Exclusive – Approximately thirty million Kurds reside in the Middle East, mainly in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where they make up nearly one-fifth of the country’s seventy-nine million people.
Founded by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has led an insurgency against Turkish authorities since 1984, seeking greater cultural and political rights, with the primary goal of establishing an independent Kurdish state. The conflict has claimed nearly forty thousand lives.
How Peace Can’t Be Made?
An essential goal of pre-negotiations is ensuring that all parties are genuinely committed to the peace process. Critical elements in this phase include:
- Logistics, including the location of talks
- Security arrangements for each party
- Representation from both sides
- A clear timeframe for each stage of negotiations
- The role and responsibilities of third-party states
- Managing the final stage before signing to prevent failure
Turkey has consistently failed to commit to the last two essential requirements of peacemaking. It often complicates negotiations with unrealistic demands and involves actors with no direct stake in the conflict. For instance, Turkey has misused legal Kurdish political parties, fabricating excuses to shut them down later. It has also manipulated Iraqi Kurdish parties, which align more with Turkey’s interests than those of Kurdish people within Turkey.
Despite engaging in direct negotiations with the PKK, Turkey continues to label the group as a terrorist organization, even when incidents attributed to the PKK were in fact orchestrated by Turkish military and intelligence operations to frame them. This allows Turkey to use terrorism as a delegitimization tool against the PKK, falsely portraying it as rejecting peace while Turkey itself manufactures excuses to terminate the peace process.
How to Create Obstacles to the Peace Process?
Turkey frequently accuses the United States and other NATO allies of supporting the PKK against Turkey. It claims that the Kurds are “separatists” seeking to dismantle Turkey by establishing an independent Kurdish state. Furthermore, Turkey portrays the Kurds as terrorists fighting a NATO member, arguing that NATO must side with Turkey against them. Given that Kurds live across four regional countries, Turkey alleges that external support for Kurdish rights is a direct attack on its sovereignty. To justify ending the peace process, Turkey often fabricates incidents through false-flag operations, providing pretexts to abandon negotiations.
How to Manipulate the International Community and Media?
Turkey has paid and volunteer allies within international media and diplomatic platforms who are activated whenever the Turkish government signals them. These individuals or entities propagate narratives favoring Turkey while undermining the Kurdish cause.
The most recent peace talks began informally in October 2024, involving several meetings between the pro-Kurdish DEM Party and PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in İmralı Island Prison. However, Turkey then diverted the process by engaging with the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government, which has well-known pro-Turkey policies and has even participated alongside Turkish forces in armed operations against the PKK.
On February 18, 2025, Turkish authorities arrested 282 individuals affiliated with the DEM Party or connected to the peace process. This move exposed Turkey’s unwillingness to sign a peace agreement with the Kurds, demonstrating once again that Turkey prioritizes sustaining conflict over achieving a lasting resolution.
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