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The past five years have seen dramatic shifts in U.S. and Turkish policy toward Kurdish political and military actors, both within Turkey and in neighboring Syria and Iraq. These shifts were driven by a complex convergence of domestic Turkish political trends and a rapidly shifting regional picture. During this period, Turkish policy has oscillated from engagement with Kurdish players in pursuit of peaceful rapprochement to hard-edged repression at home and military intervention abroad. Meanwhile, the United States has slowly abandoned its previous hands-off policy toward Kurdish nonstate actors to adopt a halting, ad hoc policy of engagement with leftist Kurdish elements in Syria, driven primarily by the tactical military requirements of a laser-focused campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS). This report traces the policy shifts that have taken place since the Center for American Progress last studied the issue in depth in July 2014.¹

From 2013 to 2015, the Turkish government intensified its efforts to resolve its long-running conflict with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). During those years, Turkey and the PKK maintained a ceasefire while negotiating to secure the PKK’s military demobilization and the normalization of Kurdish politics within Turkey. While the Turkish state had intermittently negotiated in secret with the PKK since 2006, the new effort was more public and concerted than anything that had come before. The efforts to secure a modus vivendi with Kurdish actors held great promise, with the potential for important political, strategic, and economic benefits if a lasting peace could be achieved. But the talks were unfolding alongside regional upheaval, with Syria gripped by war and Iraq thrown back into chaos by the rise of IS. Amid this tumult, the Syrian regime had withdrawn from three majority-Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria, leaving the areas to Kurdish militias, which soon found themselves fighting for survival against an ascendant IS.

The Kurdish enclaves in Syria were dominated by the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Ankara viewed with mistrust. Despite the PYD’s ties to the PKK, in the context of the peace negotiations, Turkey hosted PYD leaders in Ankara on several occasions for discussions to resolve border issues and, some hoped, to bring the Kurdish forces into the overall effort to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. But Turkey came to view the PYD as a threat as it won more influence and, eventually, U.S. military support in its fight against IS. The PYD’s militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), would quickly become the most effective ground force fighting IS and the centerpiece of the U.S.-led counter-IS campaign. Meanwhile, Turkey’s domestic Kurdish political party, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), overcame continued political repression to mobilize Kurds and liberals behind a charismatic young leader, Selahattin Demirtaş, whose rise came to threaten Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political ambitions. Eventually, the Turkish-PKK peace talks stalled in the face of these regional dynamics and Turkey’s domestic political pressures, and Ankara dropped its engagement in favor of a hardline policy of opposition to Kurdish political and military gains in both Turkey and Syria.

In July of 2015, the ceasefire fell apart and the PKK conflict resumed. The reasons for the resumption of hostilities are discussed in depth below, but Erdoğan’s domestic political imperatives, the Turkish state’s fear of Syrian Kurdish autonomy, and local dynamics in southeastern Turkey combined to undermine the peace process. The fighting since 2015 has taken a tremendous toll, killing at least 4,397 people,² leveling large parts of majority-Kurdish cities, and displacing some 350,000 civilians.³ The political ramifications have been equally dire, contributing to deep polarization, political repression, and human rights abuses. Tens of thousands of Turkish citizens—many of them Kurds—have been jailed on often dubious terrorism charges, including Demirtaş and many other duly elected Kurdish political leaders. The draconian state response has left little room for Kurdish political expression.

Given the violence since July 2015, it might seem like a strange time to revisit the prospects for a peace process. Attitudes have hardened on both sides, narrowing the space for compromise, and many potential peacemakers are in prison. But because the cost of the conflict is so high, the incentives should be strong to de-escalate, and the concessions that could markedly improve the atmosphere are easy to identify. While a resolution of the conflict is as distant as ever, an easing of tensions and, potentially, a ceasefire could be achievable. The PKK has seen its military capability degraded, and insurgent attacks have decreased in frequency and intensity. President Erdoğan can effectively rule by decree and must find new supporters to secure reelection in 2023; the nationalist pivot he undertook after June 2015 has largely run its course. With the current economic crisis, the Syrian refugee issue, and his own harsh rhetoric eroding his popularity, President Erdoğan has the motive and means to attempt a bold about-face to try to create new political space. Finally, Turkey is increasingly isolated internationally, embroiled in disputes with most of its neighbors and its traditional security partners. An easing on the Kurdish front would help to relieve pressure on an overstretched military, intelligence, and diplomatic corps.

