Former members of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who have laid down their weapons should be allowed to rejoin society, Turkish MPs said in a report released on Wednesday.
The 83-page document, seen by The National, sets out proposals for formalising the PKK’s dissolution and dealing with its former members. Tens of thousands of insurgents fought a 40-year conflict with the Turkish state until the group’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, last year called for its dissolution and disarmament.
The violence killed at least 40,000 people, spilt across Turkey’s borders with neighbouring Syria and Iraq, and left an indelible mark on Turkish society. Turkey has long regarded the PKK as its main national security threat, and alongside the EU and US designates the group as a terrorist organisation.
Members of a cross-party parliamentary commission voted overwhelmingly in favour of the report. The 50-person body was set up last year to put forward recommendations for a legal framework around the dissolution of the PKK, which Turkish leaders have made a goal as Ankara attempts to end domestic strife in a region surrounded by instability.
Future legislation should “reintegrate individuals who reject weapons and violence into society,” the report recommends. “The process should include preparatory work that helps individuals maintain their lives within society, adapt to public order, and integrate into the community.”
It stops short of offering an amnesty to former fighters and suggests authorities could start judicial proceedings against them. “Legal regulations should not create a perception of impunity and amnesty in society,” the report said.
Investment and development in areas affected by the conflict, largely in the country’s east, should continue, it added. “Improving economic and social opportunities should be among the priorities for increasing the community's capacity for adaptation.”
The report is not a bill that automatically converts into law upon a single parliamentary vote, Deniz Karakullukcu, a foreign policy adviser at the Turkish parliament, told The National. “Instead, it functions as a reference text and a conceptual road map for the actual implementing legislation that will follow,” he said.
Turkish broadcaster Haberturk reported that the document needs to be approved by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and would then return to the whole parliament for further discussions.
“Parliament will begin the process of debating and enacting specific legal instruments that this report has now legitimised, not just approve a report,” Mr Karakullukcu said.
The commission’s report would “accelerate” the PKK’s dissolution process, Mr Erdogan said on Wednesday. “We have taken a historic step,” he said.
Verification by the Turkish state that the PKK has completely dissolved itself and laid down its arms is “the most critical threshold in the process”, the report said.
Senior PKK leaders, based in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, agreed to dissolve and disarm the organisation last year, and held a symbolic weapons burning ceremony. But the process of actually disarming all PKK affiliates, geographically located in Kurdish-majority areas across Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, is not a clear-cut process.
The report also puts forward steps to strengthen democratic principles in Turkey, which had been a key demand of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (Dem), which has played a key go-between role between the Turkish government, Ocalan, and regional Kurdish leaders throughout the process. It said neither “non-violent acts” nor “actions that should fall within the scope of freedom of expression,” should be classified as “terrorist crimes”.
It also recommended an end to the system of replacing democratically elected mayors with government appointees, which has been a key demand of the Dem party.
There is no explicit mention in the report of Mr Ocalan, who is currently serving a life sentence on a remote island prison in the Sea of Marmara south of Istanbul.
The PKK and some Kurdish civilians had demanded his release as part of the group's dissolution process. Such a move would be highly unpopular in Turkey, where Ocalan is seen as responsible for the deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians. An unknown number of other people, believed to be in the thousands, are serving prison sentences in Turkey over connections to the PKK.
The report does say that Turkey should consider improved prison conditions for detainees, and comply with European Court of Human Rights rulings. That is a possible reference to an ECHR decision ordering Turkey to release Selahattin Demirtas, a Kurdish former political leader who has been in prison since 2016 on “terror related offences”. Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch have called his detention an “illegal incarceration.”
