Cemil Bayik: No disarmament until Öcalan is free

Cemil Bayik's words reflect a widespread disappointment within the PKK, as well as among its supporters, about the progress of the peace process. After promises from the Turkish regime of far-reaching concessions to the fighting Kurds, Abdullah Öcalan in February 2025 called on his own to lay down their arms.

The PKK declared a ceasefire and the Turkish Air Force stopped attacking the guerrillas' headquarters in the Qandil Mountains along the Iran-Iraq border. Some PKK members would be granted amnesty and allowed to operate politically in Turkey, whose constitution would be rewritten to equalize Turkish and Kurdish citizens. But Öcalan remains a prisoner on the island of Imrali in the Marmara Strait, where he has been held since 1999.

- We do not trust the Turkish state and we will not get rid of our weapons until "Apo" (Öcalan, editor's note) is free, says Bayik who together with Öcalan started the armed rebellion against Turkey in 1984.

The initiative for the detente between Turkey and the PKK came, very unexpectedly, from the far-right MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, who is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's most important political partner. Turkey, Bahçeli argued, must make peace with the Kurds and direct all military and political power against Israel challenging Turkey's position in Syria.

Since then, Turkey and its allies in Damascus have advanced their positions and, with US connivance, wiped out the Kurdish de facto state of Rojava in northern Syria. The Israeli threat seems less imminent today, seen from Ankara's horizon.

Another reason why the Turkish regime has been in less of a hurry to complete the peace process with the PKK is the climate of opinion inside the country. Erdogan, who is expected to seek a third presidential term in 2028, is worried that too "kind" treatment of the PKK leadership would become ammunition for his nationalist opponents during the next election campaign.

Öcalan was arrested in Kenya in 1999 by Turkish agents and sentenced to death the same year. The sentence was never carried out and the PKK leader has been kept in strict isolation, except during periods when Turkey and the Kurds negotiated and his participation was unavoidable.

During the ongoing peace process, he has been allowed visits from the Kurdish left party DEM's elected officials, who acted as mediators during the process. DEM's founder and central figure Selahattin Demirtas has been imprisoned for ten years.