Turkey and the political regime that’s been ruling it in an (increasingly) authoritarian manner for over 23 years are facing a historic opportunity. This can positively influence both developments in the Middle East and Ankara's relationship with the European Union. It is the opportunity to become a democracy capable of including millions of Kurds in its institutional mechanisms, along with the other cultural minorities in the country. Turkey can thus become a more functional democracy, but only if it definitively closes the chapter on the fight against Kurdish militancy, after the terrorist organization PKK has recently initiated its own disarmament and dissolution.
Only a functioning, liberal and inclusive Turkish democracy for all its citizens, regardless of their cultural identity, could have a real chance of joining the European Union in the future. At present, the accession process is suspended, as Turkey is far from any of the democratic-liberal standards and values that are the foundation of the European common market.
Following the call for the dissolution and disarmament of the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistane (PKK; Kurdistan Workers' Party), made from prison on February 27 by its former leader, Abdullah Öcalan , the terrorist organization held a congress in northern Iraq between May 5 and 7. The final decision of the congress was to respond positively to the call of the organization's leader, but also to reiterate the conditions from which the talks with Ankara began.
After more than four decades of fighting with the Turkish state security forces, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the terrorist organization will lay down its arms and disband if Ankara also accepts a political solution to the “Kurdish question”. However, such a political solution can only be one that is politically negotiated by both sides, which means the opposite of the authoritarian national security policy adopted by Turkey throughout the entire republican century against its own Kurdish citizens. Such a policy of force has meant for the Kurds a century of denial and multiple campaigns to annihilate their identity.
Kurdish territories, divided between four countries. Turkey – the only one that does not recognize them as a minority
The Kurdish population, numbering over 30 million in the Middle East, is today divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
In Iraq, Kurds enjoy territorial autonomy within the Autonomous Region in the north of the country, where their language is used in administration along with Arabic.
Minorities in Iran also have the constitutional right (Article 15) to use their own languages, including Kurdish, in publications and other forms of public activity, despite the many injustices they suffer from the authorities.
In post-Assad Syria, Ahmet Al-Sharaa has recently negotiated with the Kurdish leader in the northeast, Mazlum Abdi "Kobane", an agreement that includes the recognition of Kurdish identity, though only implicitly for now.
Turkey continues to militarily threaten the Syrian Kurds led by Mazlum Abdi and remains the only one of the four countries that does not legally and explicitly recognize any ethno-linguistic minority on its territory. It allows the use of minority languages under certain conditions, even in parliament, but without explicitly naming them. Sometimes the authorities resort to cataloging the Kurdish language in official documents as an “unknown language” , even though it is spoken by a people of tens of millions, older than the Turkish state or its Ottoman predecessor. However, we may be witnessing a fundamental change in Ankara’s relationship with its Kurdish citizens, and the pressure on the Erdoğan regime in this regard comes from both within and without.
Donald Trump, steps towards pacifying the Middle East. Erdoğan and Netanyahu, two allies too bellicose for Washington's plans
US President Donald Trump's fruitful tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week has already had consequences in the region, beyond the trillion-dollar deals the US president has signed with Arab partners. The tour has also sent some tough messages to long-time allies like Benjamin Netanyahu and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who are increasingly seen as inconvenient to the White House.
It’s a well-known thing already that the Israeli prime minister is no longer in the Trump administration's good graces, being treated more like a “ghost", a character who is too bellicose and increasingly inconvenient for the US president's transactional strategy in the region. A clear sign of this was that, avoiding visiting Israel and the prime minister of this state, Donald Trump instead accepted a 30-minute meeting in Riyadh with Ahmet al-Sharaa, the designated interim president of post-Assad Syria. As if to add salt to Netanyahu's already painful wounds, the American leader proposed to al-Sharaa the lifting of sanctions on Syria in exchange for a close cooperation with Washington. And we are beginning to see quite clearly that this cooperation actually means avoiding at all costs to annoy the US president, who is in turn pressed for time.
Donald Trump's gesture towards al-Sharaa is also a rather sophisticated warning for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Despite some initial rumors, probably launched by Ankara, the US president's tour did not include Turkey. Also, his meeting with the interim president of Syria was not officially announced and came as a surprise to the Turkish press, which is predominantly pro-government and has barely managed to sketch out some vague comments. By personally announcing the lifting of sanctions, conditional on Damascus' compliance with the White House's policy in the Middle East, Trump has practically taken the initiative and does not leave Erdoğan much room for action in the region.
The situation is similar to that at the White House in April, when Netanyahu was stunned to learn at the press conference with his host that the US had already begun direct negotiations with Iran, without involving Israel. And now, being treated like a "ghost", he seems to be paying for his stubbornness in pursuing a course of action contrary to American policy by continuing the war in Gaza. A Donald Trump determined to profit from peace in the region does not seem at all willing to tolerate conflicts, even - or, perhaps, especially - if they are fueled by nominal allies, such as the Israeli prime minister and the Turkish president.
