ANKARA, June 24 (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that work was underway on a legal framework that would speed up the disbandment of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and that it would be put on parliament’s agenda without much delay.
The move signals a potential breakthrough after a peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK came to a near standstill in recent months due to the Iran war and the concerns it triggered about further regional instability.
The PKK, which waged a decades-long separatist insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, decided in May 2025 to disarm and disband, after an appeal from its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Turkey announced last November its plans for establishing a new legal framework but the country’s Kurdish politicians had accused the government of moving too slowly.
“At the point we have reached, we are working on a legal framework that will speed up the disbandment of the group. Once the necessary deliberations have been made, we will present the legislation in question to parliament without too much delay,” Erdogan told lawmakers from his ruling AK Party in parliament, without elaborating.
“I believe we have the capacity to solve the issue without compromising on our state’s qualities, our people’s values,” he added, saying that the integration of Syrian Kurdish militants into Syria’s state apparatus, a key element of the process, was also moving along.
The PKK launched its insurgency in 1984. It initially sought an independent Kurdish state in southeast Turkey but later changed its goals to autonomy and Kurdish political rights.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Daren Butler and Gareth Jones)
