Slow but Not Stalled: One Year of PKK Disarmament in Türkiye

A year after the PKK dissolved its congress and declared an end to the armed struggle, the disarmament process between the Turkish government and the PKK has entered a critical phase. This is due to the persistent delay of the necessary legislative measures to regulate the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of PKK fighters. For some observers, this may already constitute a stalemate. A more sober reading, however, suggests that despite its slow pace, the process continues to move forward.

To begin with, the two lead figures remain visibly committed to keeping the process alive: PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultranationalist MHP. Öcalan's sustained communication over the past year with Kurdish actors in Kandil and Rojava has reinforced his influence over those structures and helped prevent the process from derailing. Bahçeli has consistently advocated measures such as clarifying Öcalan's formal status, recognising the "right to hope", securing the release of Selahattin Demirtaş, and ending the trustee policy, thereby making himself a critical voice on the democratic prerequisites for any meaningful resolution, albeit without success.

Support for the process goes beyond Öcalan and Bahçeli. The recently ousted leadership of the main opposition CHP – Özgür Özel and the jailed mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu – also expressed support for the continuation of the process, despite sustained judicial pressure from the government. The party declined to send a representative to the İmralı delegation. Yet, it also insisted that disarmament alone cannot define the scope of the process and called for a democratisation agenda. The DEM Party, as the primary Kurdish political actor in contact with both the government and other parties, has assumed a facilitative role: keeping lines of communication open, working to ensure that all parties are engaged in the process, and campaigning for Öcalan to be granted formal status. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for his part, has maintained a deliberate distance from the outset. He neither claimed political ownership of the process nor sought to anchor it within a broader social contract, yet he has been quietly enabling the mechanisms required for it to function.

The perception that the process has stalled is based largely on the delay of the expected legal measures. PKK fighters are still awaiting legislation that would enable their return and open a path to civilian political participation. Ankara is following a different sequence: legal steps only after disarmament, which would be verified through a mechanism under the government's own oversight. A more workable formula would likely see these tracks run in parallel – visible evidence of disarmament combined with an active legislative drafting process.

Different sequencing logics are not the only obstacle to the long-awaited legislation reaching parliament before the end of the summer. Further uncertainty stems from Erdoğan's electoral calculations and the risk of nationalist parties mobilising against the process. Erdoğan has most recently stated that he intends to proceed in line with the parliamentary commission's report and bring the process to a conclusion. Yet, a less likely, though still plausible scenario would involve deferring the legislative process until after the elections. Such a course would spare Erdoğan domestic pressure during the campaign, while potentially enhancing the Kurdish side's bargaining leverage, particularly ahead of a possible second-round vote. It remains uncertain how the PKK would respond to further delays in the legislation.

That said, Öcalan's strategic commitment to disarmament – a decision unlikely to be reversed even if the process encounters obstacles – mitigates the risk of a return to armed conflict. Öcalan's sustained communication with SDF and PKK structures reinforces this dynamic and limits the room for unilateral escalation. This could change if the escalatory dynamics of the US-Israel war against Iran and developments in Syria were to provide a legitimate justification for a return to armed struggle, which for now remains an unlikely prospect. The integration agreement in Syria is likely to produce a Kurdish structure embedded within the Syrian state rather than an autonomous one, reducing the perceived threat to Türkiye and giving Kurds a stake in a stable settlement.

A second mitigating factor is the broader trajectory of Kurdish society towards civilian political engagement. For their part, Kurdish communities, weary of prolonged conflict, broadly prefer even a slow and imperfect integration process to a return to war. Those within the PKK who resist laying down arms would face a serious legitimacy deficit. Slow as the current pace may be, continuation rather than collapse remains the more rational course for all parties. Ankara has the opportunity to close a longstanding security file at comparatively low cost.