On May 12, 2025, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK) announced its dissolution after more than four decades of armed struggle against the Turkish government. This came on the heels of a call from imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to disband the organization. On July 11, PKK fighters participated in a ceremony signifying disarmament. What will this mean for Kurdish movements for liberation and for the Middle East in general?

In the following analysis, a Kurdish feminist militant draws on over ten years of political and research engagement with the Kurdish liberation movement to explore these questions. Raised in Iran and based in the Kurdish diaspora, the author, Soma.r, has been in close contact with women participants and remains actively connected to the movement.

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Introduction

A group of PKK fighters symbolically disarmed on July 11, 2025, in Jasna Cave, located in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The site carries deep historical and political significance: in 1923, it served as a refuge and command base during British colonial attacks. That same year, Jasna Cave became a clandestine printing site for Bangî Haq (“Call of Truth”), the first revolutionary Kurdish newspaper, founded by the journalist Ahmad Khwaja. This act wove together anti-colonial resistance, political struggle, and underground journalism.

A century later, the act of disarming here is not surrender—it is a political statement, echoing through layers of time. It draws a line between the past and the present, invoking memory as strategy. In choosing Jasna, the fighters remind us: revolutions may shift shape, but their roots run deep. Where empire once sought silence, Kurdish voices printed truth. Where arms are now laid down, new struggles may rise—rooted in the same earth, but shaped by new imaginaries.

This act gains further resonance in light of recent events. Just two days earlier, Abdullah Öcalan, the legendary PKK leader, reappeared in a video message—his first since 1999—calling for the end of armed struggle and urging a definitive shift toward democratic politics. This moment invites not merely commemoration, but interpretation: how does a guerrilla movement, once synonymous with armed resistance, perform political transformation through symbolic acts?

To understand the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)’s self-dissolution, we must bear in mind the breadth of its social base, which spans tens of millions. Since Öcalan’s imprisonment in 1999, the Kurdish movement in Turkey has grown beyond its guerrilla origins into a complex political project rooted in diverse urban and rural, secular and religious, Kurdish and non-Kurdish constituencies—though the proletariat remains central. It now operates through a hybrid structure combining an armed wing in Qandil with a wide civilian network involving unions, municipalities, legal parties, women’s organizations, media, and transnational solidarity platforms. Its political praxis is at once territorial and transnational, legal and clandestine, militarized and deeply social. Among the most transformative shifts has been the rise of the Kurdish women’s liberation movement (KWLM), which has repositioned gender emancipation as both a symbolic and strategic core. Across Öcalan’s letters, the Rojava project and KWLM’s expanding role are consistently upheld as the PKK’s most significant contemporary achievements.

In a significant development for the Kurdish political landscape, the PKK announced its dissolution following its 12th Congress. This decision was shaped by a series of dialogues initiated in October 2024, involving Abdullah Öcalan (via his nephew and the delegation of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party) and prompted by statements from Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, a far-right, ultranationalist political party in Turkey. Öcalan emphasized the need for transitioning the Kurdish question from armed struggle to democratic politics, stating he had the capacity to lead this shift if the conditions allowed.

In response, the PKK began internal consultations and expressed readiness to convene a congress under Öcalan’s guidance. On February 27, 2025, Öcalan issued a formal “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society,” urging the PKK to end its armed activities and take responsibility for achieving a peaceful resolution. In response, the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire on March 1. This was followed by the organization’s 12th Congress, where the decision to dissolve the PKK and end its armed campaign was formally adopted by the leadership of both the PKK and the Party of Free Women in Kurdistan (PAJK).¹

Öcalan’s strategic vision was more fully developed in the May 2025 issue (No. 521) of Serxwebûn, the PKK’s official monthly publication. This final issue featured the complete 20-page document Öcalan had submitted to the Congress, along with a four-point letter addressed to the delegates, outlining the political framework for the transition to a peaceful and democratic phase of the Kurdish movement. Announcing the end of its uninterrupted 44-year history, the magazine declared: “Everything is in place for a new and stronger beginning.”

In his April 27 letter, Abdullah Öcalan outlines a transformative vision for the post-PKK era centered on democratic nationhood, ecological and communal economics, and democratic modernity as an alternative to both the capitalist nation-state and real socialism. He proposes democratic society as the political program of the new era—one that does not aim to capture the state but to create autonomous, grassroots-based structures like communes. Within this framework, concepts such as democratic socialism, communalism, and regional confederalism become central to both Kurdish liberation and broader regional transformation. Öcalan calls this a new form of internationalism and urges all actors to take responsibility for materializing it, suggesting that success in Kurdistan could have ripple effects across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.² The texts in this issue—including speeches, resolutions, and congress documents—reflect an attempt to reconfigure the movement’s strategic horizon.

Öcalan’s recent call for dissolution is not without precedent, as the PKK has long oscillated between armed struggle and negotiation. However, this moment signals a more profound ideological shift: since 2004, the movement has restructured itself around “democratic confederalism” via the Kurdistan Democratic Communities Union (KCK)—an umbrella framework that includes the PKK but is conspicuously absent from the current dissolution plan.

The meaning of “dissolution” remains highly ambiguous. Does it signal the end of the PKK, a mere rebranding, or a tactical shift within a longer arc of political adaptation? More critically, what does dismantling a structure that has historically blurred armed resistance and grassroots mobilization mean for anti-state and anti-colonial struggles in the region?

