IRBIL/WASHINGTON — For more than four decades, Turkey has sought to crush the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) through military campaigns, mass arrests and the imprisonment of its leaders, amid an atmosphere of entrenched distrust between the country’s government and its largest ethnic minority, the Kurds.
Now a law adopted by the Turkish Parliament on Aug. 10 has raised hopes that one of the Middle East’s longest-running insurgencies might finally end, though it has so far garnered more criticism than outright support from the PKK itself.
The legislation creates a framework for the conditional pardon, demobilization and reintegration of thousands of members of the PKK, which has been designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The insurgency the group has waged since 1984 has claimed more than 40,000 lives.
The PKK criticized the new legislation as having “serious errors and flaws,” even as signs of the group’s demobilization are already emerging in northern Iraq. The PKK said the Turkish law’s implementation must be followed by broader measures to address Kurdish grievances.
Experts and diplomats, meanwhile, generally see the law as potentially transformative, arguing it could reshape the Kurdish question not only in Turkey but also in neighboring Syria, Iraq and Iran, where up to 40 million Kurds make up the world’s largest stateless ethnic group.
“This is a historic moment and the most significant piece of legislation that Turkey passed over the past few decades,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkey and foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“It would allow for there to be a complete and formal end to the armed insurgency by the PKK,” she added.
Kurdish lawmakers pose for a group photo in Turkey’s Parliament after lawmakers passed a bill establishing a legal framework for the disbandment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), August 10, 2026 / Reuters.
Passed by a vote of 468-88, the Bill on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integration creates a legal pathway for the conditional reintegration of thousands of PKK members based in Iraq and elsewhere. It also provides suspended sentences and other legal protections for people imprisoned solely for PKK membership who were not convicted of serious terrorist crimes.
The law is the biggest milestone in Ankara’s peace process with the PKK since talks resumed in 2024. A breakthrough came in February 2025 when Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the PKK, called on the group to disband, saying its armed struggle had “run its course.”
In May 2025, the PKK formally announced an end to its armed campaign. Two months later, about 30 PKK fighters burned their weapons near Sulaimani in northern Iraq in a symbolic gesture of support for Ocalan’s call.
Regional Hegemon
Aydintasbas said the law is a major geopolitical win for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan because sets up a transformation of the Kurds from being his adversaries to becoming allies.
“It can now give the Kurds a greater role in domestic politics in return for this reconciliation,” she said. “This development means that Turkey does not have to worry about Syria or Iraq breaking up.”
Kurds make up about 20 percent of Turkey’s 86 million people. More than 5 million more Kurds live in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, about 9 million live in Iran, and roughly 2.5 million lived in Syria before the civil war.
For four decades, Ankara spent heavily to defeat the PKK insurgency. More than 40,000 people were killed in PKK attacks and Turkish counterinsurgency sweeps. Most victims were ethnic Kurds. Fighting also devastated their homeland in southeastern Turkey and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Ayten Elhaman, whose son Bayram Elhaman she says was recruited by the outlawed PKK, touches a photograph of him during a gathering outside the local office of a pro-Kurdish party in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, August 11, 2026 / Reuters.
Doga Eralp, an associate professor of security studies at the Marine Corps University’s Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia, said Ankara views the peace process as central to its regional ambitions.
“Turkey now aspires to be a regional hegemon, and this process is more of a realpolitik calculation rather than a democratization effort,” he told MBN. “Turkey needs to have a deal with the Kurds to ensure peace prevails in the region.”
James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, said the development could help stabilize the Middle East more broadly.
The relations it posits between Turkey and the Kurds, he said is “analogous in different ways to the role that the Iraqi Kurds play in Iraq, but also, most generally, for peace and stability and integration throughout the region.”
Ankara accelerated the peace process after its ally, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, toppled Bashar Assad in December 2024. Eralp said Turkey needs stability in Syria to consolidate its influence, which requires integrating PKK-linked Syrian Kurdish groups into Syria’s evolving political order.
