The Fragile Turkish-PKK Peace Process

The Fragile Turkish-PKK Peace Process Threatened by Renewed Fighting between the Syrian Army & Pro-Kurdish SDF

The sudden fighting in Aleppo between the Syrian army and the pro-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) along with local Kurdish supporters that broke out on January 6, 2026, threatens the already fragile Turkish-PKK peace process that has been ongoing since October 22, 2024. This is because Turkey views the SDF as an extension of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which has supposedly disarmed and disbanded as part of the peace process. 

Although it proclaims its inspiration from incarcerated PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and its military leader General Mazloum Abdi is a former member of the PKK politburo, it is probably an unrealistic assumption that Ocalan has the power to compel the SDF to disarm. This is because the Syrian Kurds have come a long way along their own road since the Syrian civil war began in March 2011. It would be sadly ironic, if the Turkish-PKK peace process broke down over whether or not Ocalan did or did not have the authority to decisively order the SDF to stand down. Turkey should not fall victim to its own misunderstanding propaganda and unreasonable fear of the Kurds. 

Although the de facto Syrian Kurdish leader General Mazloum Abdi earlier declared that the PKK decision to disarm and disband is “worthy of respect” and “will pave the way for a new political and peaceful process in the region,” he prominently added that the so-called PKK peace process with Turkey does not apply to his military SDF and associated political Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). 

Nevertheless, on March 10, 2025, the new Syrian government of president Ahmed al-Sharaa and General Mazloum Abdi did sign an agreement theoretically integrating the Kurdish-led SDF into the national Syrian army and government. However, the March 10 accord did not settle the essential issue over whether the new Syria would be centralized or the Kurds continue to enjoy their hard-won autonomy. Another fundamental difference pertained to whether the SDF would maintain its cohesive unity within the Syrian army or have that unity abolished and its fighters simply integrated into the Syrian army individually. 

These were first-degree issues that would determine the future of the Syrian Kurds. Thus, it would be difficult to imagine the Kurds giving up their hard-won rights of battle by integrating into al-Sharaa’s version of a new centralized Syria without constitutional guarantees of Kurdish rights. Furthermore, as is well-known, al-Sharaa and his core followers were earlier notorious jihadists who fought bloody battles against the Kurds such as Kobane in 2014-2015. Why would the Kurds suddenly trust such people without meaningful guarantees? 

Thus, the terms of the accord on March 10 were so vague as to amount to merely postponing a later decision between Ahmed al-Sharaa’s demands for a centralized Syria under his rule or a decentralized one that would allow the AANES meaningful autonomy. Indeed, al-Sharaa’s government already has proven rather inept in its efforts to unite Syria given the fighting and massacres perpetuated against the Alawites last February 2025 in Latakia near the Syrian coast and the Druze in the southwestern governorate of Suwayda this past July. 

The pro-Kurdish SDF 50-100,000 fighters trained and partially equipped by the United States will certainly prove a much harder nut to crack. For its part, the United States has faltered in its earlier attempts to bring the SDF and AANES to the bidding of Damascus. As Amberin Zaman, an astute observer of the situation concluded, “Syria’s Kurds would fiercely resist a Turkish (or Syrian) incursion. The PKK albeit under a new name, would join the fight. . . . Erdogan’s pledges for ‘a terror-free Turkey’ would go up in smoke.” Therefore, for the time being at least, the PKK-affiliated SDF and AANES in Syria remain viable and complicate any peace process between Turkey and the PKK. 

Indeed, it stretches the imagination, that anyone would imagine the Syrian Kurds are going to so easily forsake their seasoned military and hard-won democratic confederalism institutions so easily. As just pointed out, General Mazloum, the SDF commander, has already declared that the supposed PKK disarming and disbanding does not apply to his organization. Rather, it seems that the vague accord between him and Ahmed al-Sharaa on March 10, 2025, was largely window dressing to appease Turkish and U.S. pressure to stabilize post-Assad Syria despite Arab Syria’s historic animosity to Kurdish rights. The two merely kicked the can down the road until the end of the year. However, that day has now arrived and fighting has ensued with potentially disastrous implications for the fragile Turkish-PKK peace process, which was already nearing an impasse. Its future now hangs in balance.

Ironically, even before entering their peace process, Turkey and the PKK framed the reasons for doing so in starkly opposing lights as victories for themselves. Although not necessarily fatal to the process, the manner in which they then proceeded to frame what their long-running conflict was about in such utterly different terms might be. The Turkish government considered the core issue as simply ending terrorism, while for the PKK it was the much broader one of constitutional Kurdish rights. 

Given its perspective, Ankara’s solution was for the PKK to disarm and disband within the existing ultra-nationalist Turkish constitution, which grants no rights to citizens identifying as Kurds. This would require Kurdish assimilation into the larger Turkish society. However, the PKK and many though not all ethnic Kurdish supporters demanded a guaranteed place for themselves as Kurds. The opposing sides inhabited different universes, a problem that challenged success for the peace process from the very onset. 

However, now the sudden fighting between the Syrian army and pro-Kurdish SDF presents a more immediate challenge to the fragile peace process. The Syrian army ordered Kurdish civilians to abandon the three Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafiyeh, and Bani Zeid in Aleppo—the second largest city in Syria and not even located in the SDF-controlled area of Syria to the east of the Euphrates River—before it began further military strikes against SDF elements by early afternoon on January 8. Shortly after the deadline expired, shelling began between the two sides, violence that added to what had already begun two days earlier. 

The clashes were some of the most severe violence in Syria since the Assad regime collapsed in December 2024. They also represented the lengthiest fighting between the two sides since they had signed their vague agreement of March 10, 2025. Already, approximately 140,000 civilians have been displaced by the fighting. At least eight civilians have been killed in the Kurdish areas, while seven civilians and one soldier died in the government-controlled districts. Dozens more have been wounded on both sides. Both sides accused each other of violating human rights. More casualties are likely by the time this article appears in print. 

The greater fear, of course, is that the present violence is simply the opening of much larger Syrian army attacks against the Kurds, backed possibly by Turkey and its Islamic allies, the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA), which has a long record of violence against the Syrian Kurds. Meanwhile, Turkey has taken ominous steps by sending large, armored convoys and hundreds of troops into northern Syria from Afrin, Ras al-Ayn, and northern Aleppo, areas of northern Syria already controlled by Turkey and its Islamic Syrian militias. 

Turkey has warned that it “will provide the necessary support to the Damascus government if the latter is compelled to launch a military operation.” Indeed, Turkey and its Syrian militias have already attacked the Syrian Kurds several times in recent years, most famously in October 2019 because of the Turkish fear of hostile Syrian Kurds supported by the PKK on Turkey’s border with Syria. Hakan Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, has termed the SDF the “biggest obstacle to peace in Syria.”

Amongst all this bellicosity, the United States is the main power that has influence over all three sides. Turkey is its NATO ally. U.S. president Donald J. Trump has embraced al-Sharaa’s new Syria, while the United States famously armed and trained the SDF as local boots on the ground to successfully fight ISIS. Indeed, the SDF still guards as many 10,000 captured ISIS fighters and their families, whom surely it does not wish to see freed to reignite their murderous jihadist rampages. Thus, the United States rather pathetically has called for restraint on all sides and repeated that its envoy and Trump’s personal friend, Tom Barrack, was trying to mediate. Good luck! 

Michael M. Gunter is the secretary-general of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC), an NGO that promotes a peaceful settlement to the Kurdish issue in Turkey. He is also a professor of political science at Tennessee Tech University and the author of Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (London: Hurst & Company, 2014).