What does the PKK's disbanding mean for Turkey's pro-Kurdish movement?

Middle East Eye

3 days ago

After almost half a century, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has agreed to disband following an order given by its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The founding of the party in 1978 by a group of left-wing Kurds in southeastern Turkey was driven by a belief that parliamentary politics in the country was cut-off to those seeking Kurdish autonomy or independence, something that appeared confirmed by the imposition of military rule two years later.
The end of the PKK's decades of armed struggle was justified by Ocalan on the grounds that the future for Kurdish politics was peaceful, but 'requires the recognition of democratic politics and the legal aspect', in apparent reference to the repeated strangling of non-violent pro-Kurdish parties in Turkey over the past 100 years.
The achievements of peaceful or violent pro-Kurdish activity have been limited in recent decades - Kurdish politicians are still regularly arrested or replaced, while tentative gains in cultural and linguistic representation made since the 2000s and 2010s have been largely reversed.
If the PKK follows through on its promise, the most prominent organisation fighting for Kurdish rights in Turkey will be the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
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Like most pro-Kurdish political parties, the DEM Party is just the latest incarnation of parties that have been repeatedly forcibly shuttered by court orders over their supposed threat to the constitutional order.
The DEM Party was born out of the Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP) after it merged with the Green Left Party (YSP) in 2023 to circumvent a proposed ban. The HDP's most prominent leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, are both still in prison, along with thousands of others affiliated with the party.
Despite being the third-largest party in parliament and being elected to local office across the mainly Kurdish southeast, the state has continued to replace local DEM politicians and mayors, replacing them with unelected 'trustees', usually over claims of support for 'terrorism' - though Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said this would become 'rare' after the PKK disbands.
'When there is ongoing conflict and violence, politics ultimately has limitations'
- Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, DEM Party MP
DEM Party representatives and members of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) were set to meet on Wednesday with the aim of forwarding the process.
The meeting came a day after a separate meeting with the allied - and historically staunchly anti-Kurdish - Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose leader Devlet Bahceli last October became the public face of the current push for what he calls a 'terror-free Turkey.'
Any discussion over a future peace process is likely to be fraught with difficulty after so many decades of conflict, with a range of issues including the release of prisoners, constitutional change, the deepening of regional democracy and cultural rights all potential hurdles.
Just last week, Mehmet Ucum, an AKP MP and Erdogan's chief legal advisor, hit out at references by the DEM Party to 'political prisoners' in Turkey's jails.
'There are no political prisoners in Turkey,' he wrote on X, saying the party needed to abandon its 'ideological-political' views on the subject.
There is also the question of what role the DEM Party can play as leaders of a broader left-wing progressive movement in Turkey, as a party that represents the interests of workers, women, environmentalists, LGBTQ campaigners and other minority groups in Turkey.
Publicly, the DEM leadership expresses optimism on both fronts.
Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, an MP for the city of Kars in northeastern Turkey and deputy chair of the parliamentary DEM Party Group, is one of those involved in the discussions with both the AKP and MHP.
She is no stranger to the passions the issue can enflame - during a parliamentary session last year, she was punched in the face by an AKP MP during a heated discussion over the expulsion of a left-wing MP from parliament.
'When there is ongoing conflict and violence, politics ultimately has limitations. This goes for all political contexts,' she told Middle East Eye.
'But if there is no longer grounds for violence and conflict, it means that we have entered a new phase, in which a solution is sought politically. And in this regard, of course, new responsibilities, new tasks, fall upon political parties, social arenas of struggle - everyone.'
She added that they had no intention of treating the negotiations as a matter of trade-offs and hit back at criticisms made by some other opposition politicians that they had become too conciliatory with parties who had long been their opponents.
"We've never had the approach of saying, 'Let's do this, so the AKP gives us this or we'll take this step, so the AKP does this.' This has never been our approach," she said.
"We don't do politics for ourselves, and we are not struggling for our own interests. We are fighting for the peoples of this country, the Kurdish people, and all the peoples living in this country."
Deciding priorities
Although the DEM Party is heavily associated with the Kurdish movement, it is officially a coalition of a range of parties, some representing minority groups, some left-libertarian parties and some orthodox Marxist-Leninists.
The party's co-leaders - mandated as part of its commitment to gender parity - include Tulay Hatimogullari, a linguistic rights campaigner of Arab and Alawi heritage.
Apart from backing the rights of Turkey's numerous and often forgotten minorities, including Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Alevis, Laz and Circassians, the party has staked out a strong workers' rights position and supports LGBTQ rights.
