Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) MP for Diyarbakir (Amed) Cengiz Çandar said the progress of the process will depend on President Erdoğan’s own political calculations, noting that no real steps have been taken even at the introductory stage.
Çandar answered ANF’s questions regarding the ongoing contacts around the resolution process, the state’s current posture, the work of the Commission, the impact of Rojava, and domestic political maneuvres inside Turkey.
You said in September, “We are not inside the resolution process; we are at its entrance.” Are we still at that entrance?
We are still in the very first paragraph of the introduction. In fact, if you ask me, no progress has been made at the entrance at all. Recently, the optimistic and encouraging tone used by members of the Imralı delegation who met with the President, as well as by Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar from the DEM Party after their meeting with President Erdoğan, revived hopes. President Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech at the Justice and Development Party (AKP) parliamentary group last week further fed that optimism. It was precisely around that time that the appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) was rejected, and Selahattin Demirtaş’s release began to be perceived as almost imminent. Statements from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which forms the governing bloc, though this is not a formal coalition, including comments by party leader Devlet Bahçeli and Commission member Feti Yıldız, who is considered the party’s legal architect, also suggested we might be at the beginning, at the threshold, of a new period. But concretely, we still have nothing.
I read Duran Kalkan’s remarks on Medya Haber. He is highly critical, yet at the same time he says, “We have entered the second phase.” I read it carefully, trying to understand what he means by this “second phase.” From what I can gather, the Kurdish Movement has done what it needed to do; now the ball is in the state’s court. A step is expected from that side, but it has not yet come. If you ask, “Why hasn’t it come?”, I am asking the same question. While trying to answer it, I reach the conclusion that the state is still hesitant to take some steps. I honestly cannot determine the reasons for this hesitation. The Commission has not gone beyond circulating the ball in midfield; it has not done the core work it is supposed to do. Numan Kurtulmuş, the Speaker of Parliament and head of the Commission, is aware of this. We were together recently in Diyarbakir, and he also acknowledged the situation there, saying the Commission would soon complete its work and take steps.
The founding purpose of the Commission and its expected actions rest essentially on two pillars: First, drafting the framework for a return law. Second, making certain amendments to the execution law. By “return law,” they refer to work on what they call the “dissolved terrorist organisation.” The intent is not a general amnesty but a legal framework that, following the 11 July call to lay down arms, would enable the reintegration of thousands of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas into Turkey’s political and social life. Similarly, individuals linked to the organisation who are currently refugees should regain their freedom, return to Turkey, and participate in political and social life. The Commission was established to prepare these legal arrangements. Once it completes its work, holds one more meeting with the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) chief, finishes its hearings, and prepares a report, it is expected to turn to its foundational mandate.
The Commission was supposed to convene this week for its final meeting, but due to the recent plane crash, it was postponed by a week. If it meets next week, we must still be realistic: this is budget season. Until the end of December, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey has little time for anything other than the budget. If this process is going to move forward, the introductory chapter must reach Parliament by January or February. But this is Turkey, you don’t believe anything until you see it. That is why I say we are still in the first paragraph of the introduction. We have not even reached the bottom of the page.
Returning to Duran Kalkan, there is one very important sentence in his remarks: “There is no alternative path; we will take on this process.” This means that, at this moment, there is no other instrument, no other agenda available on the road toward resolving the Kurdish question, other than this process itself.
Reuters published a report based on Turkish sources, claiming that a legal arrangement covering 9,000 PKK members is being prepared. Yet you also said we are still at the introductory stage. In this sense, do you think there is such preparation on the state side? In other words, is the state actually prepared for this process, or for a peace process?
This process, I believe, started somewhat earlier than people assume. It is often perceived as beginning with the handshake between Devlet Bahçeli and the DEM Party co-chairs on 1 October 2024. But the background goes further back. We are in fact talking about a process whose button was pressed by the state itself. The second foundation of this process is Abdullah Öcalan. In the notes leaked from Imralı, Öcalan says he is not meeting with the AKP or the MHP but with the state, and that the state is one side of this process.
