The latest Turkish PKK move is a new generation disarmament Project

Speaking at a public rally in ths photo, DEM Party Co-Chair Tuncer Bakırhan called the Turkish move to dismantle the PKK as a disarmament project; that could be taken as a positive gesture by the Erdoğan govenment. DEM Co-Chair Tülay Hatimoğulları is at the right corner.

I have been watching to see who would name it correctly. Finally, it was Tuncer Bakırhan, the Co-Chairman of the Kurdish-problem-focused Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM). The following sentence in Bakırhan’s address to the DEM Parliamentary Group on April 8 seemed like a routine proposal to the government. Still, it contained the actual name of the process in all its nakedness: “The disarmament process requires a special law.”
Disarmament…
More precisely, the project to disarm the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)n which has been waging an armed campaign against Türkiye for almost half a century.
This is the actual name of the political process that the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli initiated by addressing the DEM Party benches at the opening ceremony of the Turkish Grand National Assembly on October 1, 2024, and then on October 22 by making an appeal to PKK founding leader Abdullah Öcalan in İmrali prison. To be frank, no one other than the leader of the Turkish nationalist movement could dare to make such a call; Bahçeli could be the one to sabotage it if anyone else came up with the idea.
The DEM, acting as a bridge between the government and the PKK, seems to have accepted that the ultimate goal of the process, which President Tayyip Erdoğan embraced with the slogan “Turkey Without Terror” after taking the pulse of Bahçeli’s call for Öcalan to “tell his organization to lay down arms and disband itself” for quite some time, is the disarmament of the PKK.
This also means that the DEM has now digested that this is not a negotiation process and has shifted into the gear of “confidence-building measures” at the mass level to ensure that it ends with minimum human casualties.

“How will the arms be laid down?”

When we consider the quote from Bakırhan’s speech with its before and after, the picture becomes clearer:
– “The obstacles to social peace must be removed not with words, but with concrete, reassuring, and courageous steps. “Dar bi xweziyê şîn nabe,” Kurds say. In other words, a tree does not flourish just by wishing for it.
– “We are at a very important crossroads where history is watching us, and we are at a 100-year threshold. Türkiye’s most fundamental issue is being discussed, but the government is waiting. Does anyone know where in the world peace has been achieved by just waiting?
– “The disarmament process requires a special law. Something must be done about this urgently. Disarm, but where and how? What will happen after disarmament? These questions need to be worked on and answered now.”
Bakırhan also suggests that Öcalan’s “freedom to work and communicate” should be the first step in moving the process forward.
It is possible to read between the lines the demand for a halt to Turkey’s counter-terrorism operations in Iraq and Syria to convene a congress on disarmament and the PKK’s self-dismantling.

PKK: disarming after half a century

When I was writing my book “The Kurdish Trap – Öcalan from Damascus to İmralı” in which I wrote about Öcalan’s capture, Süleyman Demirel, the President of the time, quoted İsmail Hakkı Karadayı, the Chief of General Staff of the time, as saying to him, “We don’t call it that, but, this is a guerrilla incident.”
This “guerrilla incident”, which Demirel described as the thirtieth uprising of the Kurds in history, Öcalan described as “the longest and most comprehensive rebellion and violent movement in the history of the Republic” in his call for laying down arms through the DEM delegation on February 27. It caused tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions lira of economic and incalculable political damage in Tüğrkiye in the half-century leading up to the disarmament phase.
Other than the Colombia case, which is not only a political fight, no other “guerilla incident” in the world lasted longer than the PKK’s that is going on since 1978 In a separate category, the armed struggle in Colombia, which is intertwined with the cocaine cartels, has lasted longer than the PKK’s “guerrilla incident” in 1978; Vietnam ended in 19 years.
The fact that it has reached the disarmament stage means the de facto acceptance that the PKK will not be able to achieve its founding goal of a Kurdistan that is carved out of Türkiye, Iran, Iraq, and Syria by force of arms. That is why the disarmament project is ambitious, and why it is now being discussed that at least its end should be as bloodless as possible.

International dimension, USA, Israel, Iran

The PKK had adopted Marxist-Leninist principles at its foundation under the influence of the Soviet Union. Today it resists Türkiye with the political, financial, and military support it receives from the USA through its extensions in Syria in return for acting as US foot soldiers against DAESH, or ISIS. Türkiye, on the other hand, is inflicting heavy damage on the PKK with the operations of the Armed Forces and the intelligence agency (MİT), despite the US support in Syria.
However, even before Donald Trump took office, there were already discussions within the US that there was no longer much point in maintaining their presence in Syria, except to create a buffer zone with Iran for Israel’s security.
Trump has started direct talks with Iran not only to prevent its nuclear armament but also to free US foreign policy from the Israeli shackles.
At the same time, similar to the Turkish project to disarm the PKK and bring it into legitimate politics, the US is trying to convince Israel to disarm Hamas and then bring it into Palestinian politics as Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff put it.

A unique opportunity

The PKK disarmament project has presented Ankara with an opportunity in international balances that may never come again. This is what Erdoğan meant by saying, “It is unthinkable for a politician with a sense of responsibility towards his nation to turn his back on such an opportunity”.
Under these circumstances, DEM Co-Chair Bakırhan’s use of the “Peace Process” discourse to ensure a soft transition and digestion of his party’s grassroots, while using the definition of “disarmament,” which is understood to have been discussed in party committees, is of particular value.
This is a process in which internal and external developments are intertwined and accelerating.