As Israel scores victories against Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iran-backed militias, the dynamic across the Middle East shifts. With Iran’s proxies weakened, Israel no longer needs Turkey as a strategic partner. Sensing the possibility of being sidelined in a new Middle East, Turkey has changed tacks, suddenly offering a dialogue to reach peace with the Kurdish freedom movement. A similar initiative in 2015 failed after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed two Turkish policemen, accusing Turkey of colluding with the Islamic State in the Pirsûs (Suruç) bombing, which left more than thirty Kurdish activists dead, and more than a hundred others injured in July 2015.
Turks report that they have allowed Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK imprisoned alone on Imrali Island since 1999, to phone PKK commanders on Qandil Mountain in Iraqi Kurdistan. Journalists should not take Turkey’s claims at face value, however. The PKK maintains strict security regarding communications and given Turkey’s drone strikes against PKK leaders on Qandil, phone communication is rare.
If the call happened, however, what might explain Turkey’s change of heart?
Military destruction of Kurdish towns and villages, inside and outside Turkey, has increased in recent years.
Since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded Turkey in 1923, as an ethnic-chauvinistic nation-state, the Turkish government has denied the Kurds’ existence as a separate nation in their homeland, Kurdistan. During its first decades, Turkey perpetrated genocidal violence against the Kurds, followed by a campaign of cultural erasure that banned Kurdish language, music, and heritage. Turkey sought to Turkify the Kurds and suppress their identity through the execution or long imprisonment of Kurdish leaders, torture, and forced assimilation via Turkey’s education system. Repression today continues unabated. Indeed, Turkey’s bombardment and military destruction of Kurdish towns and villages, inside and outside Turkey, has increased in recent years, even after the PKK ceased its military campaign.
Now, the leader of Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) shakes hands with the co-president of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), a gesture supported by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Turkey’s strategic calculus has changed, but not its core policy. As the Turkish government stage-managed its photo-op, it cracked down on dozens of Kurdish language centers and cultural institutions across southeastern Turkey where Kurds predominate. Turkey’s move also comes after its occupation of Kurdish-populated districts (known as Rojava) in Syria to Turkify that region, forcing thousands of Kurds from homes. Turkish agents now kill Kurdish civilians in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)-controlled regions to sow terror in an attempt to force a broader Kurdish exodus. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Turkish military has intensified its operations, killing hundreds more.
These actions show that Ankara aspires to be an active player in any Middle Eastern order, not a passive one. For Turkey, maintaining a dominant role in the region is crucial, and in the eyes of its rulers, the Kurds are a tool to manipulate, not a nation to respect.
Turkey may try to marginalize Kurds, but the United States, European countries, and moderate Arab states should not follow suit. Kurds are indispensable allies in any new regional framework. In both Iraq and Syria, they are a proven pro-Western force, standing firm against the Islamic State and other radical and jihadi groups. Kurds in Iran also have the potential to be reliable partners in any new political and economic framework.
The Turks promised autonomy to the Kurds before the end of World War I.
The reality is that Turkey, fearing the prominent role the Kurds could play and its diminishing influence in the new Middle East, again engages in a duplicitous game. The Turks promised autonomy to the Kurds before the end of World War I, before the October 29, 1923, constitution denied even the Kurds’ existence. Turkey continues a policy of ethnic and cultural suppression: It has wielded its courts against Kurdish politicians and mayors who use the Kurdish language or letters such as x, q, and w that Kurds use but that are absent from the Turkish alphabet. Additionally, Turkey prohibits clothing or scarves that bear the Kurdish flag’s colors of red, yellow, and green. Kurds are killed for listening to Kurdish music or asserting their Kurdish identity. The Kurdish language remains unrecognized in Turkish courts.
History often rhymes, and the Kurds must remain vigilant and wary of Turkey’s overtures. The Turkish state —and especially its ruling parties—has consistently exploited the Kurdistan question as a political bargaining chip, using anti-Kurdish policies and security fears to stir nationalist sentiment and win votes. Without real, substantive recognition—de facto or de jure—of Kurdish rights and autonomy, these peace gestures ring hollow. The message to Kurds is simple and clear: Kurdo, do not be deceived. Calls for “unity” and “peace” are nothing more than another trick to manipulate Kurdish aspirations for Turkey’s benefit.
Öcalan remains incommunicado, with no family members or lawyers allowed to visit him since 2019. Trust must come only after real, tangible actions. A hundred years of denial and suppression cannot end overnight or be resolved with mere handshakes and words.
