Peace Of Cake

Issue #248

Sometimes your car smokes. Other times it’s your country, especially after iftar. Ramadan Mubarak!

In this week’s recap:

• PKK heeds Öcalan call, declares ceasefire

• CHP investigations multiply

• Turkish sway on Syria transition

• Domestic and diplomatic wraps

• YouTuber brings native Amazonians to Turkey

Also from us this week:

• Wouter Massink on the Marmara’s winter sea snot outbreak, in English and Turkish

• Tomorrow, Azra Ceylan covers the latest interest rate decision in Economy recap

• And for more news from parliament, see our newly launched Meclis recap

Diagram of Kurdish political parties and their relations. © Wikimedia

Ending a 40-year conflict is no piece of cake. Neither is figuring out which part of the KCK is involved in the peace process and what they get in return.

As the map above shows, the KCK, or Kurdistan Communities Union, is the umbrella group for many organizations, political parties and militias affiliated with the Kurdish rights movement, including the PKK.

So, what’s implied in jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s call for peace last week, with the statement: “all groups should lay down their arms and the PKK should dissolve itself"?

Analyst Mohammed A. Salih pointed out the answer depends on who you ask. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi, said it doesn’t apply to his forces. AKP Spox Omer Çelik said it does.

Meanwhile, some DEM Party leaders say it might, while others say it doesn’t, as noted by Sinem Adar, an associate at the Center for Applied Turkey Studies in the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Setting the Syria issue apart (more below), Adar said Öcalan’s call was “extremely clear” in terms of the disarmament and dissolution of the PKK.

“He’s literally calling off the ideology of the organization. That's big, I think,” Adar told Turkey recap. “He is also basically calling off federalism, decentralization, even cultural identity-based politics as solutions that can no longer function.”

What comes next? To go in chronological order, directly after the call was read Thursday, DEM Party lawmaker Sırrı Süreyya Önder relayed what he said was an additional quote from Öcalan, who stated the PKK’s dissolution “requires the recognition of democratic politics and the legal dimension" of the Kurdish issue.

On Saturday, the PKK declared a ceasefire and their armed forces command did the same Sunday. The militant group has its own conditions involving political and security guarantees, explained here by the Kurdish Peace Institute.

As for the Turkish government, Sabah published the state’s ‘roadmap’ for the process with timelines for dissolution and disarmament in the coming months, followed by a “democratic transformation.”

For its part, DEM Party appears to serve as a political intermediary between the public, Ankara and Kurdish groups under the KCK. Initial steps include a meeting with the CHP and possibly a visit to Rojava, or northeast Syria.

A BBC report also suggests DEM Party and CHP seek to establish a parliamentary commission to oversee the process and resulting legal frameworks.

And the impacts? Apart from the obvious political and economic impacts to resolving any armed conflict, constitutional amendments and Syria (below) dominate the narratives regarding this peace process.

The common framing is that Pres. Erdoğan needs DEM Party votes in parliament to extend presidential term limits. Yet in what remains a fragile initiative with many variables, analysts and this meme note rhetoric from both sides indicates a larger project might be in the works.

“I'm sure that Erdoğan would like to change the constitution in ways that would guarantee him another term in office, but I'm not 100 percent sure [that’s] the primary motivation of this chain of events,” she said.

“Öcalan’s call and particularly the emphasis on the integration with the state and society … suggests that we are witnessing a recalibration of actors within Turkish domestic political landscape in ways to negotiate and implement another kind of form for the state, another form for the nation,” Adar added.

Ekrem İmamoğlu addressed supporters in Beykoz Sunday. Source

Now testi-fry: CHP investigations multiply