Curfews Backfire: Lower Government Support and More Rebel Attacks in Turkey

Curfews are a common non-violent tool for governments seeking military advantage during civil conflict, but they also disrupt everyday life and may spark political and military backlash. This study examines whether curfews achieve their intended effects or produce counterproductive outcomes in Turkey.

🔍 What The Study Compares

The analysis leverages the closeness in timing of two national elections and the implementation of curfews between those elections to create a natural comparison between areas that experienced curfews and similar areas that did not.

🔎 How Causal Effects Are Identified

• Uses novel data sources on voting outcomes and violent incidents.
• Employs a difference-in-differences design exploiting temporal variation in curfew implementation between two national elections.
• Focuses on two outcome domains: public political attitudes (measured via voting shifts) and rebel violence (measured by counts of attacks).

📈 Key Findings

• Curfews produce a clear dual backlash: political and military.
• Politically, curfews reduce support for the ruling party and increase support for both Kurdish opposition parties and Turkish national opposition parties in the areas where curfews are imposed.
• Militarily, curfews are associated with an increase in the number of rebel attacks in the same areas.

⚖️ Why This Matters

The results provide robust evidence that indiscriminate, non-violent coercive measures like curfews can undermine political support for incumbent authorities and intensify insurgent violence. These findings carry direct implications for state strategies in civil conflicts and for theories about the political consequences of security interventions.