Hope, fear and anger for families waiting for war to end

When Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced last month that it dissolved and would end its insurrection for decades against Turkey, Leila hoped that she could soon find her son.

Three years ago, the former sandwich seller left the house to join the group – prohibited as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU – in the farm distant from Qandil, near the Iraqi border with Iran.

Aside from two videos he sent, the last in March, Leila has not seen it since.

“When I heard about the announcement for the first time, I was very happy,” said Leila, whose name we have changed because she fears reprisals of the group.

“But over time, nothing has changed.”

For 40 years, the PKK has been at war with Turkey in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people, including many civilians, and who is one of the oldest in the world.

Some families to which the BBC spoke bitterly condemned the PKK, while others have spoken proudly about the death of family members to fight for the group and estimated that this sacrifice had paved the way for peace talks.

The announcement of the PKK according to which he stops fighting was considered a historic moment for Turkey, his Kurdish minority and the neighboring countries in which the conflict has overflowed.

But since then, no official peace process with Turkey has started and there is no official cease-fire in place, with information that clarified on both sides.

Initially set up in order to fight against an independent Kurdish state in Turkey, the PKK has, since the 1990s, an orientation to demand greater cultural and political autonomy for the Kurds.

Leila, who lives in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq, who borders Turkey, says that she had not even heard of the PKK until her son, an Iraki-Kurd in their twenties, returned one day to talk about the ideologies of the group.

She accuses the group of “brain washing” her son, convincing him that they defended the Kurdish ethnic minorities in Türkiye, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East but have no nation state.

Leila says that over time, her son began to become more independent, making her bed, washing her clothes and making dishes. She now thinks that the PKK prepared him for the difficult life that he would soon live in the mountains.

On the day of his departure, he returned home with three “comrades” to tell his mother that he was going to the mountains to start six months of training.

She says she tried several times to dissuade him from joining the PKK, but it was determined to go.

“He was so determined. Stopping with him would have been of no use.”

Since then, Leila says that she has regularly visited the mountains of Qandil in the hope of seeing her son, but has never seen him.

“If they just let me see him once a year, I would be happy,” she said.

The BBC went to the Qandil mountains, having obtained rare access by the PKK to film there.

The mountains, which are not very populated and known for their natural beauty, help protect thousands of PKK fighters from Turkish air strikes.

The trip has taken hours to set up narrow and bumpy roads, in an area where there are few signs of housing outside a handful of farmers and shepherds.

While the BBC approached a PKK control point, we saw large photos of the group leader and founding member of Abdullah Ocalan – imprisoned by Turkey in solitary isolation since 1999 – displayed through the mountains. But when the BBC reached the control point, the PKK refused us the entry.

Later, the PKK authorities told us that talks are underway with the group and that they did not want media attention.

They did not say what the talks, although the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq, Fuad Mohammed Hussein last month, said that BBC discussions would take place with the PKK, Turkey, Iraq and the Kurdistan regional government to discuss the way the group’s weapons will be recovered.

Until now, the terms of a possible peace agreement between Turkey and the PKK are unknown.

The PKK told the BBC in a written statement that it was sincere and serious about the process, insisting that its chief, Ocalan, was to be released.

“The ball is now in Turkey court. A peace process cannot develop on the basis of the unilateral stages,” said Zagros Hiwa, spokesperson for Kurdistan Democratic Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group of regional Kurdish organizations.

But in a possible sign of the obstacles to come, a local senior commander, who is part of the second line of leadership within the group in Iraq, told the BBC in a written declaration according to which the disarmament was “to the discussion”.

Always suspicious of the intentions of Turkey, he adds that “when we approach the reasons for the armed conflict, weapons will not be of any use for both sides”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the apparent desire to end the conflict with the PKK, was interpreted by some as an attempt to attract Kurdish support to a new constitution to extend his 22 -year rule, which he denies.

He described the PKK’s decision to dissolve as an important step towards “our objective of an turkey without terrorism”.

Writing on X, the Turkish president said that a new era was about to start after “the elimination of terror and violence”.

For some families whose dear beings were killed by fighting for the PKK, the idea that the conflict could soon end is sweet.

Kawa Takoor was 21 years old when he was killed two years ago. His sister, Rondek Takoor, who lives in the Kurdish Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya, saw him for the last time in the mountains of Qandil in 2019.

Speaking from the family’s house, where photos of Kawa adorn the walls of the living room, Rondek says that the death of his brother changed the life of the family. “I always dream of him,” she said with eyes in tears.

Rondek, who is in their twenties, always remembers the last conversation they had together.

“I asked him if he wanted to go home with me and he said” never “. He even asked me to join him in the mountains,” she said.

For Rondek and his family, who are pro-PKK, the dissolution of the group would be both a moment of “pride and pain, especially after our enormous loss”.

She believes that “it was the sacrifices we have made and the martyrs we lost, who paved the way for leaders to talk about peace”.

What is happening then is uncertain.

There are questions about what would happen to thousands of Turkish PKK fighters and if they would be allowed to reintegrate into Turkish society.

Turkish officials have not yet said whether these fighters will be treated as criminals and undergoing prosecution. But reports from the Turkish media have suggested that combatants who have not committed crimes in Turkey could return without fear of prosecution, although PKK leaders can be forced to exile other countries or forced to stay in Iraq.

It is also not known what the dissolution of the group would mean for other Kurdish groups, especially in northeast of Syria, which Turkey considers to be shots of the PKK.

During the Syrian Civil War, Turkish forces and Syrian fighters supported by the Turks launched a series of offensives to capture the border areas held by a Syrian Kurdish militia called popular protection units (YPG).

The YPG dominates an alliance of the Kurdish and Arab militias called the Syrian democratic forces, which led the Islamic State group of a quarter of Syria with the help of a multinational coalition led by the United States.

The YPG says that it is a distinct entity of the PKK, but Turkey rejects it and proscribes it as a terrorist organization.

Erdogan said that the PKK’s decision to dissolve should “cover all organizational extensions in northern Iraq, Syria and Europe”. SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said that the PKK decision “would open the way to a new political and peaceful process in the region.”

However, he also said that the disarmament of the PKK does not apply to the homeless, which signed a separate agreement to merge the Syrian armed forces in December.

In Iran, the Pjak group, which is also part of the KCK, told BBC Turkish that it supported the “new process” in Turkey, but that it did not plan to disarm or dissolve.

Pjak is appointed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and Iran. There has been a de facto ceasefire between the group and the Iranian government since 2011.

Turkey says the Pjak is the Iranian arm of the PKK, but the Kurdish groups deny it.

For mothers like Leila, all the complexities of politics and the complex balance of military powers in the region are not relevant. What cares is to have her son again with her.

“He will come back to the house when he gets tired of the hard life in the mountains, at some point, he will realize that he can no longer take it.”

If this happens, Leila plans to leave their hometown where her son was recruited by the PKK.

“This city only brought me pain.”