President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has urged prominent lawyer Kezban Hatemi to take immediate action to help revive stalled peace efforts with Kurdish actors, according to remarks she shared during a panel discussion in Diyarbakır (Amed) on 17 May. Hatemi said Erdoğan directly supported her initiative, telling her to “start immediately”.
“This is not just a Kurdish issue,” she said. “It is a Turkish issue, and it will be resolved by facing the truth and embracing reconciliation.” At the event, hosted by the Dicle Social Research Centre (DİTAM), Hatemi also revealed that talks in Ankara had already begun, including with Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş.
Addressing concerns over transparency, Hatemi acknowledged that early steps in any renewed process may require discretion. “Some things must be done quietly in the beginning,” she said, a position likely to prompt scepticism among Kurdish communities wary of secret negotiations and previous failed attempts.
Under the banner ‘The Kurdish Issue and Legal Possibilities for Peace’, the event brought together legal experts, academics, civil society figures, and politicians to evaluate the implications of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s call for disarmament and political reconciliation, made on 27 February from prison. Among the speakers was Mithat Sancar, a former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, who described the message as a “historic and serious declaration”.
Sancar argued that the process could not depend solely on the government. “Leaving everything to the government will not build social peace. Societal responsibility is essential,” he said. He criticised the government’s erosion of legal norms in western Turkey, suggesting that Ankara was increasingly replicating repressive measures previously used in the Kurdish-majority southeast.
“If you want peace, you must first recognise the people’s will. The trustee policy must end,” Sancar added, referring to the Turkish state’s controversial practice of replacing democratically elected Kurdish mayors with government-appointed officials. The policy is widely seen by Kurdish communities as a deliberate undermining of their political representation.
