The PKK began its first phase of disarmament last week, analysts say the process will be felt regionally.
On Friday, 30 fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) threw their weapons into a bonfire at a meeting in Sulaimaniyah, a city in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
After hiding out in Iraq’s Qandil Mountains for three decades, where they reportedly trained for combat and planned attacks against Turkiye, they were now renouncing their armed struggle.
The symbolic gesture is the first phase of disarming the PKK as part of a rejuvenated peace process with Turkiye, which could end a 40-year conflict that has killed some 40,000 people.
As the process unfolds, a question arises about how this may affect the broader region, including the autonomous Kurdish areas in Iraq and Syria.
Lack of transparency
In February, jailed PKK leader Abdulla Ocalan called on his fighters to fully disarm, saying the time for armed struggle was over and Kurds could now realise their rights through politics.
Senior PKK leaders heeded the call in April and agreed to a new peace process with Turkiye.
The success of the peace process largely hinges on reintegration and the political and cultural rights Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will confer on Kurds, according to Gonul Tol, an expert on Turkiye and the PKK with the Middle East Institute think tank.
While Erdogan and his far-right coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, support the new process, the implementation remains shrouded in secrecy, say analysts.
They believe the government is wary of disclosing details to avoid public backlash from some nationalist quarters, who may see any concessions as rewarding the PKK for armed rebellion.
The process will likely entail a general amnesty for PKK fighters and giving Kurds the political and cultural rights they have long demanded, which would allow disarmed PKK fighters to return to Turkiye from northern Iraq, Sinan Ulgen, an expert on Turkiye and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, said.
Only senior leaders would continue to live abroad, without fear of being targeted.
However, he added, there has been no public discussion of how the government plans to reintegrate former PKK fighters into civilian life.
“The lack of transparency raises the question over how much public support there is for this initiative,” Ulgen told media.
According to Tol, Kurdish politicians are expecting Erdogan to make some political concessions to the Kurds through the recently established Turkish Parliamentary Committee.
Failure to do so, she warns, could collapse the peace process.
How Iraq’s Kurdish region factors in the process
The exact number of PKK fighters is unknown, but rough estimates suggest there are between 2,000 to 5,000 in the Qandil Mountains.
Since the 1990s, the PKK has reportedly plotted attacks against the Turkish state from these mountains with no real resistance from Iraqi authorities.
This dynamic continued after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which officially brought about an autonomous Kurdish region in the north.
Turkiye has on many occasions bombarded PKK positions in the mountains, often relying on jets, artillery and helicopters.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which governs the Kurdish autonomous region, has never interfered in the fighting, noted Nazli al-Tarzani, an independent Iraqi analyst.
However, she said Iraq’s Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), may now try to exploit the peace process if it succeeds.
They could exaggerate their role in the process to attract voters in the upcoming national elections in November, she added.
“Things always heat up during an election cycle, and they could use the [disarmament] as a point-scoring exercise,” al-Tarzani told media.
The other scenario, said al-Tarzani, would see a resumption of conflict between Turkiye and the PKK in the Qandil Mountains.
She added that the KRG has strong commercial and economic ties with Turkiye and will likely remain quiet and in the peripheries if the peace process collapses and conflict resumes.
On top of that, she explained, the KRG cannot assist Turkiye with such a complicated military operation.
“They don’t have the capacity for a scheme of that scale, and it would be quite costly. Also, I don’t think Turkiye would want to outsource. They would want to call the shots,” she said.
The PKK’s incentives
The PKK has its own reasons to lay down arms and see through the peace process, analysts told media.
Salim Cevik, an expert on Turkiye and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, noted that the group is militarily weak after being driven out of Turkiye in 2016.
During that period, the PKK in Turkiye was trying to carve out an autonomous region which would link up with its counterpart, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), in Syria.
At the time, Kurds from Syria and Turkiye were joining the fight against ISIL (ISIS) with US support, while expanding their control over majority-Kurdish and Arab regions in northern Syria.
But since March 10, the YPG has been negotiating its own deal with Syria’s new authorities – a close ally of Turkiye that came to power after toppling former President Bashar al-Assad in December.
Analysts previously told media that any agreement between Syria’s new authorities and the YPG would lead to some limited form of Kurdish autonomy in Syria, but with greater oversight and control from the central government.
“PKK expectations seem clear … that Turkiye will stop trying to undermine Kurdish autonomy in Syria [as part of the peace process],” said Cevik.
However, Tol said Turkiye still worries that PKK fighters could mobilise in Syria if the peace process suddenly collapses, referencing the close ties between the two Kurdish factions.
“The Turkish government must be thinking that they are going to have thousands of YPG fighters right on their border if this thing doesn’t work out,” she told media.
Splinters and national security
Although analysts believe disarmament should go smoothly, some PKK fighters could refuse to disarm if they are unhappy with the process or believe that Ocalan, who has been in Turkiye’s custody since 1999, is out of touch, said Ulgen.
“Turkiye is relying on Ocalan to steer the entire PKK conglomerate … whether they will all listen remains an open question,” Ulgen told media.
Their cooperation will hinge on how soon Turkiye will confer fundamental rights on Kurds, he added.
Burcu Ozcelik, a security expert on Turkiye and the PKK with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), believes a splinter is very unlikely.
She explained that Ocalan has remained influential in the ideological evolution of the group and that he has retained the loyalty of PKK fighters since he was captured.
In addition, she said, Turkiye appears to view the rejuvenated peace process, the disarmament of PKK fighters and their reintegration into civil life as imperative for national security.
She referenced Turkiye’s historical and increasingly truculent relationship with regional powers such as Iran and Israel.
Israel, in particular, appears to view Turkiye’s regional influence as a threat to its power and agenda in the region.
Turkiye may be concerned, said Burcu, that Israel may therefore attempt to instrumentalise Kurdish armed groups to thwart what they perceive to be Turkiye’s influence, regionally.
“In the aftermath of Assad’s fall in Syria, Israeli government officials were very vocal of the Kurds being a natural ally to Israel and that Israel should support Kurdish autonomy,” she told media.
This possibility is incentivising Turkish ministers to reach a deal with the PKK to thwart the possibility of foreign meddling.
“I think Turkey’s assessment is that if it can’t conclude the conflict on its own terms, then there will be other actors looking to spoil the strategic dynamic for their own favour,” she added.
