The PKK is the largest Kurdish armed group, led by Abdullah Ocalan. Its fight with the Turkish state lasted more than four decades, claimed 40,000 lives and cost Turkey some $1.8trn, according to the country's finance minister. Turkish drones battered the PKK in northern Iraq in recent years, weakening it militarily.
In February 2025, after months of secret negotiations with Turkey, Ocalan called for the PKK to disband. On May 12th 2025 the group said it would comply. The decision was broadly welcomed by Kurds in Turkey, who saw it as a profound change. After many years underground the PKK had been becoming less relevant; pollsters say most Kurds feel closer to political parties and leaders like Selahattin Demirtas, an imprisoned former head of the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM).
On July 11th 2025 some 30 PKK fighters, half of them women, burned their assault rifles in a cauldron outside a cave in northern Iraq, beginning what is expected to be a summer-long disarmament. A parliamentary commission in Turkey is overseeing the process; an amnesty for some PKK leaders may be on the table.
Previous peace processes failed: the most recent, which included a two-year truce, collapsed in 2015 partly because Erdogan's party lost its majority in a general election. Since 2016 hundreds of DEM members have been arrested or removed from office. Dozens of DEM mayors have been dismissed and replaced with state-appointed figures, and rulings from the European Court of Human Rights ordering the release of two former HDP co-chairs, Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas, remain unheeded. But this time Erdogan's nationalist coalition partners urged the negotiations in the first place, and Syria is no longer a point of disagreement.
By late 2025 the peace process faced an impasse. Turkish officials said concessions, including a possible amnesty, were only possible once the PKK disarmed completely. The PKK said it would take no new steps until Ocalan was set free. On November 24th 2025, in a historic first, members of a Turkish parliamentary commission met Ocalan in his island prison. Tuncer Bakirhan, head of the DEM party, said the process was on track despite "hiccups".
The PKK's Syrian proxy is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.