Fréderike Geerdink
It’s a decade ago that I published a controversial column that drew a lot of attention: “A permanent ceasefire? Now? I’d be disappointed.” Many critics didn’t actually read it; a conclusion I drew because many Turks accused me of ‘a lust for blood’. Trust me, I am not a blood thirsty person at all. But at the time, I was bewildered about rumours that had surfaced that the PKK would declare a permanent ceasefire. What?, I thought? How could they do that without a successful peace process? That would be a disappointment, because all the blood would have flown for nothing.
I think a lot about that column these days. At the time, it was published in Turkish as well, at the independent news portal Diken, which of course contributed to huge backlash from Turks. When I re-read it, I am pretty stunned about how applicable much of it still is. The PKK has once again taken bold steps towards a political solution of the Kurdish issue, and once again, the government seems unwilling to walk the walk.
Rumour
What has changed though, is my understanding of the situation. I remember writing that column, in my home office in Amed (Diyarbakır), on the 7th floor looking out over Koşuyolu Park, my thoughts spinning round and round and round. What did I oversee? What on earth did I oversee? Maybe the rumour was just that, a rumour. But apparently the option that the PKK would declare a permanent ceasefire was taken seriously, so I couldn’t just shove it aside as an option. How to make sense of it?
And now, the PKK has taken it even further. They held a congress and dissolved the organisation and declared the end of the armed struggle. Now I know that they do now what they tried to do a decade ago: they try to wrestle space to force the government into political negotiations. Which means that for now, they have not actually begun handing over their weapons to the state. Peace processes have a particular order. The sequence is not: you hand over the weapons and then negotiate, but the other way around.
Concessions
Which brings me to two important women in the Kurdish political movement whom I quoted in the column of a decade ago: Gültan Kışanak and Leyla Zana. Kışanak was mayor of Amed at the time, but had an impressive record in parliament in Ankara as well. She had told me once at a press conference: ‘Have you ever seen an armed movement laying down its arms before the other side in the conflict has made any concessions?’ And icon Leyla Zana (still going strong!) had said, a few years earlier: ‘The weapons are the Kurds’ insurance. As long as the Kurdish question exists, the weapons are a guarantee for Kurds.’
At the time, I wrote that I believed that guarantee was still necessary. And I haven’t changed my mind since. It’s only logical. Because what is the state going to do when the PKK hands over the weapons now, without any guarantees? Not much imagination is needed. The government and the army will declare their deeply wished for ‘terror free Turkey’, arrest and or murder the guerrilla fighters, keep suppressing the Kurdish people and will refuse to make Turkey truly democratic.
Mountains
This is why I am so stunned by some analyses of international commentators that I heard or read. This week I listened to a podcast in which an academic suggested that it is likely that Turkey will take steps towards democratization, but only after the PKK has literally been disarmed. And that one of the things that remains unclear for now, is what would happen to the higher PKK cadre in the mountains but that it could be that they would be jailed with Öcalan at Imralı prison island.
Others have said that a current legal reform package, the release of Demirtaş and other high profile political prisoners, and the end of the ‘trustee’ policies in which Kurdish-governed municipalities are taken over by an AKP trustee, are the demands of the Kurdish movement. In exchange for that, they would support a constitutional change, enabling Erdoğan to run for a third term as president. (He said he’s not interested in yet another term, but please don’t believe that.)
The idea that people like Cemil Bayık, Besê Hozat, Murat Karayılan, Sabri Ok and Sozdar Avesta would come down from the mountains only to be locked up in a Turkish prison, is absurd. Surrender is not an option – they’d literally rather jump off a mountain cliff to protect their honour.
Illegal
The legal reform package, the release of high profile political prisoners, and the end of the trustee policy, are indeed important. With the reform package, it’s not going particularly well: it doesn’t meet any of the demands of the DEM Party. For the release of Demirtaş and others, a reform package isn’t even necessary by the way, because the European Court of Human Rights has already ruled their imprisonment is illegal and should end immediately. Maybe some political deal will be made about them, that’s possible. The end of trustee policies? As the whole process is very untransparant, we have no clue if that is on the table or not.
But these issues are important for trust building, not as a final solution or a ‘deal’. The solving of the Kurdish issue can’t be simply a ‘deal’ but must be the outcome of a transparent process in parliament. Such a process must address legitimate demands and decades-old injustices and state crimes (in which also the PKK must come clean about theirs), and true reconciliation. Such a process can start when trust is built. The PKK has done quite their share already, by dissolving and declaring the end of the armed struggle.
Until such a process is completed, the weapons are the Kurds’ guarantee. Kurds undoubtedly still need insurance.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Bluesky (or X) or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