So, if we place the starting date earlier than 1 October 2024, this is not the state’s first point of contact. There is an initiative stretching back decades. There was the Turgut Özal period. Öcalan himself refers to 1993. There was a phase in the early 2000s. And between 2009 and 2011, there were the ten meetings in Oslo, conducted between state institutions and the PKK leadership, with Öcalan’s knowledge. Then, of course, there were the public talks between 2013 and 2015. In all of these, the state was present.
So, when the state launched the current process, it already had a considerable archive in hand. It is impossible to imagine that it began without some form of preliminary planning about how it might conclude. If you ask me today, as we speak on the 12th or 13th of November, “Does the state have a format for this?” I can say with 100 percent certainty: yes, it does. Some state institutions and bodies already possess such a format. The issue is not whether the documents exist, but how they will be used, and through which stages they will be channelled. The mechanisms are clear: the Commission, Parliament, and whatever comes next. We are not going to import new instruments from outer space. The material is already there; what remains is its presentation. And the tools for that presentation are the Commission and Parliament. But the one who must push the button is the executive. And when we say “executive,” we mean the governing bloc, one side MHP, the other side AKP, and fundamentally the executive itself. And let us not forget: since the 2017 constitutional changes and the 2018 elections, Turkey has had a presidential system, in fact, a kind of “one-man” system. So when we say “executive,” we are essentially saying Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The process moves according to his own political roadmap and timetable.
When questions like “Why hasn’t it happened yet?” are asked, we cannot give clear answers because we do not know the details of Erdoğan’s internal roadmap. But he appears to have one, and if he intends to act according to it and if this is not a deception, which he repeatedly insists it is not, then we should pay attention to the signs: the Imralı delegation’s meetings, the tone of his speeches in Parliament and at the AKP group, the positive shift compared to his language a year ago. If he truly intends implementation and the signals come from him, then the process will advance according to the political plan and timetable he holds in his mind. We just do not know yet what that plan looks like.
If we attempt to reason about the timing: there is an ongoing integration process in Syria, and international actors expect a settlement there before the end of the year. The Syrian Interim President, Ahmed al-Sharaa (Al-Jolani), visited the United States and met with Trump. Meanwhile, AKP spokesperson Ömer Çelik said that “the PKK should dissolve all its structures.” Is the timing of this process tied to these developments?
My interpretation differs from the commonly repeated narrative. Everything is constantly linked back to Syria, as if nothing can move forward here until Syria reaches clarity, or as if any setback there automatically drags this process down. People even argue that the 2013–2015 process collapsed because of Syria. I object to that outright. Of course, Syria played a role, but was it the reason? No. It may have been one factor, but certainly not the decisive one.
Why did the 2013–2015 process collapse? Neither the Kurdish Movement nor the state has truly confronted that question. What did each side do? What did they refrain from doing? Why? Only when those answers are addressed can Syria be placed properly within the picture. From the standpoint of my own information and analytic approach, Syria was not the primary cause.
Coming to today, Syria has become a convenient justification for the current stagnation. Every hesitation and delay is tied to Syria. I do not find this convincing. On 11 July, weapons were burned in line with the PKK congress decisions of early May and the ongoing dialogue between Abdullah Öcalan and the state. This was a clear declaration: the PKK ended its armed struggle against Turkey.
Then the Commission was established. As I said, it has been circling the midfield, listening, absorbing public pressure, yes, but ultimately moving too slowly. On 26 October, people left the country. Was a single shot fired inside Turkey? No. We learned about the presence of some individuals only as they departed. That, too, occurred through coordination between Abdullah Öcalan and the PKK. What does any of this have to do with Syria?
If we take Ömer Çelik’s recent statement, “Let the PKK end itself entirely, in all its structures”, at face value, fine, extend that expectation to Syria as well. But the steps taken so far, the May congress, the 12th Congress responding to Öcalan’s 27 February Call for Peace and a Democratic Society, the answer to Devlet Bahçeli’s appeal on 22 October, none of these have Syria embedded in them. Extend the timeline and Syria simply does not appear.
Look at what happened in Sweida (Suwayda) in July, or the attacks on Alawite communities in Latakia and its countryside in March. Do they really imagine that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will individually go and hand over their weapons? On what grounds would such a demand be made, with what logic? It is impossible.
