Ocalan’s Call is a Golden Opportunity for Turks

MANISH RAI

Abdullah Ocalan, founder leader of The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) made a historic call from ?mral? prison where he is being held in near total isolation since 1999 to his party to lay down its arms, dissolve itself and end its decades-long conflict with the Turkish state. PKK responded very positively to the call of its imprisoned leader by announcing a unilateral ceasefire with Turkey. This call of the PKK founder is being considered as a major milestone in ending the four decades old Kurdish armed insurgency in Turkey. This major development has far-reaching political and security consequences for the region. It’s evident from the fact that all the major Kurdish political parties and groups of the region like- Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Democratic Union Party, Syria (PYD), and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) welcomed this announcement of Abdullah Ocalan. The tremendous power imbalance between the centralized Turkish State and the marginalized Kurdish poor in the periphery led to several Kurdish rebellions in the 1920s and 1930s that were brutally quashed. An armed struggle was resumed in 1984 by the PKK, with violent clashes between the Kurdish guerrillas and the Turkish army ongoing ever since, resulting in the death of about 40,000 people.

Since the creation of the modern Turkish state in 1923, the Kurdish minority has been subject to repression and marginalization. In the past, this has included a ban on the Kurdish language, and severe repression of any expression of Kurdish identity, such as the celebration of the Kurdish festival of Nowruz. Indeed, the Turkish state for a long time denied the existence of the Kurds as an ethnic group, describing them as “mountain Turks”. The PKK was formally founded in November 1978, initially as an outright separatist group. State repression and the lack of means of political expression were more important factors of public support during the PKK’s founding years and during the 1990s. Despite being formed as a radical separatist group aiming for secession from Turkey over the time PKK moderated its stand and demonstrated a lot of political maturity. The PKK’s demands long ago morphed from an independent Kurdish homeland to greater autonomy in Turkey and more rights for Kurds, who account for as much as a fifth of the country’s population. The PKK today have very reasonable demands like that the Kurdish identity be recognized, and that Kurds be able to freely exercise their civic rights through constitutional guarantees. And with the announcement of the unilateral ceasefire after the call of Abdullah Ocalan. PKK has shown to the world that they are very much willing for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue.

Unfortunately, Turkey has not reciprocated positively to the PKK’s announcement yet. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an speaking at a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner in Istanbul stated: “We will continue our ongoing (military) operations, if necessary, until we eliminate the last terrorist without leaving a single stone on top of another, without leaving a single head on his shoulder.”  Additionally, Erdogan's party has publicly said that it expects all Kurdish armed groups even in Iraq and Syria, including U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish forces, to disarm. With this kind of rigid initial response from Turks it seems that achieving peace would be a challenging task. Many analysts are sceptical about Ankara's true intentions. Some even suggest that the Turkish President will likely use Ocalan's call as a way to persuade Kurdish voters to support a constitutional overhaul that would allow him to bypass term limits and seek re-election in 2028. But this kind of short-term myopic thinking will cost the Turkish state dearly in the long term.

By giving talks and negotiations a sincere chance, Turkey can achieve a lot. The cessation of hostilities between PKK guerillas and Turkish armed forces will help reduce domestic tensions, especially in the country's Kurdish-majority southeastern regions, which for decades have witnessed violent confrontations between the army and PKK fighters. Political and social stability could help Kurds better integrate into Turkish mainstream political and social life. Which may strengthen national unity and reduce ethnic and political polarisation. Moreover, any positive step in peaceful resolution of the conflict could also help improve international relations, with Ankara potentially leveraging it to improve its relations with Washington and the European Union (EU), both of which have repeatedly criticised its policies towards the Kurds.

Turkish policymakers are wary that granting any kind of political and cultural freedom to Kurds would eventually lead to Kurdish secession. The very thought of recognizing the Kurdish identity is understood by Turks as posing a threat to the long-standing Kemalist interpretation of the unitary state. Turkish leaders must come out of this mind set now. Ankara should grab this golden opportunity for resolving this conflict which has been haunting it for the past many decades. Ankara should take some confidence building measures to strengthen trust between them and PKK like- freeing Kurdish political prisoners most notably Selahattin Demirtas, Turkey’s most popular Kurdish politician and seizing ongoing military operations against PKK and its allied groups in Syria and Iraq. 

(The author is a columnist and geopolitical analyst for Middle-East and can be reached at manishraiva@gmail.com)