Will Erdoğan untie or cut the PKK’s knot in Syria?

When I was writing my book “Kürt Kapanı (The Kurdish Trap)” about the full story of the capture of Abdullah Öcalan, the founding leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Süleyman Demirel, the Turkish President of the time, told me that İsmail Hakkı Karadayı, the Chief of General Staff at the time, had said to him, “We don’t call it that, but”; “This is a guerrilla incident.” Demirel had also told me that the Kurds had revolted 29 times so far and the PKK “incident” “Is the thirtieth.”
Demirel had threatened Syria with war because of hosting Öcalan during his opening of the Parliament speech on October 1, 1998 in front of all diplomatic representatives in Ankara, and paved the way for his capture on February 15, 1999 in Kenya; that was cutting the Syrian knot like Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot.
You know the story. When Alexander the Great started his Asian campaign, he was confronted with the “Gordian Knot” (*) of the Phrygian King Midas (near present-day Ankara). The oracles said that only the one who unties this knot can become the ruler of Asia. Alexander tried to untie the knot for a while, finally, out of patience, he drew his sword, cut the knot, and ended up in Afghanistan.
What Demirel did was cut the Syrian knot that could not be untied by diplomacy. The result was achieved, Öcalan was deported, captured and a new curtain opened on what Demirel called “the thirtieth Kurdish rebellion”.

Untying the Syrian knot

President Tayyip Erdoğan faces a similar dilemma today.
Will the solution to the “Thirtieth Rebellion”, which has been going on for almost half a century, untie or cut another Syrian knot that stands in its way?
This time Türkiye is trying to untie a more complicated Syrian knot than the former one.
The ranks were clearer that time. The Soviet Union, which had supported the Baath regime in Syria for years, had collapsed and the Russian Federation had not yet recovered. When Türkiye threatened Syria with war, Iran and Egypt, not wanting to lose the Syrian ground against Israel because of Öcalan, stepped in and convinced Hafez al-Assad to send Öcalan away. Türkiye-US relations were much better than today. Öcalan was captured in a joint operation by Turkish intelligence MİT and the CIA, as he was taken out of the Greek Embassy in Kenya via an international plot, and put in İmralı Island-prison in the middle of the Marmara Sea where he is still imprisoned.
Today, there is a regime in Syria -since the overthrow of the Baathist regime in December 2024, that is not hostile to Türkiye, but is extremely weak. The country’s border region with Türkiye and Iraq is controlled by the PKK-affiliated organizations in Syria, which the US supports on the pretext of fighting DAESH (or ISIS).
The PKK-affiliate Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the other hand, do not take Öcalan’s call for the PKK to “lay down its arms and dissolve itself”; this is the Syria knot on the way to a possible political solution for the Kurdish issue and the terrorism problem in Türkiye.

The knot is the US-created SDF

Back in 2015 when the US decided to go with the PKK against DAESH, instead of the NATO member Turkish forces they had a problem. The PKK was designated as a terrorist organization by the US government, and there was a CIA report submitted to the Congress that Kurdish secessionist PYD and its armed wing YPG were also linked to the PKK. That meant no budget support could be given to them.
Then US Special Forces Commander Raymond Thomas came up with an idea and asked the YPG people to change their names into a new organization. In a speech he delivered in 2017 in the Aspen Forum, Thomas said in irony that the next day they came up with a new name with the word “democracy” in it; that was SDF. The head of the SDF, Mazlum Abdi, who is regarded like Öcalan’s adopted son, says his call to lay down arms does not bind them, as if they have no relation with the PKK.
The SDF also refuses to accept Syria’s interim President Ahmet Shara’s offer to join the Syrian army, and instead proposes the autonomy of a Kurdish corps; as an army within an army.

A farewell to arms?

The need to untie the Syrian knot on the road to domestic peace and border security of Türkiye is obvious. The bloody armed campaign waged by the PKK for the last 47 years for an independent Kurdish state carved out of Türkiye, Iran, Iraq and Syria has claimed tens of thousands of lives, billions of dollars and unmeasurable political damage. Now there is s serious opportunity to end this source of stability in the Middle East, following a proposal by Devlet Bahçeli, President Erdoğan’a ally and also the leader of the staunchest Turkish nationalist, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and seconded by Öcalan, saying that the era of armed struggle victories for organizations like the PKK was over.
The recent Turkish success in building its weapon systems, including armed drones and MİT operations against the PKK targets in Syria and Iraq, helped the situation.
But one of the strategically important topics of the “end to the rebellion” call made by MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli to Öcalan, and Öcalan to his organization is to prevent a PKK-led Kurdish formation in Syria, supported by the US and Israel. President Tayyip Erdoğan says that for Öcalan’s call and the positive reply by the PKK headquarters in the Kandil Mountains of Iraq near Iranian border to be valid, it must include all organizations affiliated with the PKK, and it must move from rhetoric to action, that is, the steps of dissolution and disarmament must be taken.

Ukraine example for the PKK

We watched the US President Donald Trump lure Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky into the White House trap and left him in the lurch. Zelensky’s attempt to seek solace at the London Summit resulted in Trump suspending aid to Ukraine.
Trump is making all the gestures he can before meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and shaking hands. Russia’s gain will be the seizure of a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Trump, on the other hand, wants to get his hands on Ukraine’s precious underground riches in exchange for the price of protecting Ukraine against Russia. No one is talking about the promises of the US, Britain and Western Europe to bring Ukraine into NATO and the EU.
Hamish Falconer, the British Deputy Foreign Secretary for Middle Eastern Affairs, was in Ankara on March 3. He met with Deputy Foreign Minister Nuh Yılmaz, a former top counter-intelligence officer. According to diplomatic sources who preferred to remain anonymous, the consensus on helping the Syrian government gives way to contradictions as we get down to the details. One of the main contradictions is the reluctance to stop supporting the SDF; the justification is the fight against DAESH.

The US quits on Ukraine

The British rationale for making it harder to untie the Syrian knot is the same as the American one: the fight against DAESH. This is despite the Turkish proposal to the interim government in Syria and the US and Western allies that Türkiye can send anti-terror-experienced commando brigades against DAESH in Syria.
In this respect, Israel, which makes no secret of the fact that it needs a Kurdish formation in Syria for its security interests, is much more consistent.
So, will the US, which sold out Ukraine like this, stand behind the PKK-linked SDF in Syria -on the grounds of DAESH, of course – indefinitely? Do PKK leaders in Kandil believe that Ankara will try to untie the Syrian knot forever while they are using the SDF as an excuse? Erdoğan’s statement, “No one should forget that tomorrow, when the interests of the powers that support terrorist organizations change and they withdraw from the region, we will be left alone together” points exactly to such a situation.
Öcalan’s self-criticism in response to Bahçeli’s call should be evaluated with calm. The thirtieth Kurdish rebellion has cost Turkey a lot. It is now necessary to end it; the Syrian knot must be untied or cut, but somehow solved.

Noteend

(*) Rich archaeological remains of the period are on display at the Gordion Museum, located on the original site of the tumulus in the village of Yassıhöyük near Polatlı, about 90 kilometers west of Ankara. It’s a museum worth spending a full day in, I highly recommend it.