Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who proposed the “Peace and Democratic Society” project on February 27, 2025, as a non-violent solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey, is fully aware of how difficult it is to overcome the legacy of a monolithic nation-state. This is a state whose foundations and structure were built upon the denial of the Kurdish people’s identity and existence, and which met all their demands and uprisings with iron and fire. Öcalan understands the “zeitgeist” shaped by a century-long legacy of deep, chronic hostility toward the Kurdish people, and how Turkish paranoia regarding the Kurds led to military coups that dealt a fatal blow to natural democratic transition and the emergence of the “state of citizenship and the law” were killed.
Furthermore, Öcalan recognizes the existence of a wide array of “power centers” and “financial and business mafias” that profit from the “war economy.” These structures and frameworks still maintain a prominent presence within the circles and institutions of the deep state, finding their interests and influence in sabotaging the peace phase and perpetuating the military conflict. From this starting point, Öcalan begins with a foundational approach through which he has already succeeded in introducing a new narrative concerning the “redefinition” of the Republic and the correction of history. He does this by announcing the existence of two founding elements bound by “a thousand years of shared history,” who must consequently partner in managing this state. Öcalan sees no harm in having this process of correction, redefinition, and consolidation unfold through a democratic struggle that necessarily requires temporal phases—provided that it is legalized through parliament. He refers to the parliamentary National Solidarity, Fraternity, and Democracy Committee—which met with him on November 24, 2025—as a historic step that moved the Kurdish issue from the “execution gallows” to the “hall of parliament.” This process is to be supervised by the relevant institutions within the executive branch/government and monitored by civil society actors, chief among them professional syndicates and associations defending freedoms and human rights.
In tandem with solidifying the principle of partnership between the Republic’s two founding elements—the Turks and the Kurds—and returning to the sincere foundational moment (which implies a new constitution and the reform and adaptation of current laws to fit the newly recognized formula), Öcalan points out the necessity of respecting the specificities of ethnic and religious groups in the country. He emphasizes the need for deep-rooted changes to accommodate identity manifestations within the framework of peace and reconciliation laws, protect the citizen’s right to expression, and grant everyone the opportunity for integration and political participation (see: the message sent by Öcalan on the first anniversary of the call for Peace and Democratic Society). Here, Öcalan does not seek to impose a quota system based on the leadership of the “two founding elements” of the Republic to guarantee their exclusive hold on power—which their demographic and geographic weight within state borders would allow. Rather, he wants to establish a state of law and citizenship that recognizes and nurtures all identities and particularities, viewing them as part of the national heritage that must be protected under a constitution and law that do not discriminate based on ethnicity, religion, or sect. In other words, he seeks to entrench citizenship based on the citizen’s relationship with the state as a system of institutions defining a set of duties and rights. This marks a rupture with the previous legacy of treatment, which was based on the citizen’s affiliation with the “nation”—a concept currently interpreted by lawmakers as strictly confined to “belonging to the Turkish race and ethnicity.” Öcalan states: “The rights of the free citizen are established through citizenship that guarantees freedom of belief and the expression of identity and intellectual opinions, with all these fundamental rights protected by the state through its democratic laws.” He adds: “The state must not impose a specific ethnicity on the citizen, just as it cannot impose a specific religion and language on its citizens. A citizen who abides by the law, the constitution, and the unity of the state has rights that must be protected in freely expressing identity, religious belief, thoughts, and ideologies without fear of prosecution or accountability.”
The “Peace and Democratic Society” phase advances by waging a grueling and comprehensive political and organizational struggle on two fronts. The first front: imposing a solution on the Turkish state and extracting “concessions” from it. The second front: organizing the Kurdish ranks and managing Kurdistan in light of new developments.
The First Front: Negotiations with the Turkish government are ongoing and pressure is being maintained to push it to implement the clauses contained in the report of the parliamentary National Solidarity, Fraternity, and Democracy Committee. This report was issued on February 18, 2026, following the committee’s meeting with Öcalan on November 24, 2025. The report demands the drafting of a new civil constitution that takes into account the “shared destiny between Turks and Kurds,” and the introduction of changes to the municipality system by virtue of which the trustee (“Kayyum”) system would be lifted. It also calls for judicial reforms that restrict prosecutions, emphasizes the implementation of the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and demands the enactment of laws ensuring the return of armed fighters to society while providing legal immunity for individuals participating in the dialogue process. Currently, Öcalan and the Kurdish negotiating team are striving to pressure the government coalition of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to begin implementing the report’s clauses and executing urgent trust-building steps. Chief among these measures are: guaranteeing Öcalan’s freedom in a way that allows him to communicate with the outside world and meet delegations from inside and outside Turkey; enacting laws that ensure the integration of fighters returning from the battlefields into political life; releasing Kurdish political prisoners (foremost among them Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, the co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) detained since 2016) and considering ECHR rulings as the primary reference in dealing with them; ceasing the seizure of municipalities in the Kurdish provinces and halting the appointment of “trustees” in place of democratically elected co-mayors; and working toward a new civil constitution that guarantees Kurdish rights, solidifies the “shared destiny between Kurds and Turks,” and moves past the “language of violence.”
