Give and Take

Turkish authorities detained almost 300 people over the past five days, part of a large-scale crackdown on the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), despite renewed efforts between the government and the Kurdish group to end four decades of bloody conflict, the Associated Press reported.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 282 arrests took place in 51 provinces, adding that the detained individuals are suspected of providing financial support to the PKK, as well as recruiting members and participating in violent protests.

Local media said the detained included members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), left-wing activists, and at least three journalists,

The crackdown follows a recent push to restart peace negotiations with the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The PPK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.

The initiative began in October when the hardline Nationalist Movement Party – allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s party – unexpectedly reached out to PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to renounce violence in exchange for a potential early release, according to Agence France-Presse.

Since December, the DEM party has been engaged in talks with Ocalan and Turkey’s major political factions. A DEM delegation traveled Sunday to Iraq to discuss Kurdish concerns with regional leaders.

PKK militants operate from Iraq’s Kurdistan region, where Turkey has military bases and conducts operations against insurgents.

Kurdish leaders expect Ocalan – who has been serving a life sentence in solitary confinement since 1999 – to issue a call for disarmament in the coming weeks, potentially by the time of Newroz, the Kurdish New Year in March.

Even so, many Kurds remain skeptical of the peace process, citing the collapse of a 2015 peace initiative and Erdoğan’s ongoing crackdown on Kurdish political representation.

Since last year’s local elections, nine elected DEM mayors have been removed from office and replaced with state-appointed officials, most recently on Saturday in the eastern city of Van.

Critics warned that these actions undermine the credibility of the peace process.

However, analysts explained that Erdoğan is employing a strategy aimed at engaging in peace talks while maintaining political and legal pressure on Kurdish groups.

“It sends the message that if these negotiations don’t succeed, there is always this scenario of greater pressure on the members of DEM,” Sinan Ülgen of the analyst group Carnegie Europe told AFP.