In a fastidiously choreographed ceremony on July 11 in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, 30 members of the Kurdistan Staff’ Occasion (PKK) symbolically burned their weapons. This unprecedented act was a sign of goodwill towards Ankara amid ongoing peace talks that either side hope will finish Turkey’s decade-long Kurdish battle.
For years, liberal observers and peace advocates have imagined a decision to this battle as a key step in Turkey’s democratization, one that might be accompanied by full civil rights for Turkey’s Kurdish group. The present peace course of, against this, seems squarely aimed not at liberalization however at consolidating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s energy.
The query now’s whether or not Erdogan and the PKK can reach resetting Turkey’s state-society relations and reshaping the parameters of political inclusion, all with none significant steps towards democracy. Put in a different way, can Erdogan reach giving the nation’s authoritarianism a multicultural veneer?
Turkey’s relationship with its Kurdish inhabitants has traditionally been formed by the nation’s nationalist and centralized ideology that suppressed ethnic variety in favor of a singular Turkish id. The complete-scale armed battle between the Turkish state and the PKK, which started in 1984, has claimed tens of hundreds of lives, displaced communities, and imposed extreme political and financial prices. Regardless of makes an attempt at political options for the reason that Nineties, none have gotten this far.
A peace course of initiated by the ruling Justice and Improvement Occasion (AKP) between 2013 and 2015 collapsed into renewed violence—a few of the most intense within the battle’s historical past—leaving city facilities within the southeast closely broken. Since 2016, Ankara has additionally performed navy operations in northern Iraq to focus on PKK bases and in northern Syria to curb the affect of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration. Domestically, this era coincided with intensified anti-Kurdish nationalism, sweeping authorized repression of Kurdish politicians, and the erosion of democratic area for Kurdish illustration.
The present initiative for dialogue was publicly launched by Devlet Bahceli, the ultranationalist chief of the Nationalist Motion Occasion (MHP), which governs in alliance with the AKP. Bahceli has lengthy been among the many most vehement opponents of a political decision of the Kurdish battle. In October 2024, nonetheless, he took the nation abruptly when he formally invited Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s jailed founder, to name for the PKK’s disarmament and dissolution on the ground of the Turkish parliament. The professional-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Occasion (DEM Occasion) has since then performed a central position in facilitating communications between Ocalan and Ankara whereas additionally partaking with the opposition, the general public, and regional Kurdish actors.
Ocalan’s public message to the PKK, delivered through a letter in late February, was unambiguous: “combine with the [Turkish] state and society voluntarily.” Rejecting autonomy, federalism, an impartial state, and even the enlargement of cultural rights as viable options, Ocalan argued that the historic situations that gave rise to the PKK now not existed. The Chilly Struggle had ended, Turkey now not denied the Kurds’ existence, and freedom of expression had superior, the guerrilla group’s much-revered chief famous.
“Integration” has recently change into a cornerstone within the lexicon of Kurdish political elites. Selahattin Demirtas, the jailed former co-chair of the DEM Occasion’s predecessor, additionally advocates reconciliation by way of Kurdish integration into the Turkish polity. For Demirtas, coexistence is not only fascinating however inevitable: “Kurds are already built-in into Turkey—they’re in all places.” Veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk echoes this imaginative and prescient, stating, “Kurds can solely pursue a simply life and emancipate themselves alongside the Turks.”
But what integration would truly entail stays unclear. Bahceli has proposed symbolic illustration—reminiscent of appointing one Kurdish and one Alevi deputy president—arguably as a gesture of inclusivity. The place he may as soon as have insisted that this type of association was dangerously divisive, Bahceli now claims it affirms nationwide unity: “Kurds and Alevis belong to us [the Turkish nation].”
For Bahceli and Erdogan, peace with the Kurds is about greater than home reconciliation. It’s a part of a broader technique to fortify Turkey by constructing a cohesive “home entrance” towards what they describe as overseas threats—chief amongst them Israel. Professional-government commentators and former hard-liners have even prompt that the PKK could possibly be repurposed right into a pro-Turkish combating pressure.
To serve this strategic aim, Erdogan has revitalized a historic narrative that extols a “thousand years of Turkish-Kurdish fraternity.” Talking at a celebration assembly on July 12, Erdogan hailed the PKK’s symbolic disarmament as a step towards peaceable coexistence amongst Turks, Kurds, and Arabs. He then invoked the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the siege of Jerusalem in 1187, and the Turkish Struggle of Independence between 1919 and 1922 because the three most vital demonstrations of victory, prosperity, and glory achieved when Turks and Kurds stood collectively.
In Erdogan’s telling, Islam is the widespread thread binding these peoples. These historic episodes signify Muslim navy battles towards imperialists and civilizational others. Turkish management and patronage are seen as needed for guaranteeing the collective safety of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs—not solely in Turkey but in addition within the area, at a time of huge upheaval. Bolstered by this narrative, Turkish leaders and Kurdish political elites now appear to agree that reconciliation with the Kurds would assist place Turkey as a mannequin of peace and prosperity for the Center East.
