Solving the Kurdish Issue: The New Turkey, Anno 2025

Dr Can Erimtan
21st Century Wire

The historian Hakan Yavuz declares matter-of-factly that “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan [whom I like to call the Prez] is the most powerful, destructive, and revanchist leader of modern Turkey.” As an Islamist politician and leader, Tayyip Erdoğan is the one Turkish leader who has brought a decisive end to the Kemalist tradition, which dominated the country throughout the 20th century. Instead, he and his AKP henchmen have transformed the one-time quasi-secular Republic into an Islamic state in all but name. And this means that he has indeed taken his revenge on the name and the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), which is what Yavuz intimates using the adjective “revanchist.”

As a result, 21st-century Turkey is a very different country from the nominal nation state founded by Mustafa Kemal a little more than a century ago. Recently, the New Turkey’s AKP government was even able to pull off another feat numerous Turkish leaders and governments have been unsuccessfully trying to achieve for many decades now, namely the disarmament (which amounts to a de facto defeat) of the terror group PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, founded in 1978 as Kurdish militant political organization and armed group (or simply terrorist organization) that since ‘1984 . . . [has] caused thousands of civilian and security forces causalities and cost Turkey billions of dollars.’ Though “the republic has always been at pains to stress that Turkey is a unitary nation state with a homogeneous population, the reality is that Turkey’s population is ethnically diverse and an heterogeneous amalgam of individuals. Anatolia has always been home to a wide variety of ethnic and religious groups and sub-groups.” And with the exception of the Kurds, in time, these groups and sub-groups have been subsumed into the Turkish mainstream. The Kurds, on the other hand, are today spread out across a wide mountainous region of the Middle East, corresponding to a territory spread across four current countries — Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. 

A Kurdish Struggle in Turkey or Solving the Kurdish Issue

The New Turkey’s AKP leadership has long tried to solve the so-called Kurdish issue by means of appealing to a common Muslim identity and destiny: 

[A] so-called Solution Process was launched in 2009 with the AKP’s self-styled ‘Kurdish overture’ but [it] really only took off on 23 March 2013 when the PKK publicly declared a ceasefire that was met by a cessation of military operations on the part of the Turkish state. In the near-5-month period that succeeded the June elections, one could argue that the powers-that-be engineered a Kurdish gambit in the hope of garnering greater popular support and subsequent electoral favour. 

As a result, this AKP attempt to solve Turkey’s problems with the Kurds could not but prove  unsuccessful, as I explained in some detail: ‘On 22 July [2015], two policemen were assassinated by armed members of the PKK and as a result, tensions between the government and the Kurdish political movement came to a head and the Peace Process (or Solution Process) to an end.’ And, ‘intense waves of violent clashes between state forces and the PKK (or rather its military arm, known as HPG or People’s Defence Forces)’ followed:

The Turkish state, under the AKP, has thrown its full weight into the renewed fight against the PKK, or as some would argue, against the Kurdish population of south-east Anatolia (11 January 2016).

Now, nearly ten years later, the Prez and his AKP henchmen are once again beating the drums of peace and development in the country’s Kurdish areas. About two months ago,  speaking in a hotel in the Kızılcahamam district of the province of Ankara, Tayyip Erdoğan spelt out his vision: 

The issue of our Kurdish brothers is also our issue. But, not just our Kurdish citizens, the issue of our Kurdish brothers in Iraq and in Syria is also ours. We are also conferring with them regarding this process. Every step taken inside of Turkey does not just resound within our own boundaries, but also inside of Iraq [and] inside of Syria, all around our own geographical bounds. For us, the ability of our Kurdish brothers in Syria to live in calm, peace and security is a sine qua non. Brotherhood has no borders. Not the language, identity or location of the oppressed, instead their prayers [are] important. Turkey is not just the guarantor of peace inside the borders of Turkey, but within the whole geography of the heart. 

The Prez here assumes to speak for all the Kurds living divided across the borders of four countries – Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, in an area that has been referred to historically as Kurdistan. In quite an incredible semantic reversal of sorts, the President of the Republic of Turkey is now saying that Turks and Kurds are brothers, irrespective of ethnic or national differences. He is saying that Turkey is nothing but the foundation stone of Kurdistan. Tayyip Erdoğan is putting forward that Turks and Kurds basically belong to one nation – the New Turkey. And about a week ago, the Prez continued his Turk-Kurdish campaign, speaking to journalists on his return flight from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in China (31 August-1 September 2025): 

I also want to state this very clearly: whoever tries to sabotage this process will pay the price for it. Kurds are our brothers wherever they live. No one can separate us from each other. No one can lay an ambush for our eternal brotherhood.

The Prez now wants to go down in history as the one Turkish leader who ushered in a “Terror-free Türkiye” (using the country’s new name that was officially changed at the United Nations in June 2022, following a formal request by the Turkish government, a name change driven by the Prez’s desire to distance the country from the negative connotations of the English word “turkey,” which can refer to a large bird or to something that fails badly). Prior to flexing his political muscles domestically, he held bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as other regional leaders in Tianjin. Trying to show that he is a true world leader, Erdoğan even discussed paths to a “just peace” in Ukraine and the outcomes of the recent much-maligned Alaska Summit with his Russian counterpart. These international contacts only served as a backdrop to his renewed efforts to bring an end to the military conflict with the terror group PKK. 

