Earlier on February 8, Yılmaz Tunç, the Turkish Justice Minister, ruled out the possibilities of increased Kurdish rights in exchange for a dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), recognized by Turkey as a terrorist group.
Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, is expected to call for the disarmament and potential dissolution of the group on February 15. This date is significant for PKK supporters, who refer to it as the day of the “international conspiracy” against Öcalan, in which Israel and the United States were accused of helping Turkey arrest Öcalan, while Greece was criticized for allegedly allowing the event to happen. Öcalan is essentially the Turkish equivalent of Osama Bin Laden in the United States.
Murat Karayılan, the current leader of the PKK, stated that disarming the PKK is not an option unless there is first a bilateral ceasefire, Öcalan’s physical freedom, and guaranteed legal recognition of the Kurds and the Kurdish language.
Many theorists claimed that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not have the power to immediately increase Kurdish rights, but would do so after gaining Kurdish support for the removal of constitutional limits on the presidency and establishing absolute control of the country. It gets deeper, with many of his critics alleging that he had always been the most Pro-Kurdish, and only took the nationalist, anti-Kurdish turn from 2014 to 2024 to silence his critics who accused him of preferring Kurds over Turks.