Der lange Krieg, der letzte Woche endete
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/05/turkeys-kurds-erdogan-war/682923/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo
Der lange Krieg, der letzte Woche endete
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/05/turkeys-kurds-erdogan-war/682923/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo
2 Kommentare
Robert F. Worth: “Something remarkable happened last week, though it didn’t get the attention it deserved: A long and brutal war came to an end.
“For more than four decades, the Kurdish militant group known as the PKK waged an insurgency against the Turkish state that left some 40,000 people dead and reshaped the lives of millions. The PKK’s announcement on May 12 that it had ‘fulfilled its historical mission’ and was ending the armed struggle it has waged since 1984 got little notice outside Turkey, partly because the world was distracted by Donald Trump’s flattery tour of the Persian Gulf monarchies. But that’s the way it often is with wars: magnetic at the start, ignored when the violence fades. ‘War makes rattling good history,’ the novelist Thomas Hardy observed a century ago, ‘but peace makes poor reading.’
“The PKK’s decision to disarm came two months after its imprisoned founder and leader, Abdullah Öcalan, issued a statement suggesting that the war had become obsolete. Öcalan had held secret meetings with the Turkish government for a year, but the content of those talks remains a mystery, and it is still far from clear what the PKK—or the Kurds more broadly—stands to gain from the group’s decision to forswear violence and instead focus on ‘building a democratic society,’ as their announcement put it.
“The Turkish government now has an opportunity to consolidate the peace by offering some kind of amnesty to the PKK’s fighters, who have not yet handed over their abundant weapons, and by addressing the grievances that sparked the war in the first place: more cultural rights and respect for the Kurds, an ethnic group that makes up about 18 percent of Turkey’s population. The Kurds are also substantial minorities in Syria, Iraq, and Iran, where the PKK insurgency had important spillover effects.
“If Turkey fails to seize the moment, the conflict could erupt again. That has happened before. I was there the last time peace talks between the state and the PKK broke down, in 2015, and I saw the consequences up close. Cities and towns across southeastern Turkey were bombed, more than 1,000 people were killed in the following months, and thousands of activists and members of pro-Kurdish parties were thrown in prison on trumped-up charges. Many remain there.
“So far, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has described the PKK’s decision as a victory against terrorism. But the PKK is expecting political concessions from Turkey, including amnesty for its fighters and a broader recognition of Kurdish political and cultural rights. As one of the group’s leading figures, Murat Karayilan, said last week: ‘We believe the armed struggle must end—but unless the state makes legal changes, peace won’t be possible in practice.’
“The PKK’s leaders see their latest move less as a surrender than as the advent of a new phase in their movement, which has long promoted an ideology—leftist, secular, environmentalist—that sits uncomfortably with Erdoğan’s Islamist authoritarianism.
“… Within Turkey, whatever the outcome of the political give-and-take between Erdoğan and the PKK, this peace effort seems likelier to hold than its predecessors, in part because the PKK has lost some of its earlier advantages. The Turkish military has developed killer drones and other technologies that allow it to hold Kurdish leaders under siege even in remote strongholds in the Qandil mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. And many Kurds have grown weary of the war, which has made their life miserable for decades.”
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/6yYAGR4I](https://theatln.tc/6yYAGR4I)
The Kurdish community seems very suspicious of this and I’d say that’s not unfounded. I highly doubt this is the end to the conflict. Erdogan wants to project power across the region and he can’t do that with an insurgency on his doorstep…
With Syria down and the US aligning itself with the new gov over SDF, Iraqi Kurdistan mostly pacified, and Iranian Kurds largely quiet, there isn’t much support PKK has to sustain a long conflict with a powerful NATO member. Tack onto this, I believe Kurdish youth are largely becoming disillusioned with the political goals of the organization and there’s now a lot more drugs in those communities than there was in the past. The movement is simply too scattered and disconnected for right now to keep fighting so getting some concessions in exchange for peace might be ideal if it is to survive at all.
The historical animosity might simmer for awhile. Time will tell if the conflict picks up again but for now, I don’t think there’s a reason for either party to continue fighting.