By Daren Butler and Ece Toksabay
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Tayyip Erdogan’s long-held goal of ending Turkey’s conflict with Kurdish militants is a step closer after their jailed chief’s peace call, giving the president a potential political boost at home and a chance to resolve key regional security concerns.
Thursday’s call from Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan for the outlawed group to disarm and disband has triggered both hope and scepticism in Turkey.
The announcement, accompanied by a photo of Ocalan sitting with pro-Kurdish politicians, capped a delicate dialogue as Erdogan looks to capitalise on the upheaval in Syria and military gains against the PKK fighters based in northern Iraq.
Success now hinges on sustained cooperation among the various parties involved, but political analysts are far from confident that the PKK militants, based in mountainous northern Iraq, will heed the appeal of Ocalan, who has been held in an island jail near Istanbul for a quarter of a century.
They also point to the Erdogan government’s continued crackdown on democratically elected pro-Kurdish politicians it accuses of having close links to the PKK, which Turkey and its Western allies classify as a terrorist organisation.
For now, they say, Erdogan, 71, is focused especially on the domestic political dividends that peace could bring as he looks to extend his two-decade rule beyond 2028 when his term expires.
“Erdogan appears to be using the issue primarily to gain Kurdish support for a new constitution, which he hopes will allow him to run for the presidency again,” said Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based political analyst.
Erdogan has made repeated efforts in the past to resolve the Kurdish issue and end a decades-old conflict that has killed over 40,000 people and stymied economic development in Turkey’s impoverished mainly Kurdish southeast.
Finally ending the insurgency would be a major legacy achievement for Erdogan.
“After some critical changes in our politics and region, a new and important window of opportunity has opened up for our country to end the scourge of terrorism,” he said on a recent trip to Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s southeast.
KURDISH FEARS AND HOPES
The PKK leadership has yet to respond to Ocalan’s appeal.
Jenkins said the group could agree to a ceasefire but was unlikely to lay down its weapons.
“The PKK sees itself as a defender of Kurdish interests and will not disarm unless there are solid guarantees for the safety and future of Kurdish fighters,” he said.
Echoing that view, the Washington Institute’s Turkish research programme director Soner Cagaptay said the PKK leaders holed up in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq remain deeply suspicious of Ankara’s intentions.
“Some Qandil leaders likely fear they will be assassinated by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization down the road even if they are promised amnesty-in-exile in the short term,” Cagaptay said.
“Elderly commanders might also object to disbanding the PKK entirely or immediately without achieving any of its original goals — an outcome that could suggest they have thrown their lives away for nothing,” he added.
Inside Turkey, the pro-Kurdish DEM party and their allies hope Ocalan’s call will lead to democratic reforms and greater cultural and language rights for Kurds, but they remain for now the target of a years-long crackdown by Turkish authorities.
“A significant concern is whether Erdogan’s government is genuinely committed to peace when it continues to detain Kurdish politicians and activists en masse,” said Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of political risk consultancy Teneo.
Ocalan’s statement said nothing about reforms in Turkey, only saying that “democratic consensus is the fundamental way”.
However, DEM party lawmaker Sirri Sureyya Onder cited Ocalan as saying during talks in his prison on Thursday that “laying down arms and the PKK dissolving itself requires the recognition of democratic politics and the legal dimension”.
The details of Ocalan’s announcement were “purposefully shrouded in mystery, in part because Ankara’s two previous dialogues with the PKK failed miserably”, said Cagaptay.
Those talks, held in the years 2009-11 and 2013-15, were followed by increased violence and eroded Erdogan’s popularity.
GEOPOLITICS
Working in Erdogan’s favour now, however, are regional geopolitical developments after the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad following 11 years of civil war in which Ankara backed rebels seeking his overthrow.
The new Islamist government in Damascus has established good ties with Turkey, which continues to back Syrian Arab fighters in a conflict against Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria.
An end to the PKK insurgency would have major regional repercussions, facilitating Damascus’ efforts to assert greater sway over Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.
It would also remove a constant flashpoint in Kurdish-run, oil-rich northern Iraq, where the PKK set up base two decades ago.
Turkey this month mooted joint steps with Syria, Iraq and Jordan to combat Islamic State jointly in the region – potentially taking away the role currently played by the Kurdish YPG militia in guarding prison camps in northern Syria that hold IS militants.
Ankara views the YPG as an arm of the PKK and says it too must now disband.
(Reporting by Daren Butler and Ece Toksabay; Editing by Gareth Jones)
