It is the longest-lasting insurgency in the Turkish republic’s history – and now, its founder says it must stop.
It’s difficult to avoid reaching for cliches after hearing this week’s declaration from Abdullah Ocalan, the man convicted by Turkey as a terrorist and imprisoned for 26 years, but words like “historic” and “epoch-defining” are surely appropriate.
He established the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – better known as the PKK – in the 1970s as an armed separatist movement with aim of overthrowing Turkish rule in southeast Anatolia.
In the decades since, it fought in a ruthless and bitter war with the Turkish armed forces. Allegations of atrocities have stalked both sides and, even now, it’s difficult to independently verify the precise cost of the conflict. What we do know is that billions of dollars were spent to wage it, whole neighbourhoods and villages were flattened and tens of thousands of people died.
Now, Ocalan says the PKK has lost its meaning and must lay down its arms and disband.
It caps an astonishing turnaround that began on October 22 last year. That was when Devlet Bahceli, the leader of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), left observers flabbergasted when he called on Ocalan to disband the PKK – and to be allowed to attend Parliament to the deliver his message in person.
This was the same Mr Bahceli who almost resigned from government in 2002, when MPs voted to abolish the death penalty and commute Ocalan’s sentence to life imprisonment. Five years later he held up a noose in Parliament to demonstrate that – given the chance – he would let Ocalan hang.
Mr Bahceli has spent his political career in a movement widely accused of systemic racism against Kurds, with some of its members having openly denied the Kurdish people exist. That is why his call last year left everyone, even members of his own party, in disbelief: was he serious?
He was. He repeated the call the following week – and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised him for breaking down taboos and opening a “historic window of opportunity”.
Since then, members of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party have paid multiple visits to see Ocalan in prison – visits that culminated in a photograph that gave the world its first glimpse of the PKK founder in around a decade.
He is pictured, seated alongside DEM members and others, clasping the single-page declaration that was read out on Thursday. It is a message in Ocalan’s voice, dated two days previously, that speaks of how the world changed with the end of the Cold War – but the PKK did not change with it.
The letter says Turkey has changed, too, even though it never refers to Turkey by name – the word “republic” is used, a marked change from the “occupying forces” often seen in PKK literature. It says issues like the denial of Kurdish identity and growing freedoms of expression led the PKK to “an absence of meaning and extreme repetitiveness”.
“That is why,” Ocalan goes on, “like similar organisations, it has completed its life and rendered its abolition necessary.”
There are passages of the letter that will grate in many Turkish ears – he justifies the PKK’s history of violence, for example, saying it was necessary because democratic political channels were closed to them.
But he also announces an explicit change in policy: no longer does Ocalan want a separate Kurdish nation-state, or a federation or even autonomy within Turkey.
He writes: “In the search for systems and applications, there is no path other than democracy. There cannot be. Democratic agreement is the fundamental method.”
It ends with thanks for Mr Bahceli and for President Erdogan, and an explicit instruction to PKK members, many of whom are still stationed in the mountainous Turkish-Iraqi border region or in northeastern Syria: “Gather your assembly and take a decision. All groups must give up their weapons and the PKK must abolish itself.”
Will the call succeed? Plainly, it is too early to say – because it is not clear what happens next.
First, there is no guarantee Ocalan’s order to disband will be obeyed. It is true that he is the movement’s founder and spiritual leader – his face adorns flags at PKK rallies everywhere – but he hasn’t been in charge since his capture in 1999. It is entirely conceivable that PKK fighters will not believe the message or will consider it a betrayal.
Second, we do not know what Ocalan gets in return for his message. There is talk of his being transferred to house arrest, either within Turkey or elsewhere. There is talk of an agreement between Mr Erdogan’s government and DEM to relax restrictions on the use of Kurdish in schools or to access public services like the courts.
Nothing has yet been announced; the many Kurds who consider the PKK as the best security of their identity will not want to see it abolished for nothing.
Third, it is not clear how Turkish public opinion will respond. This is a highly emotive issue in Turkey – soldiers who die in battle are described as martyrs, their opponents as traitors – and many who have advocated more rights for Kurds have been labelled separatists. The opposition nationalist IYI party, for example, responded to today’s announcement by draping its headquarters in black banners with the names of soldiers killed in action.
Overarching everything will be the question of trust. Turkey’s state and military will be watching to see if the PKK truly disarms; many Kurds fear the Turkish government will respond not with amnesties and more civil liberties, but with a crackdown. A growing number of opposition politicians who won their seats in last year’s local elections, DEM members included, have been detained in recent months on terrorism charges. There is much more trust-building left to do.
Yet there is one final factor that could help move this process along: the political future of Mr Erdogan himself. Turkey’s President is in the middle of his final term. Constitutionally, he must leave office when elections are called for May 2028 – unless Parliament votes to bring those elections forward. If it does, Mr Erdogan can stand as a candidate again. The President’s party and allies like the MHP do not have the numbers in the legislature to pass such a motion – but if DEM joins them, they would.
That is a question for another day. After all, we are at only the beginning of a process that could shape the fates of Mr Erdogan and Ocalan, two of the most influential leaders Turkey has ever seen.
