A revolutionary's revolution

February 28, 2025 12:00 AM

Jailed Kurdish militant leader calls for end to conflict with Turkey [ungated] - "Turkey's jailed militant leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to disarm and disband on Thursday, a move that could end its 40-year conflict with Ankara and have far-reaching political and security consequences for the region."

In his message on Thursday, Ocalan said the armed struggle had "run its course", though he also urged Turkey to show respect for ethnic minorities, freedom of expression and the right to democratic self-organisation.

The pro-Kurdish political movement, the target of a years-long judicial crackdown, will hope Ocalan's move helps usher in democratic reforms and cultural and language rights in Turkey.

For Ankara, a peace deal would relieve a burden on its security forces, ease social tensions and boost the mainly Kurdish southeast's under-developed economy.

Jailed Kurdish leader calls for PKK to disarm – in shift that could shake up Turkey and Middle East - "The ageing leader of a Kurdish militant group imprisoned on a remote Turkish island has called on the group to disarm and dissolve itself, opening the door to a fragile peace with Turkey after four decades of guerrilla warfare, attacks and reprisals... Öcalan's message will have far-reaching implications across the Middle East, not least in Syria where Kurdish forces control significant territory, but also in Iran and Iraq."

“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility for this call,” Öcalan was quoted as saying. “All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself.”

[...]

The 75-year-old is serving a life sentence at an island prison south of Istanbul, after being captured by Turkish special forces in Kenya in 1999...

His message was greeted with joy in the Istanbul conference room where Öcalan’s allies gathered to broadcast his call, after displaying a photo of supporters visiting the white-haired septuagenarian. A group of older Kurdish peace activists ululated as the call to lay down arms was read out.

[...]

Rumours of a declaration have rumbled for months while the DEM party shuttled between different Kurdish factions and Öcalan’s island prison for negotiations.

How the different factions within the PKK might respond to Öcalan’s call also remained opaque. The head of the Syrian branch of the PKK told Al Arabiya that disarmament must be accompanied by the group being “allowed to work politically”.

“If the reasons for carrying weapons disappear, we will lay them down,” he said, adding that Turkish attacks necessitated the group carrying weapons. The group would consult among themselves about how to implement Öcalan’s call, he said.

Earlier this month, one PKK commander told a television channel close to the faction that much of the group would only regard the command as serious if Öcalan demanded they disarm after walking free from prison.

“This work cannot be done only through a call,” he said. “We are a movement with tens of thousands of armed people. These fighters are not on a payroll to be sacked. These are ideological fighters.” Öcalan, he said, “has to speak while free. If not, how can [PKK militants] be convinced to lay down their arms?”

Jailed Kurdish Militant Leader Calls on Followers to Disarm, End 40-Year Conflict With Turkey - "The group initially fought for an independent Kurdish state and later demanded greater rights for Kurds, a broad ethnic group of tens of millions of people spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The PKK has affiliates in all four countries."

The path to resolving the conflict remains uncertain, with no clear plan in place for a peace process and thousands of PKK-affiliated fighters spread across the region. Much will depend on how Erdogan and the Turkish government choose to respond to Öcalan’s message and whether Kurdish militants comply with the call to disarm.

Thousands of battle-hardened Kurdish fighters across the region would have to be demobilized. Key leaders of PKK affiliates in the region, including a political party linked to the group in Syria, have said in recent weeks they would comply with Öcalan’s message. It is also not clear what, if anything, Turkey has offered in return for the PKK laying down their arms. The Turkish government could free Öcalan or other Kurdish leaders from prison as a part of a possible future deal, analysts say.

What to know about the latest effort to end Turkey's 40-year Kurdish conflict - "Why now? ... some believe the main aim of the reconciliation effort is for Erdogan's government to garner Kurdish support for a new constitution that would allow him to remain in power beyond 2028, when his term ends."