The aggression towards the Kurds, a policy of the Turkish state that Erdoğan has exported abroad
The Erdoğan-AKP duo, holding the reins of power since 2002, established an authoritarian presidential regime in which all state powers are subordinate to the head of state since January 2018. The presidential regime was established less than three years after the Turkish leader was on the verge of losing the government. His party failed to obtain a majority in the 2015 parliamentary elections, but Erdoğan remained in power through an alliance with the ultranationalists of the Milliyetci Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Movement Party, MHP).
2015 also marked the abandonment of the democratization efforts that Ankara had undertaken years earlier. Closely linked to these was a peace process with the PKK – itself abandoned in 2015 – which was supposed to be accompanied by reforms regarding minority rights. Such reforms are essential for the Turkish state, currently described by analysts as a hardline authoritarian ethnocracy, to turn into an inclusive democracy eligible to resume negotiations for accession to the European Union.
After striking the alliance with the MHP, the Erdoğan-led government returned to the tradition of repressive policies, especially against the Kurds, pursued by all its predecessors throughout the Turkish republican century. The fight against the PKK was resumed, attacking not only the positions of the terrorist organization in Turkey and northern Iraq. Starting with the operation in August 2016, the positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian rebel forces in northeastern Syria (Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF) were also included. The Erdoğan government therefore treated the SDF as an entity organically linked to the PKK, although the Syrian Kurds successfully resisted the Islamic State, defending the populations east of the Euphrates with the support of the Pentagon, which continues today.
Turkey’s extraterritorial anti-Kurdish aggression has been counterproductive from the very beginning - it remains notorious how the American forces were forced to withdraw from the Turkish-Syrian border following a Turkish offensive against the Syrian Kurds in 2019, and the Russians present in the area captured the American bases abandoned by the Americans, which was seen as a humiliation for Washington .
With the coming to power of Ahmet al-Sharaa in Damascus and the inauguration of Trump's second term in the White House, the risks of a collision between Ankara and Washington are increasing. Let us remember that whenever he felt the need, Trump was very tough on his Turkish counterpart, especially in the last two years of his first term (2018-2019). Such a treatment might continue during this term as well, especially if Erdoğan keeps making military threats in northern Syria. It is no coincidence that, aware of the fact that their aggressive approaches in the vulnerable post-Assad Syria becomes unsettling, Erdoğan and Netanyahu chose to negotiate in Baku to resolve their bilateral differences. It remains to be seen what results will be achieved.
The condition set by the PKK: Ankara must recognize the existence of the Kurdish minority
The power circles in Ankara and Erdoğan personally are now also facing a domestic dilemma, perhaps more serious than they expected. The more than four-decade war with the PKK has led to the massive erosion of Turkey's democratic institutions, especially those in the field of justice. All of this country's legislation is designed to facilitate the punishment not only of factually proven terrorism, but of any separatist manifestation, including peaceful cultural and political manifestations organized by minorities. Over time, a repressive legal regime has been established, which makes it extremely difficult for the Turkish state and society to accept cultural diversity and a legal form of recognition and protection of minorities. The hard-liners, the ultra-nationalist and explicitly anti-Kurdish hard-liner segment, make up for a large proportion of the Turkish electorate, being the fruit of decades of indoctrination through education and the media.
The main effect is that the ultranationalist agenda has almost always won elections and political messages consistent with the values of liberal democracy are rarely heard. Closely related to this state of affairs, the process of accession to the European Union has always been blocked by the failure to meet the minimum standards of liberal democracy, without which no state can become a member of the common market.
On the other hand, PKK terrorism has done a lot of harm not only to Turkey, but has also systematically undermined the Kurdish political movement. Instead of articulating itself around legitimate and achievable desiderata through peaceful means, the movement has fallen into a trap. It has allowed the successive governments in Ankara to treat the Kurdish issue as a security issue and not in terms of political representation and minority rights.
Now, Öcalan's appeal of March 27 and the final declaration of the PKK congress on May 7 are a historic challenge to a historic change on both sides. They indicate very clearly that the organization is ready to give up the armed struggle, that it will self-disband and hand over its weapons, and that the entire process must be led by the organization's leader, Öcalan himself. The ultimate goal of this process is the transformation of the terrorist organization into a political force, possibly by joining DEM, the pro-Kurdish party in the Turkish parliament. But the fundamental condition remains the formal and explicit recognition by the state of the existence of ethno-linguistic minorities, which has not yet happened. The declaration of the PKK congress on May 7 also unequivocally condemns the reason that started the war with Ankara more than 40 years ago: the century-old policies of denial and “annihilation” of the Kurdish identity. At the same time, it explicitly demands that the Turkish state respond with "legislative measures and guarantees" that recognize the existence of the Kurdish minority and thus allow the participation of its representatives in "democratic politics" in Turkey. And the PKK congress declaration also contains a suggestive call for a joint effort to bring "the republic and democracy together under the idea of a common homeland."
