The emerging shape of the Kurdish process vis à vis Turkey, Syria and Israel
This week, I bring together the latest developments in Turkey’s Kurdish negotiation process. These include the talks with Damascus and Israel’s evolving position around the process.
The contours of the latest Kurdish negotiation process were drawn a year ago when the nationalist Devlet Bahçeli unexpectedly launched it, yet the pressures of the moment now render these features far more visible.
Followers of Angle, Anchor and Voice would by now know that I argued this process was shaped as a prophylactic step in the face of Israel’s expansionist posture and the changing regional landscape after 7th October and the fall of Assad. I cannot stress enough how central this point is for understanding what is unfolding in Syria and the recent contest, or more aptly friction, between Turkey and Israel.
Inside Turkey the launch of this process was first regarded as a political calculation by Erdoğan, an attempt to draw Kurdish voters to his side. Yet he knows well, as he learned in 2015, that it is never a straightforward game to bet on the votes of any constituency. There is no guarantee that the Kurdish electorate would support him or his party even if he initiated a negotiation process with the PKK or with Öcalan. He has therefore allowed the process to move forward without ever publicly embracing it, including the announcement of the PKK’s disbandment. Bahçeli has taken the opposite approach. Both Erdoğan and Bahçeli have been persuaded by the military and security establishment that Turkey’s decades long Kurdish question is best resolved before it becomes a tool in the hands of others, especially Israel. This logic is now more widely acknowledged and openly discussed by actors on both sides.
At this stage the process remains stalled for several reasons. Israel is intervening by striking Syria, supporting secessionist Druze militias in the south, destabilising the Sharaa government and making overtures to the Kurds whose organisation, the SDF, now administers one third of Syria with a seventy thousand strong force. All of this makes the Turkish government deeply uneasy. The second reason is Erdoğan’s reluctance to own the process which slows it down to a pace far below what the Kurdish movement, particularly the PKK leadership, expected. They believe they have already taken their decisive step by announcing the disbandment of the PKK and by burning their weapons in a symbolic cauldron of fire to mark a new direction of struggle.
Mesela… The PKK also recently has withdrawn from the Zap and Metina areas on the Iraqi side of the Turkish border, where it had been stationed for the past ten years. This is not a development that can be brushed aside, because in these two areas the PKK had caves and base zones that they had held for decades despite every kind of military operation. Some of these positions stretched for kilometres, with sections converted into hospitals and others into social facilities. Turkish intelligence (MİT) and the military confirmed the withdrawal, meaning they inspected each site one by one and ensured that all ammunition had been removed. MİT chief İbrahim Kalın explained this confirmation before the parliamentary commission established to oversee the process. One point on which all parties represented in the commission agreed, including the opposition, was how fully and deeply Kalın commands every aspect of the issue. In this sense, the Hakan Fidan–İbrahim Kalın rivalry presents itself in the Kurdish file through Kalın’s calm steadiness and Fidan’s harder edge.
Kurdish strategy within the limits of the negotiation
The Kurdish movement in all its components, from the armed groups to the political party and the civil society, might be among the most politically astute actors in the world. They know well, even if the political leadership in Turkey or Öcalan on İmralı or the SDF in Syria do not want to say it openly, that solid democratic reforms will not emerge from Erdoğan’s government. It is the most authoritarian administration in modern Turkey and offers little beyond a possible transaction that would allow the structure in Rojava, the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) , to preserve its current status and secure a few changes to Turkey’s terrorism laws, a body of legislation so incoherent that no one can make sense of its articles. And this seems to be enough for the Kurdish movement for the time being.
For now the Turkish state has stopped some of the daily attacks on Rojava and taken a few steps that ease Öcalan’s isolation. The rest has stalled. The Kurdish movement reads this inertia as a warning. The government keeps the process alive yet advances it at a pace that frustrates every actor involved. It adds to this a steady pressure on the Sharaa administration to move ahead with the integration of the SDF’s military wing into the Syrian army. This pressure is one element of the deadlock between al Sharaa and the SDF commander Mazloum Abdi. Another is al Sharaa’s own vision of a unitary Syria. He shares this understanding with much of the anti Assad landscape, including the Islamist and jihadist factions, and this vision sets narrow limits on how far the current negotiations can go.
In my reading, al Sharaa’s view of Syria was always unitary and does not need a push from Ankara to take that line. The Turkish role enters at another level. Hakan Fidan’s persistent engagement with al Sharaa and al Shaibani narrows the space in which the talks can move and everyone involved knows this. The SDF leadership repeats this point to every Western diplomat who visits them, from Paris to London to Washington. They tell them that an understanding with Damascus would be within reach if Turkey loosened its hold. There is obvious inflation in this claim, true. But also enough truth in it to shape the diplomacy around the process.
The conceptual core of the process
Another political card the Kurdish movement plays is the reminder to the AKP of why this negotiation process began in the first place. Bese Hozat, one of the senior leaders of the KCK and the figure who oversaw the symbolic burning of weapons a few months ago, recently argued that only a Turkish Kurdish alliance can secure Turkey’s future sovereignty. She also said that they do not seek a legal pardon since, in their view, they have committed no crime.
‘Turkey truly faces an existential problem. There is a very serious danger facing the country. If Turkey does not advance this process and does not resolve the Kurdish question on a democratic basis, if it does not recognise the Kurds’ existence and identity and if it does not undertake profound legal reforms and changes, then Turkey’s future will indeed be very dark. Let that be stated plainly. Turkey can preserve its existence only by securing a Kurdish Turkish alliance on a democratic foundation and on the basis of legal equality.’
