After 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish state, the outlawed Kurdish PKK will hold a ceremony on Friday to mark a symbolic first step in laying down its arms.<\/p>\n
The disarmament process will start under tight security in Iraqi Kurdistan and is expected to take all summer.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has hailed the move as \u201ctotally ripping off and throwing away the bloody shackles that were put on our country\u2019s legs\u201d.<\/p>\n
Some 40,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, and the PKK is listed as a terror group in Turkey, the US, EU and UK. Its disarmament will be felt not just in Turkey but in Iraq, Syria and Iran.<\/p>\n
A small group of PKK members will symbolically lay down their weapons in a ceremony in Suleymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, before going back to their bases.<\/p>\n
Members of Turkey\u2019s pro-Kurdish opposition Dem party are monitoring the process, and Turkish media are also there.<\/p>\n
Disarmament will then continue over the coming months at points set up with the involvement of the Turkish, Iraqi and Kurdistan regional governments, BBC Turkish has been told.<\/p>\n
In a video, the PKK\u2019s long-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, said it was \u201ca voluntary transition from the phase of armed conflict to the phase of democratic politics and law\u201d. He has been in solitary confinement on the small prison island of Imrali, south-west of Istanbul, since he was captured in 1999.<\/p>\n
This is not the first attempt at peace involving Turkey and the PKK, but this is the best hope so far that the armed struggle that began in 1984 will come to an end.<\/p>\n
Originally a Marxist group, the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party took up arms calling for an independent state inside Turkey.<\/p>\n
In the 1990s, they called instead for greater autonomy for Kurds, who make up about 20% of the population.<\/p>\n
Ocalan announced a ceasefire in 2013, and urged PKK forces to withdraw from Turkey. The 2015 Dolmabahce Agreement was supposed to bring democratic and language rights for Kurds, but the fragile truce collapsed amid devastating violence, especially in the Kurdish-dominated cities of the south-east, including Diyarbakir.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s air force targeted PKK bases in the mountains of northern Iraq. Several military campaigns have also targeted Kurdish-led forces in Syria.<\/p>\n
The government in Ankara ruled out further talks until the PKK laid down its arms. That is now on the verge of happening.<\/p>\n
In October 2024, a prominent nationalist leader and key Erdogan ally called Devlet Bahceli began a process described by the government as \u201cterror-free Turkey\u201d. He urged the PKK\u2019s imprisoned leader to call for the dissolution of the outlawed group. It could pave the way for his possible release from Imrali island, he suggested.<\/p>\n
The Turkish government launched talks with Ocalan via the pro-Kurdish Dem party, and then in February came his historic appeal for the PKK to disband, read out by two Dem MPs who had just returned from a visit to the prison island.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself,\u201d read Ocalan\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n
The PKK had been formed primarily because \u201cthe channels of democratic politics were closed\u201d, he said, but Devlet Bahceli and Erdogan\u2019s own positive signals had created the right environment.<\/p>\n
The PKK followed Ocalan\u2019s lead and declared a ceasefire and later declared that it had \u201ccompleted its historical mission\u201d: the Kurdish issue could now \u201cbe resolved through democratic politics\u201d.<\/p>\n
President Erdogan said it was an \u201copportunity to take a historic step toward tearing down the wall of terror\u201d and met pro-Kurdish politicians in April.<\/p>\n
As founder of the PKK, Ocalan continues to be reviled by many Turks, even after 26 years in solitary confinement.<\/p>\n
And yet he still plays an important role in the eyes of Kurds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he really has this authority; he is a main symbol for many Kurds, not all,\u201d says Joost Jongerden, a specialist on the 41-year conflict at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Two days before the PKK were due to begin disarmament, Ocalan appeared on video for the first time since he was put on trial more than 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
Speaking for seven minutes, he addressed the outlawed group: \u201cI believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I call on you to put this principle into practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ocalan was wearing a beige Lacoste polo shirt, and in an indication of his enduring relevance, the shirt quickly went viral and websites selling it ran out of stock.<\/p>\n
After Friday\u2019s ceremony, the scene switches to Turkey\u2019s parliament in Ankara where a commission will be set up to make decisions on the next steps for the government.<\/p>\n
As the summer recess is around the corner, no concrete decisions are expected for several months, when MPs vote on the commission\u2019s recommendations and President Erdogan has the final say.<\/p>\n
What happens to Abdullah Ocalan is not yet clear. The government says his conditions in jail could be reviewed as the process unfolds, but any chance of release will be left to the latter stages.<\/p>\n
Erdogan\u2019s AK Party has begun work on changing the constitution, and there has been speculation that this would mean Erdogan would be able to run for the presidency again when his final term runs out in 2028.<\/p>\n
The AKP and pro-Kurdish Dem party deny there is any link between the peace process and reshaping the constitution, but if Erdogan secures Dem support he would have a far greater chance of pushing through changes.<\/p>\n
Erdogan is behind in the polls, but his main opposition rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, is in jail accused of corruption, which he denies, and more opposition mayors have been arrested as part of a crackdown in the past week.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish state, the outlawed Kurdish PKK will hold a ceremony on Friday to mark a symbolic first step in laying down its arms. The disarmament process will start under tight security in Iraqi Kurdistan and is expected to take all summer. Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}