This report assesses the reasons for the collapse of the last Turkish-Kurdish ceasefire, the current impasse and prospects for moderation, the regional factors at play, and what must be considered for a potential new peace process to take shape.

The peace process fell apart in July 2015. The reasons for the resumption of hostilities are complicated and highly contested, but a combination of Erdoğan’s domestic political imperatives, the Turkish state’s fear of growing Syrian Kurdish autonomy, PKK opportunism or hubris, chaos sowed by IS, and local dynamics in southeastern Turkey undermined both the negotiations and the ceasefire. Domestically, the June 2015 elections saw the HDP win 80 seats in Parliament, playing a crucial role in denying Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) an absolute majority in Parliament for the first time. Demirtaş and the HDP campaigned explicitly against Erdoğan’s rule, specifically his desire to move the country to a strong presidential system in which he would control all executive branch institutions and have sweeping power over the judiciary.⁴ Erdoğan saw his political ambitions at risk and began to court the anti-Kurdish nationalist right.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the YPG had gained the edge against IS with the support of the United States, taking the strategic town of Tal Abyad on June 15, 2015, thereby linking two of three Kurdish cantons in northern Syria.⁵ The capture of Tal Abyad was a serious blow to IS, but Turkish officials reacted with alarm, fearing the creation of a permanent, autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. Turkish leaders believed such a development could foment separatism within Turkey and offer strategic depth to the PKK.⁶ Many Kurds in southeastern Turkey were deeply invested in the fate of the Syrian Kurdish cantons, a political and emotional commitment that was visible in urban graffiti, public protests, and through the dozens of funerals held for Turkish Kurds killed fighting to defend the Syrian Kurdish enclaves from IS.⁷ Turkey’s refusal to aid the Syrian Kurds—and Ankara’s apparent sympathy for some jihadist Syrian rebels at odds with the YPG—was a consistent point of tension, sparking violent protests from Kurds in Turkey.⁸

Tensions increased during a tense Turkish electoral campaign in spring 2015, one punctuated by repeated attacks on HDP party offices and the bombing of an election-eve rally in Diyarbakir that left four dead and more than 400 injured.⁹ Across the majority-Kurdish areas of southeastern Turkey, young Kurds—emboldened by the gains in Syria, furious with Ankara’s refusal to help the Syrian Kurds against IS, and likely encouraged by the PKK—erected barricades in urban centers and clashed with security forces.¹⁰ Gönül Tol, founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Center for Turkish Studies, summed up the situation in May 2015 as these events gathered steam:

[The] relative democratization and the partial withdrawal of the Turkish security forces have opened up a democratic space for the PKK in the country’s southeast. Quasi-state structures with legal and fiscal trappings such as courts and tax collection centers have emerged. The PKK has also stepped up recruitment of militants and has enlarged its insurgency capacity in cities via its Patriotic Revolutionist Youth Movement (YDGH).¹¹

CAP researchers saw firsthand the absence of state security forces from some southeastern urban centers as the central government allowed the restive municipalities to police their own communities; this unstated policy of noninterference might be unremarkable in many federal states, but it was astonishing in the Turkish context. Eventually, angered by the government’s harsh turn following the June elections, Kurdish leaders in these areas would declare autonomy from the Turkish state.

The declaration of autonomy, likely combined with the HDP’s threat to Erdoğan’s political dominance, ended the security forces’ hands-off policy for urban areas in the Southeast. When the security forces returned to the cities, they came with heavy weapons. Much ambiguity remains about the spark that reignited the war—the murder of two Turkish policemen in Ceylanpınar on July 22, 2015, which the PKK initially claimed but subsequently disavowed. The men accused of the crime were eventually acquitted due to a lack of evidence.¹² Speculation about possible conspiracies behind the incident will undoubtedly linger, but the response from both the Turkish state and the PKK illustrates that, by that point, key decision-makers on both sides had lost the political will to maintain the delicate peace process.

