Kurdish conflict: PKK puts the first weapons down – does peace move closer?

As part of the peace process with Turkey, the forbidden Kurdish workers’ party PKK began to put down part of their weapons. Turkish media spread pictures on which 30 PKK fighters could be seen, who burned Kalashnikovs in a kind of fire bowl near the city of Sulaimanija in the Kurdistan region in Iraq. Bese Hozat, one of the leading women in the PKK, and commander Behzat Carcel, according to the Proberdish party, told PKK “out of free will” and demand freedom for her imprisoned founder, Abdullah Öcalan, as well as a democratic-political solution to the Kurdish question.

The PKK had announced its resolution in May and had followed Öcalan’s call. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed the leaning. He hoped that the process would result in a permanent peace in the region, he wrote on the platform X. A high -ranking Turkish government official said: “We consider this development to be an irreversible turning point.”

According to estimates, the PKK has several thousand fighters. This first step is therefore initially symbolic. The Turkish government expects all fighters to have given up their weapons by the end of the year. According to reports, the process should be monitored by the Turkish and the Iraqi government as well as the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey, the EU and the USA. Her headquarters are located in the Northern Iraqi Kandil mountains. The organization was founded in 1978 by Öcalan in Turkey – mainly in response to the political, social and cultural oppression of the Kurds in the country. Since the 1980s, she has been fighting arms and attacks for a Kurdish state or an autonomy area in the southeast of Türkiye. Tens of thousands of people died in the conflict. Öcalan, mid -70, has been in custody on the Imrali prison island since 1999.

Great distrust between the parties to the conflict

The step marks the most important milestones in the Kurdish -Turkish peace process – whether the process can actually result in a new political start is unclear. The distrust of the Turkish government on the side of the Kurds is great. In addition, the PKK is considered fragmented in several groups. Even if Öcalan is still granted high authority in the association, it is doubted that all of the fighters are for a task of the armed fight. Past peace efforts had repeatedly failed, most recently in 2015.

The head of the largest opposition party Chp, Özgür Özel, welcomed the step, but also warned that full peace was only possible through justice and democracy. Özel recalled that elected mayors are repeatedly discontinued and municipalities are placed under forced administration.

Out of worry about sabotage, the location of the weapon laying was not publicly announced in advance. It is unclear whether the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG, which has built up autonomous self -government in northeastern Syria and maintains close connections to the PKK, is part of the peace process with Turkey. In addition to a delegation from the party, the chairman of the party Die Linke, Jan van Aken, also took part in the ceremony.

Release as a condition for permanent solution

Further steps are now eagerly awaited: The PKK had only expressly made the release of Öcalans on Thursday to the condition for a permanent solution. So far, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strictly rejects this.

The Kurds in Turkey have been calling for social and political equality for decades. For example, they demand the recognition of the Kurdish as a further national language or the change in the constitutional article, which says that every Turkish citizen is Turk. A commission in the parliament that is supposed to create the legal framework for the process could be set up before the parliamentarians. It should also deal with questions about the social reintegration of PKK members at home and abroad.

What is behind the desired reconciliation

The ultra -nationalist politician Devlet Bahceli had initiated the new peace initiative, an ally of Erdogan and previously pronounced opponents of reconciliation with the PKK.

According to experts, there are various reasons that the peace initiative is now gaining drive. On the one hand, the PKK in Iraq was weakened by the Turkish attacks. In the Kurdish population, too, the demand for the end of the fights is growing. With the Gaza War, the weakening of Iran and the overthrow in Syria in the region, a power vacuum was created – both Kurds and Turkey wanted to design this. Erdogan’s amended constitutional amendment should also play a not insignificant role in order to be able to run again as president. For this he needs, for example, the voices of the Percurdish Party.

Gönül Tol, Turkey expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, therefore sees the peace process skeptical despite the progress. For years, Erdogan has instrumentalized the Kurdish question for his own purposes, she wrote in a post for “Foreign Policy”. “The solution to the conflict was never the goal, but the consolidation of power. The core of the Kurdish question – the democratic deficit in Turkey – was repeatedly ignored.”