The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) says it has been dissolved after more than 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish state.
The announcement comes after the PKK held parliament in northern Iraq on Friday, about two months after founder Abdullah Ocalan, also known as “Appo,” held a parliament in February.
For most of its history, the PKK is labelled terrorist groups by Torkier, the European Union and the United States. It fought for years for Kurdish autonomy, and this has now been declared.
This is everything you need to know about why Ocalan and the PKK gave up on their armed struggle.
Who is Abdullah Okaran?
Okaran was born on April 4, 1948 in Omerli, Sanriulfa, the majority of Kurdish people in Torkiye, to a poor Kurdish farming family.
He moved to Ankara, where he studied political science at university, where he became politically active. The biographer says he is motivated by the sense of alienation felt by many Kurds in Torkiye.
By the mid-1970s he defended Kurdish nationalism and found the PKK in 1978.
Six years later, the group began a separatist rebellion against Torkier under his command.
Okaran ruled the PKK absolute, and, according to blood and belief, monopolized the Kurdish struggle for liberation, defeating rival Kurdish groups, and the PKK and Kurds monopolized the fight for independence following Aliza Marcus.
At the time, Kurds were denied the right to speak their language, and the right to convey their children’s names and show expressions of nationalism.
Despite Okaran’s authoritarian rule, his charisma and positioning as a defender of Kurdish rights leads most Kurds beyond Turkiy to love and respect him, calling him “appo.”
What was the armed rebellion like?
Violent.
More than 40,000 people died between 1984 and 2024, and thousands of Kurds fled further north from the violence in southeastern Turkiye.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Ocaran led operations from neighbouring Syria. This was the source of tension between the Assad regime and Torquier at the time.
The PKK relied on brutal tactics in the late 1980s and early 90s. According to a report from the European Council of Foreign Relations from 2007, the group lured foreign tourists under Okaran, adopted suicide surgeries and attacked Turkish diplomats’ offices in Europe.
Perhaps even worse, the PKK will suppress Kurdish civilians who did not support the group in guerrilla warfare.
Did Okaran change his opinion?
Ultimately, more than 10 years after he was caught.
In 1998, Okaran was forced to flee Syria due to the threat of a Turkish invasion to capture him. A year later, Turkish agents arrested him on a plane in Nairobi, Kenya, thanks to Inter, which they received from the US.
He was returned to Torkier and handed the death penalty, but his sentence changed his prison life after Turkier abolished the death penalty in 2004 to become a member of the EU.
By 2013, Okaran had changed his stance on separatism, beginning lobbying for Turkiye’s comprehensive Kurdish rights and greater local autonomy, saying he no longer believed in the effectiveness of the armed uprising.
This fundamental change led to the launch of a volatile peace process between the PKK and the ruling Judicial Development Party (AK Party), led by Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan.
The peace process led to some freedom for the Kurds, but in 2015, a battle erupted between the government and the PKK. This was concerning that the party was trying to create Kurdish statistics in neighbouring Syria during the Civil War.
At the time, many Kurds in the southern part of Turkiye were departing for Syria to help the Kurds there fight against ISIL (ISIS).
In 2015, the AK Party also formed a new alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which stubbornly opposes any peace process involving the PKK.
What’s the difference in this peace process?
In announcing disarmament, the PKK said it had “completed its historical mission” by breaking the policy of denial and annihilation of our people and allowing the Kurdish issue to be resolved through democratic politics.
However, analysts argue that there are other reasons behind the decision.
According to Sinan Urgen, a Carnegie expert in Brussels’ Carnegie Europe, the PKK in the region and Kurdish allies in the region are more vulnerable than before due to recent developments.
“The reason the PKK gave up on armed struggles has something to do with changing international contexts,” Urgen explained.
He explained that US President Donald Trump does not view Syria as a “strategic focus” of foreign policy, and that it is unlikely to continue supporting the country’s Kurdish armed groups during the fight against ISIL.
Furthermore, the new Syrian government is in good relations with Torkiye, unlike the one under the now widespread Assad regime.
This new relationship could significantly undermine the PKK and its Syrian derivation capabilities, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), to operate along the Syrian and Turkiye border.
Will Turkiye continue?
The political climate seems to be ripe for this reason.
Major parties, such as the AK Party and its rival Republican People’s Party (CHP), have supported the new peace process, either loudly or implicitly.
However, it was the MHP who had long opposed the overture to the Kurds, creating a new window into the peace process.
In April 2024, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli invited O’Callan to abandon “terrorism” in front of Turkiye Congress in exchange for the possibility of parole.
“The fact that it was Bahaselli was incredible,” said Sinem Adar, a Torkier expert at the German Institute of International Security (SWB).
Bahaselli’s change in mind is probably helping his coalition partner Erdogan run to win the next national election, experts told Al Jazeera.
Under the Constitution, Erdogan cannot run for another term unless an early election is called.
The votes of Kurdish representatives will be added to votes from the People’s Equality and Democrats (DEM) of the MHP-AK Party Alliance.[Erdogan] Urgen of Carnegie told Al Jazeera.
What will happen to Okaran now?
It is unclear whether he will be released, but the situation at his prison could improve dramatically, Urgen said.
He said that his support base and wider public response can be measured as the government prefers to gradually increase Okaran’s freedom.
Many people in Turkiye still view Ocalan as a “terrorist” and blame it on the conflict that has taken so many lives.
“The government would like to test the water before allowing Okaran to be free,” Urgen told Al Jazeera.
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