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

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middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-does-pkks-disbanding-mean-turkeys-pro-kurdish-movement>
What does the PKK's disbanding mean for Turkey's pro-Kurdish movement?
Alex MacDonald
May 29, 2025
------------------------------

After almost half a century, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has agreed
to disband following an order given by its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/profile/turkey-kurds-abdullah-ocalan-profile-pkk>
.

The founding of the party in 1978 by a group of left-wing Kurds in
southeastern Turkey <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/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).

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 with unelected “trustees”,
usually over claims of support for “terrorism” - though Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said
<https://www.tesaaworld.com/en/news/erdogan-it-will-be-rare-to-appoint-municipal-trustees-if-the-same-pkk-group-takes-over>this
would become “rare” after the PKK disbands.

DEM Party representatives and members of Erdogan’s Justice and Development
Party (AKP) met 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
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-government-pretending-bahceli-ocalan-outreach-being-done-alone>
the public face of the current push for what he calls a “terror-free
Turkey”.
'We don’t do politics for ourselves'

Any discussion over a future peace process is likely to be fraught with
difficulty after so many decades of conflict, with potential hurdles
including the release of prisoners, constitutional reform, the deepening
<https://bianet.org/haber/dem-parti-5393-sayili-belediyeler-kanununu-duzenleyin-307842>
of regional democracy, and the recognition of cultural rights.

Just last week, Mehmet Ucum, an AKP MP and Erdogan's chief legal advisor, hit
out <https://x.com/mehmetucum/status/1926268331176190153>at references by
the DEM Party to “political prisoners” in Turkey’s jails.

'When there is ongoing conflict and violence, politics ultimately has
limitations'

*- Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, DEM Party MP*

“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 and 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 inflame - during a
parliamentary session last year, she was punched
<https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/attack-from-akp-fascist-deputies-in-the-parliament-74832>in
the face by an AKP lawmaker 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,” Kocyigit 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.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/profile/turkey-kurds-abdullah-ocalan-profile-pkk>

Turkey and the PKK: Who is Abdullah Ocalan?

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.

[image: image.gif]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
<https://x.com/AlizaMarcus/status/1924737208927371701>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.

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 caused 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). Meanwhile, 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 it was focusing on the emancipation of Kurds “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 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
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/5/20/turkey-passes-bill-to-strip-politicians-of-immunity>of
the CHP, the party of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is now
under the state’s boot heel, its representatives and functionaries imprisoned
<https://bianet.org/haber/25-more-istanbul-municipality-employees-and-executives-imprisoned-307811>and
sacked.

[image: 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)]
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)

[image: image.gif]

[image: image.gif]Imamoglu’s arrest has galvanised a wide cross-section of
Turkish society who see 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 was 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
<https://www.duvarenglish.com/politics/2020/05/10/turkish-govt-may-go-to-snap-polls-to-prevent-further-loss-of-votes>from
the HDP before joining the more explicitly leftist TIP, citing a lack of
intra-party democracy and the influence
<https://www.barandergisi.net/ahmet-sik-konustu-emek-ve-ozgurluk-ittifaki-karisti>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 the 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 the past been critical of the Kurdish movement’s
alliance with the Turkish left, arguing that it effectively allowed
it outside influence through its 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
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/profile/turkey-kurds-abdullah-ocalan-profile-pkk>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.

[image: People hold a portrait of Selehattin Demirtas during a gathering of
Turkish Kurds for Nowruz (aka Noruz or Newroz) celebrations in March 2025
(AFP)]
People hold a portrait of Selahattin Demirtas during a gathering of Turkish
Kurds for Nowruz celebrations in March 2025 (AFP)

[image: image.gif]

[image: image.gif]“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 <https://ihd.org.tr/en/ihds-new-survey-on-sick-prisoners/> 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
<https://www.duvarenglish.com/council-of-europe-rapporteur-calls-for-demirtas-kavalas-release-upon-visit-news-64536>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.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/pkk-disarms-turkey-solidifies-its-power-against-iran-and-israel>

As PKK disarms, Turkey solidifies its power against Iran and Israel

“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
<https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/mhp-leader-criticizes-constitutional-court-for-hdp-case-180375>the
shuttering of the DEM Party's predecessor party - agreed
<https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/dem-party-meets-with-mhp-leader-develet-bahceli-79542>on
Tuesday to the establishment of a 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.”
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