1 DIASPORA POLITICS AND GERMANY’S KURDISH QUESTION Dr. Bahar Baser Introduction 1 The political sway of diaspora groups has increased over the last few decades due to the rise of a new pattern of conflict, the rapid increase of the number of war refugees and the heightened speed of communication and mobility (Demmers 2002: 86). A number of other factors have also played a role, such as the new policies pursued by host countries in terms of integrating immigrants by encouraging multiculturalism rather than through assimilation, or the home states’ own interest in creating expatriate communities abroad (Safran 1991, Østergaard-Nielsen 2003). These changes paved the way for the diaspora groups to become one of the most influential non-state actors in the global arena and through their efforts; conflicts in today’s world are no longer confined to within the homeland’s borders as they diffuse to the diasporic space. The Kurdish Question is an apt case for the diffusion of a conflict situation outside nation-state’s borders, as it is one of the many conflicts in the world which reveals itself in local, regional and transnational contexts. For instance, for a long time, it became the question used to bargain between the European Union and Turkey however it was also a matter for debate in many European Union member states. Among them, Germany might be considered as the country that has been affected the most from the spatial diffusion of Turkey’s internal conflicts. Germany has received the highest number of Kurdish and Turkish migrants in Europe and, therefore, their political activism and contentions between them has become highly visible in the German public sphere. It witnessed the rise of Kurdish nationalism in various forms and perceived the evolution of Kurdish mobilisation on its soil as a “domestic security problem” as a combination of its general approach to the Kurdish Question as well as due to the confrontational methods utilised by the Kurdish diaspora especially during the 1990s. 1 This paper was presented at the “Diasporas and Security” workshop at the University of Kent on Dec 6, 2013 and at the “Diasporas and International Relations” workshop at the University of Warwick. The author thanks the participants for their valuable comments. The author also wants to acknowledge the valuable feedback from her colleagues Dr. Vera Eccarius-Kelly and Francis O’Connor.