One Year of “Peace Process”: Has the Forty Years of Armed Conflict Between the PKK and Turkey Ended Under International Law?

[Rojda Arslan works for MAF-DAD, the Lawyers Association for Democracy and International Law and serves as a reporter for Oxford University Press’s International Law in Domestic Courts. She also works as legal counsel and a trainer in conflict-affected regions where she specialises in capacity building for documenting and prosecuting international crimes]

In October 2024, the Turkish government’s far-right ruling coalition, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), unexpectedly initiated negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the pro-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ Party (DEM), conditioned on ending the years of isolation of PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan. As a result of Öcalan’s peace call in late February 2025, the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire, its decision to disband and disarm after more than four decades of armed conflict with Turkey. While the PKK stopped active hostilities following their announced unilateral ceasefire, Turkey only decreased armed violence after the PKK’s symbolic disarmament ceremony on 11 July. Active hostilities between the parties have since decreased and on 5 August 2025, a 51-member National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy Commission (hereafter: the commission) was formed to put an end to the conflict.

It has now been one year since negotitations began. Can we speak of a legal end to the non-international armed conflict (NIAC) under international humanitarian law (IHL)?

The Beginning of the Armed Conflict

Under IHL, a NIAC is the protracted armed violence between a state and an armed group of a non-state character, or between such groups. As defined by the ICTY in the Tadić decision, two cumulative criteria must be satisfied. The intensity of hostilities, which is characterized by the scale, duration, and organization of the violence, the use of heavy weaponry, and the involvement of forces; and the organization of the non-state armed group, which is determined by its command structure, internal discipline, ownership of weapons, capacity to provide military training, recruit new combatants, coordinate operations, and control over territory.

The PKK began its armed struggle with about 200 fighters on 15 August 1984 when it conducted coordinated attacks against Turkish military bases. During the conflict’s peak in the 1990s, the PKK had a command structure, owned weapons, and was able to recruit between 12,000 and 15,000 fighters, which proved their strong organizational and operational capacity. This conflict was marked by intense hostilities, including large-scale military campaigns, mass casualties and displacement, enforced disappearances, and widespread destruction of thousands of villages, the overwhelming number of the victims being Kurdish civilians. The Belgian Court of Appeal of Brussels has confirmed in 2019 that the armed confrontations between the PKK and Turkey constitute a NIAC pursuant to Article 3 common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to which both parties are bound.

While previous ceasefires have failed due to missed political opportunities, this unilateral ceasefire, together with the decision to disband and disarm, signifies a decisive break in the cycle of armed violence and a strategic and potentially lasting shift from armed conflict to peace.

IHL differentiates between the temporary cessation of hostilities and the final conclusion of a NIAC. The legal termination of a NIAC occurs only when the conflict’s defining conditions no longer exist. The legal regime would then shift from jus in bello to general international human rights law. But there remains significant legal uncertainty as to when a NIAC ends because the ICTY only ruled that IHL applies until a “peaceful settlement” is reached. However, armed conflicts are often more complex, and thus, there is no universally accepted test to determine when a NIAC ends.

The Three Element Test

Scholars have proposed four tests, which, however, remain weak and vague in their application to asymmetric armed conflicts. For this reason, I decided to apply Farley’s more practical and cumulative three-element test in order to assess whether the conflict has ended. It examines:

(i) whether hostilities have diminished below the Tadić threshold for the existence of a NIAC,

(ii) the quality of pacification, and

(iii) the length of time since violence ceased and steps toward pacification began.

The first element (i) is fulfilled when organized armed hostilities fall below the Tadić threshold of intensity and organization, that is, when one or both sides no longer have the structural capacity or intent to pursue military actions. The PKK’s unilateral ceasefire, its decision to disband and disarm express such intent to permanently end organized hostilities. The PKK has stopped attacks since then. This also shows a sustained decline in the intensity of armed activity. Although the group’s dissolution as a non-state actor would, in principle, remove a key party to the NIAC and thereby meet an essential condition for ending the conflict, the absence of independent verification and structured disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) measures prevents confirmation that its organiational capacity for hostilities has fully ceased. Particularly taking into account that the PKK’s decision to disband was voluntarily rather than the result of defeat or dismantlement.

On the other hand, Turkey has still not formally reciprocated the PKK’s ceasefire after the PKK’s disbandment, but has instead intensified military operations and carried out at least 510 attacks on PKK positions in the Kurdistan Region of north Iraq. It was only after the PKK’s symbolic disarmament that Turkey stopped military attacks. Nevertheless, Turkey still maintains a massive military expansion and presence within and along its borders, based on counterterrorism claims against the PKK, which qualify as indicators for the intensity of the conflict. Along its southeast, Turkey maintains 73 checkpoints, more than 50.000 state-supported village guards, and a constant gendarmerie presence in predominantly Kurdish provinces. In the Kurdistan Region, Turkey controls 136 military bases, one of which was recently built following the PKK’s decision of dissolution, spanning an area of over 2,000 km². In north and east of Syria, also known as Rojava, Turkish forces, in violation of the jus ad belllum, occupy 114 bases, including Afrîn, Jarablus, Serê Kaniyê, and Girê Spî.

