, and the insurgency withered. It was the structural change of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that created the opportunity for remnants of the PKK to regroup and reopen their campaign from northern Iraq, as well as within Turkey. Ultimately, Turkey shows the external validity of the compellence theory because it is considered a particularly brutal campaign and thus should bear little similarity to successful campaigns conducted by democratic great powers and lauded as models if the governance approach explains counterinsurgency success.