Turkish Kurds - a Minority Inside and Outside the Nation State

The diploma thesis deals with the issue of the national question in international relations demonstrated on the case of the Kurdish question. The research is divided into two levels, the first of which addresses the dynamics of the Kurds in Turkey as a nation state. The second level deals with the issue of Kurds as an ethnic group in the Middle East region. The aim of the paper was to find out whether the Kurds in Turkey, ie in the whole region, represent a unified ethnic group or nation, what are their goals and influence on the polarity of the region. The research is based on the theoretical definition of ethnicity, ethnic and national minorities, national identity and the nation state, which is used to analyze the ethnic minority in the environment of (illiberal) nation state. The research has helped to uncover complicated relationships within the ethnic group as a whole, the nature of which may somewhat hamper the enthusiasm or fear of the emergence of a great Kurdistan in the near future. Although ethnic and national identification play a role in building relations between Kurds (for example, in facilitating communication between members of a group or the presence of a factor of solidarity in tense moments), the behavior of individual factions is also influenced by other factors. The question of whether the Kurds should achieve independent statehood is therefore not clear at present, and is not only a question of the will of the international community, but especially of the (so far ambiguous) will of the Kurds themselves.