The conflicts in Northern Ireland and Turkey have had political, ethnic and nationalist angles for decades. While the roots of these positions are more than a century old, the modern conflicts have taken place in the late 1960s in Northern Ireland and in 1984 in Turkey. The intractable conflicts in Turkey and Northern Ireland encompass not only ethno-nationalist claims, territorial issues, armed campaigns and political attempts to resolve these disputes, but also similar conflict resolution processes. Both the IRA and PKK primarily aim to change the political systems of the UK and Turkey, respectively, by using terrorism as a tool to reach their political goals. These primary purposes address their separatist aspirations. While the primary aim of the IRA was the reunifi cation of Ireland, the PKK's goal has diff ered from an independent Kurdish state to autonomy and democratic confederalism. These goals have determined the evolution of these conflicts and peace processes, which are assessed in this chapter.

Having developed a conceptual and theoretical framework in order to assess the two ethno-nationalist conflicts in question, it is significant to identify the history and evolution of both peace processes. When assessing the background of both cases, the aim was to distinguish the issues and actors who played a role in the evolution of these conflicts and conflict resolution processes. Based on the assumptions of conflict resolution theory, different types of events will be demonstrated, namely, backchannel communications, initiatives of peace and conflict resolution organisations, and official negotiations. While secret talks were achieved between the conflicting parties and intermediaries, official negotiations were carried out between the major political parties, governments and political representatives of the PKK and IRA. Therefore, the events organised by other agents, for instance within the nationalist and unionist communities aiming to create pan-nationalist and pan-unionist approaches, were not examined as their influence was deemed to be limited in both peace processes.