The new peace process, launched on October 1, 2024, with a handshake between Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the fascist MHP party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi - Nationalist Movement Party) and the deputies of the Kurdish nationalist party DEM (People’s Equality and Democracy Party, also abbreviated HEDEP), has reached a point of no return with the start of the PKK’s surrender of weapons.

This process, which is of great importance for bourgeois politics both in Turkey and throughout the Middle East, and in the current context of imperialism leading to world war, offers no significant solution to the Kurdish question.

This is further confirmation of what our party has stated on the question of oppressed nationalities, namely that the path to their solution within the framework of the capitalist mode of production has historically been closed by the popular, national, and anti-colonial revolutions anti-colonial revolutions in Africa and Asia in the three decades following the end of World War II, bringing the bourgeoisie to power throughout the world on the ashes of the pre-capitalist political regimes on which historical European colonialism was based.

The remaining national questions – such as the Kurdish, Palestinian, and many others – which remained unresolved at the end of that historical cycle of national liberation struggles, whose revolutionary content lay in the transition from pre-capitalist political and social regimes to capitalist ones, will now only find resolution and solution after the completion of the new revolutionary political and social content on the agenda of history, namely that of the international proletarian revolution.

Without and before it, any party that still today takes it upon itself to fight for any cause of national emancipation, deprived as it is and as it cannot be otherwise of the revolutionary material base that in past movements resided in the revolutionary character of a part of the bourgeoisie, generally in the poor peasants, can only become an instrument of one or another regional and world imperialist power, that is, no longer an instrument of political emancipation and social revolution but of imperialist war, the supreme instrument of capitalist preservation and the destruction of humanity.

Implicit in this reversal of the role and function of parties that still claim to fight on its terrain is the inevitable betrayal of the national cause. The PKK, as has been clear for some time and denounced by our party for decades, has fully confirmed this historical picture, as illuminated by Marxism.

Negotiations between the Turkish bourgeois state and the PKK date back to before the AKP came to power in 2002. In “The Kurdish Question in the Light of Marxism” (“Communism” nos. 97 and 98 of 2024), we wrote about the previous peace process attempted between 2012 and 2015: "At the beginning of 2015, the parliamentary wing of the PKK, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and the Turkish government declared that they had reached an agreement. After a largely successful ceasefire period, the 2015 Turkish general elections led to a strong gain for the HDP (13% of the vote, +7.5%), an equally strong decline for the AKP (41% of the vote, -9%), and a hung parliament. Shortly thereafter, after two police officers were killed in northern Kurdistan, the Turkish government launched police operations in cities and military operations in rural areas against the PKK, ending the ceasefire and the peace process. The operations continued in the following years, leading to the destruction of numerous cities in northern Kurdistan. All PKK suspects in the killing of two Turkish police officers in 2018 were acquitted by the court due to lack of evidence. The “peace process” between Turkey and the PKK has shown once again that in capitalism, peace is when the next war is being prepared.

Like the end of the old peace process, the beginning of the new one came when such a maneuver became consistent with the interests of the Turkish bourgeois regime, both in foreign and domestic policy.

The developments that made it necessary in foreign policy were, on the one hand, the war in Gaza that broke out on October 7, 2023, and the deepening imperialist conflict in the Middle East; on the other hand, the collapse of the Syrian Baathist regime on December 8, 2024, which the Turkish state had been aware of six months earlier. The presence of an experienced, equipped, and trained military force such as the PKK would have represented a weakness for the Turkish state in a context that is leading to world war.

In domestic politics, the increasingly serious economic crisis, the loss of popularity of the People’s Coalition – of which the AKP (the “Justice and Development Party” of Turkish President Erdoğan) and the MHP (the “Nationalist Movement Party” of Devlet Bahçeli) are the key components – and the rise of the CHP, the Republican People’s Party, which emerged victorious from the last municipal elections and which, despite large-scale arrests, is putting increasing pressure on the government, are the conditions that are bringing about a new government coalition.

Thus, past words have been forgotten and, under the leadership of Devlet Bahçeli, the Turkish state has extended an olive branch to the PKK. Abdullah Öcalan, described for decades as a “terrorist leader” in state rhetoric, has become the “founding leader.” And Öcalan has done his part, ordering the PKK to lay down its arms and disband.

