Abdullah Öcalan and members of the Kurdish DEM Party call on the PKK to disarm and disband. Screenshot from Twitter. Fair use.
After nearly half a century of fighting, Turkey’s Kurdish rebels are ready to bring theirinsurgencyto an end. If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan takes talks seriously, this could benefit not just Turks and Kurds, but also Washington’s position in the region. But if Erdoğan and his government simply instrumentalize the promise of peace as a regional power grab, the challenges in U.S.-Turkey relations will only grow. Erdoğan is arguablynegotiating with the Kurds mainly as a means to secure Kurdish parliamentarians’ votesto prolong his rule as president, which is currently prohibited by the country’s constitution.
Öcalan calls on the PKK to abandon armed struggle
On February 27, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder and leader Abdullah Öcalancalled on the group to lay down arms and dissolve. The call followednearly one year of secret negotiations with the government of Turkey. On March 1, the PKK’s armed forcesdeclared a ceasefire, saying that they would follow Öcalan’s orders, and calling on the Turkish side to take reciprocal action to facilitate their dissolution.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 when Turkey was underauthoritarian rule after a military coup. Kurdishlanguage and identity were criminalized, and dissenters, Turkish or Kurdish,faced prison, exile, or worse. Since then, the armed conflict has cost Turkey over 40,000 lives andtrillions of dollars. Both sides have periodically engaged in negotiations since 1993, with no lasting results.
The closest Turkey got to a deal was between2013 and 2015. While Erdoğan abandoned these negotiations after aloss in the June 2015 parliamentary elections, they had a lasting impact in one area: Syria.
The ceasefire allowed Kurdish forces to focus on fighting ISIS, enabling the defense of strategic regions likeSinjar in northern Iraq andKobane in northern Syria when the Iraqi and Syrian armed forces could not or would not fight. It is also unlikely that the U.S.-led Global Coalition could have partnered with the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) if Kurdish groups were actively engaged in conflict with Turkey.
Ten years later, Washington is hopeful that peace could pay dividends in Syria once again. As a White Housestatement welcoming Öcalan’s call noted, the U.S. believes that the dissolution of the PKK and resolution of Turkey’s Kurdish question could resolve what has become perhaps the largest challenge in U.S.-Turkey relations — Turkey’shostility to the U.S. partnership with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). In fact, the U.S. may have quietly supported the resumption of Turkey-PKK negotiations since at least2023, likely for this reason.
The SDF, predictably, shared this positive reaction. SDF Commander in Chief Mazlum Abdi said hehoped it would remove pretexts for Turkish attacks on his forces as they negotiate their place in the future of Syria. Abdi has been aproponent of peace in Turkey for years, publicly stating his forces’ readiness to help with any political solution in a 2022opinion article. Other leaders in his government, likeIlham Ahmed and Salih Muslim, share this view.
However, Erdoğan’s government is taking a different tone. Rather than welcome the prospect of the end of violence that hasdevastated their country, Turkish officials are using the declaration tothreaten further war. They insist that Öcalan’s declarationmust apply to the SDF, alluding to further military action if the Syrian Kurds do not simply surrender to Turkey-backed militias and Syria’s new Islamist rulers.
Why is Erdogan engaging in a new ‘peace process’ with the Kurds?
This attitude could kill the peace process before it begins, bringing instability and insecurity to Turks, Kurds, Syrians, and the international community alike. Before any of these calculations can be addressed, it is worth asking why Erdogan decided to pursue a new peace process with the Kurds now?
It is for instrumental reasons. Erdoğan needs Kurdish support in parliament in order to change the country’sconstitution, to secure a fourth presidential term. As it stands, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP)-led coalition lacks the required votes (360/600) and needs the votes ofthePeoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM, formerly HDP) members. The question is, what can Erdoğan offer DEM in return for their support?
The Kurds’ motivation to help Erdoğan would be based on self-interest and realpolitik. In late 2024, Erdoğan and his far-right nationalist coalition ally, Devlet Bahçeli, begannegotiating with DEM’s leadership. This came as a surprise, mainly because Bahçeli, who leads the ultra-far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), is historically anti-Kurdish and anti-minority rights. However, AKP and MHP by themselves lack the required number of seats to change the constitution.
Rumors coming from the secretive deliberations between the AKP/MHP and DEM suggest that Erdoğan is preparing toannounce the release of Öcalan. The inspirational figurehead has been in a Turkish prison since his capture and conviction in 1999. Securing his release would be a big win for DEM, as he is widely regarded by Kurds internationally as being the Kurdish equivalent of Nelson Mandela. Erdoğan is also allegedly considering grantingautonomy to Turkey’s Kurds. What this means in practice is unknown, but it would likely include measures such as legally protected cultural rights and perhaps territorial autonomy. Together, Öcalan’s release and cultural/administrative autonomy would be gains that would be hard to refuse.
These dynamics were complicated by the March 19arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. He is a threat to Erdoğan’s continued rule, as he has a strong electoral record of defeating the AKP in local elections. İmamoğlu is widely seen by opposition voters as Turkey’s next president, and as the CHPcandidate most capable of attracting Kurdish support. It is unlikely that a government willing to imprison such an opposition figure ontrumped-up charges will be able to make the democratic and legal reforms that Kurds demand as part of the peace process. At the same time, it will bedifficult for the PKK and the DEM Party to reject negotiations outright with all that is at stake, a decision that would drive a wedge between Kurds and the opposition.
Satisfying Kurds’ political demands inside Turkey is a necessary but insufficient condition for securing a lasting peace. The PKK is unlikely to disarm and dissolve in exchange for nothing. Giving Syrian Kurds a chance in negotiations is one of the few interests powerful enough to justify such major concessions to the group’s leaders and members. If this interest is off the table, the likelihood of splinter groups and spoiler violence increases drastically.
If Syrian Kurdish parties continue to be left out of their country’s political settlement at Turkey’s request, the new government will likely create acentralized system with no protections for Kurdish identity, language, and culture —conditions that spawned Kurdish rebellion under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Kurdish forces are also the only major alternative to the new transitional government’s hardline Islamist politics, advocating for religious freedom and the inclusion of women in addition to Kurdish rights. Recent massacres of Alawites on Syria’s coast by interim government forces and Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militias, some of which are under U.S. sanctions, show a grim vision of what Syria’s future will be if the SDF is not included.
If Turkey violates the U.S.-brokeredceasefire that has been in place between Manbij and Kobane since December and takes further military action against Syrian Kurds, they will restart the Syrian Civil War, give ISIS a new lease on life, and make any Turkish-Kurdish reconciliation impossible for a generation.
These are all outcomes that the U.S. is keen to avoid. The current administration has expressed an interest in ending perpetual wars, bringing peace to the Middle East, and countering jihadist groups like ISIS. Consequently, Washington has an interest in making sure that Turkey takes this peace process seriously.
The U.S. should support the maintenance of existing ceasefires in Syria and the creation and observation of a bilateral Turkey-PKK ceasefire in Turkey and Iraq. It should urge Turkey to align with existing domestic and international legal standards by ending the persecution of non-violent Kurdish politicians and releasing political prisoners, like jailed HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas, to undermine the appeal of armed resistance. It should take this opportunity to showcase the SDF’s independence from the PKK by staying the course in Syria: keeping the pressure on ISIS and facilitating a political settlement where Syrian Kurds find a place in the country’s government and security forces.