Jürgen Klute
At the end of January this year, I visited South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) together with Zainab Murad Sahrab, the co-chair of the KNK [Kurdistan National Congress], and the former Icelandic Minister of Justice and Interior Affairs, Ögmundur Jónasson. We discussed with the leaders of all Kurdish parties in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq the possibility of restarting the peace negotiations that were broken off by Turkey in 2015. A second important point was the question of the role of Abdullah Öcalan in possible peace negotiations. Of course, this presupposes that Abdullah Öcalan will be released by the Turkish government. But in January 2024, Öcalan’s release, which has been demanded for many years by Kurdish groups as well as solidarity groups, still seemed illusory (see our article ‘A complex conflict and how the complexity could be resolved’ on Medya News.
Suddenly, however, the tide seems to be turning. The leader of the right-wing nationalist Turkish party MHP [Nationalist Movement Party], Devlet Bahçeli, surprised the public a couple of days ago by proposing an amnesty for Abdullah Öcalan on condition that the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] lays down its arms. Öcalan has been held in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali since 1999, and for several years he has had no contact with his lawyers and family.
The condition mentioned by Bahçeli, to lay down their arms, should not be an insurmountable hurdle for the PKK. In principle, they had already promised to do so during the peace process about ten years ago. As a first step, they withdrew from Turkey. They would have been willing to lay down their arms at that time if the peace process had been legitimised and secured by appropriate legislation in the Turkish parliament. As is well known, this did not happen. And in 2015, [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan abruptly ended the peace process and launched a brutal new offensive against the Kurds. The result was not only destroyed Kurdish cities, but also a large number of injured and dead.
If Bahçeli is serious about his proposal, then he must take into account the impact of this failed peace attempt. In plain language, this means that he must offer the Kurdish side guarantees that what happened from 2015 onwards will not be repeated. He would therefore have to offer the Kurds a parliamentary safeguard for a renewed peace process. And he must ensure that the UN – in cooperation with the European Union – is involved as an external moderator and guarantor in a future peace process. Only then will the PKK be able to agree to the condition of laying down its weapons.
On the one hand, it is good that Bahçeli has made this proposal. His party, the MHP, has so far been an uncompromising opponent of an arrangement with the Kurds and of Kurdish demands for autonomy. If the MHP were to change its position on the Kurds and Abdullah Öcalan, it would make a significant contribution to a political solution to the conflict. This would bring a parliamentary safeguard for the peace process within reach.
However, it is currently still unclear what Erdoğan, the Turkish government and the Turkish parliament think of Bahçeli’s proposal and what interests are behind it. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Vahap Coşkun, a legal scholar at Dicle University in Diyarbakır [Amed] who was a member of the Wise Men’s Council that accompanied the peace process until 2015, emphasised that he takes this initiative of Bahçeli very seriously. After all, Bahçeli is taking a great risk with his proposal to release Öcalan.
For Coşkun, the question of a peace agreement between the Turkish state and the Kurds will be decided in Syria. He explains this in the Spiegel interview. On the one hand, Coşkun continues, Erdoğan wants the PKK to lay down its arms. On the other hand, he wants to ensure that there is no threat to Turkey from Syria – the Kurdish settlement areas in Syria (Rojava) border Turkey.
The situation in the Middle East has been further destabilised by Israel’s war against Iran-backed Hezbollah. As a result of this war, both Hezbollah and Iran have been severely weakened. This in turn has an impact on Syria, whose ruler Assad has been supported and kept in power not only by Russia but also by Tehran since the beginning of the Arab Spring. In a surprise coup in the last few days, Islamists were able to take control of Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, as well as a number of surrounding towns. It is clear that Hezbollah and Iran are now too weak to be able to support Assad in the short term. And Russia, too, is only partially able to support Assad due to the war against Ukraine, which is devastating its resources. It is difficult to assess at present what long-term effects the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza will have. Finally, the effects of phasing out the use of fossil fuels must be taken into account. This is because the phase-out has far-reaching consequences for the economies of the states in the Middle East, which for decades lived mainly from the export of oil and gas.
In this context, the pressure on Turkey to defuse the conflict with the Kurds, which has been going on for around a century, or even to find a lasting political solution, seems to be increasing.
This is an opportunity for the European Union. The Kurdish side has long wanted to end the conflict politically. However, without the willingness of the Turkish government, the conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurds cannot be ended. If, for the reasons mentioned above, the Turkish government now actually develops an interest of its own in resolving the conflict, then the EU has the opportunity to support and promote this process by means of appropriate incentives. This includes, among other things, removing the PKK from the EU terror list. If Öcalan were released and the PKK were willing to lay down its arms, there would no longer be any reason to include the PKK on the EU terror list.
In return, the EU can oblige the Turkish government to secure the peace process through appropriate legislation and to place it on a solid footing. Such legislation must commit the political decision-makers in Turkey to the peace process, it must lead to the release of convicted and imprisoned Kurdish politicians and guarantee impunity for all those involved in peace negotiations with the PKK and for journalists who report on the peace process and the PKK as well as on Kurdish demands for autonomy.
In the face of the challenge posed by global warming, the Russian war against Ukraine and the military conflicts in the Middle East, it is in the vital interest of the European Union, which was once founded as a European peace project, to do everything it can to contribute to the de-escalation and political resolution of the conflicts in the Middle East.
Jürgen Klute is a former Die Linke (The Left) MEP and spokesman for the Kurdish Friendship Group in the European Parliament from 2009 to 2014. He is editor of Europa.blog and a columnist for Medya News.