The Second Front: Through the “Peace and Democratic Society” phase, Öcalan seeks to organize the political situation in Kurdistan and grant the Kurds greater breathing room to practice and participate in politics via their national identity. According to Öcalan, democratic transformation means the state must lift restrictions on Kurdish organizational work and political activism in the Kurdish provinces and across Turkey as a whole. It means the state and its apparatuses must stop prosecuting Kurdish politicians and cease terrorizing and intimidating Kurdish communities to prevent them from electing the “Kurdish party / the representative of Kurdish identity,” and stop labeling them with the accusation of “supporting terrorism.” Öcalan wants to manifest the democratic Kurdish will in the Kurdish provinces within localized social and political alliances with Arab, Turkmen, and Syriac components, enabling the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) to win the trust of these components and represent everyone. This is coupled with creating a national democratic front across Turkey, shared by various forces and parties, to become an undeniable factor in planning the state’s future and ensuring the interest and safety of all its citizens. On this basis, Öcalan previously stated that the DEM Party is capable of achieving 20% of the vote across Turkey if it conducts its politics and organization with greater effort, awareness, and determination, thereby transforming into an institutional actor throughout the Turkish landscape. Consequently, removing the “terrorism” label from Kurdish political activism in Turkey, halting the prosecution of Kurdish politicians and activists, and ceasing the intimidation and threatening of citizens in the name of the “law,” the “state,” and the “nation” will grant the Kurds their true weight and natural size in the country’s political equation. It will render them the most decisive factor for change and for pushing toward a state of citizenship, democracy, and law.
It is worth noting here the negotiation phase between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement between 2013 and 2015, during which campaigns of suppression, prosecution, and restriction against the Kurds and their political activism receded. This resulted in a state of relief and an atmosphere of calm and safety, which contributed to encouraging people to express their political will without fear and stand behind the HDP (the representative of the Kurds engaged in dialogue with the state) in the elections held in June 2015. As a result of that “openness,” the party secured 50 seats across 14 Kurdish provinces, compared to only 9 seats for the ruling AKP. Here, the Kurdish movement proved—despite meager resources, hostile official media propaganda, and the ruling party’s policies of buying loyalties, distributing jobs, and handing out free “food baskets” to the people—that it is a leader in organization, dominating most of Kurdistan’s landscape. It showed that if normal conditions for free political work and fair competition were provided, it would double its votes and control the rest of the Kurdish provinces peacefully, without firing a single bullet.
There is a significant surge in the popularity of the Kurdish parties that formed and continue to form the political façade of the PKK. It is enough to know that the main Kurdish party was previously forced to ally with Turkish leftist parties to enter parliament, out of certainty that it would not surpass the 10% threshold (which was lowered to 7% in 2022). Now, however, it clears the threshold with ease and represents the absolute parliamentary majority in the Kurdish provinces. Currently, the DEM Party constitutes the third-largest bloc in the Turkish parliament. Öcalan is the architect behind the idea of founding the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) in 2014, which is the local party tasked with organizing Kurdish ranks in the Kurdish provinces and overseeing the preservation of Kurdish culture and language. This party channels Kurdish votes to its larger sister party, the DEM Party, by focusing on Kurdish segments with a purely nationalist orientation inside and outside the solid core known for its support of the PKK. It also oversees communications and consultations with small Kurdish nationalist parties and forms localized alliances in various elections. Furthermore, the party is active in connecting with social sectors and forces that state parties had managed to penetrate, win over, and influence (such as segments of the Arab component, Kurdish tribes whose chiefs and Aghas were bought off by the state, and the constituencies of the village guards… etc.) to secure their votes and involve their elites in Kurdish political activism. This local party played a major role in achieving the historic victory of the HDP (which was later banned) in the parliamentary elections of June 2015. The Kurdish movement understands that the historical and geographical existence of Kurdistan is a constant that must be solidified in the consciousness and lives of the Kurds, as well as in the general political, cultural, and social reality throughout Turkey, turning into a recognized given. Öcalan resorted to incorporating the term “Kuristan” into the titles of all his intellectual defense pleas, in which he discussed the “democratic society” and the “democratic nation.”
Öcalan relies on democratic “empowerment” and Kurdish soft power, fully aware of the developments of this phase and Turkey’s position within current shifts. He understands that stagnation and insisting on continuing to bet on “hard power” under these circumstances—and in the face of a state experiencing an existential paranoia and a condition of “defeat and self-retraction” resulting from its discovery that it is not the “greatest power” in the region—is futile. Turkey finds itself unable to confront the “Israeli foundational phase” and incapable of resisting all the leverage exerted by the Hebrew state in its wars against Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and Yemen—wars through which Israel declares it will reshape the “map of the Middle East.” Öcalan, who has deeply analyzed the structure of the Turkish mind, sees that Turkey, the heir of the Ottoman Sultanate, stands wounded, its dignity and pride pierced, bewildered and exposed before Israel, living the nightmares of a narrative of “the state whose turn will come after Iran.”
