In a carefully choreographed ceremony on July 11 in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, 30 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) symbolically burned their weapons. This unprecedented act was a signal of goodwill toward Ankara amid ongoing peace talks that both sides hope will end Turkey’s decade-long Kurdish conflict.
For years, liberal observers and peace advocates have imagined a resolution to this conflict as a key step in Turkey’s democratization, one that would be accompanied by full civil rights for Turkey’s Kurdish community. The current peace process, by contrast, appears squarely aimed not at liberalization but at consolidating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s power.
The question now is whether Erdogan and the PKK can succeed in resetting Turkey’s state-society relations and reshaping the parameters of political inclusion, all without any meaningful steps toward democracy. Put differently, can Erdogan succeed in giving the country’s authoritarianism a multicultural veneer?
Turkey’s relationship with its Kurdish population has historically been shaped by the country’s nationalist and centralized ideology that suppressed ethnic diversity in favor of a singular Turkish identity. The full-scale armed conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK, which began in 1984, has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced communities, and imposed severe political and economic costs. Despite attempts at political solutions since the 1990s, none have gotten this far.
A peace process initiated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) between 2013 and 2015 collapsed into renewed violence—some of the most intense in the conflict’s history—leaving urban centers in the southeast heavily damaged. Since 2016, Ankara has also conducted military operations in northern Iraq to target PKK bases and in northern Syria to curb the influence of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration. Domestically, this period coincided with intensified anti-Kurdish nationalism, sweeping legal repression of Kurdish politicians, and the erosion of democratic space for Kurdish representation.
The current initiative for dialogue was publicly launched by Devlet Bahceli, the ultranationalist leader of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which governs in alliance with the AKP. Bahceli has long been among the most vehement opponents of a political resolution of the Kurdish conflict. In October 2024, however, he took the country by surprise when he formally invited Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s jailed founder, to call for the PKK’s disarmament and dissolution on the floor of the Turkish parliament. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) has since then played a central role in facilitating communications between Ocalan and Ankara while also engaging with the opposition, the public, and regional Kurdish actors.
Ocalan’s public message to the PKK, delivered via a letter in late February, was unambiguous: “integrate with the [Turkish] state and society voluntarily.” Rejecting autonomy, federalism, an independent state, or even the expansion of cultural rights as viable solutions, Ocalan argued that the historical conditions that gave rise to the PKK no longer existed. The Cold War had ended, Turkey no longer denied the Kurds’ existence, and freedom of expression had advanced, the guerrilla organization’s much-revered leader noted.
“Integration” has lately become a cornerstone in the lexicon of Kurdish political elites. Selahattin Demirtas, the jailed former co-chair of the DEM Party’s predecessor, also advocates reconciliation through Kurdish integration into the Turkish polity. For Demirtas, coexistence is not just desirable but inevitable: “Kurds are already integrated into Turkey—they are everywhere.” Veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk echoes this vision, stating, “Kurds can only pursue a just life and emancipate themselves alongside the Turks.”
Yet what integration would actually entail remains unclear. Bahceli has proposed symbolic representation—such as appointing one Kurdish and one Alevi deputy president—arguably as a gesture of inclusivity. Where he might once have insisted that this kind of arrangement was dangerously divisive, Bahceli now claims it affirms national unity: “Kurds and Alevis belong to us [the Turkish nation].”
For Bahceli and Erdogan, peace with the Kurds is about more than domestic reconciliation. It’s part of a broader strategy to fortify Turkey by building a cohesive “domestic front” against what they describe as foreign threats—chief among them Israel. Pro-government commentators and former hard-liners have even suggested that the PKK could be repurposed into a pro-Turkish fighting force.
To serve this strategic goal, Erdogan has revitalized a historical narrative that extols a “thousand years of Turkish-Kurdish fraternity.” Speaking at a party meeting on July 12, Erdogan hailed the PKK’s symbolic disarmament as a step toward peaceful coexistence among Turks, Kurds, and Arabs. He then invoked the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the siege of Jerusalem in 1187, and the Turkish War of Independence between 1919 and 1922 as the three most crucial demonstrations of victory, prosperity, and glory achieved when Turks and Kurds stood together.
In Erdogan’s telling, Islam is the common thread binding these peoples. These historical episodes represent Muslim military battles against imperialists and civilizational others. Turkish leadership and patronage are seen as necessary for guaranteeing the collective security of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs—not only in Turkey but also in the region, at a time of massive upheaval. Bolstered by this narrative, Turkish leaders and Kurdish political elites now seem to agree that reconciliation with the Kurds would help position Turkey as a model of peace and prosperity for the Middle East.
