Türkiye’s Kurdish Question and the PKK Ceasefire

Photo Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Democratic_Forces; SDF fighters celebrating their victory in the Battle of Raqqa against ISIS with a portrait of PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan in the background, mid-October 2017

 

On March 1, 2025, two days after imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan called on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/PKK) to disarm and disband, the group declared a unilateral ceasefire more than forty years after it first picked up arms in its quest for cultural recognition and autonomy. The protracted conflict finds its roots in Ataturk’s 20^th century state-building efforts, based on equal citizenship and common identity, and has since remained the country’s most controversial issue given the PKK initially sought independence for Kurdish people, before moving toward requests of some form of autonomy, cultural rights, and the recognition of their distinct identity in the 1990s. The decades-long conflict has since killed more than 40,000 people and cost the Turkish state over $300 billion. The road to this month’s ceasefire has by no means been linear, and Türkiye and the PKK have experience with failed peace efforts, of which the most recent major episode took place in 2013-2015. Therefore, though it is too soon to tell whether the ceasefire will hold, there are several motivations for Türkiye to make peace with the terrorist group, designated as such by the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US), European Union (EU), and Türkiye itself. This paper will award much of its attention to possible political and security incentives for Türkiye to reach and maintain a long-term peace with the PKK.

Political Considerations

When then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) began somewhat of a revolutionary effort to come to a peaceful agreement with the PKK in 2013, most observers deduced the motivations were majorly political. Then, too, Öcalan had called for a ceasefire, though, unlike in 2025, he did not call for the complete disbandment of the group. By deviating from the traditional understanding of the Kurdish question as a security issue to viewing it as a political concern, the AKP moved away from Türkiye’s previous, majorly deterrence-based approach marked by numerous military operations, in favor of making cultural concessions to the Kurds. The hope was that dialogue would result in a total cessation of hostilities between the two parties and a major win for the APK and its Prime Minister, who was planning to run for president in 2014, given the AKP’s bylaws forbade him from maintaining his post after his second term would come to an end. Though successful in his presidential campaign, President Erdoğan’s Solution process ended in failure two years after it began, caused by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) decision to run in the 2015 parliamentary elections as a party rather than put forward independent candidates, therefore minimizing the AKP’s expectations for seats in Kurdish- dominated districts after Erdoğan argued the APK needed to win elections for the sake of the peace process. Were the HDP to withdraw as a party, the AKP would be sure of the continuation of its single-party government.

Following the incident, Ankara returned to the nationalist and militaristic rhetoric and actions that had dominated the country’s approach to the PKK before the 2013 efforts. Its military battles with the PKK on Turkish soil continued until as recently as November 2024 after the PKK’s attack on Ankara’s Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAS) that resulted in five casualties and twenty-two injuries. Ankara has combined this with the removal of several elected Kurdish or pro-Kurdish mayors from their posts over allegations of support for the PKK, blurring the lines between the terrorist threat and civilian Kurds. Furthermore, authorities tended to return to violating the very civil liberties that the Solution process sought to protect, and although Türkiye lacks laws that explicitly prohibit cultural expression, reports of infringements on the use of the Kurdish language and alphabet, the discrimination of Kurds in education, employment, and daily life, and bans on their cultural events have become frequent since the abrupt end of dialogue.

The Kurdish question remains highly intertwined with Erdoğan’s political aspirations. Regardless of whether the president was to be taken for his word when he declared during his campaign for a third presidential term that it would be his last, or aims to find further loopholes or change the constitution altogether to allow himself to run for a fourth term, the problem of the PKK is central to his political career. If his ambitions span past 2028, many predict a PKK solution and Kurdish support would embolden the President to seek another term, and likely win it. Moreover, Devlet Bahçeli, ultra-nationalist leader of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), was the one to call on Öcalan to ask his party to lay down their arms in exchange for the possibility of parole or release from his life sentence for treason, after he initially allied himself with the AKP in light of the failed 2013 talks and consistently advocated for a hardline approach to the PKK and the Kurdish question. As Bahçeli is reportedly closely collaborating with Erdoğan to determine the steps that are to follow, Türkiye’s new political context that brings together the leadership, the ultra-nationalists, and the PKK, seems to be the most conductive to successful and long-lasting peace the country has experienced in years.

Security Considerations and the Issue of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)

Many of Türkiye’s military operations – such as Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016 and Operation Claw-Sword in 2022 – against PKK and offshoot Kurdish radical forces such as the People’s Defense Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were located on the northern border with Syria and Iraq. This complicated Türkiye’s relationship not only with the respective countries but also with the US, given its military support to the SDF in hopes the group would counter the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). As a result, some frictions in the relationship of the two N ATO allies have been evident at various points in their fight against different terrorist groups, with recent incidents such as America’s downing of an armed Turkish drone in northern Syria that reportedly flew too close to US forces operating in the region making headlines. The US is not the only Western country to have supported the YPG and, consequently, the SDF, with Sweden’s N ATO accession delayed by Türkiye over concerns for its considerable diplomatic – and, according to Türkiye, financial – support for the organization that it ascribes terrorist status to. Whilst the PKK itself and its cross-border offshoots represent a great security concern for Türkiye, SDF supporters in the West and East (Iran’s growing ties to the SDF and Israel’s recent reported lobbying to US officials to limit Türkiye’s presumed role in a new Syria, given, amongst other reasons, its interests in territorial expansion in southern Syria) alike have long exacerbated these concerns.

Therefore, the recent (March 10, 2025) announcement by the interim Syrian government led by President Ahmed al-Shaara – who has, for quite some time, engaged in negotiations with the SDF in hopes of consolidating his transitional government’s grip on the country – that it reached an agreement with the SDF to integrate the forces that controlled much of Syria’s north-east into the national army and achieve a national ceasefire is not only a testament to the cross-border influence of Öcalan’s call for a ceasefire but could also provide a considerable opening for Türkiye to ameliorate some of its cross-border security challenges and deescalate tensions with the Syrian group. Alongside an integration of SDF-controlled public institutions into the Syrian government’s control, the latter has awarded its Kurdish population civil and political rights, including the celebration of Kurdish holidays and the use of the full Kurdish language and the confirmation that all of Syria’s groups would have the right to participate in the political processes that are to come. Scholars – such as Herbert Blumberg, Daniel Byman, Mustafa Coşar Ünal, and William Gourlay, to name but a few – have long sustained that awarding cultural recognition to groups from which ethnic terrorism emerges may serve to minimize their support base and draw them into legitimate political processes, which points to further possibilities for dialogue between the Kurds and the governments concerned.

Concluding Remarks

Rather than being seen as the end, Türkiye’s ceasefire with the PKK is perhaps better understood as the beginning of a peaceful approach to the Kurdish search for recognition and the country’s anti-terrorism strategies. Whether this recognition will come in the form of cultural concessions, with Türkiye allowing for the use of the Kurdish language and public events, or a form of autonomy for the ethnic group, is yet to be seen; much as is whether or not this newly-found peace will last. For its part, the AKP may further need to find the careful balance in consolidating electoral support from the Kurdish population and that of Türkiye’s growing nationalist actors, though cooperation with Bahçeli may make this an easier task, as does the possibility of improved relations with Syria. Ultimately, with the recent – if shaky – ceasefire, Türkiye’s Kurdish question seems to be close to obtaining its answers – at least for now.

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