Even within the PKK, interpretations vary. Zagros Hiwa, the Foreign Relations spokesperson of the KCK, stated on Sterk TV that the resolutions call for ending armed conflict—not disarmament—and questioned the feasibility of this, given the 100-meter proximity between Turkish soldiers and guerrillas. Others disagree. Amir Karimi, from the PKK’s Iran-Kurdistan branch, asserted, “Those who have fought and endured the most have the greatest right to speak about peace.” Meanwhile, the Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Numan Kurtulmuş, framed the process as part of a national effort to resist imperialist fragmentation:

“Iraq and Syria have been fragmented, Lebanon has become ungovernable. Libya, Sudan, and Somalia have been divided. These countries have turned into battlefields fueled by tribal, ethnic, and religious divisions, and some have been dismantled through terrorist organizations. We could have passively waited like a ‘yellow cow’ for our turn to be broken apart, or Turks, Kurds, and all others could unite to defeat this imperialist agenda. We have chosen the latter path and are committed to moving forward together.”

Unsurprisingly, this call has generated division, uncertainty, and a wide spectrum of responses among Kurdish activists. Here, we will unpack these questions by analyzing the PKK’s historical evolution in relation to peace processes, and explore the broader implications of its dissolution for contemporary anti-state, anti-capitalist, and decolonial movements.

We will begin with a brief overview of how revolutionary violence emerged through armed struggle in the Kurdish movement, and how this trajectory became entangled with a series of failed peace initiatives that often reproduced new cycles of war. Then, we can turn to the core question: why did the PKK pursue unilateral disarmament? We will examine his decision in relation to shifting political dynamics at regional, national, and global levels. Finally, we will reflect on the stakes, uncertainties, and strategic calculations surrounding this move, concluding with a gendered reading that foregrounds the role of the Kurdish women’s liberation movement in shaping both the limits and possibilities of this process.

The Kurdish Ordeal of State Violence and Statelessness

As the PKK declared on May 12, 2025:

The PKK was born as a liberation movement against the policy of denial of the Kurdish people enshrined in the Treaty of Lausanne and the Turkish Constitution of 1924.

From a recognized imperial “nation,” Kurds became “ethnic minorities” in states that repressed, assimilated, and erased them. Despite being nearly 40 million strong—20% of Turkey’s population—Kurds remain the world’s largest stateless people, excluded from political and cultural recognition.

State repression has often taken genocidal forms: Iraq’s Anfal campaign (1987–1988) killed 180,000 Kurds; Syria’s 1960s denationalization policies left tens of thousands stateless; Iran frames military attacks on Kurdish regions as jihad; and Turkey long banned the words “Kurd” and “Kurdistan,” labeling Kurds as “mountain Turks.” The war between the PKK and the Turkish military alone has claimed over 40,000 lives, in a broader context of Kurdish conflicts that have killed more than 250,000 since the 1960s.

The Turkish Republic was built on the genocide of Armenians and the denial of Kurdish identity, both of which served to impose a homogenizing nationalist project. The PKK emerged in the 1970s in direct response to this exclusionary regime. Its opposition was not only military but cultural and political, as symbolized by Leyla Zana’s 1991 parliamentary oath (“I take this oath for the fraternity of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples”)—in Kurdish—for which she served ten years in prison.

Today, Turkish imperialism combines internal colonialism with regional neo-imperial expansion. Since 2016, Ankara has deployed proxy Islamist militias—like the “Syrian National Army” (SNA)—across northern Syria (Afrin, al-Bab, Azaz, Jarablus, Idlib). These militias allow Turkey to outsource warfare while advancing a neo-Ottomanist agenda of forced Arabization, Islamization, and demographic engineering. Promises of salaries up to $2500 attract youth surviving on mere tens of dollars, turning war into precarious employment.

Since 2015, Turkey has launched successive operations—Euphrates Shield, Olive Branch, Peace Spring—occupying Kurdish areas, displacing populations, and enabling looting, mass violence, and ethno-political reengineering. Airstrikes in Iraq on Qandil and Sinjar have intensified, with little global response. This war model—privatized, precarious, and transnational—has extended to Libya (2019–2020), Azerbaijan (2020), Yemen, Niger, and Pakistan. Paramilitary networks linked to Turkish intelligence, like the Sultan Murad Brigade, operate from Kurdish villages such as Sinara near Afrin.

Turkey’s reach is also extraterritorial: in Europe, Kurdish activists are surveilled, extradited, or killed. Assassinations of key feminist figures like Sakine Cansız (Paris), Hevrîn Xelef (Syria), and Nagihan Akarsel (Iraq) reflect a gendered strategy of decapitating revolutionary leadership and stifling transnational feminist articulation. Turkish imperialism fuses Islamist militiafication, transnational war economies, and fragmented sovereignties, producing a deregulated violence in which market logics trump state interests.

This extraterritorial violence is not an isolated extension of state power, but a core mechanism of a broader geopolitical agenda. This aggressive projection of force is not merely opportunistic; it is part of a broader neo-Ottoman, neo-colonial project aimed at reasserting Turkish influence across its former imperial territories. Central to this vision is the integration of Kurdistan’s geography and resources into the emerging architecture of global trade—particularly through the Middle Corridor, discussed below.

Yet this violence has generated an equally transnational resistance. The PKK has politicized the Kurdish question, transforming a stateless population into an organized political subject. Led in large part by women, its project remains one of the few contemporary revolutionary visions centering social justice, pluralism, and radical critiques of power. Against statist, campist, or nationalist leftisms, which are predominantly shaped by vertical, militarist, and masculinist paradigms, the Kurdish movement—especially its feminist dimension—shifts the political from state-centric paradigms to embodied, localized, and solidaristic forms. Its slogan, Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (“Woman, Life, Freedom”), forged in decades of subaltern struggle, became a global cry during the Iranian uprising of 2022.

But this resistance was made possible by armed struggle. And that raises the key question: what becomes of the Kurdish revolutionary horizon with the announced dissolution of the PKK?

Peace as a Mask for War: The Recurring Betrayal of the Kurdish Movement

The repeated collapse of peace processes in Kurdistan reveals not a lack of Kurdish commitment but the entrenched refusal of regional states to recognize Kurdish rights. In Iran, the 1989 Vienna talks ended with the assassination of Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and his colleagues—an act replicated in the killing of his successor, Sadegh Sharafkandi, in Berlin in 1992. In Iraq, Baghdad’s breach of the 1970 Autonomy Agreement led to the genocidal Anfal campaign.

