Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, a veteran politician who first championed a new initiative to end the presence of the terrorist group PKK, renewed his commitment to the cause now widely endorsed by Parliament.
The leader of the government ally issued a framework made up of 50 points through a newspaper close to the party on Sunday. In remarks published by Türkgün, Bahçeli said that “the dawn breaks for the day of resolving our social problems for good, for finding lasting solutions to them.”
Terror-free Türkiye aims to end the campaign of terrorism of the PKK, which began in the 1980s, and began with Bahçeli’s call to the terrorist group to dissolve itself. The PKK responded to the call by announcing its dissolution last year, and since then, Turkish authorities have monitored the disarmament process of the group, whose senior cadres are based in northern Iraq. The PKK exploited disillusioned Kurds of Türkiye for its self-styled cause of creating a “Kurdistan” within Turkish borders, and Bahçeli says that its dissolution will reinforce Turkish-Kurdish unity. Parliament recently approved a law for deferral of sentencing and prosecution for PKK members not involved in acts of terrorism, and Ankara is expected to take new steps in the future for integration of those PKK members.
In his 50-point statement, Bahçeli said the issue is not only a matter of security but a matter for Türkiye’s future, to end the damage terrorism inflicted on the nation, on economy.
“The underlying reasoning of terror-free Türkiye is preserving the Turkish nation’s unity, cementing the Republic of Türkiye’s sovereignty and leaving a safer, more prosperous country to future generations,” Bahçeli told Türkgün.
The PKK and its jailed ringleader Abdullah Öcalan often emphasize that disarmament is the beginning of a democratic “struggle” for rights. Bahçeli said that violence should not be a tool for politics, and political demands can only be conveyed through democratic politics, laws and constitutional order. “Terror-free Türkiye is not a concept of submission, concession (to the PKK) or bargaining with it. It is about eliminating terrorism and achieving the goal of ensuring that the politics are executed through a legitimate democratic basis,” Bahçeli said.
“The elimination of terrorism also has the potential to transform the political agenda in Türkiye. As security concerns become less pressing, the aim is to create a political environment in which economic, social, cultural and democratic issues can be debated more extensively. The social dimension of a terror-free Türkiye is to foster a social climate that prioritizes reconciliation over conflict, integration over division, democratic politics over violence, and trust over fear,” Bahçeli also said.
