The End of the PKK

The PKK has announced its disbandment. How it happened, why it happened and what comes next.

War, 1947 by Jackson Pollock.

I spent the better part of my journalistic career covering Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. I followed closely the only publicly acknowledged peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK—led by its imprisoned founder, Abdullah Öcalan—between 2013 and 2015. When that process collapsed, I wrote a book tracing its political architecture and the forces that brought it down.

Since then, as Turkey slid deeper into authoritarianism, I had long stopped believing I would ever see the day the PKK announced its disbandment. And yet, on 12 May 2025, following its 12th Congress held simultaneously in Qandil and Sulaymaniyah with 235 delegates in attendance, that is precisely what it did. The group declared the end of its armed struggle.

How did we get here? A brief rewind may help those who haven’t been following closely.

The Syrian Turn

For over a decade, I’ve argued that the rise of the PYD-YPG in northeast Syria has fundamentally reshaped the Kurdish question across the region. The group—now rebranded as the SDF—is both ideologically and strategically aligned with the PKK. One could say they are Öcalan’s offspring: forged from the same theoretical clay, tempered by different terrains.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, their objectives have increasingly converged. The PKK’s priority shifted from insurgency in Turkey to the defence of political gains in Rojava.

That convergence collided head-on with Ankara’s red lines. The 2013–2015 peace process collapsed largely because Turkey refused to countenance an autonomous Kurdish region along its southern border. What followed was a brutal campaign of urban warfare between the PKK’s youth wing and Turkish security forces in Kurdish-majority cities. Then came a sweeping crackdown: Kurdish politicians arrested en masse, Selahattin Demirtaş among them, and the language of reconciliation replaced with one of erasure.

The turning point—then and now—was Rojava. The emergence of a de facto Kurdish zone under PYD-YPG control sank the earlier peace process. A decade later, developments in that same geography—driven by the same actors—have once again revived talks.

In October 2024, came a signal from an unlikely source: Devlet Bahçeli, Turkey’s ultra-nationalist powerbroker, publicly called on Öcalan to disband the PKK. He went further—suggesting Öcalan could be received in Parliament if he complied. This is the same Bahçeli who spent five decades denying the Kurdish issue altogether, depicting Kurds as either terrorists or wayward citizens.

His shift was not spontaneous. It followed backchannel negotiations between Turkish intelligence and Öcalan. Soon after, a delegation from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party began shuttling between İmralı, state institutions, and party leadership.

By the end of February, Öcalan issued a call: the PKK should convene its congress and dissolve.

The Window Opens

After Öcalan’s call, there was a pause—more than a month. Then, another jolt: a sweeping crackdown on the main opposition party, the CHP. Its mayors, including Istanbul’s Ekrem İmamoğlu—the party’s presidential candidate—were jailed. The arrests triggered countrywide protests, shaking what remained of Turkey’s democratic scaffolding.

Then, in April, Erdoğan and the intelligence (MIT) chief, İbrahim Kalın, met with the DEM Party delegation. The PKK’s disbandment announcement followed soon after.

All of this—eight or nine months of relatively open contact—culminated in the voluntary dissolution of a 52-year-old insurgency. That timeline alone is telling. A process so rapid, so abrupt, signals the urgency felt, I believe, to resolve the PKK question.

Yes, but, why the rush?

Because both Ankara and Öcalan share a reading of the regional moment. Both believe that since October 7, the old order in the Middle East has been ruptured. In this view, the disbandment of the PKK is not only about Turkey’s internal peace but also about preempting greater regional instability. It is a protective move—by both the state and the Kurdish movement.

Suspicion, Not Celebration

The public reaction to the news of PKK’s disbandment in Turkey has been one of deep caution and suspicion. And who can blame them?

