Turkey is hoping for a breakthrough in efforts to end a four-decade insurgency by Kurdish militants after their jailed leader welcomed calls by the government to find a political solution to the conflict.
Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the banned Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), told opposition lawmakers visiting his prison on an island south of Istanbul over the weekend that he was willing to support a “new paradigm” aimed at a settlement after peace talks collapsed into fierce fighting in 2015. Öcalan is 25 years into a life sentence for treason and separatism.
The visit followed a surprise offer in October from Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the government’s nationalist governing partner, to free Öcalan in return for ordering the PKK to lay down arms. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called the proposal a “historic window of opportunity”.
“I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the required call,” Öcalan said, according to notes of the meeting released on Sunday by the People’s Equality and Democracy party (DEM), whose base is overwhelmingly Kurdish. He also said he had the “competence and determination to contribute positively” to a new peace process”.
In another sign of the outreach to Kurds, the government on Sunday announced a $14bn investment into the country’s impoverished, predominately Kurdish south-east. Vice-president Cevdet Yılmaz welcomed what he called a chance for “the end of terrorism and the strengthening of an environment of peace and security”.
Enlisting Öcalan, 75, and DEM to end an insurrection that has claimed more than 40,000 lives would mark a stunning shift from Erdoğan’s decade-long effort to weaken the Kurdish political movement, while crushing the PKK, which Turkey and its western allies label a terrorist organisation.
But the fall of Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria has added renewed urgency to Erdoğan’s efforts. Syria is home to tens of thousands of Kurdish militants who lead the Syrian Democratic Forces, which Ankara considers an extension of the PKK. The SDF, which was armed and trained by the US to fight Isis during Syria’s civil war, seized large swaths of territory — an area they call Rojava — during the conflict.
Analysts say Turkey, the main backer of rebels who ousted Assad, may now worry that instability and direct confrontation with the SDF could trigger a backlash among its own 15mn Kurdish population, many of whom view the experiment in self-rule by Syria’s Kurds with pride.
“Kurds in Turkey want their rights within the borders of Turkey, while defending the status of Rojava within the borders of Syria,” Tülay Hatimoğulları, DEM’s co-chair, told the Financial Times earlier this month. “You can’t extend an olive branch here and a gun there.”
While security forces have largely stamped out PKK violence inside Turkey, eradicating the threat completely may now require political concessions to its Kurdish minority, said Mesut Yeğen, a researcher at the Reform Institute, an Istanbul think-tank.
He added that securing the backing of Öcalan, who is reviled by Turkish nationalists but remains a folk hero among PKK fighters and in north-east Syria, would be crucial.
“If Öcalan brings a proposal that has the backing of the [DEM] party and the Kurdish public for the PKK to disarm, it becomes difficult for the group to continue,” he said. “No one else can be as effective on the PKK as Öcalan . . . even after 25 years in prison.”
The lawmakers who met him on Saturday, Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan, described Öcalan as in “good health with high morale” during one of his only contacts with the outside world in four years. “We are much more hopeful than in previous” efforts to end the conflict, they said on Monday.
But freeing Öcalan alone will not end the conflict, said Hatimoğulları, whose DEM party differs sharply from the PKK in advocating for a political process over violence to strengthen Kurdish rights.
DEM calls for constitutional guarantees on the right to Kurdish-language education, greater local governance and the release of thousands of Kurdish activists and politicians. This includes Selahattin Demirtaş, who challenged Erdoğan for the presidency but has been locked up since 2016.
“The state’s conventional understanding of the Kurdish issue is that it is a security matter, while we see it as a political, social and democratic problem to be solved,” Hatimoğulları said.
For now, however, Turkey appears to be hedging its bets. Since Assad’s ousting, Syrian rebel factions Ankara backs have seized two major towns from the SDF and on Saturday, the same day Öcalan met the DEM lawmakers, the Turkish military said it had “neutralised” three Kurdish fighters in Syria.
Ankara has also continued a crackdown on Kurdish politicians at home. In the days following Bahçeli’s offer to Öcalan, authorities removed five DEM mayors in Turkey’s south-east from office, replacing them with state-appointed trustees.
Police arrived at Ahmet Türk’s door before dawn last month to notify him he had been dismissed as mayor of Mardin, the third time the 82-year-old Kurdish politician has been stripped of his duties since his first election to the post in 2014.
“While they are calling for the surrender of weapons, they are still blocking democratic politics,” he said. “But I have always believed it would be wrong to retreat into the corner in the face of intimidation [and not] recognise a chance for peace.”
Türk has spent a half-century working for a peaceful resolution of the conflict and was part of a previous attempt by Erdoğan to negotiate with the PKK.
Early in his rule, Erdoğan was credited with reforms, including loosening cultural restrictions on Kurds. But the failure of the last peace process in 2015 unleashed the worst fighting in Turkey in decades. Thousands of people were killed, and the Turkish military razed large stretches of south-eastern cities to the ground.
“We cannot lose faith, even during what is, frankly, a dark, uncertain period full of doubt about the future,” Türk said.
