Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi announced on Thursday that 219 members of the PKK terrorist group have surrendered to Turkish authorities since the group announced its dissolution on May 12, 2025.
Speaking to broadcaster 24 TV, Çiftçi commented on the terror-free Türkiye initiative launched in 2024 and how his ministry contributed to the process, which aims to complete the disarmament of the PKK.
Çiftçi noted that one recent step involved the removal of 2,763 security checkpoints set up particularly in southeastern Türkiye, which has been a hotbed of PKK attacks. “Our inspectors still work in the field and try to determine whether we can remove other checkpoints as well,” he said.
The minister, a former governor who served in the southeastern and eastern provinces that were affected by PKK terrorism, noted how checkpoints have been ubiquitous there as part of security measures.
Emphasizing that the Ministry of Interior has been closely monitoring the initiative, Çiftçi said: "We have been carrying out efforts to persuade members of the terrorist group to surrender. The terrorist group laid down its arms on May 12, 2025. Since that day, 219 members of the group have been persuaded to surrender. Of these, 134 have surrendered this year alone, within this six-month period. Checkpoints were another component of our efforts. We continue our search and sweep operations in the field. We have located 58 shelters, hideouts, storage sites or other living areas used by the terrorist group, and we have dismantled them. Our operations on the ground, conducted through the General Directorate of Security and the Gendarmerie General Command, are continuing at full speed."
As an example of improved security in the southeast, Çiftçi recalled how Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş joined the public at an event on the outskirts of Mount Cudi, where the PKK had maintained hideouts and carried out attacks in the past.
"Would something like this have been possible in the past? Today, events can be held on Mount Cudi because security has been established and a safe environment has been restored. Likewise, a wrestling festival was held in the Cilo Mountains in Hakkari. In the past, organizing such an event in Hakkari would have seemed unimaginable,” he said.
Çiftçi added that they believe tourism and economic activity in the region will continue to grow as the initiative expands, the region becomes increasingly free of terrorism, and security continues to improve.
Sources close to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and its ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose leader Devlet Bahçeli first touted the idea of the initiative, told media outlets that the legal amendments to advance the process would likely be presented to Parliament in July and may be enacted before Parliament’s summer recess in August.
The framework law, as it is dubbed by the Turkish media, consists of several articles that are expected to address the future of PKK members after their disarmament. Though the contents are still unclear, they are expected to include partial amnesty for those not actively involved in terrorist attacks. Sources told BBC Turkish that the law would be “temporary” and would be implemented only after it is verified that the PKK has fully abandoned weapons.
The PKK had taken the first step to end its more than 40-year campaign of terrorism in May 2025, announcing it would dissolve itself. In July 2025, the group held a ceremony in northern Iraq, with terrorists literally burning their weapons on the path to complete dissolution. All these moves were a culmination of the initiative launched by Bahçeli, who has called on the group’s jailed ringleader, Abdullah Öcalan, to urge the PKK to lay down arms, and Öcalan has replied positively, making the said call in February 2025.
The initiative is largely proceeding in secrecy, except for visits to Öcalan by the members of the pro-PKK Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and for regular meetings of the National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Committee, set up by Parliament to provide guidelines for the process.
