The PKK’s Low-Intensity Warfare

The Kurdish question dominates Turkey’s political agenda again, this time through low-intensity urban warfare. Just a year ago, a peace deal between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkey seemed attainable, but the situation has deteriorated since the summer of 2015. The government has not sufficiently appreciated how the Kurds’ gains in Syria and Iraq have become the reference points of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. Recent fighting has resulted in the further consolidation of the Kurdish movement around the PKK, which bodes ill for the future of Turkey and the Kurdish movement in general. This vicious cycle can only be broken by the mutual accommodation of Turkey and the PKK on Syria and Turkey’s Kurdish regions. Turkey will need to cease to question the Syrian Kurdish gains and look for some kind of modus vivendi with this entity; the PKK must reciprocate by terminating its urban-warfare strategy in Turkey.