But the party, much like its predecessor the HDP, has faced accusations from the government, Turkish nationalists and even other leftists of merely being a front for the PKK.
The proposed end of the PKK as an organisation has also led to speculation that the group's cadres - currently based primarily in northern Iraq - could return to Turkey and take up positions within the DEM Party, a move that would further strengthen the perception of the party as an organisation primarily concerned with the Kurdish issue.
Supporters of the DEM Party, as well as analysts, acknowledged to MEE that there had long been a tension between the party's left wing and its pro-Kurdish wing and resolving this would be key in future.
'If the DEM Party adopts a political line that, while considering the Kurdish identity, also embraces the demands of non-Kurdish voters - workers, youth, women, ecologists - it could become the nucleus of broader democratic alliances,' said Ahmet Asena, a co-spokesperson for the YSP.
Turkey and the PKK: Who is Abdullah Ocalan? Read More »
He said that the party's predecessors had also supported this range of causes, but that the backdrop of the armed struggle had overshadowed efforts to focus on them, with the media always returning to the question of the PKK.
Though Turkish leftists had long provided a small base of support for the DEM Party and its predecessors, the conflict with the PKK - which over the decades has seen more than 45,000 deaths according to some estimates - and the prominence of Turkish nationalist discourse tended to push secular, Alevi and centre-left voters to support the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), while electoral support for the DEM Party remains centred in the Kurdish-majority regions.
Kocyigit admitted that the Kurdish issue was currently the 'top matter' in their political platform.
'We have taken a stance that goes beyond day-to-day political interests, one that [focuses] on the Kurdish question, a democratic resolution, and an end to the bloodshed, and we are shaping our overall policy around this,' she explained.
Nevertheless, she said the party remained true to their charter and 'core principles,' adding that they were focusing on the emancipation of Kurds in a fashion that will 'matter in a way that will benefit all peoples of Turkey.'
Imamoglu's arrest
One major point of controversy for the DEM Party at the moment is how to approach the issue of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
The CHP mayor, whose original election in 2019 stemmed in large part from the decision by the then-HDP not to run a candidate against him, has been in jail since March 2025 on a range of what his supporters say are trumped-up charges, including - perhaps ironically - supporting the PKK.
After years of the detention and dismissal of HDP politicians over terrorism accusations, sometimes with the acquiescence of the CHP, the party of Turkey's founder Ataturk are now the ones facing the state's bootheel, its representatives and functionaries imprisoned and sacked.
Protesters hold Turkish flags and placards reading 'Freedom for Imamoglu' as they take part in a demonstration against the detention of the mayor of Istanbul in May 2025 (Yasin Akgul/AFP)
Imamoglu's arrest has galvanised a wide cross-section of Turkish society who saw it as perhaps the final nail in the coffin of an already fragile democracy, with the imprisonment of a man polls have suggested could unseat Erdogan in a future election.
But while the CHP and erstwhile allies like the Workers' Party of Turkey (TIP) flocked to the mass street demonstrations that have regularly taken place since Imamoglu's arrest, some saw the DEM Party's response as rather more muted.
'Leftist parties joined the initial rallies and marches with their party flags, whereas the DEM Party did not,' pointed out Ezgi Basaran, author and former editor of the centre-left Radikal newspaper.
'However, DEM politicians did not hesitate to condemn the arrest and expressed support for Imamoglu."
The initial mobilisation in support of Imamoglu took place at the same time as Erdogan and members of the DEM Party were negotiating access to Ocalan, ahead of his epochal call for the PKK to disarm.
This led to accusations from some pro-CHP voices - particularly those affiliated with the right of the party, such as news outlet Sozcu and Halk TV - that the DEM Party were collaborating with Erdogan and planning to support theoretical constitutional amendments that would allow him to run for another term.
Kocyigit said there was absolutely "no truth" to the allegations that her party had made such a trade.
"Today, the government may be approaching all these discussions with the intention of undermining its own political position to extract some political gain from it. We can't know for sure," she explained.
"But we cannot reduce such a profound, historical and societal issue that has cost so much - 50,000 lives, billions of dollars in financial resources, potentially countless people displaced or exiled - to something as narrow as the re-election of President Erdogan. That's simply not possible."
Tensions and splits
Tensions in the parliamentary movement have occasionally flared up into splits and spats, such as in 2020 when acclaimed investigative journalist and MP Ahmet Sik publicly resigned from the party before joining the more explicitly leftist TIP, citing a lack of intra-party democracy and the influence of 'rigid and sectarian' factions in the party.