As I wrote in my earlier posts, the idea of a Turkish-Kurdish alliance sits at the centre of this process. It is a phrase repeated often by Bahçeli and by Öcalan in İmralı, two figures who once stood as absolute enemies. Erdoğan has stretched this formulation further by adding the Arabs. He now speaks of an alliance of Turks, Kurds and Arabs as the path to a prosperous Middle East, a claim that unsurprisingly draws accusations of neo-Ottoman fantasy.
The most immediate fault line
The tension at this stage rests on the integration of the SDF’s armed wing into the Syrian army and state. The Kurds do not trust the al Sharaa government which has yet to offer any document that guarantees Kurdish rights or autonomy. There is no outline of a military structure that would give the SDF a defined role or weight within the Syrian forces. Saleh Muslim, one of the leading figures of the PYD and an engineer trained in Turkey, said that talks with Damascus had begun before al Sharaa travelled to Washington and that joint committees had been formed. The process stalled soon after.
‘There was verbal understanding on a few issues. But it now appears that the real purpose was to go to the United States and be able to claim that they were engaging with the Kurdish autonomous administration and addressing the problems. Washington wants these issues resolved. Hakan Fidan also said during the meetings that the 10 March Agreement should be implemented, but the commitments were left in the air and nothing tangible followed.’
Muslim is also clear about how the SDF and the PKK leadership read the al Sharaa government, a view expressed more frankly than many others are willing to state. ‘They [the Turkish government] wanted Öcalan to come out and tell the SDF to integrate into the Syrian army under any condition. Öcalan made it clear once again that he would never call on the people of Rojava to submit to jihadist groups,’ he said, referring to al Sharaa and his former organisation HTS. ‘Öcalan’s view is that integration in Syria is possible only if a democratic system is established first. Without democracy, there is no integration.’
The factors that hold this deadlock in place can be eased with determined political will from Turkey. Turkish society, long conditioned to view Kurdish cultural and political demands as threats, needs to be prepared for a shift in understanding. I am convinced that this shift would not require the monumental effort many imagine. The frame of the conversation needs to change. Only then can we reach answers that speak to this moment, to this region and to the fragile geography of Middle Eastern nation states.
Turkey’s structural strength over Israel
Turkey and Israel are living through the most strained period in their history of relations. The Kurdish issue is only one part of this tension. If only… Turkey recognised that it holds most of the advantages in this field when compared to Israel and conveyed this fact to the public as a vision for the country’s future rather than a concession to terror, many pieces would fall into place. If only…
Turks and Kurds have lived together for a thousand years. They share customs, habits, families, food - yani all the deep sediment of a shared home. They have fought in real and imagined battles on the same side. This is Turkey’s greatest advantage over Israel.
There is another point that Ankara often overlooks or doesn’t bother to appreciate: Öcalan and the movements shaped by his thinking are firmly anti-Zionist and do not share any political ground with Israel. The PKK took inspiration from Arafat’s fedayeen in its early days and, like many leftist movements, carries an understanding of justice that places it closer to the Palestinian cause. This is the political reality beneath the surface.
For this reason, even though the Kurdish movement invokes Israel to pressure the Turkish government and does not refuse meetings with Israeli officials, the direction of travel is clear. It is Turkey that they expect to work with in the foreseeable future.
Israel’s intervention and Syria’s security agreement
Last week Israel carried out an attack on the town of Beit Jinn and the road to Mazraat Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, killing thirteen people, among them women and children, and wounding as many.
Israel supported more than a dozen armed groups in southern Syria until the Assad regime and foreign Shia militias took the area in 2018. The cooperation with Moro ran especially deep. In late 2017 the town and its surroundings came under siege. Israel allowed hundreds of rebels from Quneitra and Daraa to enter besieged Beit Jinn by bus through the Israeli controlled Golan Heights in an effort to prevent its collapse. The town eventually fell and opposition supporters were forcibly displaced to northern Syria.
After the latest strike the Israeli army claimed it had detained members of the Jamaa Islamiya and alleged that they operated in the Beit Jinn area and planned attacks against Israeli civilians. Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood inspired armed group, strongly denied the accusation and insisted that it does not operate outside Lebanon.
This attack creates an opening to revisit Israel’s relationship with this town. Elisabeth Tsurkov is a Russian Israeli researcher who was kidnapped in Iraq during her PhD fieldwork and held for 903 days before her release three months ago. According to her research, over the years Israel provided humanitarian assistance to residents of Beit Jinn, Quneitra and western Daraa and treated thousands of Syrians in its hospitals. After the fall of the Assad regime in the south, Israel invaded and occupied parts of the region, including villages and towns that had received Israeli backing between 2013 and 2018. Israeli forces now routinely raid villages, carry out arrests, restrict villagers from working their fields to secure line of sight for patrols.
Al-Sharaa government has been monitoring Palestinian factions in Syria to limit attempts to target Israeli forces because it fears the destabilizing effect of an Israeli retaliation. Israel is aware of these efforts yet appears indifferent. Israeli security officials recognise that Damascus is keen to reach a security arrangement. The will is absent on the Israeli side because it prefers to preserve freedom of action inside Syria over any settlement.
The latest attack seems to have prompted the Trump administration to warn Netanyahu which led him to say that Israel is ready to discuss a security agreement with Syria if Israel’s northern and Druze communities are protected from future attacks launched from Syrian territory.
However, there is a deadlock here, unsurprising yet difficult to ignore, because of what Netanyahu is proposing for the security agreement. He wants a demilitarised zone in Syria between Damascus and Mount Hermon. This is an extreme demand and one that the Syrian government cannot easily accept.