The Dissolution of the PKK: Exploring their Interests and What Lasting Peace Requires

In May 2025, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced that it would set in motion a process of dissolution. This historic disbandment was given further legitimacy when disarmament commenced in July, followed by a withdrawal of forces in October. The international response to the announcement has been overwhelmingly positive. While Kurdish diasporas were initially sceptical, cautious optimism is now predominant. Türkiye’s direct neighbours in Iran and Iraq also welcome the initiative that could bring more stability to the region, even though Kurdish public opinion in Iraq is more divided due to a complicated web of internal Kurdish politics. Recently, Türkiye also showed some goodwill by giving lawyers access to Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s leader who has been imprisoned since 1999. All the while, the process has been slow, updates have been published sparsely, and the details of the deal remain the subject of speculation.

In response to the news, much of the attention has gone out to the political spectacle of a potential settlement. In a possible deal, Türkiye’s president Recep Erdoğan’s interests seem well established. Ending the decades-long conflict with the PKK could boost his popularity, both domestically and abroad, and extending his presidency beyond 2028 would require a constitutional amendment for which support from the Kurdish-aligned People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) looks necessary. The far-right Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) kickstarted this process and their inclusion is vital as the previous attempt at peace talks broke down over nationalist opposition. Since the MHP appears to be forming a long-lasting coalition with Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), their motives are evident too. This clarity cannot immediately be found regarding Kurdish interests. The reasons behind the dissolution of the PKK and its goals in any negotiations are narrowly framed in general discourse and often reflexively reduced to the interests of its imprisoned leader or a necessity to save face as a result of military decline. The narrative that has formed around this news has been one of power politics instead of democratisation and prevention of violence. As a result, a comprehensive overview of the interests of the PKK, and the ideology informing those interests is lacking in the public debate and will be provided in this article.

The joy of a potential end to this generational armed conflict overshadows the realities of the fragility of peace talks, especially in the context of a continuously backsliding democracy in Türkiye and the general instability and unpredictability of the region. We must overcome naivety regarding this dissolution: a long protracted negotiation, of which the path is yet unclear, still lays before us. The current stage of the negotiation has been reached before, in 2015, when talks derailed and bloody conflict ensued. The formal dissolvement of the PKK’s organisational structure might facilitate a framework for disarmament, provided the PKK sees its demands met regarding tangible steps from Ankara. Amongst those demands are the further democratisation of Türkiye and opportunities for partial autonomy, which are necessary for a reconciliation with the Kurdish population the PKK professes to represent. While some murmurs about strengthening democracy can be picked up from the capital, Erdoğan and his allies keep stressing the defeating terrorism angle. This should give us pause about the feasibility of these negotiations, an area that has generally been underexposed. As such, this article will evaluate the potential dissolution of the PKK against the backdrop of How terrorist groups end: Lessons for countering al Qa'ida, which provides an evidence-based dichotomy of the main causes behind the dissolution of terrorist organisations. 

Origins and insurgencies

To explain the original aims of the PKK and contextualise its more recent shift in ideology, one must understand its history and deep connection with the formation of the Republic of Türkiye. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the advent of the nation state, the Kurdish people found themselves in states dominated by other ethnic groups and cultures. In Türkiye, this meant Kurds were forced to Turkify. A process the young republic initially assumed to be painless since the Kurds and Turks share a religion. This hope was short-lived. After the genocide of the Zaza Alevi Kurds in Dersim, tensions heightened and Kurds became subject to intense assimilation practices which had hitherto been reserved for the, almost exclusively Christians, Armenians, and Assyrians. These policies bred distrust of the Turkish state in much of the Kurdish population, who now started longing for an independent Kurdistan. The PKK would fill this void of political dissent. 

Initially, Öcalan attempted to work with the left-wing in Ankara, but they were unwilling to focus their attention on the repression of the Kurds. He, then, established the PKK in 1978, in collaboration with a group of Kurds who characterised Kurdistan as an internal colony of Türkiye. The Marxist-Leninist militant group officially launched its insurgency in 1984 with the express objective of creating an independent socialist Kurdish state. During this time, the PKK’s strategy is described as a mix of guerrilla and terrorist tactics. Accordingly, the PKK was designated a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union in 1997 and 2002, respectively. This first conflict lasted until 2013, during which many flagrant human rights abuses were committed on both sides. In 2015, the conflict reignited due to tensions caused by the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), again resulting in many (civilian) casualties in Türkiye, and also in Syria and Iraq. Much of the PKK had relocated to these border regions during the insurgencies, with Öcalan operating in Syria until 1998, when he was forced to abandon the country and was eventually apprehended in Kenya in 1999. During the latter stages of the first insurgency, the PKK’s leadership had started amending its aims, seemingly willing to negotiate a settlement with Ankara. In jail, Öcalan also started to reevaluate the ideology underpinning the PKK’s vision for the Kurds. Before examining their ideological shift, which opened up the possibility of dissolution, we must first consider to what extent a negotiated settlement is feasible.

