by Oguzhan Albayrak, WLC Leadership Council member from Turkey.
Turkey’s new legal framework for the Kurdish peace process may help bring an end to decades of armed conflict. But disarmament alone will not make Turkey democratic. The real test is whether peace will open the door to equal citizenship, rule of law and political freedom for the country as a whole.
Turkey has entered a new and potentially historic phase in its decades-long Kurdish conflict. With a broad parliamentary majority (Yes: 467 Votes , No: 87 Votes), a new framework law has created the legal basis for the next stage of the process: monitoring disarmament, facilitating the transition away from armed struggle and eventually integrating former members of an illegal armed organization into civilian and democratic political life.
This is undoubtedly significant. But it is also important not to exaggerate what has already been achieved. The law is not a peace agreement. It does not resolve the Kurdish question. It does not establish new constitutional rights for Kurds. And it certainly does not, by itself, democratize Turkey.
It is a beginning. Whether it becomes the beginning of lasting peace will depend on what comes next.
A Cautious Process-Perhaps Necessarily So
One of the defining characteristics of the current process is its extreme caution.
Turkey is moving step by step, sometimes almost millimeter by millimeter. Political decisions are being carefully calculated; institutions are being brought into the process gradually and neither side appears willing to move dramatically ahead of the other.
That caution is not necessarily a weakness.
Peace processes rarely proceed in a straight line. They require confidence-building measures, legal guarantees and a degree of political predictability. What matters is not whether the process moves slowly. What matters is that it continues moving.
The parliamentary commission that preceded the legislation was often criticized for producing broad recommendations rather than a concrete settlement. Yet it served an important function. By hearing different political and social actors, it helped create a degree of public legitimacy around the process.
It also identified two practical necessities: some form of monitoring mechanism and a specific legal framework.
The latter now exists. But that framework will inevitably have to be followed by further legislation.
Disarmament Is Only the First Step
The central objective should be clear: moving a conflict from the battlefield into democratic politics.
International experience demonstrates that armed organizations do not simply disappear when weapons are surrendered. Successful conflict resolution requires political transformation.
Northern Ireland is perhaps the most familiar example. Individuals once associated with illegal armed organizations eventually became elected representatives, parliamentarians and ministers.
Turkey will face the same fundamental question. If people are asked to abandon armed struggle, what legitimate political space will be available to them afterwards?
This is why the current framework cannot remain isolated. Turkey’s Political Parties Law may eventually require amendment. The execution and sentencing system will have to be reconsidered. The Anti-Terror Law will inevitably become part of the debate.
If the armed conflict truly ends, Turkey will also have to ask a difficult but unavoidable question: how much of the extraordinary legal architecture created in the name of counterterrorism can still be justified?
The Penal Code may also require substantial changes. The present legislation should therefore be understood as the first stage of a broader legal transformation rather than as its conclusion.
This leads to one of the most important questions surrounding the process:
What have Kurds actually gained?
Critics have a point when they note that the law itself offers relatively little in terms of concrete Kurdish rights.
It does not guarantee education in the Kurdish language. It does not establish constitutional recognition. It does not create meaningful decentralization. It does not fundamentally change the relationship between the central government and elected local authorities. Even the language surrounding the process remains heavily shaped by security.
So what has been gained?
The first answer is also the most human one: the possibility of ending the violence.
That should not be dismissed as an insignificant achievement. For people who have spent decades living with armed clashes, displacement, village evacuations, emergency rule, mines, imprisonment and the deaths of relatives, peace is not an abstract political concept.
It means that another generation may not have to experience the same trauma. It means mothers may no longer have to bury their children because of a conflict they did not create. It means villages and cities no longer have to live permanently between armed actors and state security structures.
Peace itself is a gain. But there is another potential gain that may prove even more important.
For decades, almost every Kurdish political demand has been filtered through the language of security. Language rights became associated with separatism. Demands for local government became associated with territorial division. Political representation became associated with terrorism. Questions of identity and equal citizenship were repeatedly pushed into the security sphere because an armed conflict continued in the background.
If that conflict genuinely ends, this political logic becomes much harder to maintain.
Kurdish demands would increasingly have to be discussed for what many of them actually are: questions of citizenship, equality, cultural rights and democracy. That could fundamentally change the political terrain.
Kurds have not yet gained everything they have demanded. Far from it. But they may be gaining the possibility of pursuing those demands in a political environment no longer dominated by weapons. And that could ultimately be more consequential than any single concession contained in the current law.
Yet if we ask what Kurds have gained, another question must immediately follow:
What has Turkey gained?
This is where the contradictions of the current process become much more difficult to ignore. If Turkey is genuinely entering a new era of peace and democratic normalization, where is the broader democratic transformation?
Political pressure against opposition figures continues. Opposition politicians and elected mayors continue to face judicial pressure. Municipalities remain vulnerable to intervention from the central government.
Journalists, civil society actors and political activists continue to operate in an environment where the boundaries of acceptable political criticism can change rapidly.
The judiciary remains at the center of political controversy.
These realities create a fundamental contradiction.
On the one hand, the government is asking society to support reconciliation and the reintegration of actors once associated with armed conflict. On the other hand, peaceful political opposition continues to face restrictions and judicial pressure.
How can these two trajectories coexist indefinitely? Peace cannot mean expanding political space for one group while narrowing it for another.
Democratic politics cannot be celebrated as an alternative to armed conflict while ordinary political opposition continues to be treated as a potential security problem.
