This study aims to address a historical paradox: how can we understand the Kurdish movement’s EU policy in the two decades subsequent to the end of the Cold War? I argue that the Kurdish movement has pursued two different approaches towards the EU (or Turkey’s EU membership bid) in the last two decades. While the Kurdish movement adopted a pro-EU stance from the beginning of the 1990s until 2005, it situated itself in an in-between position towards the EU after that year. In the analysis of these two different periods, I will interrogate the role of the international system, the domestic setting, identity/difference and the relations of power in the Kurdish movement’s EU policy.