Turkey has followed a similar trajectory. While the Kurdish movement has consistently sought dialogue, Turkish state policy oscillates between short-lived peace gestures and systematic repression. President Özal’s early-1990s initiative died with him, and the decade that followed saw massive state violence, including torture, forced displacements, and cultural erasure. The 1999 capture of Abdullah Öcalan marked a shift: he called for a ceasefire and the PKK’s dissolution. Yet the state’s punitive response only deepened Kurdish mistrust.

Despite repression, the Kurdish movement transformed. By 2004, democratic confederalism emerged, rejecting nationalism in favor of grassroots pluralism. Armed resistance continued alongside legal-political strategies, culminating in the electoral gains of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP). But peace efforts, including the Oslo talks (2008–2011)³ and the İmralı Process (2013–2015), were sabotaged by the state. First, the leak of negotiations sparked a nationalist backlash in 2009; later, in 2015, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan abandoned the Dolmabahçe Memorandum in response to Kurdish advances in Syria, particularly the victory of the YPG and YPJ (the People’s Defense Units and Women’s Protection Units) in Kobanê. The collapse of the peace process triggered a brutal crackdown that displaced over 350,000 people and resulted in the deaths of around 1700 individuals, while also positioning Turkey among the world’s leading jailers of journalists. By August 2016, Erdoğan was denying that any negotiations had ever taken place. From this perspective, the Turkish government’s gestures toward peace negotiations have often signaled its preference for military operations, whether via war or coup.

For many Kurds, armed struggle has become an existential necessity against what they see as colonial domination precisely as result of this asymmetric conflict, which some describe as a “war against peace.” Inspired by Frantz Fanon, the PKK frames violence as strategic self-defense. While internal critiques question urban warfare and protracted militancy, broad Kurdish support persists, rooted in historical trauma and the failure of political avenues. The state’s persistent framing of Kurdish identity as a threat reinforces this impasse.

By 2025, any such horizon appeared more elusive than ever. But “all that is solid can melt into air.” As highlighted by Kurdish scholar Adnan Çelik and other voices within the movement, Öcalan’s message during the PKK’s 12th Congress, while unexpected, signaled a rupture: in contrast to his 2015 call for a “democratic opening,” the 2025 statement stripped away the ideological richness of previous appeals, omitting critiques of the nation-state, neoliberal capitalism, internal colonialism and patriarchy. While the initial statement portrays the PKK as a Cold War relic devoid of strategic or ideological legitimacy—calling for its disarmament without political concessions or recognition of Kurdish historical claims—this stance is partially revised in the April 27 letter, which devotes significant attention to the history of Kurdish repression by regional states and the PKK’s legacy of resistance.

Widely perceived as a unilateral capitulation, Öcalan’s shift provoked shock within the movement—with many interpreting it as a form of implicit humiliation and erasure of past sacrifices, according to Çelik. Yet rather than triggering collapse, it spurred both immediate organizational responses—such as a proposed dissolution congress—and an intense interpretive effort to preserve critical legacies. This moment signals a major strategic reconfiguration, shifting focus from the pursuit of a sociopolitical project to the management of militant heritage, memory, and political resilience amid a transformed geopolitical landscape.

Today, the Kurdish question remains structurally unresolved. Reconciliation is impossible so long as the Turkish state cycles between hollow peace offers and brutal repression. As the state clings to nationalist paradigms, the Kurdish movement continues to adapt—between insurgency and imagination, memory and resilience.

This tension between state denial and Kurdish endurance came into sharp focus in Erdoğan’s post-disarmament landmark speech on July 12, where he officially acknowledged that the Turkish state committed mass killings of Kurds, stripped them of their rights, and initiated this violence in places like Diyarbakır prison. He admitted to burning villages, criminalizing unidentified individuals, banning the Kurdish language, and denying mothers the right to speak Kurdish with their children. Delivered in the wake of the PKK’s symbolic disarmament, the speech, insisting on unity of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs, marks a shift from insurgency to reconciliation, serving as a state-orchestrated spectacle in which the Turkish state reasserts its sovereign power by controlling the narrative of both past violence and future order, positioning itself as the sole arbiter of memory, truth, and historical legitimacy. Framed as an act of closure, this moment instead consolidates state authority. The dissolution of the Kurdish armed struggle is not met with genuine political transformation, but with symbolic containment. What appears as peace is, in reality, a rebranding of domination, setting the stage for new forms of control under the guise of reconciliation.

Why the Dissolution?

In a letter dated April 25, 2025, Abdullah Öcalan articulated the rationale behind the proposed dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), framing it not as defeat but as a deliberate paradigm shift. He stressed that this process, far from an immediate disarmament demanded by the Turkish state, requires deep ideological critique, self-reflection, and a prolonged debate to reshape both personality and mentality. The PKK, founded to elevate Kurdish national consciousness and expose systemic oppression, now faces a phase in which the next step toward freedom must be built on democratic institutions, cultural renewal, and communalism⁴—transformations that the PKK as an armed hierarchical organization may no longer embody. It is within this trajectory that the dissolution must be understood: as the culmination of a theoretical break from the 20th-century nation-state model and its militarism, defined by systemic violence that has now “lost its justification (raison d’être).” Öcalan’s vision of democratic confederalism, grounded in local autonomy, gender equality, and ecological economy, signals a decisive break from the statist, militarized models of the past and a move toward a post-state societal project.

This ideological evolution, however, is neither sudden nor uncontroversial. Since the 1990s, the PKK has undergone significant internal transformation, confronting the collapse of socialism and the authoritarian tendencies inherent in statist paradigms. The movement’s survival has depended on adaptability and critical engagement, culminating in the Twelfth Congress’s decision to embrace dissolution as a radical reorientation rather than a capitulation. The letter emphasizes that a failure over two decades to fully integrate democratic, ecological, and feminist principles into organizational structures has precipitated this moment of decisive change.

