5 hours ago
1
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Turkey is still bombing armed Kurdish insurgents in Iraq and Syria, even after their leader urged them to lay down their arms and disband, and their group declared a cease-fire.
March 12, 2025Updated 5:30 a.m. ET
Turkey’s military has kept up deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq on fighters linked to the Kurdish insurgent group P.K.K. in the two weeks since the movement’s founder called on his followers to lay down their arms and disband.
The P.K.K. leadership, which is based in the Qandil Mountains of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, responded to the call by the founder, Abdullah Ocalan, by announcing a unilateral cease-fire on March 1. But they said that Turkey had to release Mr. Ocalan from prison to oversee the group’s disarmament, a possibility that Turkish officials have not publicly entertained.
Previous efforts to negotiate an end to the 40-year Turkey-P.K.K. conflict, which has killed more than 40,000 people, have failed. This time around, Turkish officials are releasing little information about the state of any talks. But it appears that the process is still moving forward, and analysts say Turkey is not discussing its progress to avoid a potential domestic backlash.
What is the P.K.K.?
For more than four decades, Turkey has been fighting an armed insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., a militant group that says it seeks greater rights for the country’s Kurdish minority.
The group began fighting the Turkish state in the early 1980s, originally seeking independence for the Kurds, who are believed to make up about 15 percent or more of Turkey’s population.
