Turkey-PKK talks: Is peace finally possible?
A year after the PKK's symbolic weapons burning, a conference in Diyarbakir assessed the peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
July marks one year since the Kurdish militant group PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by several countries, symbolically burned their weapons. Last May, the PKK announced it would end its "work under the name of PKK," halting a decades-long armed insurgency that had cost an estimated 40,000 lives. On July 11, about 30 PKK fighters in northern Iraq burned their weapons in a symbolic disarmament ceremony.
This year on the same date, human rights activists, academics, and politicians gathered in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, to assess progress in the ongoing peace process. The conference was organized by Diyarbakir's administration and the Human Rights Association (IHD). One of the IHD's co-chairs, lawyer Cihan Aydin, proposed making July 11 an official day of remembrance. He argued that a vibrant culture of remembrance contributes to coming to terms with the past and prevents future conflicts. Aydin also called for a legal solution for all those impacted by the peace process, including PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been jailed by Turkey since 1999. Ocalan, long considered a terrorist in Turkey, is now the focal point of the peace process. It was he who called on the PKK to lay down its arms in February 2025.
Following this, the Turkish parliament established a committee that heard testimony from approximately 140 representatives of politics and civil society, including human rights activists, relatives of soldiers, veterans, and prisoners. The committee recommended reforms to advance the peace process, such as the reintegration of PKK members who renounce violence and state security verification that the PKK had genuinely disarmed. Talks have focused on rules for the return or prosecution of PKK members and their potential integration into civilian and political life. The Kurds want Ocalan and other political prisoners released. The Turkish government has not been open to a general amnesty, only a partial one, and has made no concrete commitment regarding Ocalan. However, the ruling AKP party has recently struck a more moderate tone.
Aret Demirci, head of the Istanbul office of Germany's Friedrich Naumann Foundation, views the progress as "cautiously positive." He notes that the PKK's symbolic weapons burning was a "historic turning point" and that, unlike previous peace initiatives, the process has not collapsed early. However, Demirci warns that central political questions have mostly been ignored. The Turkish government pushes for complete disarmament while the Kurdish side wants political and legal guarantees first. "The parties' differing expectations are likely to be the biggest challenge in coming months," he says.
After meeting with Ocalan and others in prison this week, the pro-Kurdish party DEM released a statement in which Ocalan repeated his call for a legal framework to advance the peace process. "The Kurdish-Turkish alliance is the cornerstone of Anatolia's shared future," Ocalan stressed. The PKK's leadership also seems optimistic. Duran Kalkan, a co-founder of the PKK, said in an interview that the peace process would not fail because the regional situation is very different this time.
Many observers agree with Kalkan. Conflicts in the Middle East have intensified recently, especially due to tensions between Israel, Iran, and the US. Changes in Syria are also important. Turkey faces a different security situation than a decade ago, when informal talks between Turkish intelligence and the PKK that began in 2009 evolved into negotiations between 2013 and 2015. In March 2013, Ocalan declared a ceasefire that did not last. Demirci thinks geopolitical changes are forcing dialogue.
The new government in Syria plays a key role. Better relations with Kurds inside Turkey give Ankara leverage over Syrian and Iraqi Kurds. Turkey worried that PKK members might join Iranian-Kurdish militias. During the Syrian civil war, Syrian Kurdish groups tied to the PKK and backed by the US controlled a large area near the Turkish border. Now they have had to accommodate the new Syrian government and no longer fully control that area.
However, long-term success depends not only on ending violence but also on a political dialogue encompassing democratic reforms, rule of law, and Kurdish identity issues. As long as opposition politicians are arrested, Kurdish mayors removed, and political freedoms restricted, ending armed conflict alone will not bring sustainable peace. "This very ambivalence currently shapes the debate in Turkey and makes the process both historic and extremely fragile," Demirci says. A lack of transparency is also problematic: "There is hardly any public information about which agreements have been reached and what steps are planned, making it difficult to build public trust."