Strategically, the Kurdish political presence has gained prominence across Turkey and the broader Middle East, particularly through women’s liberation initiatives and political advances in all four Kurdish regions. This progress challenges Turkey’s prior framing of the PKK as a mere terrorist entity. Presidential advisor Mehmet Uçum’s recent declaration that “Kurds are an essential component of the Turkish nation” signals an ideological recalibration at the state level.

In this situation, the dissolution of the PKK can be seen as a tactical move to remove obstacles to international recognition, especially of Kurdish structures in Rojava, where the “terrorist” label has served to justify Turkish military incursions. Disarmament aims to protect Rojava as an autonomous political project, ensuring its survival and legitimacy on regional and international stages. Reports suggest that a meeting between Abdullah Öcalan and Masoud Barzani (the longtime leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iraqi Kurdistan) may soon take place—a development that, above all, strengthens the hypothesis of an emerging Kurdish regional alliance aimed at reinforcing the stability of Rojava in the current geopolitical context.

Despite the diplomatic gains stemming from the role Kurdish forces played in the fight against ISIS, international support has remained inconsistent. Öcalan’s call for voluntary dissolution could be a preemptive strategy to avert total defeat amid growing military isolation. Since the collapse of the 2015 peace process, intensified Turkish military pressure—cross-border operations, drone warfare, and surveillance—has confined PKK operations primarily to Qandil, eroding its capacity within Turkey. Even the 12th PKK Congress, which was recently held, took place 12 years after the 11th Congress, primarily due to the lack of security and to military pressure from Turkey. The PKK addressed this issue in a letter released on May 4, addressed to the people and activists of the movement:

A retrospective look at the past two decades reveals the following: although the new paradigm was intended to facilitate deeper integration with society, in practice, it was the cadre members who experienced the greatest disconnection from it—even as the movement as a whole moved toward decriminalization. While the aim was to cultivate stronger organizational structures and promote communal and socialist modes of life, what actually emerged was a rise in individualism and materialism. It is evident that in our engagement with the masses, we failed to provide adequate education or foster the organization of a truly democratic society. In the military domain, we were unable to develop or implement effective training and organization for social self-defense. We remained, in the mountains, at the level of guerrilla units detached from society and completely encircled. This condition not only led to increased casualties but also weakened the political and propagandistic impact of our armed struggle. Gradually, our capacity for effective warfare became confined to a very limited geographical area.

Technological advancements, notably algorithmic warfare and real-time surveillance, have deepened this isolation, as NATO states prioritize relations with Ankara. Meanwhile, Kurdish autonomy in Syria is under threat from that regime’s centralization, and Turkish influence grows in northern Iraq with tacit local approval. These conditions have driven the PKK’s political center from armed struggle toward seeking civil and institutional legitimacy across the Kurdish region. The dissolution represents a symbolic disarmament and strategic relocation, shifting the Kurdish struggle into political and transnational arenas, where popular power is redefined outside the paradigm of military confrontation.

The decline in PKK recruitment and the failure to translate anti-ISIS alliances into lasting international support underscore the necessity of this strategic recalibration. Öcalan’s proposal is understood by supporters not as surrender but as a lucid adaptation to changed geopolitical and military realities, including the prospect of a temporary ceasefire in Qandil and Rojava.

According to many Kurdish analysts, Öcalan’s stance reflects his persistent opposition to Israel and his reluctance to see the Kurdish movement forced—out of strategic necessity—into a tactical or pragmatic alliance with it. This, they argue, is what drives his pursuit of preemptive political solutions aimed at avoiding such alignments. Other proponents of the Kurdish movement contend that the decision by Öcalan and the PKK was a strategic attempt to prevent Kurdistan from becoming the next Gaza of the Middle East. They argue that the PKK’s military constraints in the face of a highly technologized inter-state and international war apparatus—coupled with Turkey’s persistent campaign to annihilate Kurdistan and Rojava—necessitated a political recalibration. This shift, they suggest, is also informed by the waning material and symbolic power of global solidarity with the Kurdish cause, which remains significantly weaker than the widespread support mobilized for Palestinians. From this perspective, if Turkey were to enact a Gaza-like scenario against the Kurds, there would be little international capacity or will to intervene. With diminishing material means of resistance and the absence of comparable regional or international mobilization, Kurdish actors must adopt alternative strategies for survival. This decision is thus viewed not as a retreat, but as a calculated and pragmatic tactic to endure within an increasingly unlivable geopolitical context.

This strategic pivot cannot be understood without acknowledging the profound human toll of the conflict. Kurdish guerrillas, PKK cadres, and especially civilians are exhausted; the cumulative costs of the war have become unbearable. Thousands of young lives have been lost, entire cities destroyed, families fractured, bodies scarred, generations shaped by prison, exile, precarity, and stigma. This accumulation of suffering over more than forty years imbues the word “peace” with a new resonance: not as capitulation, but as a vital necessity—a breath long awaited after decades of suffocation.

From the Turkish state’s perspective, the dissolution aligns with a political strategy orchestrated by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who aims to extend his power beyond the constitutional limit of 2028. By presenting himself as the architect of a new peace process, Erdoğan hopes to win over parts of the Kurdish electorate while fracturing the opposition. Framed as reconciliation, the call to end armed struggle is, in reality, a maneuver to disrupt emerging alliances between Kurdish forces and progressive opposition currents. In 2019, the tactical support of Kurdish voters—notably via the HDP (now the Peoples’ Equality Party, DEM)—was crucial to the opposition’s victory in major cities like Istanbul and Ankara. This strategy seeks to isolate secular-nationalist factions within the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) from those open to dialogue with the Kurdish movement while maintaining a securitization discourse for domestic use. This electoral engineering rests on a dual calculation: weakening the joint mobilization of the opposition and deterring Kurdish forces from criticizing the regime too openly for fear of jeopardizing a potential peace.

