This book analyzes and describes the instruments used by the Turkish state to manage Kurdish nationalism during 2007 to 2009 and the response of Kurds and the PKK and DTP to this state management which included the armed forces, conspiratorial organizations such as Ergenekon, a right-wing conglomeration of active and retired military officers, journalists, academics and organized crime types; the judiciary, media, Kurdish informants and the largesse of the state. Part of the state’s management of Kurdish nationalist movements within Turkey also impelled Ankara to better relations with Iran, Syria and Iraq. Improving relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq became especially important for Turkey in 2008 and 2009. This essay concludes with the 29 March 2009 elections and an analysis of how successful the instruments of Turkey’s management of Kurdish national movements were during the period under analysis and what this bodes for the future of relations between Kurds and Turks in Turkey, Turkey and Iraq, Turkey and the KRG, and the impact of these relations on the politics of the wider Middle East. The word “blood” in the title serves as a metaphor for the differences that grew between Kurds and Turks throughout the 20th century, especially after WWI. “Beliefs’ refers to the evolution of how differences between the two ethnic groups grew and developed into different nationalist movements and by 1984 into sustained armed conflict. Although the civil war between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party, popularly known as the PKK, abated somewhat after the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in February 1999, low intensity warfare has continued to the present. In the 1990s, with the creation of Kurdish ethnic political parties, the conflict between Kurds and Turks in Turkey also became one of a battle over ballot boxes. The coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in November 2002 intensified the electoral competition. In the 22 July 2007 elections the struggle between the AKP and the main Kurdish contending political party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), increased when the AKP was able to win 50 parliamentary seats in the heavily populated southeast and east of Turkey. The gain of the AKP was a stinging defeat for the DTP in spite of the largesse that the ruling AKP possessed to deliver goods to the impoverished people of the southeast. As a result of AKP gains, the competition between the AKP, now backed by the Turkish Armed Forces, the PKK and the DTP grew more intense during the period from the 22 July 2007general election and the local elections scheduled for 29 March 2009.