The Economist: Turkey could soon strike a historic peace deal with the Kurds

Source:The Economist Date:02Nov2024

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”.