Turkey peace call may boost Erdogan’s domestic and Syria goals

February 28, 2025 MeighTimbol News 0
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan greets his supporters during the Grand Congress of his ruling AK Party in Ankara, Turkey, February 23, 2025. REUTERS/Cagla Gurdogan/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
REUTERS | Published February 28, 2025
ISTANBUL, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Tayyip Erdogan’s long-held goal of ending Turkey’s conflict with Kurdish militants is a step closer after their jailed chief’s peace call, giving the president a potential political boost at home and a chance to resolve key regional security concerns.
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Thursday’s call from Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan for the outlawed group to disarm and disband has triggered both hope and scepticism in Turkey.
That’s according to a letter read by Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party.
The announcement, accompanied by a photo of Ocalan sitting with pro-Kurdish politicians, capped a delicate dialogue as Erdogan looks to capitalise on the upheaval in Syria and military gains against the PKK fighters based in northern Iraq.
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Success now hinges on sustained cooperation among the various parties involved, but political analysts are far from confident that the PKK militants, based in mountainous northern Iraq, will heed the appeal of Ocalan, who has been held in an island jail near Istanbul for a quarter of a century.

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They also point to the Erdogan government’s continued crackdown on democratically elected pro-Kurdish politicians it accuses of having close links to the PKK, which Turkey and its Western allies classify as a terrorist organisation.
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For now, they say, Erdogan, 71, is focused especially on the domestic political dividends that peace could bring as he looks to extend his two-decade rule beyond 2028 when his term expires.

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“Erdogan appears to be using the issue primarily to gain Kurdish support for a new constitution, which he hopes will allow him to run for the presidency again,” said Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based political analyst.
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Erdogan has made repeated efforts in the past to resolve the Kurdish issue and end a decades-old conflict that has killed over 40,000 people and stymied economic development in Turkey’s impoverished mainly Kurdish southeast.

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Finally ending the insurgency would be a major legacy achievement for Erdogan.
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“After some critical changes in our politics and region, a new and important window of opportunity has opened up for our country to end the scourge of terrorism,” he said on a recent trip to Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s southeast.

KURDISH FEARS AND HOPES

The PKK leadership has yet to respond to Ocalan’s appeal.
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Jenkins said the group could agree to a ceasefire but was unlikely to lay down its weapons.
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“The PKK sees itself as a defender of Kurdish interests and will not disarm unless there are solid guarantees for the safety and future of Kurdish fighters,” he said.
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Echoing that view, the Washington Institute’s Turkish research programme director Soner Cagaptay said the PKK leaders holed up in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq remain deeply suspicious of Ankara’s intentions.
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“Some Qandil leaders likely fear they will be assassinated by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization down the road even if they are promised amnesty-in-exile in the short term,” Cagaptay said.

 

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SOURCE: www.reuters.com

RELATED: Kurdish militants in Iraq, Syria must lay down weapons, Erdogan’s party says

All Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, including U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish forces, must lay down their weapons after the peace call from the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey’s ruling AK Party said on Friday. (AFP/File)
ARAB NEWS | Published February 28, 2025

JENIN: Watching her granddaughter sleep in cramped quarters for displaced Palestinians, Sanaa Shraim hopes for a better life for the baby, born into a weeks-long Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces searching for suspected militants have long carried out limited incursions into Jenin refugee camp, where Shraim and about 24,000 other Palestinians normally live.
But with no end in sight to the ongoing military operation across the northern West Bank, “I worry about what will happen, when the children grow up in this reality of constant raids,” said Shraim.

She had already lost her militant son Yusef in a previous Israeli raid, in 2023. More recently, forced to flee the escalating Israeli assault since late January, Shraim has watched her daughter give birth in displacement.
“There have been so many repeated raids, and they won’t stop,” said the stern-faced grandmother, speaking to AFP in a crowded room at a community center in Jenin city where the family have been sheltering for the past month.
The sweeping military operation was launched around the time a ceasefire took hold in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, a separate Palestinian territory.

Israel has since announced that its troops would remain in Jenin and neighboring camps for up to a year.

’Nothing left’ back home

Shraim and her family are among about 80 displaced residents of Jenin camp sharing the building in the city.

Thaer Mansoura, confined to a wheelchair due to osteoporosis, said he had to be rescued in a cart after army bulldozers tore through the streets around his home.

“We endured it as much as we could, but with so many children — my brothers’ kids, our neighbors’ children, my cousins’ children — we had no choice but to leave,” he told AFP.

Mansoura said his family had remained home for three days as electricity and then phone lines were cut, engulfed by the sound of bombs, gunfire and helicopters, as well as army drone broadcasting calls for residents to “evacuate your homes.”

Now, in the relative safety of the community shelter, he feels “stuck here — there’s no place to return to, nothing left.”

Back in the camp, just five kilometers (three miles) away, the rubble-strewn streets are devoid of people as Israeli soldiers patrol the perimeter on foot or in armored jeeps and personnel carriers.

An AFP correspondent walls riddled with bullet holes, narrow streets littered with concrete slabs and facades torn by army bulldozers, and twisted metal storefronts barely hanging from their hinges.

Awnings blackened by fire stand as a reminder of life in the camp that came to a standstill a little over a month ago, when the Israeli operation began.

In the city center, life has returned despite military presence, with some shops cautiously reopening — a sign of pressing economic concerns for many residents.

“Normally, after an operation, everything shuts down. But this time it is different,” said the manager of one apparel shop who declined to be named.

’The same occupation’

The ongoing Israeli raid is unusual not only in its duration, but also in the rare deployment of tanks to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Nathmi Turkman, 53, once jailed by Israel, carries a constant reminder of the last time Jenin saw such relentless military activity during the second Palestinian intifada, or “uprising” — a bullet from 2022 still in his flesh.

While Israel maintains that its offensive targets militant groups long active in the northern West Bank, Turkman said that “their bullets don’t differentiate between civilians and fighters.”
Before leaving the camp, he grabbed just one item from his home, a small Eiffel Tower figurine which he chose for its sentimental value.

Now at the community center in Jenin city, Turkman said that for people who did not witness the events of the second intifada, the current Israeli operation “was shocking.”

“But for us, we lived through 2002 with tanks and warplanes,” he said.
“There’s no difference between 2002 and 2024 — it’s all the same occupation.”
In this reality, Shraim fears that her grandchildren will grow up knowing only war and displacement.

On edge, she was startled when the stroller carrying her granddaughter tipped over in a park near the shelter, reacting as though the infant was in mortal danger before realizing she was fine.

“The fear is inside me, and I can’t shake it,” said the grandmother.

 

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SOURCE: www.arabnews.com

 

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