In a widely anticipated statement that many hope will set the stage for ending more than more than four decades of conflict between Turkey and the Kurds, imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his followers Thursday to lay down their weapons and disband the rebel organization.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility for this call,” Ocalan said in his remarks that were relayed at a news conference in Istanbul. “All groups must lay [down] their arms, and the PKK must dissolve itself,” after convening a congress to that end.
The 74-year-old rebel chief made no reference to the Kurdish-led statelet in northeast Syria, which reveres him as its ideological leader while Turkey views him as an existential threat. Mazlum Kobane, commander in chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the Pentagon’s top ally in the fight against the Islamic State, confirmed that the call was not directed at his group. “Just to make it clear, this is only for the PKK, nothing related to us in Syria,” Kobane said.
Differences over Syria were a key obstacle in the talks, with Turkey insisting they encompass northeast Syria, where Turkish forces and allied Sunni factions have been waging a ferocious nine-year campaign to destroy the self-declared Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria over its links to the PKK.
But Ankara appears to have softened its stance, as several Arab nations have pushed back against Turkey’s growing influence in Syria, where an al-Qaeda offshoot overthrew Bashar al-Assad and seized power on Dec. 8 of last year. If the shift proves lasting, this would mean a big win for Syria’s Kurds.
The scene in Istanbul was festive, as lawmakers from Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish DEM Party took turns reading Ocalan’s orders to his outlawed PKK — first in Kurdish and then in Turkish — before an audience that included Kurdish politicians recently freed from prison and the mothers of Kurds forcibly disappeared by the Turkish state. The news conference was carried live by national television.
A photograph of Ocalan flanked by the DEM lawmakers who had met with him on his prison island earlier in the day was shown on a giant screen. Wearing a cherry-colored shirt and a navy blazer, the once burly PKK leader looked grayer and thinner than in the last official photographs of him that were circulated more than a decade ago during the previous peace talks.
Blast from the past
In arguments reminiscent of his 1999 courtroom trial in which he was sentenced to life imprisonment, Ocalan argued that the conditions for the PKK’s continuation — including the collapse of socialism in the 1990s — no longer existed, thereby “weakening the PKK’s foundational meaningfulness.” He also claimed that Kurdish identity was no longer rejected in Turkey, and that there were improvements in freedom of expression, even as large numbers of Kurds airing nationalist opinions or wearing Kurdish symbols continue to be prosecuted and jailed amid a fresh wave of repression.
A separate nation state, federation, administrative autonomy or “culturalist solutions” were not the answer, Ocalan said. “There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realization of a political system. Democratic consensus is the only way,” he added. His reference to administrative autonomy may still be interpreted as a message to the self-declared autonomous administration in northeast Syria, which Turkey and Syria’s new Islamist leaders say must be dissolved.
However Foza Yusuf, a key official in the Kurdish-led administration, echoed SDF commander Kobane’s views that Ocalan was not alluding to Syria. “His statement reveals once again his strategic brilliance. We knew he would not make us part of any bargain. Our deals, agreements need to be made with Damascus, not with Turkey,” Yusuf told Al-Monitor. “This is confirmation that there are no organic links between us and the PKK.” The distinction may prove to be a double-edged sword, allowing Turkey to pursue its attacks against the Syrian Kurds even as it makes peace with its own.
Drawing on the Turkish government’s narrative that malign external forces are willfully pitting Turks against Kurds, Ocalan also emphasized the “spirit of fraternity” between Turks and Kurds that was essential to “survive against hegemonic powers.” He also credited Erdogan and his nationalist ally, Devlet Bahceli, for creating the conditions for the current talks.
In October 2024, Bahceli signaled that secret talks with the PKK and the government — first reported by Al-Monitor — were underway when he invited Ocalan to the parliament where he said he should make a call to disarm, the very same call the PKK leader made today.
Official reaction has been muted so far, and there was no response from the PKK at the time this article was published.
