August brought some truly transformative good news for Turkey, the Kurds, and Turkey’s immediate neighborhood in the Middle East. On Aug. 10, the Turkish Parliament passed a law establishing a legal framework for the dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Kurdish militant group, and creating a phased pathway for reintegration of its members into society. For more than four decades, the Kurdish issue has run like an electrified barbed wire through conversations in Turkey.
The armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkish government has killed around 40,000 militants, soldiers, and civilians, and cost Turkey losses estimated to be around $2 trillion since 1984. Following peace talks, in July 2025, the PKK held a symbolic weapon-burning ceremony, starting a process of disarmament and moving toward ending the armed conflict. The law offers legal protections to former PKK militants who have not committed specific crimes and helps suspend prison sentences for some members of the group.
Thousands of sympathizers, activists affiliated with the PKK, and Kurdish politicians have been living in exile in Europe and elsewhere to escape legal prosecution. The law opens a path for them to return to Turkey. And the passage of this law in the Turkish parliament with broad support is a transformative step toward lasting peace and the creation of a new social contract between Turkey and the Kurds, domestically and regionally.
In the past decade, Turkey established clear military dominance in the fight against the PKK. Changes in military technology, intelligence, and surveillance systems, especially the rise of Turkish drones, strengthened the country’s counter-insurgency efforts. Yet Turkey’s military capacity to suppress an insurgency was not the sole factor in persuading the PKK to give up arms.
Turkey did suppress waves of Kurdish rebellions in the past without creating space for Kurdish aspirations, and each suppression was followed by a more formidable and more violent rebellion. Turkey’s embrace of a political process—instead of simply pursuing a decisive military path—to end the conflict made it more acceptable to the PKK leadership and the Kurdish movement. Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, had to persuade his comrades to dissolve their organization, abandon the armed struggle, and choose political struggle.
Unfavorable broader regional trends against armed militancy may have helped convince Ocalan and his comrades to make that consequential choice. The legitimacy of the political solution, in the eyes of the Kurds, determines its sustainability and transformative impact. The current peace process seeks to end the insurgency and transform the struggle for Kurdish rights and aspirations into a nonviolent political one.
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