The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk) announced a ceasefire with Turkey on March 1. This comes after its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, called for the group to lay down arms days before. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan welcomed the agreement, claiming it heralds progress toward a terror-free Turkey.

The pkk is a designated terrorist group in Turkey, according to the governments of the United States, the European Union and other Western nations. With this ceasefire, decades of conflict between the pkk and the Turkish government are apparently over. This is a massive turning point for Turkey and the Middle East.

But how exactly?

Background

The Kurds are an ethnic group whose homeland has become split among Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Turkey has the largest population, with an estimated 15 million Kurds. Turkey as a whole has approximately 84 million residents. Kurds, like their Turkish and Arab neighbors, are predominantly Sunni Muslim. But Kurds have their own distinct culture, history and shared identity. The Kurdish language is part of a different language family than Turkish or Arabic.

At the end of World War i and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France promised the Kurds an independent state. This never materialized. Kurds have been pushing for an independent Kurdistan since.

Turkey has for decades tried to forcibly assimilate the Kurds. Use of the Kurdish language in media and education was forbidden. Even the public display of the letters Q, X and W, which exist in Kurdish but not Turkish, could lead to legal trouble. The Kurdish people were officially classified as “Mountain Turks.”

The pkk formed in the early 1980s as a Communist group. Its original goal was liberating Kurdish lands from Turkey and establishing a socialist state. Over time, while retaining its secular roots, the pkk has jettisoned communism for a more inclusive general Kurdish nationalism. Öcalan, the pkk’s founder, relocated to Syria, where he conducted operations against Turkey.

The pkk has been implicated in everything from suicide bombings to mass recruitment of child soldiers. It has attacked government facilities, such as police stations, and civilian ones, such as schools. It’s estimated some 40,000 people have died in the conflict.

Why Now?

Öcalan was arrested in 1999 and has been in on-and-off solitary confinement since. The pkk has been committed to its fight against Turkey since the 1980s. So, what has changed?

Some see an improved situation for Kurds within Turkey as a reason for the ceasefire. Erdoğan’s government has lessened Kurdish language restrictions in education and media. But he has also replaced Kurdish-elected mayors with appointees and pressured Turkey’s Kurds through other means.

The recent events in Syria are a likelier catalyst. The Syrian Democratic Forces (sdf) is a Kurdish militia controlling northeastern Syria. The sdf has supported the pkk in Turkey even as it fights for Kurdish power in Syria. Since the fall of Syria’s Bashar Assad in December by Turkish proxies, the sdf is facing an existential crisis. With Assad out of the way, the Turkish proxies are fighting the sdf. The Kurds are receiving little international support.

On March 10, the sdf agreed to merge forces with the Damascus government. Details are unclear, but the agreement coming on the heels of the pkk agreement is probably not a coincidence.

The Syrian Kurds are about to lose their freedom. With it will go one of the Turkish Kurds’ most important backers. So the prospect of Erdoğan forcing his proxies to back off and giving the pkk and Öcalan amnesty in exchange for laying down arms may be too good for the Kurds to refuse. It may be their only chance of protection in the short term.

Iran

Turkish sources report that Iran is trying to sabotage the peace process. Türkiye, citing “senior security sources,” says Iran is a current cause for concern. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also criticized Iran for its sponsoring of proxies in Syria and Iraq to further its influence. Geopolitical Futures suggests this could relate to Syria’s Kurds.

Turkey alleges that Iran has supported the pkk and sdf for years. But sponsoring Kurdish groups could be counterintiutive. Kurds also live in Iran, so supporting Turkish and Syrian Kurds could mean empowering Iran’s Kurds.

When Syria was an Iranian proxy state under Assad, the Kurds were some of the biggest challengers to his rule. Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian woman whose death in 2022 sparked Iran’s women’s rights protests, was ethnically Kurdish.

The main reason Iran would sponsor Kurdish groups is because it sees weakening Turkey’s power as an even more important priority. That Iran would try to sabotage the pkk’s peace process shows how much Turkey’s ascendancy worries it.

Syria is still suffering from major unrest. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Turkey’s main proxy governing Syria, is far from uncontested. But since Assad’s ousting, Iran’s influence in Syria has plummeted. Rumblings of Iranian meddling shows Turkey is poised to replace Iran as Syria’s most influential power broker.

Israel

Israel’s Channel 11 reported in February that Shin Beit, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, is looking for new recruits who can speak Turkish. “The move,” Geopolitical Futures wrote, “is seen as an indicator of Israeli concerns about Turkey’s growing regional influence, especially in Syria.”

This shows how much Turkey is turning Syria into its puppet state. This has massive geopolitical implications. Aside from wresting access to the Mediterranean Sea from Iran, this also places, for the first time, a Turkish proxy on Israel’s border.

“Erdoğan is willing to use brutal force to reshape the Middle East,” Trumpet contributor Josué Michels wrote in “Turkey’s Sacred Quest.” He continued: “Time wrote in 2020 that Erdoğan’s role model is Selim i, the Ottoman sultan who ruled from 1512 to 1520 and extended the empire to Syria, Egypt, Palestine and what is now western Saudi Arabia. Jerusalem has always been a focal point of this empire. … Erdoğan has concrete goals for Syria and Jerusalem.”

Turkey could be settling its Kurdish conflict to reorient its attention elsewhere. Its new control over Syria gives it a natural highway leading to Israel. While the end of a conflict that has killed some 40,000 people is good news in the short term, expect Turkey’s expansion to continue.

To learn more, read “Turkey’s Sacred Quest.”