Kamal Chomanî
When, for the first time, “a handshake” between an ultra-extremist right-wing party leader from the dominant ethnic group and a progressive left-wing party from a minority group explodes like an atomic bomb in a country, this means this country is in a deep political crisis. Was the handshake strategic or a tactical one as PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] guerrillas commander Murat Karayılan said? Is the time now “ripe” for peace in Turkey, or does the society need to reach a level of catharsis to convince the ruling parties that bloodshed should stop? Is it the fear of the extension of the war in Gaza, or the Turkish society has realised what Palestine is going through has been the Kurdish experience for a century, too?
No matter what the answer to the abovementioned questions is, one thing is for certain: time is due for peace, but “the past is the past” and we cannot regain time; therefore, I can argue that time is ripe for peace. If the ripeness won’t be exploited to be treated as a fruit for good, it will rot.
Today (5 November 2024), I visited the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo and was captivated by the remarkable peace activists and heroes from around the world, celebrated for their dedication to a peaceful world, justice, equality, and freedom. Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat particularly caught my attention. I found myself wondering: could [Abdullah] Öcalan become the next Mandela, once labelled a “terrorist” and held in isolation? I believe he could, if given the chance to work for peace. I also imagined what the Middle East might look like now, especially Israel and Palestine, had the Oslo Accords succeeded—could these two nations be coexisting today? I believe so. Why should we let more chances for peace slip away?
To understand the Kurdish question in Turkey, one does not need to put much effort into conceiving it. Like all other ethnic issues worldwide, a minority group has been dismantled from her human rights and political and cultural rights. Her imagination has been abandoned. Her agency has been delegitimised. Her existence has been constitutionally denied, and her call for freedom and equality has been criminalised for the last 100 years. Her fight for recognition has been enlisted as terrorism.
From the Turkish policy of assimilation following the foundation of the new Turkish state post-World War I to the contemporary Turkish policy of further securitisation of the Kurdish question in the country, the Turkish state has failed to achieve its key objectives. On the other side, from the onset of the foundation of the Turkish state, the Kurds have been fighting for freedom and equality, and with the foundation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1978, the Kurdish freedom movement stepped into a new phase. Although the Kurdish freedom movement has not been able to achieve its key objectives, it has succeeded in remaining as a resistance movement not only in the mountains but also in the streets of Amed [Diyarbakır] and Istanbul, or in Berlin, Washington, and London, and the Turkish parliament itself. However, the key objective of recognition as an ethnic group with democratic political and cultural rights remains unrealisable. Nonetheless, both parties, the Kurds and the Turkish state, realised that peace can be the only way to resolve this question. Unfortunately, the 1992 Ozal talks, the Oslo talks, and the İmralı talks, all failed in vain.
The conflict has reached its ripeness phase, it is a stalemate. Neither Turkey can eradicate the PKK like the Srilankan Army did against the Tamil Tigers, nor the PKK can liberate the Kurdish territories. The war has been bloodier since 2016 with the advancement of the Turkish warfare technology. The Turkish offensives in Syria and Iraq, have hurt the Turkish army as much as hurting the PKK and YPG [People’s Defence Units]. The number of casualties from both sides is not received well in the Kurdish and Turkish households.
Following the failure of each peace talks, the country proceeded through unprecedented violence, catastrophes, and war crimes. If Turkey had channelled its war expenditures to annihilate her very own citizens to improve the downtrodden Turkish rural areas economically, she would have turned into one of the major economies in the world. Additionally, as a regional democratic country, Turkey would have influenced Iran, Iraq, and Syria to democratise. Recognition of Kurdish human rights in Turkey imposes similar steps in Iran and Syria. In the broader MENA region, Turkey would also have had a huge impact.
The Turkish state would not be democratised as long as its single most significant problem remains unresolved, as the Kurdish question is a political and democratic problem. If Turkey had resolved the Kurdish question, she would have possibly joined the European Union by now, as one of the demands of the Copenhagen criteria was democratic rights for the minorities and democratic changes, which can be interpreted to as resolving the Kurdish question. Turkey can’t go through democratic reforms without addressing the Kurdish question, for the nature of the Kurdish question is democratic. Many countries have joined the EU since Turkey applied for the accession.