Turkey has been governed by an oligarchic party entrenched in cronyism and authoritarianism for two decades. Its leader has jailed his most formidable rival and hollowed out every institution of democratic accountability. In such a climate, it is difficult to imagine how a conflict of this magnitude might be resolved through genuine reform. The ingredients are simply not there: no mindset shift, no political will, no institutional guarantee.

Hence the suspicion. Especially among the electorate of the main opposition CHP. But many Kurdish citizens also ask: what’s really changed since the last process collapsed in bloodshed? Why now, and what’s the play behind the scenes?

The fear is not irrational. It’s informed by the fact that journalists, academics, MPs, and mayors continue to live under constant threat of arrest. Or are already in prison.

What’s Really Driving This?

Short answer: Israel, Syria and Iran.

I usually resist “big picture” explanations. They often flatten the internal dynamics of states and veer toward the conspiratorial. But in this case, the broader regional realignment is not a backdrop, wallahi it’s the engine.

And it helps explain why the ultranationalist Devlet Bahçeli, of all people, emerged as the face of this process.

Ankara’s core motivation is to gain leverage over the Syrian Kurds by reactivating Öcalan’s influence. Bahçeli’s involvement signals that critical segments of the state—especially within the intelligence and security bureaucracy—have concluded that resolving the Kurdish question is no longer optional: It’s a strategic imperative.

Believe it or not, there is a faction within the state that sees Turkey’s internal fragilities as an open flank, one that regional rivals, particularly Israel and Iran to a certain extent, could exploit. In their eyes, the old geopolitical scaffolding of the Middle East has crumbled since October 7, and Turkey must secure its “soft underbelly” before it’s pulled into a regional quagmire.

Remember, Erdoğan had begun invoking the Israeli threat months before Bashar al-Assad’s fall. With Assad now gone, Ankara sees both a vacuum and a danger; especially in the possibility of an Israeli-backed Syrian Kurdish entity along its border.

Within this frame, the Kurdish movement is being nudgedtoward alignment with Turkey rather than with outside actors. Outside actors meaning, above all, Israel.

If one were to do a discourse analysis of recent statements from Bahçeli and Öcalan, a recurring phrase would surface: “a Turkish-Kurdish alliance.” That, I believe, is the core of the current strategy. It’s not about elections. It’s about a new Middle East order.

Yes, some in the opposition insist Erdoğan is chasing Kurdish votes ahead of 2028, or angling for a constitutional amendment to run for a third term. I remain unconvinced. Elections in Turkey (and anywhere, frankly) even under duress rarely follow clean transactional logic. And Erdoğan knows this.

That’s not to say DEM Party would never ever eventually strike a constitutional deal with the AKP in the parliament. But it’s not the principal engine behind this process. To reduce it to domestic horse-trading is to miss the geopolitical forest for the electoral trees.

Can There Be Peace Without Democracy?

This is a 50-year-old conflict. Resolving it requires more than a ceasefire—it requires time, political reform, institutional shifts and social reckoning. Laws must change. Crimes must be investigated. Societies must be given the space to reckon with the violence they have survived and, in some cases, inflicted.

But no one I’ve spoken to in the Kurdish movement expects that kind of transformation from this government. Not now. What they see is a beginning. Nothing more.

And that, I would argue, is where we must anchor our expectations: that this is a transactional process as it stands.

But history shows us that even authoritarian settings run by undemocratic actors on both sides, can host the early stages of conflict resolution. The technical tracks. The choreography of disarmament, demobilization, reintegration etc.

The Kurdish issue is ultimately a political one. Its resolution requires a new constitutional contract that affirms the equal cultural and political rights of Kurds in Turkey. That stage will not arrive tomorrow. It may not arrive for years.

But it will not arrive at all unless the first step is taken. This, for all its limits, may be that step.

What Comes Next?

The PKK has taken a leap by declaring its dissolution. But it has also set terms for what must follow.

For this process to take root, legal amendments are needed to create a freer and safer environment: protection and oversight for Öcalan, amnesty for senior cadres, and a reintegration framework for militants laying down arms.