Although the guerrilla leadership in Kandil – the PKK headquarters in the mountains of the same name in Iraqi Kurdistan – tried to delay the orders of the “leadership” and set some conditions, in the end, the laying down of arms began after Öcalan’s official speech, first at the PKK congress, then in front of the cameras at a ceremony attended by important leaders such as Bese Hozat and Mustafa Karasu. The weapons were destroyed near Süleymaniye, in northeastern Iraq.

On the level of bourgeois and parliamentary politicking, the DEM (Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party), whose base is opposed to the current Turkish government, was taken from the opposition and transformed into a reserve of the government bloc. This has forced the CHP, which has offered critical support to the peace process, to move closer to Turkish nationalist parties hostile to the Kurds, such as the “Good Party” (İyi) and the “Victory Party” (Zafer). Erdoğan and his entourage’s goal for the upcoming elections seems to be to present themselves as the candidate of peace against the continuation of the conflict with Kurdish nationalists, as opposed to a candidate such as Mansur Yavaş, the mayor of Ankara, a Turkish nationalist, anti-Kurdish, with a past in the MHP. Although the alliance with the DEM is limited to peace with the Kurds, it could pave the way for some of its members to draft a new constitution that removes the legal obstacles to Erdoğan’s re-election.

The fact that the main demand put forward by Kurdish nationalists is the freedom of Öcalan, who for decades led the organization, placing himself at the service of all the regional powers that oppressed the Kurds and this or that great imperialist power, shows what the peace process promises. The other promises on the table are a kind of amnesty for most of the guerrillas and politicians in prison, the possibility for some to participate in democratic politics, and the return, in some form, of the Kurdish municipalities that the Turkish state has placed under administration. The empty pacifist rhetoric – the silence of weapons, the recognition of rights, dialogue instead of war – has been counterbalanced by the repeated assertion that the Kurds will not be given even a crumb of autonomy. Nor is there any discussion of the demand for education in the mother tongue.

One of the most important aspects of the new peace process is the fate of the region governed by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurdish nationalist movement in Syria. On January 28, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi announced during talks in Damascus with Al-Jolani, the new Syrian president, that an agreement had been reached on the reorganization of the army and the territorial integrity of the country, specifying that the SDF would become part of the Syrian army. On the other hand, the draft constitution prepared by Hay’at Tahrir al Sham – the Islamist organization headed by Al-Jolani, in power since December – did not satisfy the Kurdish nationalists, who insisted on their demand for autonomy, seeking to delay the dismantling as long as possible, just as the PKK leadership in Kandil had done.

In the end, after years of being the tools of the United States on the ground, the Syrian Kurds heard from the US ambassador in Ankara and the special representative for Syria, Barrack, that they would not get even a shred of autonomy in Syria. Thus, the so-called “Rojava Revolution,” which began with the withdrawal of the Assad regime from Syrian Kurdistan, was quickly liquidated by order of the United States. Kurdish nationalists in Syria are so dependent on US imperialism that they could not raise the slightest objection to the decision imposed on them.

In the current situation, which is leading to a new world war, the Turkish state is filling its biggest security gap, which is the question of Syria. Kurdish nationalists, who now openly declare that Kurds in Turkey will enter the service of the Turkish state, cannot oppose the entry of Syrian Kurds into the service of the Syrian state.

In this context, there is one point that neither Turkey, Syria, nor the United States is addressing: the Iranian arm of the PKK, the PJAK. No one is talking about the PJAK surrendering its weapons. Behind the scenes of the staged destruction of weapons, it appears that the PKK’s military force is about to be transferred to eastern Kurdistan. In this way, the Kurdish dagger, in line with the interests of US imperialism, would be pointed at the Iranian bourgeoisie.

All these events demonstrate once again that, under the current conditions, the Kurdish question cannot be resolved within the framework of the capitalist regime, under the leadership of global and regional imperialist powers.

The only solution is through class struggle. The Kurdish proletariat must fight for its interests, organized in class unions together with the Turkish, Arab, and Iranian proletariat, reconnecting with its experiences of struggle, which in the past led to the establishment of workers’ councils in Iraqi Kurdistan.

It is on this path that leads to revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, seizing power in each of the capitalist states that exist today, that, once the material bases of the capitalist interests that today exploit unresolved national questions have been destroyed, they can finally find a solution.