If democracy is the destination of this process, democracy cannot be selective. It must apply to Kurds and Turks, to government supporters and opposition voters, to conservative citizens and secular citizens alike.
This is therefore the question Turkish citizens should ask: Where is democracy in this peace process?
For years, successive governments have justified extraordinary measures through the same arguments: terrorism, armed conflict, separatism, national security, and the survival of the national state.
These arguments shaped Turkey’s political and legal system for decades. But if the armed conflict disappears, one of the strongest justifications for exceptional rule disappears with it. And then another uncomfortable question emerges:
If the terrorism argument is no longer available, what will justify continuing authoritarian practices?
This is why the peace process could become far more important than the Kurdish question alone. It could create an opportunity for Turkey to dismantle parts of the political architecture that developed around permanent insecurity.
Turkish citizens should therefore expect something from this process too. They should expect stronger rule of law. They should expect a judiciary whose independence is not constantly questioned.
They should expect elected politicians to lose office through elections rather than controversial legal interventions. They should expect greater media freedom. They should expect the right to criticize the government without automatically being treated as disloyal to the state. And they should expect political opposition to be recognized as a normal and necessary part of democracy.
If none of that happens, then the peace process risks becoming merely a security settlement rather than a democratic transformation.
Öcalan’s Role Cannot Be Avoided
Another politically sensitive issue is the role of Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned PKK & Kurdish Leader. For a large section of Turkish society, the idea that Öcalan could play an active role in the process is deeply uncomfortable.
That reaction is understandable. But peace negotiations are rarely conducted with actors society finds comfortable. They are conducted with actors who possess influence over the conflict.
If the aim is genuine disarmament, then the internal authority structure of the PKK matters. Öcalan continues to possess significant symbolic and political influence within the Kurdish movement.
It is therefore unrealistic to imagine a complete transition away from armed struggle without some role for him. This does not require society to rehabilitate or embrace Öcalan politically. It requires recognizing a practical reality of conflict resolution.
The same principle applied in other historical cases. Northern Ireland could not achieve peace without eventually engaging political actors associated with organizations previously addressed almost exclusively through security policy.
Turkey will create its own model. But it cannot entirely escape this basic logic.
Peace Through Law
Turkey’s path may ultimately differ from many international examples in one crucial respect.
I believe Turkey will have to build its peace primarily through law. The conflict itself was shaped in significant part by legal and constitutional choices.
The heavy constitutional emphasis on a singular ethnic understanding of Turkishness, historical restrictions on the Kurdish language, extraordinary security regimes and the centralization of political authority all contributed to the conditions in which the conflict developed.
If law helped create the problem, law must also become part of the solution. That means constitutional reform will eventually become unavoidable.
A lasting settlement will have to confront questions such as:
- What does equal citizenship mean?
- Can mother-tongue education remain constitutionally restricted?
- How should Turkey define the relationship between ethnic identity and citizenship?
- How much democratic authority should local governments have?
- Can elected municipalities continue to be replaced through the “kayyım” (appointed trustee) system?
- How should political decentralization and local democracy function without threatening the territorial integrity of the state?
These questions do not automatically lead to federalism or territorial autonomy.
But they do require Turkey to recognise that local democracy, cultural rights and equal citizenship are legitimate democratic questions. Without addressing them, permanent peace will remain difficult.
Trust Must Be Built, Not Declared
No peace process survives without trust. And after decades of violence, neither side has much reason to trust the other automatically. Trust will therefore have to be created through concrete measures.
People returning home. Political participation becoming possible. Prisoners being released under clearly defined legal mechanisms. Legal protections being established for people participating in the process. Democratic political activity becoming safer.
These measures may appear incremental. But peace is often built through precisely such incremental steps.
The current legislation itself contains an important principle by offering legal protection to those who perform official duties within the process.
That matters.
People cannot participate honestly in a peace process if they fear that a future government or prosecutor could punish them for carrying out responsibilities that the state itself authorized. Legal certainty is therefore not a technical detail. It is one of the foundations of trust.
A Historic Opportunity — But Not Yet a Historic Achievement
Turkey may now have one of the most important political opportunities it has had in decades. But an opportunity should not be confused with an achievement.
The surrender of weapons would be historic. The end of the armed conflict would be historic. But neither would automatically produce democracy.
The real measure of success will come afterwards.
Can Kurdish citizens pursue demands for language, identity, equality and local democracy without those demands being criminalized? Can Turkish citizens criticize the government without fearing that political opposition will become a judicial matter?
Can elected politicians across the country trust that voters — rather than prosecutors or administrative authorities — will determine whether they remain in office? Can Turkey finally move away from the idea that every major political disagreement is a question of national security?
These are the questions that will determine whether this process changes the country or merely ends one dimension of its conflict.
So, what have Kurds gained?
They may have gained the possibility of pursuing their rights without the shadow of armed conflict.
And what has Turkey gained?
For now, perhaps only the opportunity to demand that peace finally be accompanied by democracy.
That opportunity should not be wasted.
Because the real success of this process will not be measured only by how many weapons are surrendered. It will be measured by whether Turkey becomes a country in which neither Kurdish identity nor political opposition is treated as a security threat.
Only then will Kurds have gained more than an end to violence. Only then will Turkey has gained more than greater security. And only then will Turkey have transformed a process of disarmament into what it should ultimately become: a genuine process of peace and democratization.
