Turkey could soon strike a historic peace deal with the Kurds

DEVLET BAHCELI, the leader of Turkey’s biggest nationalist party, has made a career out of opposing concessions to the country’s 15m-strong Kurdish minority. The only solution to Turkey’s conflict with armed Kurdish separatists, he has long argued, is to pound them into the ground. Since 2016, when Mr Bahceli and his Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) threw their weight behind Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he has been able to put his convictions to work. On his watch, the government unleashed armed offensives against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) at home and abroad. Thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists ended up behind bars.

But on October 22nd, to the astonishment of most Turks, it was the same Mr Bahceli who raised hopes of a settlement with the PKK, by calling on the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to address parliament and renounce violence. Were the Kurdish leader to disband the PKK, he could have a chance to walk free, said Mr Bahceli. A day later Mr Ocalan, who has spent a quarter of a century on a remote prison island, said he could “move the process from violence to politics”.

A reminder of just how hard this might be came the same day, when two PKK militants killed five people and wounded over a dozen others at the headquarters of a leading Turkish defence company in Ankara, the capital, before they were killed. Turkey responded with air strikes against the group’s strongholds in Syria and Iraq. The PKK later claimed the attack was not related to Mr Bahceli’s overtures.

The violence could have derailed any peace process before it began—but it did not. On October 30th Mr Erdogan backed his coalition partner’s proposal, but ruled out talks with PKK commanders other than Mr Ocalan. Success is hardly assured. Earlier talks collapsed in 2015 amid mutual recriminations, triggering a cycle of violence that reduced parts of Turkey’s south-east to rubble before spreading to northern Syria. Kurdish politicians accused Mr Erdogan of pursuing power rather than peace, and of backing Islamic State against the Kurdish insurgents. Turkish officials say the PKK used the talks to buy time and rearm.

PKK attacks, scorched-earth tactics by Turkey’s army and assassinations, by Turkish death squads and insurgents alike, have claimed over 40,000 lives since the conflict began four decades ago. Turkey now has a much stronger hand. The PKK has been wiped out as a fighting force in the south-east. Mass arrests have pushed Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), to the fringes of politics.

That has many watchers wondering why Turkey’s government chose this moment to rekindle the peace process. The probable explanation has to do with the damage Iran and its proxies have suffered at Israel’s hands in the past year. Iran’s waning influence in Syria and Iraq risks emboldening the region’s Kurds to pursue more autonomy, says Mesut Yegen, a Turkish academic. “That’s the scenario Turkey wants to prevent.”

Mr Bahceli’s sudden conversion, from being one of the biggest obstacles to talks with the PKK to a go-between, is equally noteworthy. The MHP’s leader is known to have many allies in Turkey’s vast bureaucracy, and especially the security forces. “Bahceli’s role suggests this is a serious Turkish state project,” says Cengiz Candar, a DEM lawmaker, “and that we are either on the eve of very important developments, or already in the implementation phase.” ■

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