In this complex configuration, the Kurdish movement finds itself in a position reminiscent of the 2013 Gezi Park protests. As then, any opening toward dialogue with the state paradoxically implies recognizing its legitimacy, even as it remains the primary object of contestation. This tension requires the Kurdish movement to adopt a balanced posture: to engage in peace efforts without dissolving into Turkish institutional politics or alienating broader social movements. The result is a form of strategic isolation, but it can also be an opportunity to construct an autonomous political space in which the Kurdish question can be articulated without weapons, yet without renunciation.

Meanwhile, Erdoğan continues to exploit the rhetoric of securitization, criminalizing Kurdish political figures and perpetuating the trope of the “internal enemy” to consolidate his conservative base. The contrast between ongoing repression and the conciliatory language of peace underscores the cynical nature of the initiative: it is not a genuine commitment to resolution but a tactical move cloaked in the guise of dialogue.

Both Erdoğan and the Turkish state as a whole seek to facilitate the integration of Kurdistan and its resources into contemporary capitalist markets through its disarmament. In a speech outlining the new 2025 process, Erdoğan openly articulated the capitalist objectives driving this initiative:

A Turkey free from terrorism will elevate the Turkish economy above all else. Once we achieve this goal, the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB) will be the primary beneficiary. From this point forward, Turkey will compete in a new league.

Likewise, Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek stated that Turkey has spent nearly $1.8 trillion over the past five decades on the “fight against terrorism,” and ending the conflict could bring significant economic benefits to the country.

These economic imperatives, however, are not confined to domestic considerations alone. They are embedded in Turkey’s broader geopolitical ambitions. The so-called 2025 peace process between Turkey and the PKK is less a genuine step toward reconciliation than a geopolitical maneuver aimed at neutralizing Kurdish military, political, and economic power as a precondition for Turkey’s integration into neoliberal infrastructural capitalism. Central to this strategy is the realization of the “Middle Corridor,” a trans-Eurasian trade route connecting China to Europe via Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Turkey. This corridor positions Turkey as a logistical hub in global capitalist circulation. It is crucial to both China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, a multi-trillion-dollar project linking China with Europe, Africa, and the Middle East through land and sea routes) and the US-backed India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC, a competing infrastructure project aimed at securing Western geopolitical and commercial dominance).

More recently, this vision has been reinforced through the “Development Road” initiative—a $17 billion project spearheaded by Iraq, Turkey, and Gulf states, which links the Persian Gulf (via Iraq’s Grand Faw Port) to Europe through Turkish territory. The proposed route cuts directly through Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast, further amplifying the geopolitical stakes of Kurdish containment. In the aftermath of October 7 and the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians, regional geopolitical alignments have been further destabilized—producing a new wave of strategic corridor politics in which Turkey’s logistical and diplomatic centrality has only intensified. Amid the collapse of traditional power balances in the Levant and Gulf, Turkey’s control over these infrastructural routes—particularly those that bypass Iranian and Syrian influence—has become even more indispensable to both Western and non-Western blocs.

But for Turkey to consolidate control over these routes, it must erase all subaltern or non-state actors, especially Kurdish forces. The disarmament of the PKK should therefore be read not as demilitarization but as the foreclosure of Kurdish armed struggle under a new regime of infrastructural securitization. With Iran’s “Shia corridor”(Tehran–Damascus–Beirut axis) neutralized, Assad toppled, and the axis of the PKK and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) severed under US and Israeli pressure, Kurdish actors have been structurally removed from regional power negotiations. With NATO’s tacit support, Turkey has carried out military campaigns and demographic reengineering to consolidate control over Kurdish regions. In this context, “peace” becomes a euphemism for capitalist pacification, with political reconciliation replaced by spatial and military containment to enable uninterrupted flows of capital, goods, and geopolitical influence across imperial corridors of extraction and control.

Erdogan’s endorsement of the PKK’s call for disarmament should be seen in the broader context of shifting Middle Eastern geopolitics and the evolving balance of power in the region. It also reflects Turkey’s strategic use of Kurdish dynamics to counter rivals such as Israel and Iran. A complex interplay of domestic and regional political calculations has pushed Turkey toward adopting this tactic. This is clearly articulated in a letter from the Central Committee of the PKK dated May 4:

The escalation of the Third World War in the Middle East, the outcomes of the Gaza conflict that began on October 7, 2023, the significant strikes by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israeli assaults, and the collapse of the Ba’ath regime in Syria—thereby extending the regional transformation to Iran and Turkey—have all played a pivotal role in bringing us to this stage. The fear and existential anxiety engendered within the Turkish state and the AKP-MHP government, combined with pressures for democratic change imposed internally by our movement and the Turkish people, and externally by the transnational capitalist system, constitute the primary factors motivating the [Devlet] Bahçeli administration and his well-known rhetoric and calls to action. Consequently, we have reached the current stage as a result of the aforementioned political and military developments.

The paradox is profound: a movement possessing considerable territorial and organizational strength is forced to reinvent itself precisely because that power makes it susceptible to algorithmic annihilation. Ultimately, Öcalan’s proposal invites a fundamental rethinking of revolutionary struggle in an era defined by drones, metadata, and total surveillance. It challenges the Kurdish movement to imagine a form of resistance that transcends armed confrontation, finding power in silence rather than gunfire.

From Guerrilla Warfare to Political Transition: Tensions, Hopes, Horizons

The announcement in February 2025 of the PKK’s potential armed disengagement raises profound questions about the conditions under which a protracted guerrilla struggle might transition into a political process, especially in a context marked by entrenched authoritarianism, repression, and ideological deadlocks. While some interpret this move as a sign of strategic and ideological reconfiguration, it remains deeply ambiguous. The Turkish government, framing the moment not as a “peace process” but as a “cleansing from terrorism process” (“Terörden arındırma süreci”), signals a punitive stance that departs from the conciliatory language of 2015, casting doubt on the possibility of a just and comprehensive resolution.