• Abdullah Ocalan: who is Kurdish militant chief urging peace with Turkey?
• What is the PKK, the militant group urged to make peace with Turkey?
• Ocalan's call for peace in Turkey: what's in it for key actors?

also btw...
-Syrian Kurdish groups influenced by jailed militant Ocalan
-Israel's Demilitarization Demand Tests Syria's Shaky Government
-Can Kurds survive the new Syria? Their fate will remake the region

Welcome, then, to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), a place that sometimes feels at the very edge of world affairs. Save the Catalan Parliament, no foreign body recognises this multi-ethnic federation of four million people, often known by its Kurdish name Rojava. And yet this rugged corner of the Middle East, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, has long been a fulcrum of regional change. The Assyrians and Seleucids and Ottomans have all come and gone, leaving locals deeply conscious of their storied history. One group of AANES-affiliated Arab women’s activists have named themselves “Zenobia” — evoking the ancient warrior queen who briefly defied Rome here back in the 3rd century.

These days, AANES faces threats equal to Aurelian’s legions. After the dramatic collapse of the Assad regime, Damascus is ruled by Ahmed al-Sharaa, and his al-Qaeda offshoot Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Turkey, HTS’s key backer, lurks behind the border wall, its drones leaving vapour trails spiralling through the sky as they target AANES ambulances, civilian protesters and Kurdish commanders continuing the fight against ISIS. And then there is the Islamic State itself, no longer a physical Caliphate but still backed by tens of thousands of fanatical detainees, currently wallowing in AANES-run camps but eager for revenge.

With Donald Trump still prevaricating over Washington’s role in the region, the future feels bewilderingly unclear. Nor is this surprising. AANES’s existential struggles for survival have long been animated by dynamics driving the broader conflict now engulfing the Middle East — proxy conflict amid a new Cold War; Islamist insurgency and authoritarian brutality; struggles over oil and water resources between rich capitals and impoverished regions. All the while, the AANES’s vision of multi-ethnic federation governance offers a striking alternative to Islamism and autocracy, even as its fate hints at the future course of conflicts swirling through Syria, the Levant, and beyond...

The AANES has shown some openness to local sensitivities. Though the diplomatic and military elite is still dominated by Kurds, Raqqa and other Arab areas have been able to secure exemptions in areas like secular education, military service, oil tariffs and marriage law. Public opinion in Raqqa is therefore more nuanced than either the AANES or its opponents suggest. By defending the rule of law and protecting basic services even in Arab regions — visiting for the first time in three years, I was struck by the pace of reconstruction in Raqqa’s bustling market — officials have long been able to secure tacit support from locals otherwise suspicious of its modernising, feminist vision. “Despite all the errors AANES has made, it is nonetheless the best option in Syria,” a female Arab journalist in Raqqa tells me, sipping a fruit milkshake from a nearby store. “I personally would like to see the AANES and HTS reach a deal for a shared administration.”

Syria’s leaders have tried to find some common ground. Al-Sharaa has already met the top Syrian Kurdish commander, while HTS and AANES have maintained a careful ceasefire, with both sides expressing sincere desires to prevent further conflict and establish working committees and a national conference. But Turkey’s massive influence as al-Sharaa’s key foreign interlocutor is frustrating progress, while both sides have deeply contrasting visions about what Syria should look like: secular versus clerical; federal versus unitary...

Assessing these panicked appeals, a Syrian Kurdish friend describes his stateless people as “children who grew up without parents, leaving them desperate for love from anyone.” Indeed, the Syrian Kurds have long sought support in unexpected places. On the one hand, the AANES has drawn support from the international Left by advancing its progressive ideology through the “anti-fascist” struggle against ISIS. On the other, the AANES’s armed wing successfully established themselves as the Pentagon’s indispensable partner in the war against Islamist terror. Even beyond emotive appeals to anti-fascist values, or else the security risk posed by over 40,000 ISIS affiliates still held in the region, yearning for a HTS takeover, there are reasons for observers of all stripes to care about what happens next.

When appealing to its anarchist and socialist supporters, the AANES has long drawn comparisons to the Spanish Civil War. The analogy is more than a rhetorical flourish. Just like in Spain, the Syrian bloodbath presaged a far wider conflict, one defined by proxy warfare, state collapse and mass displacement. The conflict offers a case-study for the coming disintegration of the so-called “rules-based international system” — a euphemism for US hegemony — as Islamism and other forms of political militancy both challenge and buttress central state power.