Most Syrian Kurds live along the Turkish border, where the YPG militia and PYD political party are widely regarded as the PKK’s main Syrian affiliates. The Syrian Democratic Forces is considered a broader coalition dominated by the YPG. Since early 2025, Sharaa has sought to integrate the SDF’s military and civilian institutions into the Syrian state.
“The peace process is not necessarily the result of what changed in Turkey, but more directly the result of the political changes in Syria,” Eralp said. “If the PKK lays down its arms in Turkey, then they would be allowed to operate within certain confines in the new Syrian political framework.”
Kurdish demonstrators take part in a protest in solidarity with Syrian Kurds in Istanbul, January 24, 2026 / Reuters.
The challenge remains formidable. On Aug. 10, Kurds protested in the northeastern Syrian city of Ras al-Ain after attacks on returning Kurdish families displaced during the country’s civil war. Demonstrations spread to the Kurdish-majority cities of Qamishli and Kobani. Syrian authorities said protesters attacked government offices and removed the national flag from a local security headquarters in Kobani before officials imposed a curfew.
Lifelong President
Jeffery, now a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said President Erdogan could use Kurdish reconciliation to advance his political future by leveraging broad parliamentary support for the law to pursue constitutional changes that would allow him to remain in power beyond the current term limits, which expire in 2028.
“That’s just speculation on my part, but it opens the door,” he told MBN.
Erdogan could seek another term if at least 360 members of Turkey’s 600-seat Parliament vote for an early election. Alternatively, 400 lawmakers could approve a constitutional amendment, or 360 could send it to a national referendum. The PKK peace bill passed Parliament on Aug. 10 by a vote of 468-88.
“It paves the way for some sort of a lifelong presidency for Erdogan,” Elarp said.
Erdogan has led Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and, since 2014, as president. He has been the country’s most dominant political figure since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the modern republic more than a century ago.
Iranian Help
Turkish forces have moved into positions vacated by about 1,000 PKK fighters in northern Iraq, according to five officials of the forces of Iraqi Kurdistan, known as the Peshmerga. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials said the militants handed over their positions in Dohuk and Irbil before relocating to the Qandil Mountains along Iraq’s border with Iran.
Political analyst Mansur Azizi said the handovers reflect an implicit understanding between Ankara and Tehran, which he said pressured the PKK leadership to make that move.
“There is a hidden Iranian role that benefits Turkey in this matter,” Azizi told MBN. “It is part of cooperation between Tehran and Ankara.”
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi praised Turkey’s role in preventing a Kurdish uprising against Iran after its war with the United States and Israel began in late February. During the war, Tehran targeted the offices and bases of Iranian Kurdish groups and Iraqi Kurdish authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan.
After early speculation about a Kurdish uprising, President Donald Trump ruled out opening a Kurdish front against Tehran. “I don’t want the Kurds going in. I don’t want to see the Kurds get hurt, get killed,” he told reporters on March 7.
Continued Kurdish Grievances
The PKK has expressed doubts about the new law and Ankara’s commitment to resolving the Kurdish question.
“The fact it refers only to disarmament without using the term ‘Kurdish’ shows the issue has not been addressed in its entirety,” the PKK leadership said in an Aug. 9 statement.
A boy holds a flag bearing an image of jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan during a Kurdish march in Diyarbakir, Turkey, May 10, 2026 / Reuters.
The group also called for the release of its 77-year-old leader, Ocalan, who has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999, saying “many provisions of the law will remain dead letters” without his freedom.
Shukriya Bradost, a Kurdish affairs expert in Washington, said the law does not address the broader Kurdish question. “It treats it as a terrorist group issue, without addressing the reasons behind why the PKK fought a guerrilla war all these years,” she said.
Experts say reconciliation between the Turkish state and the PKK still faces major challenges. Eralp said secret talks between Turkish intelligence and Ocalan have largely driven the process.
“It is very opaque, there is mistrust,” he said. “It’s highly susceptible to sabotage by sudden changes in the political calculus in Syria.”
Given the fragile environment in the region, Aydintasbas said Ankara must move quickly to sustain public support for the process. “Time is of the essence,” she said.