And from Abdullah Öcalan’s remarks during last week’s family visit, as relayed by his nephew, DEM Party MP Ömer Öcalan, and reported by Mezopotamya Agency, we know his position on Syria is very clear. He says: “Syria is Syria. Developments there must be observed. Turkey should help. Just as it meets with Ahmed al-Sharaa, it must also meet with Mazlum Abdi and Ilham Ahmed.” What he is not saying is, “Go and surrender your weapons one by one.” Because there is no such situation in Syria.
As for your point about Ahmed al-Sharaa: forty-eight hours ago he entered the White House, the first Syrian head of state ever to do so under that title and was received under a special protocol. The meeting was closed to the press, but Donald Trump did meet with him. And we have already seen the results. Today, Mazlum Abdi said he held an excellent phone call with U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack and that talks between the SDF and the Damascus government would be revived under the 10 March Agreement.
Other elements are also known: the integration of SDF-affiliated forces into the Syrian army as one division and two brigades; the elevation of their commanders to senior posts in the General Staff; arrangements concerning local administration, the list is long. But to summarize all this with one sentence: Syria today is an American mandate.
Just as Iraq and Palestine fell under British mandate after World War I, and Syria and Lebanon under French mandate, with Lebanon carved out of Syria, today, after the Gaza War and the thirteen years of conflict from 2011 to 2024, Syria is under an American mandate. What will happen between the SDF and Damascus, how Syria will be shaped, all of this will depend on the relations among actors under that mandate. Israel will have a role, Turkey will have a role, but this cannot be reduced to “Turkey said this” or “Israel did that.” In the final analysis, the United States is redesigning this mandate, listening to Turkey with one ear and to Israel with the other and let’s be clear, its ear toward Israel is far more attentive. Will they succeed? We do not know. But imagining a Syria that is not under an American mandate leads nowhere. There is no path there. So, whether it is Ömer Çelik or someone else, much of what is being said on this front is simply empty rhetoric.
If we return to the domestic side of the process: one of the expectations from the Commission was a meeting with Abdullah Öcalan. The last meeting was postponed due to the plane crash, but the debate around whether the Commission should meet him has been ongoing. There are also ECtHR rulings that remain unimplemented, for instance, the Selahattin Demirtaş judgment. Meanwhile, Esenyurt Mayor Ahmet Özer has been released. Looking at this overall picture, it seems possible to take important steps within Turkey’s legal framework without passing major new laws. Some progress could be made even before the full process is completed. Why, then, is there still no step?
The point overshadowing the process is that it appears deeply intertwined with the domestic political agenda. And to be frank, the government bears significant responsibility for this. If you envision, in their own words, a “terror-free Turkey,” or in Abdullah Öcalan’s terms “a path toward peace and a democratic society,” then Turkey’s internal political balance and public atmosphere must be aligned with that vision. Yet at the same time, the government is carrying out operations against the Republican People’s Party (CHP). Some mayors who emerged through the “urban consensus” formed with DEM Party voters have been removed from office; one of them was released only after a year. The DEM Party mayors of Mardin and Van remain suspended. In Şişli, there is no corruption allegation, yet Mayor Resul Emrah Şahan is still held in pre-trial detention on the basis of that same “urban consensus.” Unless these political landmines are cleared, it is difficult to make progress. In fact, it is almost impossible to make progress.
President Erdoğan’s confrontational approach toward the main opposition, using the judiciary as a tool, also impacts the process. How does it impact it? Let me explain. Good (IYI) Party Chair Müsavat Dervişoğlu, who is hostile to the process, operates on the CHP’s nationalist ground. When you look at media outlets assumed to be under CHP influence, you see İYİ Party figures appearing more frequently than CHP members. This fuels the nationalist wing inside CHP and triggers their resistance to the process.
All of this produces a loud chorus repeating two points: First: “The CHP should withdraw from the Commission, what business do they have there?” Second: “Under no circumstances should the Commission go to Imralı. And if it does, the CHP must absolutely not be part of it.”
All of these dynamics negatively affect the healthy advancement of the process. This may also serve as a delayed answer to your earlier question: the elements slowing and disrupting the rhythm of the process are its entanglements with domestic politics. From the very beginning, we have said that the nature of this process makes it highly vulnerable to internal and external provocations. And this is precisely what we are seeing now.