The armed conflict between the government of Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) threatens regional stability and security, including prospects for a successful political transition in Syria and an enduring defeat of ISIS.

No party to this conflict can bring it to an end by military means. Both sides are aware that a political process of some sort must take place. The failure of previous negotiations between the Turkish government and the PKK cost thousands of lives, displaced millions, and traumatized Kurdish and Turkish society. As a result, it is imperative that new negotiations bring different results.

The international community can act now to bring about such a solution, taking advantage of earth-shaking developments in both the Syrian conflict and Turkey’s domestic politics and averting a regional crisis.

What’s Happening

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party has been waging an insurgency against the government of Turkey since 1984. It demands greater rights and self-governance for the country’s nearly 20 million Kurds. Currently, Kurdish identity has no legal recognition in Turkey. Kurds are prohibited from studying in Kurdish or using Kurdish in public institutions. Those who advocate against these policies by peaceful means face arbitrary arrest, torture, police brutality, censorship, and other forms of violence and harassment.

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), which form the core of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have ideological and historical links to the PKK.

Turkey views the PKK and political and military organizations inspired by it, like the PYD and YPG, as existential threats to its national security. Turkish leaders are also broadly suspicious of Kurdish self-governance in northern Syria in any form, believing it encourages Kurds in Turkey who seek the same.

Since the breakdown of peace talks between the state and the PKK in 2015, Turkey has arrested thousands of Kurdish dissidents and launched multiple military operations into neighboring Iraq and Syria in order to counter the group and weaken Kurdish autonomy.

In October, reports alleged that Turkish officials were engaged in secret talks with imprisoned PKK founder and leader Abdullah Ocalan. Far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli called on Ocalan to address the Turkish Parliament and dissolve his organization. A PKK attack on the headquarters of Turkish Aerospace Industries, the company that produces Turkey’s armed drones, and subsequent Turkish strikes on critical civilian infrastructure in northeast Syria did not appear to harm either side’s will to negotiate.

The Syrian Angle

The fall of the Syrian regime on December 8th, 2024 has led to Turkish escalation against the SDF and DAANES. Further military action could doom prospects for peace, but attempts at mediation could stave off catastrophe and build towards a wider solution.

As Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other rebel groups marched on Damascus, Turkey and Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militias took control of SDF-held territories west of the Euphrates River, including Tal Rifaat and Manbij. On December 10th, they launched attacks on Kobane.

The city of Kobane is of incredible symbolic importance for the SDF and DAANES, the PKK, and millions of Kurds of all political orientations. It is the site where Syrian Kurds won their first major victory over ISIS (ISIS’ first ever defeat) and gained international support for their struggle against the jihadist group. Kurds from Turkey, Iran, and Iraq mobilized to support that effort. The PKK and the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga put aside their differences and fought together despite longstanding political disagreements. Many Kurds from Turkey, Iran and Iraq volunteered for the war effort of their own accord or protested in their home countries.

The people of Kobane are incredibly proud of their resistance to what they view as a half-century of attempts to displace them and destroy their Kurdish identity carried out by Assad, ISIS, and now the government of Turkey. They are also aware of the fate of Kurdish communities in Turkish-occupied Afrin and Ras al-Ain: mass displacement, with grave human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and enforced disappearances, targeting those who remain in the historically Kurdish regions and resist Turkey’s attempts to replace them with an Arab population drawn from Syrian’s millions of refugees.

As a result, Kobane’s status as a Kurdish city under Kurdish control is a red line for all Kurdish actors. Attacks on Kobane will shatter the Kurdish-U.S. relationship, distract SDF forces from the fight against ISIS, and potentially lead to escalating civil unrest and PKK military activity in Turkey. A settlement for northern Syria and for the wider Turkish-Kurdish conflict will be almost impossible to achieve if Turkey and Turkey-backed militias take this region.

Same Crisis, Different Outcome?

The United States appears to recognize this and has been engaged in efforts to de-escalate tensions. Reports of a ceasefire to allow the SDF to withdraw from Manbij and end SDF-SNA clashes are positive.

Yet recent history shows that stop-gap ceasefires are not enough to solve security problems in northern Syria. In 2019, the United States found itself negotiating to resolve Turkey-SDF tensions. Despite overtures from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Ocalan, and the PKK leadership in Qandil, the United States chose not to broaden Turkish-SDF de-escalation efforts into a comprehensive Turkish-Kurdish peace.

