President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said they were expecting “good news” in the terror-free Türkiye initiative, referring to the highly anticipated disarmament of the PKK terrorist group. “We will have good news in the coming days,” Erdoğan told the parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on Wednesday. The first batch of terrorists will reportedly lay down arms on Friday in Iraq, according to media reports. "Terror-free Türkiye will not betray the memory of our martyrs. We are saving our country from a bloody shackling with terror-free Türkiye. After the wall of terrorism comes down, things will be different,” Erdoğan said.
"Our friends and enemies will see that the sacrifice of our martyrs was not in vain when we achieved the terror-free Türkiye goal first and then, a terror-free region," he said, referring to soldiers who died fighting the PKK. On Sunday, 12 soldiers died after exposure to methane while combing a cave once occupied by the terrorist group in northern Iraq for the body of a soldier slain by the PKK in 2022.
The terror-free Türkiye initiative engineered by Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), last year, has followed warnings by Bahçeli and Erdoğan about the risk of spillover of Israeli aggression in the region. At that time, Israel, encouraged by international inaction against its brutal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, had targeted Lebanon, before moving into neighboring Syria, where it claimed parts of the Golan Heights contested between Tel Aviv and Damascus for years. Since then, Israel spread its aggression to Iran, launching unprecedented attacks on Tehran. Erdoğan and Bahçeli had repeatedly urged caution against what they called the fact that it may target Türkiye next if not stopped. Although Türkiye managed to boost its defenses through new, locally-made weapons systems, terrorism remained a major security threat for decades. After the civil war erupted in neighboring Syria, Türkiye faced another security risk in the form of the YPG, the Syria wing of the terrorist group PKK, which carved out a so-called autonomous region for itself in northeastern Syria, right across the Turkish border. Türkiye has launched cross-border offensives to stop the YPG after the latter launched several cross-border attacks.
The initiative is largely endorsed by the opposition parties, though some tried to exploit the situation, claiming that Ankara reached a deal with the PKK and "betrayed" people killed by the PKK since the 1980s. Authorities insist that the PKK cannot impose conditions on the state and any acts of terrorism amid a pledge of dissolution would be responded to in kind. "We never took and will not take any steps that will hurt the memory of our martyrs. Indeed, the values our martyrs died for guide us in this initiative. Our martyrs sacrificed their lives for our brotherhood, and the initiative will cement it," he said. The PKK has long exploited the Kurdish community in Türkiye, brainwashing Kurdish youth to join it to fight for "Kurdistan." More than a decade ago, Türkiye launched a "reconciliation process" to redress the rights of the Kurdish community, to end the PKK's justification that it fought for Kurds.
"Turks, Kurds, Arabs, the entirety of Türkiye will be the winner in this initiative. Our brothers in the region will win. In my meeting with the DEM Party, I affirmed our will to put our ideal of terror-free Türkiye into practice," he said, referring to his reception of two lawmakers from the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) on Monday. The DEM Party acted as an intermediary between Öcalan, Parliament and the public, relaying his messages and calls to the PKK.