A Prediction Fulfilled: Solving the Kurdish Issue

More than 10 years ago now, I posed the following question: ”Will solving the Kurdish issue eventually lead to a revived sense of Islamic solidarity among Turkey’s population?” Or, will this solution spell the end of Turkey as a nation state?!??

The idea of the Anatolian population as a purely Turkish entity harking back to ancient times was first proposed as early as 1922, the year prior to the official proclamation of the republic. And in 1924, the first Turkish constitution proclaimed that the “name Turk, as a political term, shall be understood to include all citizens of the Turkish Republic, without distinction of, or reference to, race or religion.” Though most Turks would disagree violently, the Kemalist definition of Turkish nationalism in the  early 20th century basically boils down to a re-definition of the 19th-century ideology of Ottomanism: 

All subjects of the empire are called Ottomans, without distinction, whatever faith they profess; the status of an Ottoman is acquired or lost according to conditions specified by law (Article 8, Kanun-ı Esasi, 1876). 

Now, Tayyip Erdoğan has narrowed down his definition of Turkish citizenship – Turks and Kurds – while simultaneously expanding the geographical scope of his designs. As far as I can tell, this is the first time in living memory that a Turkish leader has blatantly stepped beyond the sacrosanct borders of the Republic to claim Iraqi and Syrian Kurds as ‘Turks,’ basically. On the website of National Security Innovations or NSI, Inc., the following assessment can be read: 

Dr. Birol Yeşilada argues that Turkey’s security policy and actions cannot be fully understood without including President Erdogan’s personal political ambitions and domestic political considerations as critical motivators of state behavior. According to Yeşilada, President Erdoğan is using operations in Iraq and Syria to demonstrate his government’s strength and ability to provide security to Turks in order to advance his domestic political agenda. 

Yeşilada correctly appreciates Erdoğan’s domestic focus, still the Prez’s recent remarks indicate that he now wants to incorporate the approximately 30 million Kurds living around Turkey into the Republic’s body politic as well. Last year, the Norwegian scholar Simon Solberg-Arntsen declared the Kurdish issue as ‘an effective political tool’ used by the Prez to project a strongman image in Türkiye, the region, and globally.’ But beyond merely instrumentalizing Turkey’s Kurds, the Prez now really seems to be taking steps towards establishing the New Turkey as a state based on Turco-Kurdish brotherhood. 

As part of the Prezs’ “Terror-free Türkiye” progamme, early last month, Turkey’s Parliament (TBMM) set up a Parliamentary Commission on National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy, led by Numan Kurtulmuş (5 August 2025). So far, this talking shop has had eight sessions. The Commission will be able to draft legislation with a three-fifths majority, while other decisions will be made by a simple majority of those present. The Commission is expected to ‘continue its work until Dec. 31, 2025, and may extend its mandate by up to two months at a time with the approval of three-fifths of all members.’ Given that the “AKP’s political Islam has already been transformed into a form of Islamic nationalism,” as worded by Solberg-Arntsen, the Commission is now apparently laying the groundwork for the establishment of a New Turkey, comprising a nation of Turks and Kurds united under the banner of Sunni Islam, laying the groundwork for establishment of the New Turkey as a regional Islamic powerhouse. As mentioned earlier, the ‘most intense period of the conflict [with the PKK] came in the 1990s, which also saw the height of Turkish paramilitary activity,’ explains Ayhan Işık. Paramilitary activity that amounted to ‘the creation and/or usage of [armed] groups by the Turkish state.’ And ironically, ‘almost all of the members of the two [most prominent] groups – the village guards and Hizbullah – were ethnically Kurdish.’ 

Now, nearly four decades later, the Prez and his AKP henchmen have apparently been able to solve the Kurdish issue. The PKK leader and co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union (alongside Cemil Bayik), Besê Hozat (aka Hülya Oran), stated unequivocally:

“We destroy our weapons of our own free will as a decisive step toward the practical success of peace and a democratic society.”

As such, Tayyip Erdoğan has been involved with the Kurdish issue throughout the whole of his political career. On 18 December 1991, he had a report prepared by Mehmet Metiner (today an MP for Adıyaman)  entitled “Kürt Sorunu ve Çözüm Önerileri” (or ‘The Kurdish Issue and Proposals for a Solution’) and presented it to his leader and mentor Erbakan: “The Kemalist state’s traditional method of applying force and using weapons has gone bust.” 

The issue that today is called the ‘Eastern’ or ‘South-Eastern Issue’ is actually a ‘Kurdish Issue.’ The areas that are today being referred to as the East or the South-East are situated inside a geographical area that has actually been called ‘Kürdistan’ since time immemorial. The language spoken by the Kurds is Kurdish. It is an independent language that has no connection with Turkish whatsoever . . . The area has been stuck between state terror, on the one hand, and PKK terrorism, on the other… The people living in the area have been left without material or life assurances. The people living in the area are even being fed ‘shit,’ if need be.

Tayyip Erdoğan used Metiner’s extremely harsh words when he was the Refah Partisi (or RP)’s provincial chairman for Istanbul. 

And now, more than a quarter century later, as the head of the Turkish Republic, Erdoğan is now showing the world that Islamist politics do trump Kemalist policies. And that Turkish nationalism has now effectively been replaced by Islamic nationalism. On the other hand, a Kurdish scholar like Loqman Radpey cautiously or maybe merely cynically remarks that “[t]his so-called peace process, or ‘terror-free Turkey’ as the Turkish state calls it, may be as short-lived as the Trump-Elon Musk partnership.” 

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