This presents several urgent questions. Can democratization in Turkey be defined as merely symbolic gestures—such as the conditional release of Abdullah Öcalan (and bringing him to parliament to call on the Kurds to withdraw from Qandil and embrace a peaceful political path) or limited cultural concessions—or must it entail far-reaching constitutional reforms, the mass release of political prisoners, and formal recognition of Kurdish collective rights, including regional autonomy and the right to Kurdish-language education? Would the reinstatement of annulled municipal mandates, the return of exiles, or a general amnesty suffice to convince the PKK that a viable political path has emerged? Many fear that Erdoğan might renege on his commitments once he has secured the political leverage he seeks, repeating the betrayal of the 2015 process and risking a return to conflict with the Kurdish movement in a position of fragmentation and weakened legitimacy.

Unlike other peace processes—such as those involving the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Colombia, or Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna (ETA) in Spain—the Turkish state has refused to engage in truth and reconciliation, constitutional restructuring, or genuine political recognition. In Colombia, for instance, disarmament was accompanied by restorative justice initiatives, often led by women and survivors of state violence. A similar potential lies within the Kurdish women’s movement, yet the Kurdish case remains exceptional in its systematic criminalization and denial of the existence of a political problem. At the same time, what distinguishes the PKK case from many other examples is that it has the support of a powerful and influential mass-based civil and political movement. The struggle has not been confined to the military sphere alone, but has also taken deep root in civilian and political arenas.

The decision of the PKK to engage in disarmament exposes internal contradictions. Despite being imprisoned since 1999, Öcalan remains the movement’s unchallenged authority, centralizing decision-making in a vertical structure that suppresses internal pluralism. His recent statement—“I can say that the opponents of the process have no value. They will fail”—epitomizes a model in which charismatic authority overshadows collective deliberation, generating a legitimacy crisis in which fighters and activists are expected to follow top-down directives without mechanisms for participatory decision-making. This centralization reproduces a depoliticized militant base and stifles the internal democratization needed for genuine transformation.

In the evolving landscape, some analysts highlight two developments that could mark preliminary steps toward disarmament and a transition to a democratic order. First, in a symbolic gesture, a group of guerrilla fighters, some of whom previously held leadership positions, publicly laid down their arms in the presence of the media, accompanied by a statement declaring:

We are ready to participate in democratic politics.

Second, the Turkish Parliament is anticipated to establish a body provisionally titled the “Commission for Social Peace and Democratic Transition,” tasked with formulating a legal and institutional framework to support disarmament and broader democratic reforms.

While these initiatives may initially unfold on a limited and symbolic scale, their proponents view them as indicators of mutual willingness to move forward in the peace process. Nonetheless, past experiences, such as the dispatch of three groups of guerrillas to the Turkish state between 2000 and 2007, underscore the persistent vulnerability of such efforts to repressive state policies and the enduring structural distrust that continues to hinder durable resolution. Neither the guerrilla fighters nor the PKK leadership appear to be naïve about the risks involved. They seem to be approaching the process with strategic caution and political foresight, deliberately preserving the option of returning to armed struggle if necessary. As Bese Hozat,⁵ Co-Chair of the KCK Executive Council, stated in an interview following the symbolic disarmament of 30 guerrilla fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan in July:

If we were to unconditionally comply with every demand made by the state, it would lead to the following outcome: other groups would be expected to do the same—destroy their weapons, return to Turkey, and surrender. If such an approach becomes the norm, the fate awaiting us and our comrades would be either imprisonment or death. But such a future is not one we accept. The Turkish state must understand this.

Still, some within the movement view this as an opportunity to transcend its hierarchical militarist Leninist legacy. A shift toward broader civilian participation and internal renewal could reposition the PKK within a wider democratic framework. The emergence of the DEM Party as a significant actor suggests the possibility of transforming a Kurdish nationalist formation into a pluralistic force capable of uniting Turkey’s broader democratic constituencies. Yet the risk of abandonment—by both the Turkish state and international supporters—looms large, making the promise of renewal contingent on structural reforms, not rhetorical accommodations.

A framework of transitional justice is crucial. Without acknowledging past atrocities—particularly during the 1990s and the brutal 2015–2016 period—any ceasefire will remain fragile. Truth, reparation, and the decolonization of national narratives are prerequisites for meaningful peace. Otherwise, Kurdish collective memory will continue to bear unhealed traumas that could reignite conflict.

The regional context renders disarmament precarious. Syria remains unstable, and the fragile ceasefire between Kurdish forces and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), following the recent Kurdish Unity Conference, appears increasingly uncertain. Turkey’s ongoing military campaigns against Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria, including over 500 airstrikes on PKK-controlled zones in Iraqi Kurdistan in May 2025 alone, undermine the feasibility of a peace transition. Simultaneously, Ankara’s alleged back-channel offers—such as recognizing Kurdish autonomy in Syria in exchange for the dissolution of the PKK—remain vague and untrustworthy. A full-scale offensive on Rojava would threaten to collapse the civil and military architecture of the Kurdish project.