Ending terrorism successfully

The influential book How terrorist groups end remains an informative piece of literature in explaining the motives of terrorist organisations and providing a framework for peaceful dissolution. It characterises such organisations as rational actors that are willing to use a myriad of strategies to effectuate a list of hierarchically ordered political objectives, including terrorism. The purpose of terrorism, then, is to gain support from the larger political movement it professes to represent, to coerce its adversaries, and to actualise its goals. If components of the cost-benefit analysis for using terrorist strategies are altered, a reassessment of tactics and goals is possible. In its quantitative analysis of how terrorist organisations have historically ended, the book finds that forty-three percent of groups end through a negotiated settlement, with a transition from terrorism to joining the political process as the most common method. In contrast, only seven percent of organisations end through military defeat. This ‘utilitarian’ approach to terrorism might feel crass but provides us with a realistic framework in combating it. If we see terrorism as one method among many, we could institute the structural conditions that favour those other methods over the violence and eroding effects of terrorism. In the case of the PKK, the structural developments that can create a window of opportunity for the adoption of nonviolent tactics and settlement have already emerged. When such a window has been found, the book outlines a few conditions for a successful end of the conflict. One of these conditions is the type of political regime in which democracy is associated with less repression and grievances, and stringent constraints on state behaviour. The most important condition for a peaceful end is, however, the breadth of goals of a terrorist organisation. These range from defending the status quo, policy change, territorial change, and regime change to empire-building and social revolution. Broader goals are more likely to encounter resistance from the state, making it more likely that groups will consider terrorism their only viable method for change. If goals are narrower, nonviolent tactics become more feasible. Additionally, narrow goals make it easier to find a middle ground, which makes reaching a settlement more likely. The question, thus, becomes: has the PKK, whose previous Marxist-Leninist ideals advocated for social revolution, sufficiently narrowed its goals?

New aims and methods

The PKK’s call for dissolution and disarmament is in line with structural developments and an explicit shift in ideology and strategy. The end of the Cold War, brought about, at least in part, by the very public failure of Marxist-Leninist regimes, can be seen as an impetus to shift away from armed struggle and insurgency towards the use of political means and societal empowerment through democratisation. While the non-negotiable goal of the PKK had long been to establish an independent state, this development provided room to reflect on the nationalist conceptualisation of Kurdish liberation and the methods employed to realise this aim. Some of the PKK’s alleged offshoots are, indeed, still involved in terrorist activities, but terrorism no longer seems to be central to the PKK’s modus operandi. In 2020, the Belgian Court of Cassation ratified a lower court’s judgement that the PKK was not a terrorist organisation and instead “an international armed organization which is not a state”, spurring on questions of whether other countries should follow suit.

Another impetus for change can be found in Öcalan’s reflections on the proceedings of the first insurgency. He noticed two glaring issues: a monopolisation of power through patriarchal structures and a lack of self-sustainability. PKK leaders effectively turned into warlords and depended wholly on logistical support from locals, opening them up to reprisal attacks. Exploitation of the local population is detrimental to garnering support from the larger political movement one professes to represent. To combat the predominance of patriarchal structures and their associated centralisation and abuse of power, Öcalan encouraged the formation of independent women’s institutions and militias. To address the predation and lack of self-sustainability, the PKK developed an organisational structure based on self-defence and autonomy. This culminated in a new political strategy, which decoupled self-determination from state building and developed the concepts of democratic confederalism and democratic autonomy in opposition to separatism and nationalism. These concepts refer to a bottom-up system of self-administration that is meant to reinstitute values of local political participation away from the electoral politics of representative democracies. While these concepts were tailored to the political reality of the Middle East, they are not altogether novel. Much of their theoretical substantiation is borrowed from Murray Bookchin’s work on libertarian municipalism. Öcalan read Bookchin’s theory and corresponded with him through intermediaries, adding to the theory with his critique of patriarchy and the assimilationist tendencies of centralised states.