Since last year 7 October of Hamas’s atrocious attack on Israel and the Israel’s catastrophic inhumane response, no leaders worldwide have been as outspoken as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, denouncing Israel’s atrocities and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warmonger and colonial ambitions. Although, to a lesser degree, the Kurds have been through similar atrocities by the Turkish army in southeast Turkey’s Kurdish cities in 2016 and in Afrin (Efrîn) and Rojava in northeast Syria since 2018 with the Turkish occupation. Currently, the entire Kurdish communities worldwide are undergoing the anxiety of a new war on the horizon if Donald Trump is reelected as US President, the withdrawal of the US forces in northeast Syria will be followed by another Turkish occupation that possibly turns Rojava into a new Gaza. If Erdoğan calls for peace in Gaza, which is, of course, very honourable as the international community, mainly US and EU countries, are complicit in this genocide, why not start peace at home?
Time is ripe for peace. There should be no conditions from any side to resume peace talks. One of the reasons for the collapse of the peace talks of 2013-2015 was the divergent views of the PKK and Turkey on Rojava, as President Erdoğan rejected to accept a Kurdish status similar to the KRG [Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government] in Syria, while Kurdish leader Öcalan considered Rojava as “a red line”. However, it seems the geopolitics of the region following 7 October require both Turkey and the PKK to very much work together to sustain peace in the north and east of Syria, to safeguard civilians in Syria and protect the Turkish borders, especially if the US withdraws from the region.
Lessons should have been learned from the collapse of the peace talks in 2015. The resolution of the Kurdish question itself should be the main objective not whether Erdoğan is supported by the Kurdish-led DEM Party [Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party] to regain presidency or not. Peace needs compromises from both sides, but compromises should not undermine the democratic principles to resolve the very roots of the question.
The PKK has transformed from an insurgent group into a political group promoting a new social, economic, communal, ecological, and political paradigm. The evolution of the PKK toward a peace-seeking party should be responded to by resuming the peace talks that are profoundly significant for the people of Turkey and the security of the region in its entirety. The framework of the Dolmabahce Agreement, which was signed in February 2015, can be the basis for the new peace talks, and from there, we can look forward for a new democratic constitution to eventually integrating the PKK with the political process in Turkey.
It is easy to start a new phase of peace talks in which the PKK can trust the state; Turkey should lift the embargo on İmralı [a Turkish high-security prison island] where Mr. Öcalan spends a life-time sentence. Öcalan has been unable to meet his family and lawyers since March 2019, and he only met his nephew in October 2024, where he reiterated that the Turkish policy of his isolation continues. There are three main players on the side of Kurds in the peace talks; Mr. Öcalan, the DEM Party, and the PKK. The DEM Party and the PKK may have contradicting views, but both have no objectives to what Mr. Öcalan says; therefore, resuming peace talks goes through İmralı, where Mr. Öcalan can address Kurds and Turkey in a one-minute video.
In his writings (Third Domain, 2003), Öcalan argues that “peace should not be understood as submission to force, since on the contrary it emphasises the removal of force from society. It is based on the firm belief in a society without wars in a civilised world.”
I believe that a peace deal is better than no deal; however, I also agree with Öcalan that it should remove the prospects of force and violence in all its forms; only then will we have real peace, and Turkey and its society will thrive. A peace deal should not be a mechanism to delegitimise and co-opt the PKK because such mechanisms will not work with a liberation movement that sees itself, and it has been, the sole Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey since the 1970s.
If Turkey wants peace to succeed, Abdullah Öcalan must be freed so he can engage with all sides. I genuinely trust in Öcalan’s efforts for peace. If there is to be peace in Turkey, it must be negotiated through him.
Kamal Chomanî is a Ph.D. student at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, Erfurt, and a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Bangalore, India. He has over a decade of experience as a journalist in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, with a focus on state building, democracy, human rights, corruption, and Middle East affairs, including the Kurdish question in Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Chomanî is a non-resident fellow at the Kurdish Peace Institute in Washington, DC. Previously, he held the position of non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for the Middle East Policy in Washington, DC.