But this apparently mutual aspiration to raise Turkey right into a regional hegemon is just not the one issue driving the brand new spirit of Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood. Correcting the “historic error” dedicated by Turkey’s early republican elites is one other. Significantly for Erdogan and Turkey’s Islamists, the secularist insurance policies of the early republic corrupted indigenous Islamic and cultural norms. The republican nation-building venture related to the Treaty of Lausanne and the 1924 structure is seen as having dismantled Ottoman era-multiculturalism—supposedly based mostly on shared religion and formed by native cultures. Extra particularly, Erdogan and his allies have lamented the lack of Islam as an organizing precept for the nation and a driving pressure in on a regular basis life.
The PKK and Ocalan additionally hint Kurdish grievances to the identical second of historic rupture, even when they perceive it in a different way. For them, the early republican venture launched insurance policies of ethnic homogenization and assimilation, denying Kurdish id and suppressing dissent. Each narratives—the AKP’s and the PKK’s—have the added benefit of casting the Republican Folks’s Occasion (CHP), the nation’s founding social gathering and present most important opposition social gathering, because the historic villain.
But past these ideological foundations, there are additionally extra concrete political concerns. The Turkish president’s present time period ends in 2028, and barring an early election or constitutional change, he can’t constitutionally run once more. Calling an election within the parliament or placing constitutional adjustments to a referendum requires a minimal of 360 votes within the parliament. Whereas the AKP and the MHP mixed don’t command such numbers, bringing the DEM Occasion on board would give Erdogan the votes to increase his rule. As Erdogan’s ally, Bahceli additionally sees the worth of consolidating the established order and sustaining authoritarian stability. Bahceli has repeatedly emphasised the have to strengthen the presidential system. For him, the method towards a attainable finish to the armed battle is a path towards stabilizing the regime and neutralizing the opposition.
The federal government now seems to be pursuing a twin technique: repressing the CHP whereas cautiously reintegrating Kurdish political actors. This managed inclusion of the DEM Occasion and the PKK goals to reshape the political panorama, marginalize rivals, and reestablish hegemonic dominance.
For its half, the DEM Occasion seems to have shifted priorities. For a little bit over half a decade, the social gathering labored alongside the CHP to confront the AKP-MHP bloc within the identify of democratizing Turkey. Now, nonetheless, the social gathering appears to have concluded that this effort failed and Erdogan is now the one recreation on the town. Consequently, they’re in search of concrete beneficial properties for Kurdish residents by cooperating with the ruling coalition. Over the past decade, Erdogan has jailed a lot of the Kurdish motion’s political management whereas stripping elected Kurdish mayors of their positions. From the DEM Occasion’s place, if Erdogan stops jailing Kurdish leaders and jails CHP politicians as an alternative, that is nonetheless higher than all of them being in jail collectively.
If this sounds cynical, Ocalan and DEM Occasion officers additionally argue that the PKK’s disarmament and enlargement of Kurdish rights will broaden democratic area for everybody, together with the CHP. Along with the ruling elites, they’re calling on the primary opposition social gathering to hitch the parliamentary fee to debate the authorized steps towards the PKK’s disarmament and dissolution. This, they insist, will in the end produce the absolute best end result for the nation as an entire.
Nonetheless cynical the motives of the primary actors, the challenges going through them nonetheless stay vital.
Domestically, the continuing authorized and political marketing campaign towards the CHP may create issues that transcend considerations over democracy. Erdogan’s crackdown on the opposition undermines public confidence within the course of. Particularly, it fuels fears amongst a extremely nationalist public that’s already predisposed to see concessions to the Kurds as a betrayal of Turkish id. For a lot of Turkey’s secularist opposition, the potential for an authoritarian power-sharing association between political elites who signify spiritual and Kurdish constituencies is a longtime conspiracy dropped at life. This might generate an unpredictable backlash.
On the Kurdish facet, Turkey’s management additionally faces a deeper structural problem. The Kurdish political panorama is much from monolithic. Ocalan’s character cult stays sturdy. However beneath this there may be an excessive amount of political variety. Many Kurds might resist makes an attempt at co-optation below a unifying nationalist framework with communitarian undertones.
Past Turkey’s borders, one other urgent concern is the way forward for the autonomous administration in northeastern Syria. For Ankara, any disarmament by the PKK should lengthen to all affiliated teams, together with components of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). But the SDF stays cautious, because the broader contours of Syria’s political future stay unsure and unstable. Negotiations between the SDF and the Damascus authorities are ongoing, however there may be nonetheless an important deal that might go mistaken.
The present peace course of represents a high-risk gamble to remake Turkey. If profitable, it will consolidate Islamist and nationalist elites, each Turkish and Kurdish, below the banner of Turkish supremacy and a fastidiously managed pluralism. It will enshrine the facility—and outline the legacies—of Erdogan, Bahceli, and Ocalan alike. However with out the rule of regulation, equal political illustration, and a rights-based method to society as an entire, the advantages to the remainder of Turkey’s inhabitants might be restricted.
