Peace among the Kurds

Karam Said, Tuesday 14 Jan 2025

Is new life being breathed into the long-stalled Kurdish peace process in Turkey

Peace among the Kurds
Erdogan (r) and Prime minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region Masrour Barzani at the Presidential Complex in Ankara (photo: AFP)

 

Just before 2024 drew to a close, the long imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan signalled his readiness to engage in dialogue with the Turkish government. In late October, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), took the step to shake hands with the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic and Equality Party (DEM) head during the opening session of the Turkish parliament’s legislative year. He then called for a resolution to the Kurdish question and Öcalan’s release in exchange for declaring before parliament that he had severed ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Soon afterwards, Erdogan announced his support for the Bahçeli initiative, which had taken many by surprise.

The far-right MHP, the junior partner with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the People’s Alliance electoral coalition, had long opposed talks with Öcalan and consistently advocated a military solution to the Kurdish question.

A statement released by the DEM Party following a meeting with the PKK leader in Imralı Prison, where he has spent 24 years in solitary confinement, quoted Öcalan as saying, “I have the capacity and will for necessary positive participation in Erdoğan and Bahçeli’s call for dialogue.” He added, “Strengthening Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood, while being a historical responsibility, has concurrently become a vital and critical necessity for all peoples… The events in Gaza and Syria have revealed that the resolution of the Kurdish issue, which external interventions are attempting to complicate, should no longer be delayed.”   

As Öcalan noted, current calls for settling the decades-old Kurdish question cannot be viewed separately from regional and domestic events. Regionally, the  most salient development is the fall of the Bashar Al-Assad regime on 8 December 2024 and the rise to power in Damascus of the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS). The long sought-after regime change has created conditions favourable to Turkish designs in Syria, especially in Syrian territories adjacent to the Turkish border. In tandem with the opposition forces’ march on Damascus, Turkish-backed Syrian militias launched a large-scale military operation against the Kurdish controlled region in northeastern Syria. On the other hand, Turkey has come under increasing criticism regionally and internationally for its unilateral attempts to politically and demographically engineer post-Assad Syria to suit Turkey’s narrow interests.

Regarding domestic developments, in October, shortly after Bahçeli announced his initiative, Turkey sustained a terrorist attack, carried out by the PKK, targeting the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAŞ). It was the third terrorist attack in 2024. Although the previous two were not carried out by the PKK, the attack underscores a domestic vulnerability due, in large measure, to ongoing economic straits in Turkey and mounting discontent over rising prices and deteriorating living standards. It is noteworthy, in this regard, that the Turkish government’s long war against the PKK has incurred an estimated $4.2 trillion in economic losses. Ending this conflict would allow a large portion of budgetary allocation for security to be redirected towards infrastructural development and other measures to spur economic growth.

Turkey has come under Western pressure on its human rights record, especially towards the Kurds. A recent example comes from the Freedom for Öcalan campaign, supported by the British Trade Unions Congress and over a dozen major trade unions, which urge a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish issue. In a statement released on 8 November, they condemned Turkey’s continued “systematic policy of repression on Kurdish communities and their democratic institutions…including the forced removal of elected Kurdish mayors and the imposition of trustees, [which] are blatant attempts to suppress democratic rights and undermine local governance.”

On the other hand, Western governments have shifted their positions on Kurdish related issues since HTS took over Syria. On 20 December, after a meeting with her Turkish counterpart, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on Kurdish groups in Syria to disarm and integrate into the new national security structure in Syria. “The security of Kurds was essential for a free Syria, but Turkey’s security concerns must also be addressed to ensure stability,” she added.

Three days later, Mike Waltz, President-elect Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, said US troops should not remain in Syria. US support for Kurds in Syria has long been a strain on its relations with Ankara which regards the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as an extension of the PKK. Removing this support would free Turkey’s hand to carve out what it calls “safe zones” across a sizeable chunk of Syrian territory.

The EU, for its part, has turned a blind eye to Operation Dawn of Freedom, launched by the Turkish-backed Syrian forces against the SDF and other groups in northeastern Syria.  The offensive caused the displacement of tens of thousands of Kurdish and other civilians, many of whom had been previously displaced by the Turkish operation to seize control of Afrin in 2018. During her visit to Turkey on 17 December, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the need to address Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns.”

Despite repeated military offensives, Turkey has been unable to contain Kurdish nationalist aspirations both in Syria and Iraq, which it fears will influence the Kurdish rights movement in Turkey. Nor, despite repeated clampdowns, has it been able to suppress the influence of Kurdish civil society in Turkey. At the same time, Kurdish forces, whether in Turkey or regionally, have sustained major losses. Both sides therefore appear to have reached the conviction that violence is no longer a viable strategy and that diplomacy is the only sensible option.

However, the Turkish position is not consistent. Even as it emphasises reconciliation with Kurds in Turkey, Turkish President Erdoğan threatens further large-scale military operations against the Kurds in northeastern Syria. On the other hand, while Öcalan remains a major political symbol for Kurds in Turkey, his influence has diminished in tandem with the rising influence of a new generation of Kurdish leaders. Perhaps more crucially, the PKK itself is divided on the question of talks with Ankara. A hardline faction, based in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq and led by PKK Co-Founder Cemil Bayık, distrusts the initiative, which it believes is merely tactical, and believes that the armed Kurdish rights struggle should continue until the Turkish government demonstrates its intent to pursue a truly genuine political and democratic solution.

As though to prove Bayık’s suspicions correct, Turkey has summarily dismissed more Kurdish mayors who had been democratically elected in the March 2024 municipal elections, imposing a “trustee” administration on their municipalities. The Turkish Interior Ministry also launched an investigation into DEM Party Co-Chair Tuncer Bakırhan, in connection to a speech he gave on 4 November following the removal of three Kurdish mayors. Then, contrary to Bayık’s call on the Turkish government to end the Imralı system of solitary confinement, further restrictions were imposed on Öcalan’s ability to communicate with the outside world.

Although many factors favour a political solution to the Kurdish question, it continues to face significant challenges. Foremost among them is the self-contradictory policies of the Turkish government, with its talk of a political solution on the one hand and its militaristic approach to Kurds in Syria and Iraq as well as its anti-democratic actions towards Kurds in Turkey on the other. Then there are the conflicting positions within the PKK in conjunction with the declining influence of Öcalan within that organisation. If, indeed, a serious Kurdish-Turkish peace process got off the ground, it is bound to be quite a fragile one.

 

* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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