The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging an armed struggle for the separation of the Kurdish regions from Turkey and the creation of an independent state since the 1970s, is ceasing to exist. The organization held a congress at which it was decided to dissolve itself. The PKK has fulfilled the will of its founder and undisputed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence in a Turkish prison. This is the undoubted propaganda success of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, it is not at all obvious that this success will actually lead to the end of the armed confrontation between the Turkish authorities and supporters of the creation of an independent Kurdistan.
On Monday, May 12, the Firat news agency (headquarters in the Netherlands), which is close to the PKK, published the materials of the party’s congress.
It took place from 5 to 7 May somewhere in the Kandil mountains. This is the territory of the Kurdish autonomy in northeastern Iraq, where PKK bases have been located for many years.
At the congress, which was attended by 232 delegates, it was decided to self-dissolve the party. In addition to Ocalan’s instructions (he called on his colleagues to lay down their arms at the beginning of the year), it is justified by the fact that the PKK has achieved its goal: “recognition of the Kurds as a political and ethnic reality of Turkey.” In any case, this wording is contained in the statement of the Presidium of the Congress, published by Firat. However, what will follow from this practically is not very clear from this document.
The text of the statement speaks of the need to “review Kurdish-Turkish relations.” It’s not the clearest wording. There are a few more specifics in the part of the statement that concerns Ocalan. “The decision taken by the congress to end the PKK’s activities and move towards a democratic path creates the basis for long-term peace. However, the implementation of these decisions is impossible without the participation of Abdullah Ocalan as the leader of the process. Legal and political guarantees of his status are needed. In this regard, the role of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and all parliamentary parties is important,” the text says.
Ocalan, who turned 76 in April, has been in prison on Imrali Island since 1999. The Turkish authorities did not announce that he could be released, even when negotiations began with him last year on the possibility of the PKK abandoning its armed struggle. Unlike previous attempts to reach an agreement with Ocalan, the negotiation process was initiated not directly by Erdogan, but by the president’s ally, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli. The prisoner was allowed to visit representatives of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, whose leader Selahattin Demirtas, by the way, is also serving time in a Turkish prison. Finally, the leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan insisted on the dissolution of the PKK. It has strong trade ties with Turkey, and the oil produced in this Iraqi autonomous region goes there. Therefore, local authorities are not happy with the fact that their territory periodically becomes the scene of armed clashes. They insist on the dissolution of the PKK and the simultaneous withdrawal of Turkish troops from Iraqi Kurdistan.
However, there is no reason to believe that the decision of the congress will definitely lead to the end of the 47-year-old Kurdish-Turkish war. Too much is unknown: neither how the organization’s disarmament will take place, nor how it will (if at all) be integrated into Turkish politics, nor whether there will be an amnesty for Kurdish politicians convicted in Turkey. So far, we can only say for sure that there is no question of any autonomy for the Turkish Kurds. The Turkish presidential Administration has stated this unequivocally. In addition, the PKK is currently not the most active part of the Kurdish radical independence movement. The last armed action she took was in the fall of 2024. Currently, most of the most capable PKK formations are located not in Iraq and Turkey, but in Syria. There they are part of the People’s Self–Defense Units (known by the Kurdish acronym YPG). This organization is currently conducting difficult peace negotiations with the new Syrian authorities on integration into state structures, perhaps on the creation of a Kurdish autonomy. In any case, the de facto leader of the YPG armed groups, Mazlum Abdi, who is a member of the PKK, said that Ocalan’s call to lay down arms does not concern the Syrian Kurds.
So will the bloodshed stop? “It all depends on whether the Kurds are deceived or not, and the Kurds have always been lucky in their history, so to speak, since 1920, when they were promised an independent state. The dissolution of the PKK must be accompanied by any obligations on the Turkish side, they must be legally fixed. In the meantime, there are no Kurds even in the Turkish Constitution. All citizens of the country are recognized as Turks there,” Viktor Nadein–Rayevsky, senior researcher at the E.M. Primakov IMEMO of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in a comment to NG.
He recalls that Ocalan is now more the spiritual leader of the PKK than the one who practically leads it. Therefore, it is possible that the decision on the self-dissolution of one or another armed structures of the party will be ignored. But in general, Erdogan can take the decision of the PKK congress to his credit.
Nadein-Rayevsky believes that reconciliation with the Kurds is an integral part of the tactics of the current Turkish president in order to remain in power for a new term. “Erdogan barely won the 2023 presidential election. In the new elections, he may not have enough votes to win. And the Kurds once supported Erdogan. They received certain concessions under him,” the expert said. It is enough to recall, for example, the 2013 decision to lift the ban on the use of the Kurdish alphabet. Therefore, Erdogan is interested in re-enlisting the support of the Kurdish electorate, which currently supports the opposition. And those who are hostile to the Kurds vote for the current president of Turkey anyway.