So, it has happened. The Kurdish Workers' Party has announced its self-dissolution and the end of its armed struggle against Turkey. This decision can hardly be called unexpected: the main surprise occurred last October, when Erdogan's junior partner, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party of Turkey, Devlet Bahçeli, called for the PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, who was imprisoned for life, to be brought to the Mejlis to dissolve the party, call on the militants to lay down their arms, and in return receive freedom and the opportunity to spend the rest of his life among his family.

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Life-imprisoned founder of PKK Abdullah Öcalan and members of the Turkish parliament from the Kurdish party, photo by SOZCU

And then boat diplomacy began - literally. Many deputies from the pro-Kurdish party received permission from the Turkish Ministry of Justice to visit Öcalan in solitary confinement on the island of Imrali to agree on the conditions for the elimination of armed resistance.

Resolving the Kurdish issue has been Erdogan's programmatic goal since he came to power in 2002. In 2013, the “Kurdish Opening” was supposed to be the successful completion of the reconciliation process and the end of years of terror. However, the events in Syria, of which the de facto Kurdish confederation of the Rojava cantons and Ankara's support for their opponents were to become a part, interrupted the internal Turkish process.

Armed clashes on Syrian territory escalated into the declaration by some Kurdish mayors of “autonomous” cities in the Turkish southeast, the construction of trenches, and confrontation with Turkish security forces. The “Kurdish opening” failed. The PKK's terror has intensified. Repression by the Turkish authorities spread to Kurdish civilian structures, and the country rolled back to the early 1980s, when this problem had just emerged. In 2016, the Turkish authorities imprisoned the most prominent Kurdish leader, Selahattin Demirtaş. Since then, he has been awaiting a court decision, and local elections in which Kurdish leaders win in southeastern cities often end with the replacement of elected mayors with external control from Ankara.

However, against the backdrop of the falling popularity of the ruling party and its partners, a radical solution to the Kurdish issue could be the reserve of votes that will help Erdogan continue to remain the country's unchallenged leader. He can't win elections without the Kurds, and radical solutions to the Kurdish issue are impossible without nationalists, because it was they who, for 40 years offered only one solution for Öcalan - the death penalty.

The only nationalist who could allow a 180-degree turn toward the Kurds is Bahçeli. The release of Öcalan is a symbolic step for most Kurds, which will mean that they are no longer perceived as a problem for the country. We are talking about those Kurds who supported the armed confrontation, which is almost half of Turkey's Kurdish citizens. The government has always relied on the other half of the Kurds, who cooperated with it. Ankara, while denying the existence of the problem, has always shown that representatives of the Kurdish people are in all the highest positions in the country, sometimes in disproportionate numbers: from the parliament to bureaucratic structures. However, the authorities did not specify that the loyal part of the Kurds mostly represents regions that have long been assimilated and lost their Kurdish consciousness.

Therefore, the Turkish authorities now need the votes not of those loyal Kurds of Malatya and Kahramanmaraş who already voted for Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, but of those who were and remain on the side of the liberation (and at the same time terrorist) Kurdish movement in Diyarbakir and Van.

The biggest opposition on this path, represented by the Republican People's Party, does not pose a threat to the government because Atatürk's party cannot afford anti-Kurdish rhetoric and has no resources to offer the Kurds more than power.

Only nationalists can interfere with Erdogan's game. Their potential is at least 20% and is scattered among three major players in the nationalist field. A risky step towards reconciliation by Turkey's number one nationalist, Devlet Bahçeli, could be the beginning of the end for his party - nationalist rhetoric (and thus voters) would be quickly intercepted by other nationalists, who are in abundance in Turkey. Because of this risk, the authorities watched the public reaction for some time, and Erdogan remained silent and did not comment on Bahçeli's “autonomy.”

However, the government's technologists calculated the terms of the bargain with the Kurdish armed movement well: the release of the leader in exchange for the complete liquidation of the organization.

And here, the most interesting thing begins. Theoretically, for the Kurdish armed groups, which have long lived a separate life from the political wing, which is the Kurdish parties in the Turkish parliament, the announcement of the liquidation of the PKK is not a problem. The base of the terrorist organization has always been in the mountains, which are the territory of Iraq, and the organization's greatest activity is in Syria under the name YPG. Ankara demands that the entire network be disbanded. However, no one understands how this can be controlled and guaranteed. That is why Turkey has been violating the borders of neighboring countries for 40 years and conducting military operations against armed Kurds in Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria.

And now the long-awaited decision of the PKK to dissolve itself has finally been made public. The party's congress was held on May 5-7, but its decisions were not made public for almost a week. The published decision raises even more questions than just the liquidation of the armed network.

In particular, it states that the creation of the Kurdish Workers' Party was a response to the Lausanne Peace Accords and the 1924 Constitution, which led to the beginning of the assimilation of the Kurdish people. These reservations are already a major problem for secular and republican Turkey. Even a partial rejection of the Lausanne Agreements brings back the Sèvres Agreements, according to which the Ottoman Empire loses everything but a small area around Ankara, and on the present-day territories, Greater Armenia, Kurdistan, Greece, as well as French, British, and Italian colonial administrations will be built. The rejection of the 1924 Constitution returns the temporary Basic Law of 1921, which lacks secularism, a republican form of government, and equal rights for women. If the government agrees to this statement, it will be the first step of joint actions by Erdogan and Kurdish forces not only on the path of reconciliation, but also on the final dismantling of the Ataturk Republic, not only de facto but also de jure. However, along with the return of the Caliphate, the risk of losing recognized Turkish borders will also return.

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