All this is precipitated by rising temperatures, desertification, failed harvests, and the weaponisation of water resources. Israel’s degradation of Iran’s clients in Hezbollah and Hamas forms part of this broader story, paving the way for Assad’s collapse. Turkey’s expansion of drone and proxy warfare beyond Syria into Iraq, Azerbaijan and Libya does too. The mooted economic corridor linking Saudi Arabia through Israel to Europe, while evading Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, will be linked to fresh conflicts, as will Turkey’s competing, multi-billion dollar Development Road project between Baghdad and the West. Combined with worsening resource competition in the Eastern Mediterranean and Horn of Africa, little wonder that AANES representatives have long referred to this spiralling polycrisis by a simpler name: World War III.

The complex struggles in northern Syria therefore form part of a broader picture, suggesting ways in which state governance, resistance and reaction might evolve in decades to come. For all their differences, the AANES and HTS have responded to these historical upheavals in strikingly similar ways. “HTS have two faces,” says one opposition activist in Raqqa. “One is a religious face, which aims to export jihad worldwide; and the other is a political one, which tries to find a solution for all the peoples in Syria. We are with them for this second approach.” The AANES, which has long sought to balance radical Leftist militancy and institutionalised legitimacy, could be described in similar terms. Evolving far beyond its utopian vision of a decentralised “commune of communes”, it’s established a complex federation capable of feeding and protecting millions of people despite severe ideological differences. Indeed, while AANES officials dramatically claim that “Turkey wants to reorganise Syrian society under an Ottoman vilayet system”, their own project rather closely resembles that unwieldy pre-modern federation.

Given this mutual pragmatism, it’s possible to at least imagine a future modus vivendi between HTS and the AANES. While the latter have declared their readiness to recognise al-Sharaa, and integrate into his new Syrian army, any such transition is likely to be fraught and protracted. Rather, the Kurdish leadership will seek ways to survive, adapting themselves to a diminished role in the new Syria. Their chances depend on the direction taken in Damascus. Al-Sharaa himself looks set to continue down the path of technocratic crony capitalism, coupled with authoritarian repression of civil society. It’s a model he has already successfully trialled in Idlib, while the new Syrian foreign minister recently joined Tony Blair on stage at Davos to proclaim his hopes that his country would follow the Saudi Arabian path toward neoliberal integration. While this model could protect some basic rights, community self-determination in the Kurdish model is likely to remain beyond the pale.

Nonetheless, it’s striking to hear AANES talking-points over women’s and minority rights being echoed by both al-Sharaa and the conservative Arab opposition in Raqqa. From 1789 to 1917, all true revolutions have had an impact beyond their collapse, as civil rights once seen as radical become everyday conventions. The same could yet happen in Syria...

-Rojava on the Brink
-Syrian Kurds excluded from National Dialogue Conference
-Turkish Airstrikes Kill 12 in Rojava as Cross-Border Attacks Escalate
-Is Rojava a socialist utopia? The Syrian polity was built on a web of contradictions
-'Woman, life, freedom': the Syrian feminists who forged a new world in a land of war

posted by kliuless (10 comments total)

Fantastic post, thank you.
It's incredibly hard to speculate on the fate of Rojava in light of HTS victory over Assad, they have a few things going for them, they know HTS pretty well, they fought on the same "side" against the Islamic State, they're close with the U.S military, and they've got a good army.
I don't think HTS wants to antagonize them too much and start a new conflict that could be really messy for them, even with Turkey as an ally.
And with Ocalan's call for peace things could quiet down for the kurds in Turkey, which would mean maybe less pressure from the Turks on Rojava.
What I think, and by that I mean what I hope, is that there's a world where Rojava can survive all of this.
posted by SageLeVoid at 2:31 AM on February 28 [3 favorites]

This is fascinating, and it seems like further evidence that Erdoğan is taking advantage of all this (*waves hands") to recover for himself some legacy as a peace-/play-maker in Europe.