The resultant Turkish invasion of Ras al-Ain displaced hundreds of thousands of people, empowered ISIS, Russia, and Iran, strained Washington’s ties with both Turkey and the Syrian Kurds and further pushed the resolution of the regional Kurdish question down the road.

This time, U.S. policymakers should make a different choice. The U.S. and other countries with interests in stability in Turkey and Syria and relationships with the involved parties should work for a deal wherein the Kurdish issue becomes a matter of politics, not arms, on both sides of the region’s existing borders.

First, any Turkey-YPG ceasefire in northern Syria should be broadened into a general Turkey-PKK ceasefire across the region. There is some evidence that protecting Syrian Kurds might incentivize the PKK leadership in Qandil to come to the table and be more flexible. Northeast Syria’s leadership has been open about its desire to see a resolution to the Turkish-Kurdish conflict and willingness to support efforts to that end.

The best chance of a regional Turkish-Kurdish ceasefire being called lies in allowing Abdullah Ocalan to participate freely and openly in negotiations. Ocalan has declared eight of the PKK’s nine ceasefires, including the 2013 ceasefire that opened the way for the previous peace process. He is the only authority that the entirety of the PKK-inspired Kurdish movement in both Turkey and Syria will listen to.

In a ceasefire environment, the U.S. should offer mediation and technical assistance to all parties. This support should focus on achieving a few basic goals:

• Democratization: This, at a bare minimum, would have should include both an end to arbitrary undemocratic practices (for example, the release of people imprisoned for peaceful political activity and the return of seized Kurdish municipalities to their elected leaders) and legal and constitutional reforms that will strengthen and institutionalize democratic principles.
• Culture and Identity Guarantees: The Kurdish movement wants guarantees that the existence of Kurds in Turkey will be recognized and that there will be no de facto or de jure restrictions imposed on the Kurdish language or culture.
• Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration: The HPG and the YJA-STAR, the armed forces of the PKK, will ultimately disarm, ending the armed threat to Turkey. The ‘road map’ proposed by Ocalan and accepted by Turkish authorities in previous talks calls for a legal amnesty to allow former fighters to return to civilian life. Disarmament is likely to be the final stage of any process. The Kurdish movement is suspicious of calls to disarm without assurances that Kurdish concerns can be satisfied by political means.
• Demilitarization: The Kurdish movement wants to see the dismantling of state-linked paramilitary structures in Kurdish regions and a transformed relationship between security forces and society. Presumably, the end of the conflict would mean a lower number of security personnel present in Kurdish regions; democratization would imply that security personnel would not be used to settle political scores.
• Economic Development: The Turkish-Kurdish conflict is estimated to have cost Turkey trillions of dollars. Kurdish-majority regions to this day tend to be poorer and have less economic opportunity than Turkish-majority regions. Economic assistance could help make peace profitable on both the Turkish and Syrian sides of the border and address economic inequities that fuel conflict.
• Truth and Reconciliation: The ‘road map’ includes proposals for efforts to hold both Turkey and the PKK accountable for wrongdoing during the conflict and discussions of the need for a shared historical memory of cooperation and coexistence that can appeal to Turks and Kurds.

Negotiations should result in a scenario where the PKK lays down arms and transforms into a political movement when conditions for free and open Kurdish participation in politics are created in Turkey. The group could be offered de-listing when it meets these conditions. This will address Turkey’s security concerns by ending the armed conflict. It will facilitate the exit of non-Syrian PKK members from northeast Syria, another Turkish demand, by allowing them to return to Turkey and participate in politics or go to third countries under amnesty provisions.

In this scenario, Turkey could accept the inclusion of the DAANES/SDF and its core Kurdish political formations in a Syrian political process. The new HTS-led government of Syria could be incentivized to accept DAANES/SDF participation and demands for minority rights through offers of delisting and sanctions removal.

The result could be a more democratic and multi-ethnic Syria that recognizes the rights of Kurds and other minorities and the autonomy of core Kurdish regions of the northeast. This would provide a counter-balance to HTS’ worst tendencies, providing a partner with which the international community could continue to work on addressing the ISIS threat, and addressing fears in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq about migration and sharing a border with radical Islamists.

On the Turkish side of the border, an end to over four decades of armed conflict and a chance at a positive relationship with Kurdish regions of northern Syria could bring political and economic dividends. The Kurdish issue would no longer strain Turkey’s relationships with the international community. Instead, a successful peace could strengthen Turkey’s diplomatic position in the region.

(Photo taken by author, Ain Issa, February 2023)