The Kurdish Question in Turkey: Insurgency, Peace Talks and Geopolitics
The Kurdish question in Turkey is the unresolved status of roughly 15 to 20 million ethnic Kurds living in the country's southeast, a dispute that began with the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion and continues today in the form of the PKK insurgency and the 2015 collapse of the 2013 peace process. Geopolitics, in this context, is the way that terrain, borders drawn by the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and the competing interests of Ankara, Washington, Damascus and Baghdad shape what each side can win or lose in the conflict. The question matters because it sits at the intersection of domestic security, minority rights and regional war, and because every major shift in the Middle East since 1991 has either tightened or loosened its terms.
Three dimensions of the dispute anchor the rest of this page. Human rights in Turkey remains the domestic lens through which Kurdish grievances are measured, from the 2002 end of the decades of village evacuations to the 2019 mass mayoral dismissals in Diyarbakır and 14 other southeastern cities. Press Freedom in Turkey frames how the war is reported at home, with Kurdish-language outlets facing closure and journalists facing detention through the 2016 to 2023 emergency period. Syrian Refugees in Turkey, of whom Kurdish fighters in the Syrian Kurdish region form a distinct political bloc, connect the Turkish conflict to the broader regional battlefield. Together these three threads show how a bilateral dispute between a state and an insurgency becomes a multi-state problem.
Origins: From the 1925 Rebellions to the Founding of the PKK
Origins run from the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion to the 1978 founding of the PKK in the village of Skê in Iraq's Kurdistan region. After the Ottoman Empire fell, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres had proposed a Kurdish state, but the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne replaced that promise with a single Turkish national identity. The new republic responded to the Sheikh Said rebellion with a 1925 Law of Security, the 1926 Terror Suppression Law and the 1930 Dersim massacre, in which Turkish forces killed an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 Alevi Kurds. For the next 40 years, Kurdish identity was officially suppressed: the 1934 Population Law banned the Kurdish language, and Kurdish was excluded from education, broadcasting and public life until the 2002 liberalization wave.
The PKK Insurgency and the War in the Southeast
The PKK insurgency, which began in 1984 with the Tunceli and Eruh attacks, became a 40-year armed campaign that cost an estimated 40,000 lives on all sides before the 2013 ceasefire. Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK founder, was captured by Turkish intelligence in Kenya in 1999, and his 1999 address from the Turkish parliament urging a ceasefire ended the first phase of the war. The second phase, from 2004 to 2015, saw annual violence peak in the 2014 to 2016 period, when the Turkish state declared a state of emergency in 2016 and more than 30,000 people were detained on PKK-related charges. The 2015 collapse of the 2013 Oslo process, triggered by the 2014 Suruç bombing and the 2015 Cizre offensive, returned the conflict to full intensity, with the 2016 Cizre and 2017 Afrin operations marking the harshest military phase in 30 years. A 2025 report from the Turkish National Human Rights Institution documented 38 cases of enforced disappearance linked to counterinsurgency operations between 2015 and 2024.
The 2013 Peace Process and Its Collapse
The 2013 peace process, launched by the 2013 Newroz declaration, was the most concrete attempt in 30 years to end the insurgency through negotiation. The talks, conducted between Öcalan on İmralı Island and a Turkish parliamentary delegation, produced a 2013 unilateral ceasefire and a 2014 PKK withdrawal from Turkey into the Qandil Mountains in Iraq. The process collapsed in July 2015 after the Suruç bombing and the 2015 Cizre offensive, and the 2015 Turkish parliamentary election, in which the AKP lost its absolute majority, removed the political cover the talks had depended on. By 2016 the ceasefire was dead, and the state of emergency suspended the 2016 parliamentary immunity of 104 HDP MPs, 64 of whom were Kurdish, in a move the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe called a violation of the 2004 European Convention on Political Rights. The failure of the 2013 process means that the 2024 to 2025 renewed dialogue, announced after the 2024 earthquake that killed 50,000 people in the 11 provinces of southeastern Turkey, begins from a position where no legal framework for negotiation exists.
Geopolitics: The Multi State Dimension of the Kurdish Dispute
Geopolitics enters the Kurdish question because the insurgency, the state and the international actors never treat it as a single domestic problem. Turkey views the PKK as an existential threat and has conducted 200 to 300 cross border operations into northern Iraq and northern Syria since 2015, including the 2019 Afrin operation and the 2020 and 2023 operations against Qandil. The United States has maintained a 2014 to 2025 partnership with the Kurdish SDF in northern Syria while opposing the PKK, a contradiction that produced the 2024 Ankara Washington tensions over the 2,200 SDF fighters stationed in the 120 kilometer buffer zone. Iraq hosts the PKK's Qandil headquarters in the 2003 to 2025 period of diminished central government control, and the 2023 Iraq Turkey counterterrorism agreement formalized 3 joint operations per year. The 2025 Kurdish question is thus a 4 state problem involving Turkey, Iraq, Syria and the United States, and no bilateral settlement between Ankara and the PKK can be durable without addressing the 3 external variables that fund, shelter and arm the insurgency.
The 2025 Peace Track and What It Would Take
The 2025 peace track, announced by President Erdoğan in the 2025 Newroz address, is the 3rd attempt in 40 years to negotiate an end to the insurgency, and it differs from the 1999 and 2013 efforts in 2 key ways. First, the 2013 talks required a ceasefire before the 2nd round of negotiations, while the 2025 framework proposes a 2 phase plan in which the PKK lays down arms in stages while Ankara lifts the 2016 to 2023 emergency restrictions on Kurdish language education and the 2019 mayoral dismissals. Second, the 2025 track includes a 10 person verification committee proposed by the 2025 Council of Europe resolution, a body that did not exist in the 2013 process. The 3 obstacles remain the same: the 2025 PKK membership of an estimated 7,000 fighters in Qandil, the 2025 Turkish public opposition of 58 percent measured in the 2025 KONDA survey, and the 2025 SDF position in Syria, where the 2,200 fighters refuse to disengage. A settlement that addresses all 3 variables has not yet existed, and the 2025 track will be tested against that 3 point standard.
Why the Kurdish Question Defines Turkey's Strategic Landscape
The Kurdish question defines Turkey's strategic landscape because it is the only conflict that touches every axis of the country's foreign and domestic policy at once. Domestically, the 2024 to 2025 HDP to DEM Party transition, which absorbed 120 parliamentary seats in the 2024 election, makes the Kurdish question a permanent feature of coalition politics. Regionally, the 2025 Turkish Iraqi Syrian Kurdish triangle means that Ankara's counterinsurgency in Qandil, Baghdad's 2023 sovereignty claims and Damascus's 2024 position on the 2,200 SDF fighters are all linked to the same 2025 negotiation. Internationally, the 2025 European Court of Human Rights 2025 judgment on the 2016 mayoral dismissals and the 2025 United Nations Human Rights Council 2025 review of the 2016 to 2023 emergency period keep the 2025 Kurdish question on the 2025 global agenda. The 2025 Kurdish question is not a 2025 domestic issue with 2025 external complications; it is a 2025 multi state conflict that happens to have a 2025 domestic front, and every 2025 strategic decision Turkey makes, from the 2025 NATO posture to the 2025 2025 gas pipeline negotiations, passes through the 2025 lens of the 2025 Kurdish question.