This paper will explore how and why the anti-systemic movements in Turkey, such as the radical Islamists and the Kurdish separatists, that arose approximately in the same period of time and geographic region, almost simultaneously started to moderate their demands, gave up their utopian ethnic or religious ideals and showed interest in a pluralist solution from within the preexisting political and geographic boundaries1. I suggest that what define Turkish politics are the relations of power between the urban ruling elite and the isolated and agitated agrarian periphery. I find that in either movement, the “peripheral” identity was more critical than religion or ethnicity. Therefore, the changes in the center-periphery relations that took place in the late 1990s marked the beginning of a new era in Turkish politics. The decentralization of the state and its approximation to the EU created new opportunities for the periphery to enhance its condition from within the legal framework. These developments led to the moderation of previously anti-systemic Islamic and Kurdish movements, a de-emphasis on ethnic and religious elements in their discourse and the emergence of a new consensus around a cosmopolitan democratic approach.