Öcalan’s Call: A Potential Honourable Exit for All Parties

This is an unscheduled post, prompted by the significance of yesterday’s events. I felt compelled to share my analysis of PKK leader Öcalan’s historic call for the PKK to disarm and disband.

There should be no misinterpretation or underestimation of Öcalan’s call for the PKK to disarm and disband. It is clear, and it is historic.

He is calling on the organization he founded four decades ago to dissolve itself. The message references historical turning points—the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, or as he puts it, the “collapse of real socialism”—but it exists in a temporal vacuum. It begins with the PKK’s foundation, explains why it was necessary, then pivots into self-criticism: the organization, he argues, became too nationalistic and, in doing so, drifted toward separatist aspirations—a nation-state, federation, administrative autonomy, or culturalist approaches —all of which, he says, failed to meet the sociological needs of Kurdish society. The message culminates in its historic call to the PKK.

What it does not contain is any reference to where the Kurdish issue stands today. Nothing about rights, democratic backsliding, or authoritarianism. No preconditions …