Within this transnational configuration, the PKK is not an isolated guerrilla force but part of a broader network established since 2002 through the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), which includes the PYD in Syria (2003), PJAK in Iran (2004), and the PÇDK in Iraq (2002). These sister organizations, while nominally autonomous, are ideologically aligned with Öcalan’s vision of democratic confederalism and are deeply embedded in their respective societies, particularly through women-led initiatives. The ambiguity of Öcalan’s disarmament call—whether it targets solely the Turkish wing of the PKK or extends to these allied entities—adds to the uncertainty. Some analysts suggest that cadres could be redeployed to other fronts, like PJAK or Rojava, rather than demobilized outright, raising the possibility of a tactical rather than strategic dissolution. Then, the fate of guerrilla forces in the Qandil mountains remains uncertain, as Ankara’s signals are ambiguous and often contradictory, blurring the line between rumor and reality. For example, AKP member Şamil Tayyar claimed that nearly 300 senior PKK members would be relocated to third countries such as South Africa and Norway, while approximately 4000 fighters would be gradually received at the border. Yet, beyond such unofficial remarks, what concrete steps—beyond rhetorical gestures—will the Turkish state actually take?

Domestically, Erdoğan’s suppression of the CHP—which has historically been a secular nationalist party complicit in anti-Kurdish policies—reveals the paradoxes within the Turkish opposition. For many Kurds, the CHP remains part of the problem rather than an alternative, complicating the formation of an inclusive democratic coalition. Meanwhile, internal tensions within the Kurdish movement, combined with Erdoğan’s autocratic consolidation, continue to fragment the political field, making a pluralistic political realignment uncertain.

Despite these challenges, the Kurdish movement demonstrates remarkable resilience and strategic adaptability. It continues to articulate a political vision that resists militarization while affirming the right to self-defense—aligning itself with global decolonial struggles. In Rojava, for example, the Autonomous Administration sustains a formidable security infrastructure, including the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), YPG-YPJ, and Asayish forces, estimated at over 80,000 members. In Rojhilat, the PJAK continues to organize opposition to the Iranian regime. These formations reflect a deeply rooted, transborder movement that cannot be reduced to a mere guerrilla phenomenon.

This material infrastructure suggests that even if the current process collapses, the PKK and its allies could pivot to a new, perhaps more fragmented and protracted, phase of resistance. Decades of asymmetric warfare, ideological consolidation, and social embedding have given the movement a capacity for survival unmatched by many revolutionary actors. Its legitimacy stems not just from military capacity, but from its cultivation of political consciousness, gender liberation, and grassroots autonomy.

At the heart of this hope lies a deeper ethical question. Is it not profoundly unjust—perhaps even cynical—to project our visions of radical democracy, anti-capitalism, feminist internationalism, and non-state anti-fascism onto a people already burdened by marginalization, repression, structural poverty, and relentless criminalization? Can we, in good faith, ask a geopolitically vulnerable and besieged people to carry, alone, the burden of our revolutionary utopias? How can a marginal revolutionary force—politically and militarily isolated, devoid of state or international backing—survive not only as an organization, but as a carrier of political vision and emancipatory practice? How can it preserve its ideals in an environment dominated by powerful states and imperial actors willing to annihilate it through massacres, ethnic cleansing, and systemic sexual violence? This critical juncture compels us to reconsider the very terms of our solidarity. How can we maintain a radical political stance in a global order increasingly dominated by militarization and authoritarianism, without falling into romantic abstraction or political resignation?

What remains at stake is not just the fate of an armed group, but the viability of a political project that has redefined the parameters of struggle in the Middle East. As the specter of renewed war looms amid unfulfilled promises and military escalation, the Kurdish movement continues to pose a universal question: how can a revolutionary force, stripped of statehood and facing overwhelming repression, preserve its emancipatory praxis without succumbing to erasure or compromise?

Rethinking Dissolution Through a Gender Lens

Long overshadowed by the PKK, the Kurdish women’s movement has emerged since the 1990s as a powerful ideological and organizational actor—what many describe as a “revolution within the revolution.” Initially marginalized within a militarized, male-dominated structure, Kurdish women militants turned this exclusion into a strategic opportunity by forming a dialectical and reciprocal alliance with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. This relationship, far from patriarchal submission, allowed both parties to become political resources for each other: Öcalan instrumentalized the women’s movement to expand and reform the PKK, while women used his symbolic authority to center gender liberation within the Kurdish struggle.

Öcalan’s recognition of women as the “vanguard force of the revolution” was key to redefining leadership and legitimacy in a movement long shaped by virilism. He encouraged the creation of women’s parallel structures and supported jineolojî, a feminist epistemology theorized as central to his vision of democratic confederalism. In turn, Kurdish women legitimized his ideological leadership. They especially reaffirmed Öcalan’s call for a suspension of armed struggle after his capture in 1999—a moment of deep crisis for the PKK marked by mass defections in 2002–2004 (roughly 1500 fighters left the PKK amid ideological reorientation and internal struggles that culminated in a return to armed conflict in mid-2004). The women’s continued loyalty during this period was a strategic choice aimed at preserving ideological continuity amid fragmentation and repression.

Yet this loyalty had limits. Proposals for greater autonomy—such as the creation of a Kurdish Women’s Workers’ Party—were blocked by the PKK’s Central Committee, revealing persistent structural constraints. Still, the alliance held, particularly as Öcalan’s ideological turn in 2005 toward democratic confederalism placed gender equality at the core of a new political model. In 2012, Öcalan refused to meet a peace delegation without women’s movement representation, underscoring their indispensability. Symbolically, in 2013, women in Rojava announced the creation of the YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) on Öcalan’s birthday, reaffirming both their trust in his vision and their claim to autonomous militancy.

This paradox—building women’s political autonomy through a male leader—raises critical tensions. While Öcalan’s discourse promotes decentralization and demilitarization, his charismatic authority remains central. The movement’s feminist horizon is thus entangled with strategic dependence. Öcalan’s repeated calls for PKK disarmament, particularly in recent years, amplify this contradiction: they challenge the militarized masculinity long embedded in revolutionary struggle, yet they also provoke uncertainty about women’s influence within a de-armed political process.