Asena said that the DEM Party was now left at a crossroads - does it become 'a progressive, multi-ethnic force for democracy and social justice' or does it primarily become the voice of Turkey's Kurds, who are largely conservative, religious and had in past been viewed with suspicion by some secular, liberal Turks?
'The ongoing conflict has heavily influenced how both the state and opposition actors position themselves - as such a disarmament scenario would deeply affect party alignments and open space for a reconfiguration of political strategies,' he explained.
'When the democratic transformation begins, everything that is problematic today will change'
- Devris Cimen, former HDP European spox
Vahap Coskun, a law professor at Dicle University in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, has in past been critical of the Kurdish movement's alliance with the Turkish left, arguing that they effectively allowed them outside influence through their piggybacking on the much bigger Kurdish cause.
He told MEE that the dissolution of the PKK and the end to armed struggle could boost the DEM Party's position in Turkish politics - but it could also open the grounds for Kurdish politics to 'diversify.'
'This may put pressure on the DEM Party. Therefore, if the DEM Party can adapt to the post-arms era, it will grow, but if it cannot adapt, it will face the risk of shrinking,' he explained.
The DEM Party and its predecessors have so far managed to virtually monopolise Kurdish politics in the southeast, vying with the AKP for Kurdish votes prior to the latter's decision to launch a military operation in the region in 2015.
The only other specifically pro-Kurdish party with any profile in the southeast is Huda Par, an Islamist party with links to the armed Turkish Hezbollah organisation, whose politics could not be more different from DEM Party, apart from a mutual support for the Kurdish language and cultural representation.
What is needed, said Devris Cimen, former European representative of the HDP, is a fundamental change in the nature of democracy in Turkey and an end to its nationalistic, exclusionary constitution, after which, everything else can and will change.
'The form of state administration will change, the parties will change, society will change, politics will change, the law will change, the political language will change, Turkey's foreign policy will change,' he said.
'If the Turkish state and Turkish society achieve the democratic transformation and change that Ocalan points to, they will also achieve prosperity and democracy. When the democratic transformation begins, everything that is problematic today will change.'
A new era?
Going forward, the prime goal of the DEM Party seems to be securing the eventual release of Ocalan.
Watching the ongoing discussions, that would seem to be the natural direction of travel - but convincing the people of Turkey that a man commonly known in the press as a 'baby killer' might be an uphill struggle.
'This is not a demand for negotiations, but a necessary step for the peace and resolution process to move forward,' said Cimen.
People hold a portrait of Selahattin Demirtas during a gathering of Turkish Kurds for Nowruz celebrations in March 2025 (AFP)
'Ocalan is the most important actor in this process, and his freedom and his ability to work freely are a fundamental condition.'
Another goal could be the release of Demirtas and Yuksekdag, as well as the masses of prisoners languishing in jails for their alleged PKK links, hundreds of whom are thought by rights groups to be sick and in need of immediate release.
Unlike Ocalan, repeated rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have declared that both Demirtas and Yuksekdag should be released. The Council of Europe already initiated infringement proceedings against Turkey in early 2022 for failing to implement ECHR rulings.
Basaran said that, also unlike Ocalan, Erdogan harbours personal animosity towards Demirtas, who was able to take the AKP's parliamentary majority from it for the first time in 2015.
The election of that year took place during the previous peace process, which was to collapse just months after the vote before a coalition could be formed.
As PKK disarms, Turkey solidifies its power against Iran and Israel Read More »
'During the 2013–2015 peace process, Demirtas' famous speech where he repeated the slogan 'We will not make you president' directed at Erdogan is said to have triggered this animosity and contributed to Erdogan's disillusionment with the peace process, particularly as it bolstered the Kurdish party's standing rather than delivering votes to the AKP,' said Basaran.
'It is politics that keeps him imprisoned - more precisely, he is considered a formidable politician, a disruptor to Erdogan, and is thus kept out of public view. In that sense, both Ekrem Imamoglu and Selahattin Demirtas are victims of their own brilliance.'
Kocyigit and her colleagues have all these issues and others to deal with in their ongoing meetings with political leaders.
Compared to previous attempts at negotiating an end to the Kurdish conflict, there appears to be relatively little vocal opposition. The MHP - who supported the shuttering of the DEM Party's predecessor party - agreed on Tuesday to the establishment of fully authorised commission within the parliament to oversee the process.
But a range of issues will remain contentious, not least discussions over the constitution and democratic reform.
'We are now talking about a democratic resolution to the Kurdish issue, and about peace," said Kocyigit.
'Certainly, we are entering a new era. Our main focus as of today is to resolve the Kurdish issue in a truly permanent way and establish sustainable peace in these lands.'