 in the March 2024 local elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched secret talks with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan. Erdogan's objectives were clear: to shatter the electoral alliance between the CHP and the pro-Kurdish DEM party that had helped propel the opposition to victory, and to harness DEM support for legislative and political maneuvers that would enable him to run for a third presidential term when his second, and final, five-year mandate ends in 2028.){kind=link}
As Trump deepens his Syria push, Washington is probing whether its leverage can turn fragile truces into lasting peace.
After his party suffered a national defeat to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the March 2024 local elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched secret talks with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan. Erdogan’s objectives were clear: to shatter the electoral alliance between the CHP and the pro-Kurdish DEM party that had helped propel the opposition to victory, and to harness DEM support for legislative and political maneuvers that would enable him to run for a third presidential term when his second, and final, five-year mandate ends in 2028.
The outreach to the Kurds, made public by Erdogan’s nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli in an extraordinary parliamentary address in October 2024, was presented to a skeptical Turkish public as an effort to establish a “terror-free” Turkey.
This was meant to culminate in a perfect marriage between the security state’s objectives and Erdogan’s personal ambitions, with some benefits thrown in for the Kurds. The PKK would end its more than 40-year armed campaign against the Turkish state, followed by the group’s dissolution. In the process, the thinking goes, the nationalist fury that had contributed to derailing a previous round of peace talks in 2015 would be avoided.
In exchange, amnesty and other forms of legal reprieve would be accorded to Ocalan and eligible fighters. Decades of pressure on elected Kurdish officials and overt expressions of Kurdish identity would cease. The biggest prize of all would be Ankara’s tacit acceptance of the mini statelet formed under partial US protection by the PKK’s Syrian franchise in northeast Syria, which it has long sought to destroy. That prospect is thought to have been instrumental in the PKK’s decision to go along with its revered leader’s orders. On May 12, it announced that it was disarming and disbanding. “The mother is sacrificing herself for the baby” is how Bayar Dosky, an Iraqi Kurdish academic, described the PKK’s move to Al-Monitor at that time.
Twenty months on, such calculations have been thrust into disarray by the momentous changes upending Syria, which have rekindled relations with the United States after decades of deep freeze.
In 2015, the Syrian Kurds’ refusal to comply with Turkey’s demands to join the Sunni rebels seeking to overthrow Syria’s now ousted dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was one of the main reasons the previous peace talks failed and Turkey resumed the war against the PKK in Iraq and Syria alike. Now, disagreements over the Syrian Kurds’ future status under their country’s new ruler, Ahmed al-Sharaa, are what stand in the way — not only of a deal between Ankara and the PKK but also of one integrating Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by Kurdish figures who were long active in the PKK.
The two processes are so inextricably linked that unblocking one depends on unblocking the other, and from Ankara’s vantage point, it is Syria that needs fixing first. In a nutshell, Turkey does not want Syria to grant its Kurds any rights that it would be unwilling to grant its own.
The longer the impasse persists, the greater the risk that the existing ceasefires between Turkey and the PKK, and Turkey and the SDF, could collapse, drawing Syrian government forces into the fray. The Islamic State, Assad regime remnants and other malign actors would have a field day. Israeli intervention in Syria would surely increase.
For both the Kurds and Damascus, the only power capable of untangling the knot is the United States.
Though Turkey has for decades bitterly resisted any US involvement in its Kurdish affairs, the reality is that the Trump administration is firmly planted in the mix and is producing some results.
State of play
Sharaa’s historic Nov. 10 meeting in the White House with President Donald Trump has injected fresh life into the talks after months of deadlock — especially since Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who arrived in Washington at the last minute, was briefly in the room.
Many Kurds expected to be invited separately and sooner given their contributions to the war against ISIS and were bruised by their exclusion from the Syrian delegation, yet they are putting a positive spin on the affair. Sharaa’s visit proves that “the United States has decided to take control of the Syria file,” in the words of one Kurdish source with close knowledge of the negotiations between Damascus and the Kurds. This in turn means that Washington will not permit Damascus or Turkey to engage in any unilateral attacks against the Kurds.