Efkan Ala, the deputy chairman of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and a key figure in the previous peace talks that collapsed in 2015, was the first to comment on the Turkish side.
“The upshot of [Ocalan’s] call is for the terrorist organization to dissolve itself, and everyone must make an effort to achieve this result,” Ala told the pro-government news channel A Haber. “If terrorism persists, we are determined to continue fighting it,” he said.
Cheers and tears
Thousands gathered before giant screens erected in the main squares of cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast region to watch the news conference. They cheered and ululated before Ocalan’s message was read out. Some could not conceal their shock when they heard his words. “There were quite a few people crying, asking why Ocalan had given up so much without getting anything in return,” local journalist Selim Kurt told Al-Monitor from Diyarbakir, the Kurds’ informal capital.
Similar sentiments were echoed in Istanbul, prompting DEM lawmaker Sırrı Sureyya Onder to note that the PKK leader had also said that “democratic politics and a legal framework” were needed — ostensibly from Ankara — for his followers to disarm and disband.
Those words were not included in the statement that was read aloud.
More than 40,000 people, most of them PKK fighters, have died in the rebels’ armed campaign launched by Ocalan in 1984, which originally aimed for an independent Kurdish state carved out of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The rebels have said since the early 1990s that they would settle for local autonomy.
It remains unclear what the government has offered in return for Ocalan’s call, with the talks shrouded in secrecy. Sources with close knowledge of the negotiations say Ocalan has been promised vastly improved internment conditions and that numerous Kurdish political prisoners — most notably Selahattin Demirtas, Turkey’s most popular Kurdish politician — will be freed. Amnesty for PKK fighters untainted by the violence is reportedly in the cards, and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has offered asylum to senior PKK cadres, the sources told Al-Monitor.
A first and necessary step for the process to continue would be a mutually declared ceasefire, PKK sources say. There are unconfirmed reports that the PKK will release two senior operatives from Turkey’s national intelligence agency, MIT, whom the group kidnapped in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sulaimaniyah province in 2017.
But the path to lasting peace is peppered with pitfalls, as previous attempts have shown.
Erdogan’s nationalist detractors were quick to slam Ocalan’s call. Ali Sehiroglu, deputy chairman of the far-right Zafer (Victory) Party, vowed in a post on X to undo “this murky process.”
“We will not let the [Turkish] republic be destroyed! We will not allow the Turkish homeland to be divided,” Musavat Dervisoglu, leader of the nationalist Iyi (Good) Party, posted on X.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has relied on Kurdish support in recent elections, endorsed Ocalan’s call. CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said the call was “important,” and expressed hope that the PKK would heed it.
One of the chief goals of Erdogan’s outreach to Ocalan is to drive a wedge between the CHP and the DEM ahead of the next presidential and parliamentary elections, which are scheduled to be held in 2028. Being able to claim victory over the PKK — an organization that is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union — would give Erdogan a huge boost among nationalists. Overtures to Ocalan, long labeled a “baby killer,” would win over enough Kurds, Erdogan’s thinking goes.
The logistics of disarming are daunting. “Historic call, yes, but the PKK will not disappear tomorrow. On a practical level, the PKK needs security guarantees to hold a congress, at least a big one, and that is going to require more than Ocalan’s statement,” said Aliza Marcus, author of “Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.”
“Additionally, how is ‘dissolve’ defined here? There are thousands of armed rebels in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan — the group cannot simply dissolve or even disarm without a decision on what happens to these people. Where do they go? What will they do? Will they be allowed to return to Turkey and enter legal politics? Is the KRG going to allow them to settle in Iraqi Kurdistan? The PKK is supposed to dissolve itself, but its cadre do not just disappear,” Marcus told Al-Monitor.
The silver lining, Marcus noted, is that “in dissolving itself, the PKK would in essence be giving its local affiliates, whether for Syria or Iran, the independence they were promised back when these parties founded in 2003.” “Whether Ankara accepts this is another question,” Marcus added.
Ezgi Akin contributed to this report from Ankara.