Turkey-PKK talks: Is peace finally possible?
It was a year ago that PKK fighters held a symbolic disarmament ceremony, burning their weapons. Peace talks between the PKK and Turkey are going
It was a year ago that PKK fighters held a symbolic disarmament ceremony, burning their weapons. Peace talks between the PKK and Turkey are going slowly, but some observers believe that they will succeed this time. July marks a year since the Kurdish militant group known as the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by numerous countries, symbolically burned their weapons. Last May, the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, announced it would end its "work under the name of PKK," halting a decades-long armed insurgency between the Turkish state and those fighting for Kurdish rights or independence inside Turkey, one that had cost an estimated 40,000 lives. Later, on July 11, a group of around 30 PKK fighters in northern Iraq burned their weapons in a symbolic disarmament ceremony. This year, on that 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 between the Turkish government and the PKK. The conference was organized by Diyarbakir's administration and the Human Rights Association, or IHD. One of the IHD's co-chairs, lawyer Cihan Aydin, has proposed making July 11 an official day of remembrance. A vibrant culture of remembrance contributes to coming to terms with the past and prevents future conflicts, he argued. 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. For decades, Ocalan was considered a terrorist in Turkey. Today the 77-year-old is the focal point of the current peace process.
It was he who called on the PKK to lay down its arms in February 2025, a call that members responded to. Turkey-PKK peace process Following this, the Turkish parliament established a committee that heard testimony from approximately 140 representatives of politics and civil society, including human rights activists and relatives of soldiers, veterans and prisoners. The committee then recommended a series of reforms to advance the peace process, including the reintegration into society of PKK members who renounced violence, as well as state security institutions verifying that the PKK had genuinely given up its weapons. Talks have focused on the rules on the return or potential prosecution of PKK members as well as their possible integration into civilian and political life. The Kurds want to see Ocalan released from prison along with other political prisoners. The Turkish government has not been open to a general amnesty, only a partial one, and has yet to make any concrete commitment regarding Ocalan. However, more recently the country's ruling party, AKP, seems to have struck a more moderate tone. PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been jailed by Turkey since 1999, called for the PKK to end their fighting in May of 2025 Image: DEM This makes Aret Demirci, head of the Istanbul office of Germany's Friedrich Naumann Foundation, believe that progress in the talks should be seen as "cautiously positive." The fact that the PKK symbolically burned their weapons marked an "historic turning point," he says. "And unlike previous peace initiatives, the process has not collapsed at an early stage." But, Demirci cautions, so far the central political questions have mostly been ignored.
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