Chris Den Hond
In October 2024, at the opening of the parliamentary year in Turkey, ultranationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli shakes hands with elected officials from the pro-Kurdish left-wing DEM (Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, formerly HDP). His message is addressed to Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, who has been imprisoned for life on the island of Imrali since 1999: “If the terrorist leader comes out of his isolation, let him come and speak in parliament. Let him say that terrorism is over and his organisation is dismantled.” The PKK has been waging a guerrilla war since 1984. After the 1980 coup and the authoritarian regime installed by the military, political space has been reduced to nothing. The PKK sees no other way out than armed struggle for the liberation of the Kurdish people. Since then, the party has made several proposals for a political solution, including a ceasefire. They have all received no positive response from the Turkish state. Will things be different this time?
After nearly ten years of total isolation, Abdullah Öcalan received several visits from a delegation from the DEM party. This delegation subsequently consulted with the main political parties in Turkey, as well as with the Kurdish parties in Iraq (KDP and PUK), the Autonomous Administration (AANES), and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern and eastern Syria. The aim was to discuss the impact of Öcalan’s message in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. The message would finally be made public on 27 February 2025. Broadcast on giant screens, Öcalan’s message, read by members of the DEM delegation, was heard in Turkish Kurdistan, Syria, and Iraq. “All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must be dissolved.” Many burst into tears. “The PKK is my party, it’s my life,” a former member of the Turkish assembly told me [1]. Öcalan explains in his message that the creation of the PKK in 1978 and the armed insurrection since 1984 were justified by “the explicit denial of the Kurdish reality and the restriction of fundamental rights and freedoms.” The world has changed, he says, and “the armed struggle has had its day. It must end.”
Then follows a rather ambiguous sentence: “The creation of a separate nation-state, a federation, administrative autonomy, or culturalist solutions do not correspond to the historical sociology of society.” Not a word, then, on the demand for education in the Kurdish language, a demand from the approximately 26 million Kurds in Turkey for whom education in the Kurdish language is vital for the survival of the language, which is several thousand years old. Mehmet Ekinci, a teacher in Batman, 60 kilometres east of Diyarbakir, is furious: “We’ve been fighting for 40 years, we’ve lost people, our loved ones have been imprisoned, we’re not going to give up the fight without compensation. The fact that the struggle is political is a good thing, but the ball is now clearly in the court of the Turkish state, which must make very concrete gestures.”
The sentence that changes everything
In his message, Öcalan does not mention any compensation for the dissolution of the PKK. Evil tongues suggest that there would be a “deal” with the Turkish state for Öcalan to obtain house arrest, or that the DEM party would help Erdoğan change the constitution so that he could run for a third presidential term. This would be underestimating the seriousness of the Kurdish movement. When, in Imrali prison, Öcalan handed the message to the DEM delegation at the end of the visit, he called the delegation back and said: “Obviously, the legal and political conditions must be in place to implement this message.” During the last visit, holding the message in his hand, he told the representatives of the Turkish state in front of him, with the DEM delegation at his side: “If you (the Turkish state) do nothing with this declaration, we will throw it in the trash.”
The counterpart: a roadmap
There can therefore be no disarmament and dissolution of the PKK without compensation. But what compensation? This is not made explicit in Öcalan’s message, which may be worrying, but this is not the first time Öcalan has used very moderate language to open doors to a negotiated solution to the Kurdish question. He did the same in 1999-2000 when he was imprisoned. Far from “capitulating”, he has once again thrown the ball into the Turkish state’s court.
Selahattin Demirtaş, the popular HDP leader, who is also imprisoned, published a letter supporting Öcalan’s message but calling for it to be accompanied by a “road map”. Tuncer Bakirhan, the current co-chair of the DEM party (who has so far escaped imprisonment…), also supports the process while condemning Ankara’s policies: “The government continues to repress the DEM party. Since the March 2024 municipal elections, ten democratically elected DEM mayors have been replaced by AKP administrators. In February alone, more than a dozen pro-Kurdish journalists were arrested. All political prisoners must be released.”
During the Newroz celebrations in Cizre and Nusaybin, in Turkish Kurdistan, not far from the Iraqi and Syrian border, three men share their impressions of the peace process. Mehmet, 60, from Cizre:
“We have absolute trust in Abdullah Öcalan, and we know he will never betray us. But we need guarantees, and we have none. How can we imagine that our region, ravaged by decades of war, could find peace thanks to Erdoğan, who put so many of our children in prison? How can we live in peace if Apo is still behind bars? There isn’t a single family in our region that hasn’t been bereaved by the Turks’ dirty war, despite all our attempts to end this conflict. So our mistrust is logical, I think.”
Abdulrahman, 78 years old:
“I was very happy when I heard Öcalan’s announcement. I have lived in Cizre since my village was burned by the Turkish army in the 1990s. Today, my family is torn between Rojava, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Germany. I hope we will all be reunited one day, but I believe the road will be long. We have no other choice anyway.”
Ferhat, Nusaybin, 25 years old:
“I absolutely do not believe that peace is possible if we do not get anything in return. We are completely ignorant of what is going on behind the scenes, and it is very destabilizing. I hope that we will obtain rights, that Turkey will stop raging against us, we have suffered enough, but to be honest I do not really believe it.”
The SDF in Syria are not concerned
Ankara interprets Öcalan’s message as a disarmament and dissolution of the PKK without compensation, which should also include the YPG, the Kurdish armed forces in Syria, as well as the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces). According to Erdoğan, these should be dissolved and integrated into the Syrian army on the basis of individual membership. But things will not happen that way. In northern and eastern Syria, the Kurdish-Arab-Syriac alliance has obtained de facto autonomy, after sacrificing 12,000 young people in its fight against Daesh. SDF commander Mazloum Abdi immediately declared that they are not concerned by Öcalan’s call: “This call only concerns the PKK,” he clarified. Saleh Muslim, one of the PYD’s main political leaders in Syria, told me in an interview in early February: “If Turkey talks with Öcalan and takes it seriously, then it should stop attacking us, stopping bombing the Tishrin Dam [in northern Syria] every day. The PKK has often tried to start a peace process with the Turkish government: in 1993, in 1998, in 2007, and again in 2013. Each time the Turkish side failed. They continued with their destruction. We hope that this time it’s serious and that a solution will be found, because we here in Syria will certainly feel the positive effects of a possible political solution in Northern Kurdistan.”
In Qandil, high in the Iraqi mountains, the PKK leadership also joined the call, demanding that Öcalan be able to lead the congress himself and declare a ceasefire. But the Turkish regime continues its repression: actress Melisa Sozen is being prosecuted on the grounds of “terrorist propaganda” for her role in the series “Bureau of Legends”, in which she plays a Syrian Kurdish YPJ fighter. On 18 February 2025, more than 300 Kurds, writers, lawyers, and journalists, were arrested for “terrorism” in Turkish Kurdistan. Most of them are sympathizers of the pro-Kurdish DEM party. On 24 February, a tenth elected Kurdish mayor was suspended and replaced by an administrator sent by Ankara. On 20 February, Orhan Turan, the president of the Turkish employers’ association, was placed under judicial supervision. Turan had criticised “attacks on the rule of law in Turkey”. Erdoğan is even attacking his own employers. It is therefore far from certain that he will agree to sit down at a negotiating table with the Kurds.
Note
[1] As the author of this article is banned from Turkish territory for 10 years, most of the quotes were collected by telephone.
This article was originally published by Contre Temps and has been translated by Medya News.
