Analyse the Reasons for Separatism Within and Across National Boundaries, and Discuss Its Consequences.

606 Words3 Pages
Analyse the reasons for separatism within and across national boundaries, and discuss its consequences. (40 marks) Separatism is the movement by a minority group or a region of a country to gain greater independence or separation from the country that governs them. Reasons and consequences behind this, as well as different case studies will be further discussed in this essay. Living within an ethnocentric community has led to major influence in separatist activity. Ethnocentric individuals judge other groups relative to their own ethnic group or culture, especially with concern for language, behaviour, customs and religion. Therefore major differences can create tensions between individuals or even communities in a separatist point of view. For instance when the people feel secluded from central government, they tend to seek to gain more political control. Such groups may have different language or religion amongst the others in the state and are often geographically peripheral (isolated from another region). The Kurdistan for example is socially segregated as they live in mountainous area across Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. They are known to be the largest ethnic group without a country of their own with over 40 million populates. Kurds class themselves differently as their culture and identity is unknown to many others, creating oppression to where they currently live in. As they continue to speak different language known as Kurdish and perform different culture from the crowd. Therefore their great independence has led to them feeling oppressed with only Turkish is being taught in Turkish schools. Such traits were being tolerated by the majority of Kurds that they have formed an active terrorist organisation in Turkey known as the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) which is led by Abdullah Ocalan. Their motive was to cause an attention from the media a get the
Open Document