Yet this apparently mutual aspiration to elevate Turkey into a regional hegemon is not the only factor driving the new spirit of Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood. Correcting the “historical error” committed by Turkey’s early republican elites is another. Particularly for Erdogan and Turkey’s Islamists, the secularist policies of the early republic corrupted indigenous Islamic and cultural norms. The republican nation-building project associated with the Treaty of Lausanne and the 1924 constitution is seen as having dismantled Ottoman era-multiculturalism—supposedly based on shared faith and shaped by local cultures. More specifically, Erdogan and his allies have lamented the loss of Islam as an organizing principle for the nation and a driving force in everyday life.
The PKK and Ocalan also trace Kurdish grievances to the same moment of historical rupture, even if they understand it differently. For them, the early republican project introduced policies of ethnic homogenization and assimilation, denying Kurdish identity and suppressing dissent. Both narratives—the AKP’s and the PKK’s—have the added advantage of casting the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the country’s founding party and current main opposition party, as the historical villain.
Yet beyond these ideological foundations, there are also more concrete political considerations. The Turkish president’s current term ends in 2028, and barring an early election or constitutional change, he cannot constitutionally run again. Calling an election in the parliament or putting constitutional changes to a referendum requires a minimum of 360 votes in the parliament. While the AKP and the MHP combined do not command such numbers, bringing the DEM Party on board would give Erdogan the votes to extend his rule. As Erdogan’s ally, Bahceli also sees the value of consolidating the status quo and maintaining authoritarian stability. Bahceli has repeatedly emphasized the need to strengthen the presidential system. For him, the process toward a possible end to the armed conflict is a path toward stabilizing the regime and neutralizing the opposition.
The government now appears to be pursuing a dual strategy: repressing the CHP while cautiously reintegrating Kurdish political actors. This controlled inclusion of the DEM Party and the PKK aims to reshape the political landscape, marginalize competitors, and reestablish hegemonic dominance.
For its part, the DEM Party appears to have shifted priorities. For a little over half a decade, the party worked alongside the CHP to confront the AKP-MHP bloc in the name of democratizing Turkey. Now, however, the party seems to have concluded that this effort failed and Erdogan is now the only game in town. As a result, they are seeking concrete gains for Kurdish citizens by cooperating with the ruling coalition. Over the last decade, Erdogan has jailed much of the Kurdish movement’s political leadership while stripping elected Kurdish mayors of their positions. From the DEM Party’s position, if Erdogan stops jailing Kurdish leaders and jails CHP politicians instead, this is still better than them all being in jail together.
If this sounds cynical, Ocalan and DEM Party officials also argue that the PKK’s disarmament and expansion of Kurdish rights will broaden democratic space for everyone, including the CHP. Together with the ruling elites, they are calling on the main opposition party to join the parliamentary commission to discuss the legal steps toward the PKK’s disarmament and dissolution. This, they insist, will ultimately produce the best possible outcome for the country as a whole.
However cynical the motives of the main actors, the challenges facing them still remain significant.
Domestically, the ongoing legal and political campaign against the CHP could create problems that go beyond concerns over democracy. Erdogan’s crackdown on the opposition undermines public confidence in the process. Specifically, it fuels fears among a highly nationalist public that is already predisposed to see concessions to the Kurds as a betrayal of Turkish identity. For much of Turkey’s secularist opposition, the possibility of an authoritarian power-sharing arrangement between political elites who represent religious and Kurdish constituencies is a longtime conspiracy brought to life. This could generate an unpredictable backlash.
On the Kurdish side, Turkey’s leadership also faces a deeper structural challenge. The Kurdish political landscape is far from monolithic. Ocalan’s personality cult remains strong. But beneath this there is a great deal of political diversity. Many Kurds may resist attempts at co-optation under a unifying nationalist framework with communitarian undertones.
Beyond Turkey’s borders, another pressing concern is the future of the autonomous administration in northeastern Syria. For Ankara, any disarmament by the PKK must extend to all affiliated groups, including elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Yet the SDF remains cautious, as the broader contours of Syria’s political future remain uncertain and unstable. Negotiations between the SDF and the Damascus government are ongoing, but there is still a great deal that could go wrong.
The current peace process represents a high-risk gamble to remake Turkey. If successful, it would consolidate Islamist and nationalist elites, both Turkish and Kurdish, under the banner of Turkish supremacy and a carefully managed pluralism. It would enshrine the power—and define the legacies—of Erdogan, Bahceli, and Ocalan alike. But without the rule of law, equal political representation, and a rights-based approach to society as a whole, the benefits to the rest of Turkey’s population will be limited.