Such extensive deployments imply Turkey’s ongoing capacity to conduct organized hostilities, so it cannot be confirmed that the intensity of violence has fallen belowthe Tadić threshold for the time being, despite a mutual pause in active hostilities.

The second element (ii) takes into account the quality of pacification and whether a NIAC has been stabilized through significant measures that institutionalize peace, prevent recurrence, and show that the parties have attained their objectives. For instance, through clear statements of renunciation of hostilities and the implementation of concrete pacification steps such as DDR, amnesties, or monitoring.

The PKK has taken significant steps toward pacification, including the ceasefire and their decision to disband and disarm. These steps suggest a clear intent to end the armed struggle and begin a transition toward political participation. The PKK has long dropped its initial demand for an independent Kurdistan and, on the contrary, fought for greater cultural and political rights of Kurds within Turkey. At its final congress, the PKK declared that the resistance to the denial and assimilation of the Kurdish identity has been achieved through the armed resistance and that weapons no longer served its purpose. Of particular relevance is that the PKK has, since the beginning of the conflict, called for ten unilateral ceasefires, each of them reverberating its consistent wish to put an end to the armed violence and turn to political dialogue with the objective of attaining a democratic and peaceful solution.

The responsibility has since shifted to Turkey to end the conflict through dialogue. After the PKK’s disarmament ceremony, Turkey established the commission to advance dialogue. Although this body provides a formal mechanism for potential reconciliation, it has produced no tangible outcomes after having held thirteen sessions. The commission has still not implemented DDR programs, reintegration measures, amnesties, or UN-monitored mechanisms, steps necessary to end the conflict and ensure durability. Another point to consider is that Turkey frames the process as a “Terror-Free Turkey” narrative, emphasizing internal security and counterterrorism over genuine pacification and reconciliation, while DEM and the PKK view the negotiations as a peace process toward peace and a democratic society. From an international law perspective, ending a NIAC requires more than the cessation of hostilities. There must be evidence of a stable and lasting peace in which the core objectives of both parties are addressed, thereby removing the risk of renewed violence. Ankara’s narrative, however, only focuses on the defeat and dismantling of the PKK, while the PKK’s objectives of recognition and protection of cultural and political rights for Kurds remain unaddressed. By avoiding reciprocal commitments and institutional mechanisms essential for mutual and durable pacification, Turkey risks fostering grievance and mistrust, thereby undermining the legal stabilization of the conflict, particularly taking into account that both parties retain their organizational capacity for renewed hostilities.

At the same time, during these negotiations, political rights of Kurds continue to remain severely restricted. State-appointed trustees continue to govern Kurdish municipalities in which the DEM party has been democratically elected, and political prisoners such as Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ continue to be detained despite ECtHR rulings.

Turkey also continues to put pressure on the PKK to call for the disarmament of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Rojava. It was only recently that the leader of the MHP threatened military action against the SDF, stating “Silah varsa siyaset yoktur” (English: When there are weapons, there is no politics), which proves that Ankara makes political negotiations conditional upon disarming a group that is not involved in the NIAC.Turkey’s conflation of the PKK with the SDF has no legal basis internationally, as neither the SDF nor the Kurdish People’s and Women’s Protection Units (YPG/J) are parties to the conflict with the PKK. Neither the commission nor Ankara have addressed any sort of withdrawal of state forces from either Iraqi or Syrian territory, following the PKK’s disbandment, although the unlawful military expansions were based on self-defense claims against the PKK under Article 51 of the UN Charter. This further indicates Turkey’s unwillingness to stabilize the conflict by consolidating the gains achieved by the PKK’s pacification efforts.

The third element (iii) adds a temporal dimension, highlighting that sustained stability is necessary to confirm the end of organized hostilities and the effectiveness of pacification. The five-month observation period begins once violence falls below the Tadić threshold, providing time to see if the cessation of hostilities holds. For this conflict, that timeline started on 11 July 2025, after the PKK’s disarmament ceremony and the temporary drop in mutual hostilities.

Since the establishment of the commission, Turkey has made no effective progress on DDR measures for PKK fighters nor ensured independent monitoring to verify the group’s dissolution. Dialogue has been minimal and largely symbolic. Its pacification efforts remain weak and conditional. Consequently, the cessation of organized hostilities and the prospects for genuine pacification remain uncertain and reversible from Turkey’s side. Turkey’s approach reflects reluctance to really pacify the conflict, neglecting crucial steps and weakening prospects for sustainable settlement. The five-month observation period has not ended yet and must, therefore, be observed further to assess whether lasting pacification is feasible.

Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded that the measures taken by Turkey are of high quality or effective, instead, Turkey undermines trust and brings genuine progress to a standstill.

Concluding Remarks

Under Farley’s Three Element Test, the conflict cannot be considered terminated. While the PKK’s voluntary disbandment marks a decisive step, the absence of independent verification, reciprocal stabilization measures, and recognition of the PKK’s objectives leaves the conflict’s root causes unaddressed. Until Turkey engages in genuine reconciliation, institutionalized pacification, and long-term political solutions, the risk of renewed hostilities remains, and the armed conflict continues to fall under the jus in bello. The NIAC’s closure under IHL thus hinges on Turkey’s genuine commitment to a mutually recognized and durable peace.