The urban guerilla war that ensued brought what had previously been a largely rural insurgency war to the cities with startling brutality.¹³ It quickly became clear that some elements on both sides had used the peace to prepare for war, with the security forces continuing to build outposts and roads to improve their position while the PKK stashed arms and supplies. According to the International Crisis Group’s conservative tally, at least 4,397 people have been killed in fighting or terror attacks since July 2015, including 464 civilians, 1,166 Turkish security personnel, 2,544 PKK militants, and 223 unidentified casualties.¹⁴ Large sections of Kurdish cities and towns in Diyarbakır, Silopi, Cizre, Mardin, Şırnak, and Hakkari were destroyed as Turkish security forces used tanks, airstrikes, and artillery to defeat the insurgents, displacing some 350,000 civilians in the process.¹⁵ In the face of this draconian response, the European Union (EU) and the United States issued only pro forma condemnations of the violence, unwilling to endanger tense discussions with the Turkish government over the Syrian war and associated migration crisis.

Alongside the human costs of the fighting, the political ramifications have been disastrous for Turkey. Tens of thousands of citizens, journalists, academics, political activists, and elected officials have been jailed on often dubious terrorism charges.¹⁶ Hundreds of Kurdish news and media outlets have been shut down. As of 2019, 10 HDP parliamentarians—including Selahattin Demirtaş—and 46 co-mayors remained in prison, as well as thousands of party activists, while the Turkish government has removed elected mayors and installed government-appointed trustees in all but four of 102 HDP-controlled municipalities.¹⁷ Collectively, the Turkish state response has dramatically reduced the peaceful paths for Kurdish political expression and largely criminalized Kurdish journalism and dissent.

Why the peace process failed

When revisiting the breakdown of this process, a few points emerge. First, Erdoğan did go further than any previous Turkish leader in his attempts to reach a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish question. He oversaw improved atmospherics, rhetoric, and economic conditions in the Southeast, particularly by helping open up trade with northern Iraq. He allowed the expansion of Kurdish language rights and, for a time, permitted Kurdish-run municipalities to run their affairs with minimal central government interference—though some would note that these should be basic legal rights for all citizens of Turkey. To preserve the fragile ceasefire, Erdoğan consistently rejected the Turkish military’s repeated requests to conduct anti-PKK military operations.¹⁸ But the lack of trust between the parties meant that the most crucial step for peace—the withdrawal and/or disarmament of PKK fighters—was never taken.¹⁹

This impasse is tied to a second key point: the secrecy and centralized handling of the peace process by the government. The PKK wanted legal assurances from Parliament regarding its safety during a withdrawal, but the AKP had negotiated outside the auspices of Parliament and never institutionalized the process.²⁰ Through the peace process, government and intelligence officials would meet with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in his prison, with HDP leaders acting as mediators and go-betweens, conveying messages to the PKK’s military leadership in Kandil.²¹ The government wanted it both ways, seeking to ease tensions and earn Kurdish support without risking the nationalist backlash that had undermined earlier attempts at peace. The 2013–2015 process included more work to persuade the public than a prior attempt from 2009 to 2011, but it was still a closely guarded process on uncertain legal footing. Indeed, rivals within Turkey’s judiciary tried to arrest Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s intelligence chief, in 2012 for his role in earlier secret negotiations with the PKK.²² The move against Fidan—as well as leaked recordings of secret negotiations in Oslo between Turkish intelligence and the PKK—is believed to have been orchestrated by Gülenist security officials opposed to peace talks with the PKK, reflecting the divisions within the Turkish state and the governing conservative political alliance when it comes to the Kurdish question.²³

The AKP’s desire to maintain its appeal with both Kurds and Turkish nationalists illustrates a third point: the failure to differentiate between terrorism and legitimate Kurdish political expression, as well as the associated failure to build a viable negotiating partner. The government wanted to win Kurdish votes but feared being seen as soft on the PKK, so it did not want to strengthen civilian Kurdish interlocutors, such as the HDP, who might appeal to both PKK sympathizers and those critical of the group’s violent tactics, thereby siphoning Kurdish votes away from the AKP. The government therefore elevated Öcalan, despite the fact that the HDP was the only legal representative for the Kurds. The actual PKK military cadres, as well as the YDGH, were controlled by a separate decision-making structure in Kandil—one long isolated from Öcalan, if deferential to him. Politically, the AKP did not want to negotiate directly with groups it labeled as terrorists in Kandil, but it also did not care to build up the HDP as a legitimate partner in the public eye, given the fact that the HDP was a political rival for Kurdish votes as well as a party to the negotiations. This political reality led the government to negotiate primarily with Öcalan, who the state could control but who lacked operational command of the PKK military cadres. Meanwhile, the government sought to weaken the HDP by positioning the party as merely an intermediary to the PKK leadership in Kandil, ignoring the HDP’s potential to serve as a conduit to Kurdish society at large and a legal, peaceful outlet for Kurdish political activity. To be fair to the Turkish government, the relationships between these various entities is murky. The PKK helped set up, train, and arm the YDGH.²⁴ But the story is different with the HDP; while the groups share many goals and rhetoric, the HDP consistently emphasized peace and sought to reduce tensions, for example, playing peacemaker with the YDGH during protests in 2014 and 2015.²⁵ In the end, the YDGH ignored HDP leaders, hinting at a distance between the groups. For its part, the PKK likely grew concerned about Demirtaş’ popularity after June 2015, perhaps fearing that further peaceful political success would undermine the guerillas’ influence. Absent definitive proof, the political evidence suggests that HDP is not fully subservient to the PKK, even if they share overlapping goals and constituencies as well as some organizational links.²⁶ But their shared base of support means that the HDP cannot easily condemn the PKK in absolute terms and that the HDP was punished by voters in the November 2015 rerun elections for the PKK’s culpability in the resumption of the conflict.