Ukraine’s territorial integrity is nonnegotiable for Turkey, Erdoğan says
Türkiye ideal host for possible upcoming meetings between Russia, Ukraine and US: President Erdogan
In Turkey, New Syrian Leader and Erdogan Pledge to Work Together
posted by chavenet at 2:32 AM on February 28 [4 favorites]

Fantastic post. I particularly liked the extended piece on the AANES/Rojava. That was very well written.

For my part, I find it hard to believe that such ideological differences can continue to exist in partnership over the long term. I dearly hope there is a place for Rojava, but we need to be clear eyed about this.

Right now all sides are in a period of relative weakness. As that changes and everyone gets back on their feet, tensions will almost certainly start to heat up again.

For the moment, lessened militarism is a good thing, though. Hopefully Ocalan's call has some positive ramifications, especially in terms of domestic and foreign policy coming out of Ankara.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:33 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

we need to be clear eyed about this.

some realpolitik today...
Exclusive: Israel lobbies US to keep Russian bases in a 'weak' Syria, sources say - "Israel is lobbying the United States to keep Syria weak and decentralised, including by letting Russia keep its military bases there to counter Turkey's growing influence in the country, four sources familiar with the efforts said."

Turkey's often fraught ties with Israel have come under severe strain during the Gaza war and Israeli officials have told Washington that Syria's new Islamist rulers, who are backed by Ankara, pose a threat to Israel's borders, the sources said.

The lobbying points to a concerted Israeli campaign to influence U.S. policy at a critical juncture for Syria, as the Islamists who ousted Bashar al-Assad try to stabilise the fractured state and get Washington to lift punishing sanctions.

aren't the kurds in a better position to counter "Turkey's role as a close ally of Syria's new rulers" vs russia given its ties with iran?

also btw...
Russian operator of Syria's Tartous port dismisses reports it has lost its contract
posted by kliuless at 11:42 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

After Öcalan’s call, Turkish society has a long way to go
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:54 PM on March 1

PKK: We will comply with Leader Öcalan's call, we declare a ceasefire

We in the PKK agree with the content of the call as it is and state that we will fully comply with and implement the requirements of the call on our part. However, we would like to underline that democratic politics and legal grounds must also be secured for its success.

posted by Golden Eternity at 4:57 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Netanyahu and Katz direct IDF to ‘prepare to defend’ Syrian Druze suburb of Damascus
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:59 PM on March 1

Interestingly, The Druze had recently formed the 'Suwayda Military Council' with a flag very similar to SDF's.

Suwayda Military Council: A new Druze coalition emerges in Syria

The Suwayda Military Council has adopted a flag featuring a map of Syria, identical to the one used by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), that separates SDF-controlled territory east of the Euphrates from the rest of Syria. The only modification is a highlighted Suwayda Governorate with the Druze five-pointed star. The council expressed openness to cooperation with the SDF, praising it as a force that defended its land and people against terrorism and dictatorship.

posted by Golden Eternity at 5:53 PM on March 1

Öcalan's message to Syrian Kurds

Before the public reading of Öcalan’s message last week, he had already sent a separate letter to the SDF, a fact Abdi himself acknowledged. Two sources familiar with its contents say Öcalan praised the governance model in Rojava before offering strategic advice. First, he urged the SDF to establish itself as a legitimate political force within Syria—meaning institutionalizing as a political party and becoming a recognized stakeholder in the country’s governance. Second, he warned that demanding an independent military force in negotiations with Damascus was neither realistic nor necessary, especially if the SDF secured a strong political foothold.

To drive the point home, Öcalan pointed to Hezbollah. His message was clear: failing to merge into formal politics at the right moment carries serious risks. Hezbollah, he suggested, had miscalculated at critical junctures, setting itself on a path to decline. The SDF, he implied, should avoid that fate at all costs.

posted by Golden Eternity at 10:05 AM on March 6

Syrian Presidency Announces Agreement With Kurds To Integrate Autonomous Institutions

This is the full translation of the agreement. The timing is interesting, and its HTS to proof if they are ready to fulfill, looking at the coast, doesn't seem
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:08 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]