Turkey’s new peace initiative with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been “frozen,” a senior PKK figure said on Thursday, warning that the lack of recent contact with the group’s jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was a dangerous sign for peace efforts, Turkish Minute reported.
Murat Karayılan, one of the leaders of the PKK, told the pro-PKK ANF news agency that the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) delegation that has been holding talks with Öcalan has not met with him for about a month.
“As of now, the process has been frozen. This is what we see,” Karayılan said.
His remarks came a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the process, which the government calls “a terrorism-free Turkey,” would continue and that Ankara had passed several critical thresholds.
The PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, has waged an armed campaign against the Turkish state since 1984. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people.
The latest process gained momentum after Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on İmralı Island near İstanbul since 1999, in February 2025 called for the PKK to lay down its arms following months of talks. The group said in May 2025 that it had decided to dissolve itself and end its armed campaign.
Karayılan said April had been presented by government and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials as the month when laws linked to the process would be introduced, but no meeting with Öcalan had taken place.
“The fact that there was no meeting with Öcalan in April, a month everyone expected with excitement as the month when the laws [to resolve the conflict] would be passed, is not normal and is a dangerous sign for the future of the process,” he said.
Karayılan said the failure to move forward despite a parliamentary commission report showed the process had been halted.
A parliamentary commission headed by Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş approved a report in February outlining a roadmap for legal steps linked to the peace initiative. Erdoğan said Wednesday that the approval of the report had brought Turkey to a stage that needed to be managed with care.
Karayılan rejected accusations from government circles that the Kurdish side has failed to take steps.
“It is clear that we have fully done everything needed for the government to take steps,” he said. “It is not an ordinary decision for an organization to end the armed conflict strategy it has pursued for 42 years and dissolve itself. It is a strategic decision.”
He also criticized Ankara’s position that the PKK should first lay down arms and that legal steps should come afterward.
“This attitude, to put it mildly, is dragging the matter uphill and imposing surrender,” Karayılan said. “Anyone who knows the field and thinks realistically knows very well that this is not possible in practice.”
Karayılan said PKK members could not lay down their arms without legal guarantees, citing conflict and insecurity in the Middle East.
“In the current situation, the guarantee of our forces is the security system we have established and our weapons,” he said. “It would be irrational for us to lay down arms on this ground without a legal guarantee.”
His statement highlights the main dispute in the process. Ankara says the PKK must take verifiable steps to end its armed activity before broader legal and political measures are taken. Kurdish political actors say Öcalan’s call and the PKK’s decision to end its armed campaign should be followed by laws that would protect the militants and allow members of the group to leave armed activity without fear of prosecution or attack.
DEM Party officials have also stepped up criticism of the government in recent days. Tülay Hatimoğulları, the party’s co-chair, accused Ankara this week of acting in a “hesitant, timid and stalling manner.”