The US’ Syria envoy, Tom Barrack, has been engaged in strenuous shuttle diplomacy to avert precisely that outcome. In early October, he helped to broker a ceasefire between the SDF and government linked forces in Aleppo following a spike in clashes that were threatening to spiral out of control.
He has been pressuring Damascus and the Kurds to implement the March 10 agreement, signed between Sharaa and SDF Commander in Chief Mazlum Kobane, which laid the groundwork for integrating the SDF into the national army. Waves of sectarian violence against Alawites and Druze that left thousands dead have bolstered the SDF’s hand, with Barrack now acknowledging that the tightly centralized rule advocated by Sharaa cannot work.
One of the thorniest issues — the merger of the SDF’s US-trained multiethnic, mixed-gender forces with the Syrian National Army — appeared to be partially addressed last month, when Kobane announced that Damascus had agreed to the establishment of one division and two brigades composed of SDF forces, which would remain deployed in the Kurdish-run third of the country.
Al Arabiya, citing unnamed Syrian Kurdish officials, reported on Wednesday that the SDF had named three SDF commanders to take up positions in the Ministry of Defense to lead the division and “at least two brigades.” The commanders were identified as Luqman Khalil, Jiya Kobani and Jamil Kobani. SDF officials could not be reached for comment.
The announcement suggests that a compromise of sorts may be in the works, whereby in exchange for preserving homogeneous SDF units under the overall command of the Ministry of Defense, the SDF will allow government forces to enter the parts of the oil-rich province of Deir ez-Zor that remain under its control. The area that falls to the east of the Euphrates River is hugely strategic because it borders Iraq, where Iran-backed Shiite militias continue to hold sway. However, a senior SDF source who spoke on condition of anonymity to Al-Monitor on Wednesday said that “nothing has changed.”
The SDF had initially proposed to let government forces and bureaucrats in, but only if power would be shared and SDF commanders would retain their positions. That proposal was rejected by Damascus.
Syria’s decision to join the US-led global coalition against the Islamic State could yet build bridges between the SDF and the national army Sharaa is trying to establish. With more than a decade of working with elite Pentagon forces, the SDF can provide training and know-how to the new army, especially in continuing to fight ISIS.
Leveraging Caesar
Though Barrack claimed recently that the talks were going « amazingly well, » until a formal integration deal is announced it would be premature to assume that one is irreversibly in the making. It is no secret that the sides are under US pressure to send out positive signals, and Turkey likewise faces pressure to refrain from bellicose rhetoric against the Kurds. This is because the administration’s foremost priority is to get remaining sanctions on Syria fully repealed. The Treasury Department on Monday announced another 180-day waiver on sanctions that have isolated Syria from the global financial system and discouraged foreign investment under the Caesar Civilian Protection Act. Trump has been lobbying Congress for the full and permanent repeal of the act.
It came as no surprise, then, that Kobane posted an effusive message on his X account thanking Trump for “his leadership on Syria and giving the people of Syria a chance for greatness.”
However, certain lawmakers, notably Brian Mast, the Republican congressman from Florida who heads the House Foreign Relations Committee, are opposed to the repeal, saying Sharaa needs to prove his commitment to the protection of minorities first. Although Mast shared a positive message about his meeting with Sharaa this week, he stopped short of saying he had changed his mind.
Israel is believed to be pressuring congressional members sympathetic to the Jewish state to not scotch the sanctions until it strikes a security deal with Syria.
The Kurds view the sanctions — and the brakes they put on potential aggression from Damascus and Ankara — as critical leverage in their negotiations with Sharaa. And as a top SDF commander Sipan Hemo made clear in a recent interview with Al-Monitor, the Kurdish position is that until Damascus provides ironclad guarantees for political and cultural rights for Syria’s different ethnic and confessional groups that would be enshrined in a democratic constitution, the Kurds will not cede ground.