Fourth, had the Turkish government been able to pursue peace absent other political considerations, it might have sought to build peaceful alternatives like the HDP by accentuating the ideological and tactical differences between the various Kurdish groups. But the peace process became a threat to Erdoğan’s personal ambitions, and he eventually sought to lump the HDP and PKK together in pursuit of electoral advantage. Erdoğan’s rhetoric on the peace process shifted in parallel to the rise of the HDP and Demirtaş in the polls as well as their opposition to the proposed presidential system—specifically, a March 2015 speech in which Demirtaş vowed that the HDP would not make Erdoğan president.²⁷ This visibly enraged Erdoğan, who turned on the HDP-AKP peace talks—by then housed at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul—as they neared a conclusion.²⁸ Erdoğan seemed to take the HDP’s opposition as a personal affront, apparently believing that he had given the Kurds more than any previous Turkish leader and therefore deserved unquestioning support. Shortly thereafter, the HDP’s success in the June 2015 elections confirmed his fears, and Erdoğan saw his political dream to build himself a strong presidential system placed at risk.

Fifth, the Syrian Civil War presented a crucial outside stressor on an already delicate process. As noted above, Kurdish gains in Syria increased the Turkish government’s fear of permanent Kurdish autonomy, undermining Ankara’s commitment to the ceasefire. Those same Kurdish gains also caused some Kurds to adopt maximalist demands or unrealistic expectations about their influence, losing sight of the fragility of the peace process and the asymmetry of power with the Turkish state. But what is often forgotten is the role of IS in deliberately sabotaging the peace. In the early years of the Syrian war, Erdoğan and then-Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, both for humanitarian reasons and to support the rebellion against Assad, had adopted a hands-off border security policy, allowing people and goods to move freely. IS exploited this vulnerability, and by 2015, the group had thoroughly infiltrated Turkey, establishing networks of supply and support. This allowed the jihadist group to repeatedly stoke the fires of Turkish-Kurdish conflict with terror attacks at crucial junctures, playing on the cleavages in Turkish society as they had previously exploited sectarian fault lines in Syria and Iraq. The IS bombing of a Kurdish peace rally in the Turkish border town of Suruç on July 20, 2015, was instrumental in reigniting the conflict, with the PKK claiming that the Ceylanpınar murders were a retaliation for this tragedy.²⁹ A subsequent October 2015 bombing of another Kurdish peace rally in Ankara came just as the peace movement seemed to be gathering strength, leading to more violence and recriminations.³⁰