All of this actually invites the Turkish state and Turkish society to a historical exercise in imagining political solutions beyond the rigid approach that Ankara has imposed since its founding.
The Treaty of Lausanne and European practice can help Turkey adopt a democratic policy towards minorities, but this means abandoning a century-old way of thinking.
The cornerstone of the statehood of the Republic of Turkey is the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which also contains, in Section III, provisions for the protection of minorities. The section allows and encourages the legal recognition and protection of minority identities, referring to both religious and linguistic ones. Article 37 clearly stipulates that all provisions under the title “Protection of Minorities” will be treated by the Republic of Turkey as fundamental laws. And Article 39 explicitly prohibits the new state from restricting “the free use by any Turkish citizen of any language in private relations, in commerce, in the practice of religion, in the media or in publications of any kind, as well as in public meetings”. It continues: “in addition to the use of the official language, (the Turkish state) shall create appropriate conditions for non-Turkish-speaking Turkish citizens to be able to use their language orally in the courts of law.” Article 40 also insists on the Turkish citizens’ freedom to use their languages in religious practice. There has therefore been, for more than a hundred years, the legal basis in the republic's founding treaty for its governments to adopt and implement legislation for the protection of religious and linguistic minorities.
The Turkish government can get inspiration from elsewhere, Europe in particular, where various types of non-territorial autonomies and forms of devolution from the central authority to local authorities are applied, including in France, Spain, Italy, the UK or Scandinavia. Romania also offers the successful example of a functional, not territorial, autonomy , that is, specific rights granted to minorities in the administrative units of Romania where they have a share of over 20% of the local population. These details also explain the societal peace that finally came to Europe after hundreds of years of violent struggles between communities and destructive wars between states.
Turkey has to overcome the ultranationalist tradition of the republican state, traced back to the first state policies under the leadership of the founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. At that time, it started by interpreting Section III of the Treaty of Lausanne as referring only to religious minorities. This means only non-Muslim citizens, that is, Jews and Christians of several nationalities. Everyone else, regardless of their ethno-linguistic identity or other identity elements, was subsumed under the policies of the Muslim majority state (including Kurds, Circassians, Arabs, Azerbaijanis or various Alevi sects). The idea of belonging to a minority was at the same time discouraged, being associated with an inferior status.
This logic was the essence of a mechanism of assimilation and/or annihilation of diversity with profound effects on the political and institutional culture of society and the state. It is this culture, of aggressive and exclusive nationalism, that the Erdoğan regime and the Kurdish representatives are facing today in their attempt to produce a historic change in collective mentality, so that peace between the Turkish state and its ethnic Kurdish citizens becomes possible. In the absence of such a change in collective mentality, I do not believe that Turkey has a chance of becoming the democracy that all its citizens dream of, regardless of their cultural identity, and which would thus become a credible candidate for a European Union founded on the values of liberal democracy and cultural diversity.
Erdoğan is reluctant to respond to the Kurdish offer, but international and domestic pressure is growing
For now, the government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not yet taken concrete steps in response to the Kurdish representatives’ calls. There is talk of legislative initiatives, even a new constitution, but no concrete measures have been taken. Although it has announced that arresting Kurdish mayors and replacing them with government-appointed administrators will stop, those already arrested have not been released and the appointed administrators are still in office.
However, the pressure for a decisive and irreversible change is increasing, both from within and from the region, where the imperatives of forces much more influential than Turkey are becoming more and more explicit. The US, in the little over three years that the Trump administration has left, has the same amount of time to implement the transactional agenda that cannot be hindered by the bellicosity of some leaders in the region. And from the Turkish society, Erdoğan is also faced with a gradual but apparently irreversible degradation of the economy, adding to which is the obvious wear and tear of his restrictive political regime. The protests are ongoing after the arrest of his main political rival, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, followed by many other arrests judged as political by an increasingly strong opposition. The current leader of the main opposition party, Özgür Özel, even had the courage to proclaim in front of over two million participants in a protest rally in Izmir on May 19 that the Turkish president is a local dictator, not a global leader , who will leave as he came.
It remains to be seen whether the leader in Ankara will have the courage to face the opposition and his own ultranationalist supporters to start a long and undoubtedly painful process that will bring profound changes to the state and society. This is certainly a moment when one side will have to give in, and it is worth watching to see whether it will be Turkish society or the political regime at the helm of the Republic of Turkey that will give in.