The underlying message, according to a Kurdish politician in Turkey who spoke to Al-Monitor on background, is that unless Sharaa agrees to shed his autocratic and exclusionary style, the Kurds would be “willing to face whatever consequences that may ensue.” In other words, they are betting that because Sharaa has an aversion to renewed conflict, underpinned by the weakness of his forces and fear of drawing congressional ire, he will make further concessions.
Many also believe that Erdogan’s desire to remain in power means that Ankara, too, will be open to further compromise, with Washington gently nudging it along.
Meanwhile, thousands of ISIS fighters and their families remain sequestered in prisons and camps that are under the SDF’s control.
More broadly, neither Syria’s neighbors nor the Europeans — who fear potential new influxes of refugees — want the country to plunge back into war and instability. At the same time, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel all want to curb Turkish influence in Syria and hence maintain open lines to the SDF.
All of this strengthens the Kurds’ hand.
Lockstep with Turkey
But Fidan’s presence at the White House is a clear signal that, as Barrack has stated, especially when it comes to matters to do with the SDF, the Trump administration will act in lockstep with Turkey. Turkey “is so key to the future of Syria,” Barrack said at a recent conference in Bahrain. Trump has also repeatedly hailed Erdogan’s role in Syria, crediting him with “the successful fight in ridding Syria of its past leader.”
The Pentagon’s alliance with the SDF led to the meltdown in US-Turkish relations under the Obama administration. Trump was on the point of reversing the decline when he approved Turkey’s 2019 invasion of a chunk of Kurdish-held northeast Syria. He was also on the verge of withdrawing US troops from the northeast but was forced to reverse the order amid a congressional revolt.
The US military presence has been one of the Kurds’ strongest cards. But it also gives Washington leverage to push them into an agreement with Sharaa. Barrack, who is double-hatted as the US ambassador to Turkey, wielded the threat of a pullout soon after he was named the Syria envoy in May. Ankara believes that, depending on the course of the negotiations, it is one that could be wielded again.
During a joint news conference with Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, in Ankara Wednesday, Fidan said that Turkey “noted with satisfaction” that the United States was playing “a constructive role” with regard to Syria’s “problems with the Druze in the south and the PKK in the northeast.”
Back in Turkey, PKK leader Ocalan is viewed as another crucial means of influence to bring the SDF into line. Minutes of a leaked video conference held in May between Ocalan and his lieutenants in the field offer clues about his thinking on Syria. The Syrian Kurds’ de facto foreign minister, Ilham Ahmed, was present, as was an unnamed member of Turkey’s national intelligence agency, MIT. The leak could have occurred only after vetting by Turkish authorities. During the course of the meeting, Ocalan stressed the importance of local democracy and of a democratic constitution for Syria. But he then went on to tell her that control over Syria’s “foreign frontiers and border crossings must be handed over to the [Syrian] state.” His comments differ from those made during a separate face-to-face meeting with his lawyers, who relayed that he had called northeast Syria his red line.
The timing of the leak, some five months after the video conference took place, is a clear signal that Turkey wants Ocalan to use his heft. The challenge for the 77-year-old PKK leader is to keep Turkey happy enough for it to continue its dialogue with him without besmirching his image among the millions of Kurds worldwide who adore him.
The challenge for the PKK and the SDF is to sustain their biggest gain since launching their struggle 40 years ago — establishing an autonomous Kurdish entity with its own civilian and security structures — without abandoning the man to whom they believe they ultimately owe it all to, leaving him to spend his remaining years behind bars. For it is Ocalan who, in 1979, led and grew the PKK from Syrian soil — following his flight from Turkey — and planted the seeds of a freedom Syria’s long-suppressed Kurds never knew, only to be captured with the CIA’s help two decades later.