Finally, the government’s security response in late 2015 was draconian and misguided. The Turkish government can legitimately argue that it had to reassert its authority over the areas that had unilaterally declared autonomy absent any democratic process. But there was no justification for the way in which it was done: with the use of heavy weaponry. The Turkish state responded with disproportionate force in southeastern Kurdish cities, prompting further violence and crippling the prospects of a political resolution. It is possible that this was not entirely a top-down decision taken by Erdoğan himself; there are indeed factions within the state security apparatus, and many soldiers and gendarmes displayed ultranationalist symbols and slogans in the campaign in the Southeast. In addition, as mentioned, Gülenist officials had at several points sought to sabotage the peace process.³¹ But ultimate responsibility for the conduct of the security forces must rest with the government, and Erdoğan himself—through his rhetoric and his decisions—sought to instrumentalize the conflict for personal political gain. Instead of trying to promote peaceful, alternative pathways for Kurdish political expression, his government suppressed it, polarizing the country and making his equation of the HDP with the PKK a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Many of the factors that crippled the last peace process remain today. There is the lack of reliable, acceptable interlocutors with whom the Turkish state could negotiate. The state crackdown—and the pro-government media’s vilification of Kurdish politicians—has marginalized the leaders and institutions that might be capable of delivering a political settlement.³² There is also the issue of overcentralization of decision-making. The advent of an all-powerful presidency complicates efforts to build a broad, inclusive peace process, though this concentration of power also means that President Erdoğan can deliver sweeping changes to government policy with the snap of his fingers. And there is the political problem of Erdoğan’s reliance on Turkish nationalist support, which comes in several forms. Formally, the AKP must maintain its alliance with the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to hold a parliamentary majority. Informally, President Erdoğan likely feels pressure to present public policies that appeal to nationalist voters, as he hopes to hold together the right-wing constituency that won him the presidency. And less visibly, Erdoğan may need to manage factions within the state security apparatus that favor a hardline response to the Kurdish question.

None of these factors seem to signal a softening on the Kurdish front. At one level, then, the prospects for peace have rarely seemed more remote. The bloodshed and urban destruction, as well as the pro-government press’ ubiquitous vilification of the HDP as terrorist-sympathizers, have stoked nationalist fervor and fury on both sides, dramatically shrinking the political space among both constituencies for any compromise or easing of tensions. Meanwhile, the jailing of Kurdish leaders and activists has undermined many of the very political interlocutors with whom the state would need to negotiate to achieve a settlement. These detentions have continued apace, with dozens of HDP members and local activists arrested in July 2019.³³

However, because the costs of continued conflict are so high, holding back economic growth and shattering tens of thousands of lives, the incentives to de-escalate are strong. Moreover, because the situation is so dire and the political repression is so severe, the concessions that could markedly improve the atmosphere are easily identifiable. Most Turkish citizens—particularly Kurds in the Southeast—are tired of the fighting and draconian security measures. Regionally, IS has lost much of previous its ability to launch attacks and play spoiler within Turkey, while the Syrian war has entered an uneasy stasis. While the bloodshed, regional upheaval, and transformation of Turkey’s domestic political structures in the past five years have made a resolution of the conflict far more difficult, they may have also lowered the bar for a general easing of tensions and, potentially, a ceasefire.

Opportunities for a softening of tensions

On the military front, the PKK has been dealt severe setbacks, and both insurgent attacks and casualties were down dramatically in 2018 and, thus far, in 2019.³⁴ Turkey’s adoption of armed drones has shifted the tide further against the group, broadening the scope of surveillance and allowing for increasing numbers of government airstrikes.³⁵ But a final military resolution is unlikely, given the sympathy for the insurgency among a Kurdish population exposed to generations of Turkish state repression, the mountainous terrain, and the strategic depth offered to the insurgency by strongholds in neighboring Iraq.

Politically, several factors could augur an easing of tensions. Under Turkey’s new presidential system, President Erdoğan can effectively rule by decree, with a constitutionally weakened and politically pliant Parliament as well as a cowed judiciary. In order to win reelection—the next vote is scheduled for 2023, though the president can call early elections—Erdoğan must secure support of 50 percent plus one vote.³⁶ At this point, the nationalist pivot he undertook after June 2015 may have largely run its course. There are few additional votes to be won, and if anything, President Erdoğan may now view the MHP as a greater potential political threat than ally. It is hard to imagine what further hawkish, anti-Kurdish steps Erdoğan could take without completely destroying the country’s social fabric and economic prospects. With the economic crisis and the Syrian refugee issue eroding his popularity, President Erdoğan now faces a situation where continued stagnation may only bring the slow erosion of his personal authority, political brand, and party support. In the past, he has consistently chosen the path he thought would best advance his personal political ambitions; therefore, he may opt for a bold about-face to try to create new political space. If Erdoğan believes that he can win over significant numbers of Kurdish voters—or comes to view his nationalist allies as too unreliable—he may pivot back to the Kurds to try to win reelection, a strategy that would necessarily require a new effort at peace.

Still, such a move faces large obstacles and is far from certain. First and foremost, President Erdoğan has so thoroughly alienated Kurds over the past five years that Kurdish