Bookchin, rejecting the statist notion of Leninism and other contemporary socialist endeavours, developed his political philosophy and strategy on the basis of communality. Libertarian municipalism advocates for the formulation of public policy on the local level through face-to-face assemblies on the basis of complementarity and solidarity, thereby seeking to redefine how politics are viewed and practiced. Bookchin, thus, envisions a highly deliberative form of politics which attempts to actualise the Marxist maxim “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” without the power of a centralised state, believing local interests to be more rational and ecological. Wary of the possibility of parochialism, an insular outlook that neglects broader societal issues, he presses the importance of education and organisation, envisioning a confederation of local councils. This confederation would be strictly administrative and coordinative with recallable deputies instead of representatives that serve a set term. This is meant to ensure that the power of creating policy remains directly in the hands of local assemblies. Öcalan was able to translate his theory to the Kurdish context, initiating a debate among Kurds about prioritising a democratic confederacy over a nation state. His main aim is the development of a political theory and strategy that addresses the negative societal consequences of colonialism and patriarchy, and the influence of nation states and capitalism which he believes to be destructive to political equality. Öcalan argues that these influences have dispossessed people of their freedoms, their ability to express themselves, and live fulfilled lives. Revolution, then, does not mean directly combating the capitalist state by violently upending it but, instead, supplanting it with a moral - ecological, equal and democratic - political society. This society is, in his view, only attainable through the establishment of institutions that develop ethical citizens and a political methodology of dialogue, diplomacy, and negotiation.

It seems, then, that the PKK’s new approach has a more democratising aim that is less served by terrorism. One can hardly build the institutions of a democratic confederacy while on the run and fearing for one’s existence, much less instil the values that are necessary to uphold it. Even though the libertarian municipal view is highly critical of the nation state, it does not put itself in complete opposition to it, allowing democratic confederacies to exist within traditional states. This is the case in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria – a semi-autonomous Kurdish region controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is made up of Syrian offshoots of the PKK – that has hitherto maintained its autonomy in a highly volatile political situation. If the PKK wants to make good on its promise of creating a moral semi-autonomous political society, the choice to pursue negotiations and transform into a legitimate political movement seems strategically correct, especially in a time of heightened attention to the region. Its demands are narrower than they once were: cultural and legal recognition of the Kurdish identity and social, political, and economic autonomy. These aims would fall into the narrow range of goals (seeking policy and territorial change) as defined in How terrorist groups end. It may well be, however, that Erdoğan, who characterised the likelihood of a comprehensive agreement as slim, considers these demands too stringent still. His political aims of centralising and holding onto power seem to run counter to the demands of the PKK and Türkiye can hardly be called a democracy with free and fair elections, which makes a settlement less likely and is at odds with the concept of democratic confederalism. Additionally, hierarchical organisations are thought to be more likely to negotiate a deal. Although the PKK and affiliated organisations have regularly followed the direction of Öcalan, not all of them believe the dissolution of the PKK should result in their subsequent disbandment. Ankara’s domestic repression of political dissidents and support of the Syrian transitional government in their skirmishes with the SDF, with direct Turkish involvement now being threatened by the MHP, heightens these tensions.

Reaching a settlement

Despite considerably narrowing its goals, the PKK and the Turkish government might still be too far apart to reach a settlement. Their negotiation would need to make progress on key elements like democratic transition and an end to repression before it can focus on the demands of the parties. Such a drastic change in Ankara’s behaviour seems farfetched without external pressure. That is not to say that the PKK will definitely return to the use of violence, it might continue to further its goals through political means, calculating that nonviolent methods are more fruitful. It could mobilise civil society organisations to cover and condemn repression of the Kurds in the Middle East and advocate for democratisation of the wider region. A failed negotiation followed by intensified hard counter-terrorism measures which are considered less effective in ending terrorist organisations, might, however, amend the structural conditions in such a way that the PKK or other Kurdish groups feel emboldened to return to the use of terrorism. If this peace process is to be successful, it will require guidance of international organisations and pressure to democratise by leading actors in the international order. These negotiations might well form a blueprint for peace in the region, or create yet another breeding ground for violent extremism and terrorism.

This article represents the views of the author(s) solely. ICCT is an independent foundation, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy unless clearly stated otherwise.

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