Kurdish militants say they’ll disarm in favor of politics. Will Turkey respond?
| London
In a critical stride toward ending a conflict that has claimed some 40,000 lives in Turkey and the region, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) declared Monday it would disarm, disband, and shift from armed struggle to a political one to secure the rights of ethnic Kurds.
The statement, made after a PKK congress in northern Iraq last week, echoes a February call to lay down arms by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned by Turkey since 1999.
The move to end the decades-old conflict, marked by extreme brutality on both sides, reflects what analysts characterize as emerging recognition of the limits of violence and shifting political realities in the region and internally in Turkey.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onKurdish and Turkish statements indicate both sides recognize the limits of violence. Yet the PKK overture makes clear an expected quid pro quo from Turkey is official recognition of Kurdish political and cultural rights, which is not yet assured.
The PKK overture makes clear an expected quid pro quo from Turkey is official recognition of Kurdish political and cultural rights, which reportedly has been agreed to but is not yet assured. That would include legal steps such as Turkey changing anti-terror laws, releasing Kurdish politicians from prison, and restoring Kurdish mayors who had been removed from office in southeast Turkey.
“We got here because of this unique moment in history, when both sides – for hard-nosed geopolitical reasons – have decided that compromise makes greater sense, that they can only secure their gains through a Turkish-Kurdish peace,” says Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a Turkey expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Kurds as power brokers?
On the Kurdish side, after a quarter century in prison, Mr. Öcalan appears to now recognize that the PKK’s original aim – to create an independent, Marxist-Leninist Kurdish state – is no longer viable.
Instead, he sees Kurdish rights today as best protected if Kurds can be players and power-brokers in the countries where they have always been repressed minorities: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
On the Turkish side, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the PKK decision was “historic” and “opened another critical chapter on our path toward a terror-free Turkey.” The PKK is designated a terror group by Turkey, the United States, and European Union.
Yet Turkey’s long-standing leader also has his own domestic reasons for embracing the end of insurgency, as he looks for legal ways to secure a third term in 2028, says Ms. Aydıntaşbaş.
“While [Erdoğan] looks very powerful, he also can sense that there’s a significant drop in his popularity,” she says. “His secular rivals like the mayor of Istanbul – who he imprisoned – are gaining ground. He still has to win elections and push through constitutional changes to extend his reign. All that requires Kurdish support.”
“Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood”
Mr. Öcalan’s decision to negotiate with central governments, instead of fight them, coincides with Mr. Erdoğan’s “own sense of political trajectory, and rebirth of Turkey as a new regional entity,” says Ms. Aydıntaşbaş.
“There is a place in which Kurdish demands for greater autonomy meet Erdoğan’s idea of neo-Ottomanism, all ending up in this idea of a new, imperial Turkey based on Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood,” she says. “That is a very radical re-think of what Turkey is, but it seems to be the genesis of this.”
The PKK statement Monday said its armed fight had “carried the Kurdish issue to a level where it can be solved by democratic politics, and the PKK has completed its mission in that sense.” Yet many details remain unclear about what happens to PKK weapons and fighters who have known nothing but guerrilla warfare all their lives.
Already the Turkey-PKK fight in recent years has moved off Turkish soil and played out in northern Iraq. Turkey stepped up operations there in recent months – including some 200 airstrikes and attacks on PKK targets in April alone – from bases inside northern Iraq where Turkey operates at least 136 outposts, according to a recent BBC investigation.
A Syrian offshoot of the PKK has also played a critical role among American-backed Kurdish militia forces in northeast Syria that battle the Islamic State. Kurds there exercise self-rule, but the strong PKK ties and U.S. support have long infuriated Turkey.
With the collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria last December, and a possible U.S. withdrawal under President Donald Trump, Syria’s Kurds have struck a deal with the new Islamist government in Damascus – but also have feared Turkish military advances.
Mr. Erdoğan said he expected PKK “dissolution [to] include all its branches, especially in northern Iraq, Syria, and Europe.”
Uncertainties in Turkey
But risks abound, with so little detail yet about the actual mechanism of ending a war that has defined insecurity in Turkey for a generation. After the PKK lays down its weapons, success would depend on Mr. Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) taking key legal steps.
“The fact that they are not being very open about this … generates some anxiety [among Kurds] that maybe this process will not end where it is supposed to be, and everything would be rolled back again,” says Mohammed A. Salih, a non-resident senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute and an expert on regional Kurdish affairs.
“This is all unfolding amid the Turkish government’s mistreatment of the main opposition party,” says Mr. Salih, noting the arrest in March of Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, which triggered the largest street protests in a decade.
“These are red flags,” he says, of the “deep contradiction” of the Turkish government’s stated willingness to open democratic space for Kurds, while continuing to clamp down on secular opposition.
“If the PKK is disbanded entirely or partially, they will lose their limited leverage to ensure that the Turkish side honors its part of the agreement,” says Mr. Salih. “There might be some concession by the AKP in parliament that satisfies Kurds. But given the overall political atmosphere, it makes it very hard to be optimistic that this will continue in the long run.”
For years, the insurgency led to widespread destruction of southeast Turkey. The PKK mounted attacks on Turkish soldiers and police – and even killed teachers appointed by Ankara – while the Turkish military destroyed entire swathes of Kurdish villages.
But the PKK has come far since the Monitor met Mr. Öcalan in August, 1991, at a PKK training camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where a portrait of Lenin hung over a small clinic.
Back then Marxist-Leninist ideology was central, and Mr. Öcalan – wearing bright white Adidas tennis shoes, in contrast to his dark uniform – claimed that the PKK did not target civilians.
“We do raids on villages – 50 so far this year – and spread our ideas,” said Mr. Öcalan, whose nom de guerre is Apo, or Leader. “Now we are married to the war, to the revolution,” he said, surrounded by uniformed cadres. “Our war is for humanism.”
Mr. Öcalan also chastised Iraq’s two main Kurdish groups, which were negotiating then with Saddam Hussein.
“They are both weak, so they talk,” he said. “We refuse this agreement. They negotiate with Turks also, and Turkey is our enemy.”
