The Kurdish peace process
The bill filed in Turkey's parliament on 5 August 2026 would suspend the sentences of PKK members rather than erase them, would take effect only once the National Security Council confirms that the group has dissolved and handed over its weapons, and says nothing about Öcalan's own status.
The process began in October 2024, when Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the nationalist MHP and President Erdoğan's coalition partner, publicly offered Abdullah Öcalan a “right to hope” if he told the PKK to dissolve. Öcalan issued that call in February 2025. The PKK held a congress in May 2025 that voted to disband, staged a symbolic disarmament ceremony in northern Iraq and began withdrawing fighters from Turkey to Iraq. Parliament then set up a commission to work out the legal consequences.
Those consequences are now a bill. The Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integration, twelve articles, was filed on 5 August 2026 with 360 signatures from six parties. It would not take effect on its own. Article 1 makes everything conditional: security institutions must first establish that the PKK has ended its existence and handed over its weapons, and a National Security Council decision confirming that finding must appear in the Official Gazette. Only then does the clock start, and applicants have six months to come forward.
What follows is deferral, not pardon. Investigations, prosecutions and prison sentences of up to fifteen years would be frozen for five years, anything heavier for ten, including life and aggravated life. If no new terror offence follows in that window, the case is dropped or the sentence counts as served. The bill excludes intentional killing within the organisation's activities, and offences before 1 June 2005 that carry life terms. The Washington Times says that leaves Öcalan and other senior PKK figures outside it.
Each side takes something different. The government gets the PKK's end certified by its own National Security Council, no general amnesty on the statute book, and a separate board chaired by the vice president to run implementation, seating the justice, foreign, interior and defence ministers and the intelligence chief among others. The bill's own rationale insists it erases no conviction and ends no criminal responsibility. The DEM Party gets a legal route home for members abroad and in prison, and put its name to government-backed legislation.
Almost everything else is open. It has been submitted, not passed and not in force. The Justice Committee takes it up on Friday 7 August, with the General Assembly pencilled in for Sunday 9 August. Its trigger has not been met: the security council's communiqué of 6 August still lists the PKK first among the terrorist organisations it fights, wording bianet calls unchanged. Legal scholars say it could work as a conditional amnesty needing a larger majority. Rights groups say the opposite, that its exclusions are too wide.
”With this law we are setting out to solve a historical problem. We are at the beginning of a democratisation process that will be at least as important as the founding of the republic.”
The numbers
What the comparison shows
Where they agree
Deputies from six parties, from the MHP to the DEM Party, signed the bill. They agree that a forty-year armed insurgency should be ended in parliament rather than in the field, and that the PKK's dissolution needs a legal form. Even most critics say the aim is right.
Where they split
The fight is over what the text is. The bill's own rationale says it removes no conviction, changes no offence's legal character and ends no criminal responsibility, but only regulates the legal consequences of a disbandment. Legal scholars reply that it could function as a conditional general amnesty and so would need a higher majority. İYİ rejects the premise that an organisation like the PKK can dissolve itself at all. The Human Rights Association argues the opposite, that the exclusions and the restriction on political activity make the law too narrow to produce a lasting peace.
What nobody is saying
What the text leaves out carries the weight. There is no clause on Öcalan's status, none on his release and none of the democratisation that parliament's own commission report set out. The PKK said in July that a law passing over Öcalan and the senior leadership would solve nothing and would obstruct its own implementation. The DEM Party calls the bill a first door rather than a settlement, and Yeni Parti wants the democratisation chapter to move in step with it. Whether that second law is ever written is the real test.
Who says what
Started the process and wants to go further than the bill: Öcalan should be granted the right to hope, Demirtaş should be released, and the two removed mayors he calls “the Ahmets” should get their posts back.
”Selahattin Demirtaş evine, Ahmetler görevine, Öcalan umut hakkına kavuşmalıdır.”Selahattin Demirtaş should return home, the two Ahmets should return to office, and Öcalan should be granted the right to hope.
Spoke two days before the text was filed, welcoming the law politics was expected to produce and calling it a key that would open the process. His words reached the public through the DEM Party's İmralı delegation, Pervin Buldan, Mithat Sancar and Özgür Faik Erol, who visited him on 2 August and published them the next day.
”Bu yasa ile tarihsel bir sorunu çözmek için yola çıkıyoruz. En az Cumhuriyet’in kuruluşu kadar önemli olacak bir demokratikleşme sürecinin başlangıcındayız.”With this law we are setting out to solve a historical problem. We are at the beginning of a democratisation process that will be at least as important as the founding of the republic.
Calls the law a first step that should neither be inflated nor dismissed, and says her party will keep naming its shortcomings.
”Bir gün, bir an ya da bir dönemle sınırlı olmayan siyasi ve hukuki bir inşa sürecinin ilk kapısı aralandı”The first door has been opened onto a political and legal process of construction that is not limited to one day, one moment or one period
Backs the process but calls the text carelessly drafted. His party will table amendments in committee and take part in the vote, but will not sign, and he demands that democratisation run alongside the law rather than after it.
”Altıncı madde ile demokratikleşme kısmının peş peşe değil, iç içe olması gerektiğini söyledik. Silahların bırakıldığının teyit ve tespitine kadar geçecek süre demokratikleşme adımlarının atılacağı süredir. İmza namustur.”We have said that the sixth article and the democratisation part should not follow one another but be interwoven. The time until the laying down of weapons is confirmed and established is the time in which the steps towards democratisation are to be taken. A signature is a matter of honour.
Rejects the premise outright. İYİ was, by his own account, the only party group that refused to sign the commission's report, and its request for a general debate on the bill in the chamber was voted down.
”Bu PKK sözde hukuki bir organizasyon mudur ki kendini feshetsin?”Is this PKK a so-called legal organisation, such that it could dissolve itself?
Calls the bill an important first step but wants a wider scope: drop the sorting by offence type and date, and drop the restriction on political activity during the deferral period.
”Silahın yerine ikame edilmek istenen siyasi faaliyetlere katılımın kısıtlanması kabul edilebilir bir tutum değildir.”Restricting participation in the very political activity that is meant to replace the weapons is not an acceptable position.
Our coverage
- Opposition and legal scholars attack the draft PKK peace law over due processFriday, 7 August 2026
- Erdoğan's ruling party files PKK peace bill in parliament, offering suspended sentences to returning militantsWednesday, 5 August 2026
- Barzani visits Damascus as Kurdish diplomacy over SDF integration accelerates in the new SyriaWednesday, 5 August 2026
- Bahçeli and Öcalan urge parliament to back the legal framework for the peace processMonday, 3 August 2026
- Kurtulmuş says the joint ‘terror-free Türkiye’ bill reaches parliament next weekSaturday, 1 August 2026
- Erdoğan says the bill on the PKK's dissolution reaches parliament within daysThursday, 30 July 2026