Analyzes Turkeys Kurdish conflict since postOttoman nationbuilding through recent peace attempts from a novel perspective highlighting the dilemmas of the Turk majority and reshaping our understanding of ethnic conflicts and offers solutions for a sustainable peace.How did the TurkishKurdish Conflict arise Why have Turks and Kurds failed for so long to solve it How can they solve it today How can social scientists better analyze this and other protracted conflicts and propose better prescriptions for sustainable peace Return to Point Zero develops a novel framework for analyzing the historicalstructural and contemporary causes of ethnicnational conflicts highlighting an understudied dimension politics. Murat Somer argues that intramajority group politics rather than majorityminority differences better explains ethnicnational conflicts. Hence the politicalideological divisions among Turks are the key to understanding the TurkishKurdish Conflict though it was nationalism that produced the Kurdish Question during lateOttoman imperial modernization political elite decisions by the Turks created the Kurdish Conflict during the postimperial nationstate building. Today ideational rigidities reinforce the conflict. Analyzing this conflict from premodern times to today Somer emphasizes two distinct periods the formative era of 19181926 and the post2011 reformative period. Somer argues that during the formative era political elites inadequately addressed three fundamental dilemmas of security identity and cooperation and includes a discussion of how the legacy of those political elite decisions impacted and framed peace attempts that have failed in the 1990s and 2010s. Return to Point Zero develops new concepts to analyze conflicts and concrete conflictresolution proposals.