From this, Öcalan captured the moment and laid the foundations of his “Peace and Democratic Society” project to protect the Kurds inside and outside Turkey. He aims to deny their psychologically defeated enemies the opportunity to point gun barrels at their chests as the “weakest link” in the equation to compensate for their developing “inferiority complex” and to register some form of “victory” after failing in the field to match the state that now openly threatens them (the resolutions of the Nagel Committee, January 2025). Hence came Öcalan’s description of the parliamentary National Solidarity, Fraternity, and Democracy Committee’s report as the historic step that moved the Kurdish issue from the “execution gallows” to the “hall of parliament.” In Öcalan’s view, this is a new beginning and a launchpad carrying immense momentum and fresh vitality for a phase of peaceful and democratic struggle. It aims not only to correct history and place the Kurds alongside the Turks as one of the “two founding elements” of the state, but also to spare Turkey and the region bloody wars and confrontations that could surpass in their horror “fifty Gazas” combined, as was quoted from him in the first contact with him after the launch of the current dialogue phase at the end of 2024.
The peace process between Öcalan and the Kurdish movement on one side and the Turkish state on the other cannot be read in isolation from regional developments following October 7, 2023, and the wars that ensued. The Middle East, and indeed the entire world following the Russian war in Ukraine in 2022, has entered a new phase of confrontations and a clash of wills. A massive arms race is currently taking place in the region (Turkey raised its defense budget to $51.4 billion for the current year, 2026, representing about 11.4% of total public spending and a 34% increase over the defense budget of the past year, 2025), and everyone wants to build and rehabilitate their military capabilities and achieve deterrence. The American presence under the leadership of Donald Trump and his envoy, Tom Barrack, is based on supporting strongmen without regard for the will of the peoples regarding democracy and elections. The current American trend is to back the individual ruler holding the reins of power and to reject all forms of decentralization that accommodate identities, particularities, and pluralism. This approach, which Barrack is working to implement, supported the central government in Damascus (the authority of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) at the expense of the Kurds, who were the loyal partner of the international community in the war on terror.
Now, Barrack is threatening the Kurds in Iraq by openly rejecting the formula of federalism (recognized in the Iraqi constitution) and issuing hostile statements against Kurdish particularity regarding the process of “merging” the Peshmerga forces into the structure of the Iraqi army. In truth, the United States wants strong states and entrenched, loyal regimes, all within the framework of its arrangements for the region aimed at tightening its blockade on both China and Russia. Through the “Peace and Democratic Society” process, Öcalan wants to protect the Kurds from the consequences of the coming change, lead the “Kurdish-Turkish” foundation, and place it back onto the developments and agendas of history and politics. By doing so, he aims to “neutralize” the Kurds from the fallout of the current tempest and that which may follow and be even more painful, in addition to guaranteeing participation in policymaking in Turkey from within the center, rather than transforming into an adversary entrenched on the periphery against whom all regional and international powers—tense, mobilized, and excessively brutal—would unite.
There is no doubt or surprise, given this situation, that Öcalan’s “Peace and Democratic Society” project faces rejection from the oligarchies of war who trade in Turkish nationalism and imperial slogans (Neo-Ottomanism, the National Pact/Misak-ı Millî, the Blue Homeland, the Turkish state extending from the Adriatic Sea to the Great Wall of China… etc.), and from the advocates of a monolithic, totalitarian state based solely on the Turkish element. These groups view the peace project as a danger to them. The war oligarchies and the “power centers” benefiting from emergency laws want to embroil the country in wars beyond the borders (Iraq and Syria, and later Iran) to eliminate the “Peace and Democratic Society” project domestically. Consequently, they aim to push the Kurdish issue out of the political sphere (“the hall of parliament”) and return it to the battlefields and arenas of armed confrontation, where prosecutions and “execution gallows” await—something Öcalan and the rest of the rational actors in Turkey are fighting with all their might to prevent.
On the Kurdish side, reality dictates that the major Kurdish parties and forces support the peace process between the Kurds and the Turkish state. The two main Kurdish parties in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have announced their support for the current dialogue and negotiation, considering that a peaceful solution, the relinquishing of weapons, and moving away from a military resolution is the best option for both sides. Currently, it is vital to take advantage of the state of relative calm and openness to organize the ranks of the masses and promote and strengthen the Kurdish culture and language, especially in major cities and metropolises inside and outside historical Kurdistan. The Democratic Regions Party (DBP), which recently launched a massive popular campaign titled “Every Home Must Become a School for Teaching the Kurdish Language,” is striving to focus on cultural aspects. This follows recommendations from Öcalan, conveyed via the parliamentarians of the DEM Party and members of his family, emphasizing the necessity of restricting spoken communication in various aspects of life to Kurdish alone, and strongly confronting the legacy of long years of Turkification, forced cultural assimilation, and hostility toward the identity, culture, and language of the Kurdish people. These are the very policies that Öcalan intended his “Peace and Democratic Society” project—which solidifies the partnership of the “two founding elements”—to bring to an definitive end.
