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Following a decision by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to disband, Turkey was on Wednesday eyeing a raft of legal and technical measures to ensure its full implementation and finally end a four-decade-long war.
Monday’s announcement sought to draw a line under a bloody chapter that began in 1984 when the PKK took up arms, triggering a conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives.
“What matters most is the implementation,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday, pledging to “meticulously monitor whether the promises are kept”
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a key player that facilitated contact between jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan and the political establishment, urged Ankara on Tuesday to take “confidence-building steps” such as freeing political prisoners.
So far, Turkish officials have said little but the government is working on a proposal that could ease prison sentences in general.
The text, which should be submitted to parliament by June at the latest, provides for the conditional release of all those in pre-trial detention for offences committed before July 31, 2023.
There are also plans to release to house arrest those who are sick, or women with children, if they are serving sentences of less than five years.
The moves could affect more than 60,000 people, Turkish media reports say.
No general amnesty
But the authorities are reportedly being careful not to frame it as an “amnesty.”
“Sick prisoners should not die in prison… These measures should not be interpreted as a general amnesty, which is not on the agenda,” Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said.
But DEM Party co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları said a move to free prisoners was essential.
“There are nearly 10,000 political prisoners in this country… If a peace process is ever to get under way, they must be released as soon as possible,” she said Monday.
For the DEM Party, that must include prisoners like Selahattin Demirtaş, the charismatic former leader of a former pro-Kurdish party who has been jailed since 2016.
“With the complete elimination of terror and violence, the door to a new era will open,” Erdoğan said Monday.
Some prisoners, such as Demirtaş or the philanthropist Osman Kavala, who is serving life on charges of “trying to overthrow the government,” could in theory be quickly freed if Turkey heeded rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, which has repeatedly demanded their release.
Proof of laying down arms
But before that, Ankara is awaiting concrete proof that the PKK has actually laid down its weapons, Abdulkadir Selvi, a columnist close to the government, wrote in the Hürriyet newspaper.
“The democratic changes will start after the head of the MİT (intelligence services) has submitted his report to President Erdoğan,” he wrote.
According to Turkish media reports, the MİT will supervise the weapons handover at locations in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
It will register the weapons handed in and the identity of the fighters in coordination with the Syrian and Iraqi authorities.
“Our intelligence service will follow the process meticulously to ensure the promises are kept,” Erdoğan said Wednesday.
Most of the PKK’s fighters have spent the past decade in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Those who have committed no crime in Turkey will be allowed to return without fear of prosecution.
But the PKK’s leaders will be forced into exile in third-party states such as Norway or South Africa, media reports suggest.
Ousted mayors
Duran Kalkan, a member of the PKK’s executive committee, said Tuesday that renouncing armed struggle “can only be implemented under (Öcalan’s) leadership” and when he is guaranteed “free living and working conditions.”
Experts say prison conditions for Öcalan, 76, will be “eased” but he is unlikely to leave the İmralı prison island where he has been held since 1999, largely because his life would be threatened.
“Naming trustees (to replace deposed mayors) will become an exceptional measure… after the terrorist organization is dissolved,” Erdoğan said, suggesting that Kurdish mayors removed from office over alleged ties to the PKK would be reinstated.
In total, 16 opposition mayors from the DEM Party and the main opposition Republican People’s Party have been removed since local elections in March 2024.
© Agence France-Presse