After more than a quarter of a century in solitary confinement, Turkey allowed Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), to issue a statement from prison calling for the PKK to disarm. “Convene your congress and make a decision. All groups must lay their arms, and the PKK must dissolve itself,” he reportedly said.
It is easy to embrace his statement with optimism. Kurds long have compared Öcalan to South African militant-turned-statesman Nelson Mandela. Öcalan’s early years—like Mandela’s—were violent. And as with Mandela, many of Öcalan’s early targets were political rivals.
The Kurdish struggle also has been exhausting, though Turkey’s oft-cited figures of 40,000 dead at the hands of the PKK appear spun from whole cloth. Could the insurgency be over?
Kurds would be foolish to believe so. The enthusiasm with which diplomats and journalists approach the ceasefire call suggests that, more than 40 years after the PKK’s founding, they do not understand the group or the Kurdish issue more broadly. They fundamentally flunk their understanding of Öcalan and his role in the PKK.
It is easy to call for the PKK to dissolve itself, but this will be impossible if a similar democratic structure does not take its place under a new structure.
True, Kurds widely revere Öcalan for putting their cause on the map and they treat him like both a founding father and philosopher. He is their inspiration, but not their dictator. Indeed, the reason why the PKK became so popular in Iraqi Kurdistan in recent years is that the PKK’s emphasis on democracy and technocratic merit juxtaposed sharply with Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Talabani brothers’ Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s autocracy and nepotism.
It is easy to call for the PKK to dissolve itself, but this will be impossible if a similar democratic structure does not take its place under a new structure. Neither Turkey—one of the world’s most corrupt and dictatorial countries—nor the tribal Iraqi Kurdish parties provides compelling alternatives.
Nor can the PKK readily lay down arms. After all, where would that leave the Kurds? It was armed People’s Defense Units (YPG) and their all-female compatriots (YPJ) who defeated the siege of Kobane at a time when the Turkish government supported the Islamic State. Likewise, when Masrour Barzani ordered his peshmerga to abandon the Yezidi, while his wife and relatives fled with designer goods, Patek Philippe watches, and cash to the Erbil airport to flee Iraq, it was the YPG and YPJ who fought the Islamic State and ultimately freed many enslaved Yezidis.
To disarm the PKK-affiliated groups today would mean leaving Al-Hol, the main prison complex in which Islamic State fighters and their family members sit, unguarded.
Kurds are not as foolish as well-meaning but naïve diplomats. This is not the first time President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has demanded the PKK disarm. There have been many ceasefires over the years. Erdoğan turns on a dime. He will embrace Turkey’s Kurds so long as they subordinate Kurdish cultural identity to his religious exegesis. When Kurds refuse to vote for Erdoğan’s political party or kneel at the feet of the would-be sultan, Erdoğan will order them slaughtered.
Remember: Erdoğan previously demanded the PKK lay down their arms and leave for Syria. Once they did so, he bombarded them with drones, U.S.-provided F-16s, and artillery. Despite the constant onslaught and ethnic cleansing of Afrin, the Kurds built perhaps the most tolerant and democratic statelet in the Levant.
Turkey needs a truth and reconciliation committee to shine light on its deep state, abuse of human rights, and intelligence service.
General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, is correct to reject Öcalan’s specific demands for disbandment. While think tank analysts like the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran can repeat the Turkish mantra that Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is the PKK, this does not make it so—as, indeed, he would recognize if he visited the region. The idea behind the PKK is decentralization, and the Syrian Kurds and Christians and Yezidis and Muslims have shaped their own destiny in the region.
If Erdoğan is serious about change, he should do what P.W. Botha did in South Africa so many years ago: He should release the Kurdish Mandela from prison, and he should step down. There is much fault to find in Öcalan’s philosophy, but his basic commitment to decentralization is wise. Perhaps Öcalan’s vision can free Turks from the yoke of Erdoğan’s Islamist dictatorship just like Mandela freed South Africans from Apartheid rule.
True peace also will require addressing the elephant in the room: the Turkish Army, which is responsible today for far more bloodshed than the PKK. At a minimum, Turkey needs a truth and reconciliation committee to shine light on its deep state, abuse of human rights, and intelligence service that acts more like a foreign terrorist organization than a facilitator of security.
Peace will come only when Turkey is willing to live at peace with itself and its neighbors. Erdoğan is not there yet, even if Öcalan may be.