Historically, armed resistance enabled Kurdish women to gain visibility, leadership, and legitimacy. Combat shattered gender taboos and created symbolic capital, even as it risked reproducing what some theorists call “adopted masculinity”—a replication of patriarchal norms under the guise of revolutionary equality. The current shift toward demilitarization, while opening space for community-based, non-hierarchical feminist practices, also threatens to dismantle the structures that protected and empowered women under conditions of state violence. This tension is central to debates about the future of the movement.

The potential dissolution of the PKK prompts urgent questions: Will the Kurdish women’s movement seize the moment to assert full autonomy? Will it develop a distinct feminist stance on this strategic shift? Does dissolution weaken or empower women within the Kurdish struggle? Disarmament could represent either a step toward feminist peace or a strategic vulnerability. Some militants advocate cautious, conditional demilitarization—contingent on institutional consolidation, international recognition, and guarantees for women’s rights as it entrenched masculine war mentalities, opening space for radical, community-based, non-hierarchical feminist practices. Historically rooted in masculinist ideals—where heroism, martyrdom, and military valor defined legitimacy—Kurdish revolutionary violence is now challenged by Öcalan’s call for demilitarization, which seeks to shift the movement toward a feminist horizon disentangled from militarized masculinity. But others warn that demilitarization could expose women to renewed patriarchal and state violence, especially if gains made by the YPJ or YJA-Star (the Free Women’s Units, Yekîneyên Jinên Azad ên Star), are not politically safeguarded.

Beyond armed struggle, Kurdish and Turkish women have long played vital roles in broader civil resistance and peace commitments. The Peace Mothers (Dayikên Aşîtîyê)—Kurdish mothers who lost children to the PKK–state conflict—became symbols of nonviolent resistance in the 1990s and 2000s. Campaigns like “Don’t Touch My Friend” (1990) and “Women Walk Together” mobilized grassroots networks to confront nationalism, racism, and war.⁶ In 2009, the Feminist Initiative for Peace (BİKG) brought women together across ethnic lines to demand demilitarization, social reconstruction, and inclusive peace processes. These movements demonstrated how women have transformed experiences of loss and marginalization into political agency.

In a letter dated May 30 from İmralı Prison to the Jineolojî Academy, Öcalan reaffirmed that women’s liberation is the true measure of socialism, calling it the foundation of his revolutionary struggle. He described jineolojî as an ongoing transformative project and women as potential leaders of peace and democracy in the Middle East. In fact, Öcalan relies on women to lead this transition, given women’s leading role in previous peace efforts in Kurdistan.

The choice of Bese Hozat—a long-time commander and co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) and a close comrade of Sakine Cansız, the iconic feminist PKK leader assassinated in Paris in 2013—as the central figure in the symbolic PKK disarmament ceremony on July 11 underscores the enduring centrality of women’s leadership in the Kurdish movement. Even at a transitional moment, this symbolic gesture reaffirms the movement’s ideological commitment to gender liberation and honors the legacy of revolutionary Kurdish feminism.

The challenge now lies in navigating the contradictions of demilitarization: balancing feminist ethics with the need for protection, autonomy with strategic alliances, and peacebuilding with political agency.

Any future peace process must center the lived realities and political visions of Kurdish women. Their role has not been peripheral but foundational—and it is their strategic decisions, not only Öcalan’s, that will shape the Kurdish movement’s next chapter.

Conclusion

From the perspective of supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the potential dissolution of the organization should not be interpreted as the end of the Kurdish struggle, but rather as marking a new and as-yet undefined phase of resistance. While this perspective embodies a strategic optimism, it also demands careful reflection. Redefining resistance within such a complex context requires a nuanced understanding of its inherent limitations, contradictions, and risks. In other words, although this approach may open new avenues for the movement, it should not be accepted uncritically as a definitive solution without thorough analysis. Mechanisms for integrating the critical feedback of PKK members and activists—particularly the voices of female political prisoners—into this process are necessary to ensure its legitimacy.

The PKK faces a confluence of complex challenges, including intensified military and technological pressures as well as political constraints at both domestic and regional levels. These challenges severely limit the movement’s capacity to sustain armed struggle and achieve structural transformation. The shift toward civilian-led, legal forms of organization represents a significant strategic gamble. While this transition warrants serious consideration and experimentation, its success depends on the fulfillment of several critical conditions; absent these, failure or marginalization remains a substantial risk. Moreover, the tension between the state’s immediate pressures and the PKK’s long-term vision for a protracted political process raises questions about the viability and timing of this shift.

Should the political process once again be undermined by Erdoğan, the PKK is prepared to resume armed resistance, not out of desperation, but as a continuation of its enduring political logic grounded in collective dignity and self-determination. Nonetheless, such a resurgence would likely entail significant difficulties and costs, disproportionately borne by the Kurdish population.

Far from being merely a tactical actor, the Kurdish liberation movement embodies a broader political project that fundamentally disrupts prevailing notions of sovereignty and legitimacy across the region. Any substantive shift in its strategic orientation demands a grasp of the interplay between structural constraints, geopolitical risks, and asymmetrical power relations at the local, regional, and international levels. At best, the movement’s turn toward institutionalization could not only consolidate its political legitimacy but also open new avenues for intra-Kurdish reconciliation, particularly with long-standing rivals such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). This strategic realignment could potentially lay the groundwork for a transnational Kurdish political architecture—one more intelligible and diplomatically acceptable to international actors, especially Western powers that have historically marginalized Kurdish claims in favor of their strategic alignment with Ankara.

This ongoing redefinition of Kurdish resistance also confronts substantial internal challenges, including factional tensions and the imperative for political reconciliation, which must proceed in tandem with regional and global actors’ acceptance. Yet this process offers the potential to cultivate more inclusive and legitimate political structures.

Finally, the proposed transformation in the language and modalities of resistance—articulated by Abdullah Öcalan and PKK supporters—responds to the realities of contemporary technological surveillance and warfare. This challenges conventional militant resistance, emphasizing adaptability, resilience, and the re-articulation of power in novel, less visible forms.

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