But details remain scarce. This stage is being coordinated almost entirely by the intelligence and security apparatus, and unsurprisingly, the timeline is opaque. What we do know is that MIT is expected to oversee the disarmament process, likely beginning in June.

The PKK leadership has asked for formal guarantees before that begins—something binding and formal. Written on paper with the seal of the state. In the words of senior figure Duran Kalkan: “There is now a process that is difficult to reverse.”

“We can now comfortably say that the PKK era has ended in the freedom march, and a new era has begun. Apo [Abdullah Öcalan] has defined this new era as the Era of Peace and Democratic Society.”

It is a long, fragile road riddled with hidden traps, as all such roads are. But I genuinely hope it holds. This country has neither the moral reservoir nor the psychological bandwidth to weather another failure on this front.

A Process Prone to Sabotage

The 12th Congress document of the PKK closes with a telling line. It “calls on international forces to not impede the democratic resolution” of this conflict. This is a subtle warning, disguised as a plea.

Since the 1990s, nearly every attempt at negotiation between the Turkish state and the PKK has ended with a provocation. A killing. A rupture.

In 2013, just as the last peace process began, three senior Kurdish militants were assassinated in Paris. One of them, Sakine Cansız, was a founding figure of the PKK and a close comrade of Öcalan. To this day, the perpetrators behind the operation remain unidentified but the political message was unmistakable. That memory is not distant. Nor is the risk.

This time, too, the danger is real. And it is multi-directional.

The most obvious suspects for any disruption are Israel and Iran; each of whom would prefer a weak, distracted Turkey hemmed in by internal dissent. A Turkey that has resolved its Kurdish conflict would be stronger: more cohesive at home, more assertive in Syria, less vulnerable to external leverage.

Neither Tel Aviv nor Tehran is likely to welcome that scenario.

Obviously external actors aren’t the only concern.

There’s always the possibility that sabotage comes from within either from Turkey’s deep state (whatever that means in any given year), or from within the PKK itself. Not everyone is convinced or every faction aligned within the organization. That is precisely why the PKK keeps insisting that Öcalan must be allowed to oversee the disarmament process to consolidate the middle and lower ranks, to ensure coherence from declaration to implementation.

Because saying the PKK is disbanded is one thing. Making it so is another.

And for this to be realized smoothly, all parties—state, party, and intermediaries—will need to proceed with vigilance.

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What will happen to those military posts?

The reverberations of the PKK’s disbandment will not stop at Turkey’s borders. Syria, Iran, and Iraq, all host to PKK-affiliated groups, are watching closely. But it was Baghdad that reacted most pointedly.

On the very night of the PKK’s declaration, the Iraqi government issued a statement. It welcomed the group’s decision to disarm, end the conflict, and dissolve. But it didn’t stop there.

“This development,” the statement read, “provides a normal entry point to reconsider the justifications that have long been used to validate the presence of foreign forces on Iraqi soil.”

That wasn’t a subtle message. It was a direct challenge to Turkey’s vast—and largely unacknowledged—military footprint in northern Iraq.

A recent BBC documentary, Turkey’s Hidden War – The Forbidden Zone, aired just as these events unfolded. Fronted by Simona Foltyn, the film revealed the extent of Turkey’s military expansion: more than 130 outposts now dot the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, amounting to de facto control over several thousand square kilometers.

The documentary went viral in Kurdish social media circles. In a discussion I attended, Foltyn explained how her footage reignited criticism of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) for enabling Ankara’s expansion—offering Turkey a blank check in exchange for quiet patronage.

The film traces how KDP authorities have facilitated troop movements, blocked access to farmland, and detained individuals suspected of PKK sympathies. Hoshyar Zebari, a senior KDP figure and former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, defended the arrangement, claiming Turkey targets only the PKK and not Kurdish civilians.

But with the PKK now out of the equation, a question hangs in the air:
What happens to those 130 outposts?

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