The future of northeast Syria dominated the conversation when Turkey’s National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Commission discussed the results of a landmark meeting with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder and leader Abdullah Ocalan on December 4th.

Secret talks between Ocalan and the state have made little progress since they were announced over a year ago. Less than a month remains until the New Year’s deadline for the merger of Syrian Kurdish-led forces aligned with his movement into the Syrian transitional government in Damascus.

All parties to the talks – and the international community — expect concrete action soon, lest talks collapse like they did in 2015. Ocalan’s public intervention in the Syria file at a moment when he has become accepted by the Turkish government as a political interlocutor could open the door for progress, dampen potential spoilers, and help solidify the favorable SDF integration deal already taking shape under U.S. auspices.

The State of the Process

At this stage, the peace process between Turkey and the Kurdish freedom movement largely consists of steps that convey an appearance of non-negotiation so that negotiations can take place without spoilers or scrutiny. On Ocalan’s orders, the PKK dissolved itself and made highly publicized moves towards disarmament, including a ceremony in which a group of guerrillas burned their weapons in front of international observers and, more recently, withdrawals from Turkish territory and sensitive border areas of Iraqi Kurdistan. In return, the Turkish state has quietly improved Ocalan’s prison conditions, paused its seizures of Kurdish municipalities and arrests of Kurdish politicians, and begun to acquit and release Kurdish activists and officials who were jailed on PKK-related charges. No Turkish strikes or armed clashes have been reported in months.

The most visible step on the Turkish side was the August formation of the National Solidarity, Democracy and Brotherhood Commission. This parliamentary commission is tasked with recommending new legislation to regulate the disarmament and reintegration of PKK guerrillas and make other reforms that may be necessary for the advancement of the process. It is supposed to offer those recommendations in the coming weeks.

However, there is not yet consensus on what its proposals should say and do – or even as to what the goal of the process is. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government wants to end what it sees as a ‘terrorism’ issue, pull Kurdish voters away from the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), and repair political and social divisions that actors like Israel or Iran could exploit in the event of regional conflict. The Kurdish freedom movement sees the dissolution and disarmament of the PKK as a shift from a 20th-century model of politics and warfare to a means of struggle more suited to the opportunities and constraints that Kurds in Turkey — and the wider region – encounter now.

The question of northeast Syria is where this divergence in positions is most significant. One of Turkey’s objectives in launching talks was forcing the capitulation of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a multi-ethnic coalition of armed groups led by Kurdish factions linked to the PKK, and the Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAANES), its affiliated civil administration. Since Turkey’s invasion of the Syrian Kurdish territories of Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad in 2019, the PKK has considered a return to peace talks as a means by which the SDF and DAANES could consolidate their gains.  In doing so, they have found some unlikely alignment with Washington. U.S. officials recommended a ceasefire to Qandil through the SDF before Turkey’s 2023 elections and said for the first time in 2022 that there was ‘no military solution’ to Turkey’s Kurdish question.

The collapse of the Baathist regime in December 2024 shot the Syria file, and these near-irreconcilable positions, to the top of all parties’ agendas. Turkey opted against using Bashar al-Assad’s fall as an opportunity to finish off the SDF entirely, adhering to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire along the Euphrates River in mid-December 2024. In avoiding the military option, they accepted that a political future for northeast Syria could be won at the negotiating table.

The March 10th Agreement

To date, the situation in Syria is not unfavorable to the Kurdish freedom movement. The DAANES and SDF still stand. On March 10, 2025, SDF commander-in-chief Mazlum Abdi and Syrian transitional president Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a U.S.-brokered deal to integrate the civil and military institutions of the northeast with those of Damascus. The eight-point text also called for a ceasefire and the recognition of Kurdish rights and identity at the national level.

The SDF have come to understand the March 10th deal framework as, at best, an opportunity to be a founding component of a new and better state. By going to Damascus, they could curb the transitional government’s most extremist and Arab-nationalist tendencies, win more democratic and decentralized governance for all of Syria, and ensure that Kurds have a powerful enough presence in the army to prevent it from being used against their communities again. Joining recognized state institutions could also neutralize the threat of Turkish military intervention and bring an end to the economic challenges brought on by de-facto status.

Al-Sharaa has practical reasons to want to bring the northeast in peacefully. His government is fragile, and his army is a patchwork of militias infamous for abuses against ethnic and religious minority populations. Damascus does not have the resources, personnel, or political legitimacy to seize and govern Kurdish territories by force. A return to civil war might end DAANES territorial control, but it would also scare off investment and businesses, deplete hard-won international legitimacy, and invite foreign powers back to Syrian territory – leaving Syria far more fragmented than a decentralized system ever could.

So far, out of all the deal’s provisions, only the ceasefire has been implemented. On front lines in Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor, it is fragile. The government reneged on its promises to grant Kurdish rights in a transitional constitution issued just days after the agreement was signed. A week of sectarian violence in the Druze region of Suwayda led many in northeast Syria to believe that integration with this particular state could be impossible.

In October, after a flare-up of violence in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, the DAANES and Damascus reached a verbal agreement on military and security integration. Under this agreement, SDF leaders said, their forces would join the Syrian Ministry of Defense as brigades and divisions based in northeast Syria. The SDF and DAANES also expect political reforms to accompany the new military structures – like constitutional recognition of Kurdish rights.

Turkey seemed to have felt left out of the March 10th agreement at first. The promise of rights and recognition for Syrian Kurds is a demand that Turkish officials reject when they discuss the Kurdish issue in their own country. More importantly, the text did not call for the complete dissolution of the SDF and DAANES – only their merger with a government that has little ability to run the northeast on its own.

For Washington, bringing Turkey, Syria and the Kurdish movement onto the same page is important for regional stability and security. The Suwayda violence seems to have shifted the U.S. towards greater acceptance of the SDF’s demands for decentralization and hard guarantees for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. In November, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said that Turkey and Syria agreed on the integration of the SDF into the “economic, defense and civic structure” after a White House meeting with Sharaa and Fidan. This signalled Turkish acceptance of the political elements of the agreement for the first time, under U.S. supervision.

Damascus also announced its participation in the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS after the same meeting. Notably, Damascus is not providing troops to the Coalition – the joint counter-ISIS operations that have taken place so far have been done through Syria’s Ministry of Interior. This could suggest that the U.S. expects its partners in a future Syrian army to be the SDF partners it has worked with for a decade – an expectation compatible with the proposal the SDF has discussed but not Turkey’s capitulationist view.

The Ocalan Factor

Abdullah Ocalan has always seen Syria’s Kurds as a ‘red line.’ Throughout this peace process, he has played his cards to maximally defend northeast Syria’s interests, choosing to make his most painful concessions elsewhere. His engagement on Syria now is unlikely to change the integration plan to which the SDF, the transitional government, and the United States seem to have agreed. Competing interpretations of the commission meeting suggest that he may be using this critical moment to get Turkey to accept it.

According to DEM Party commission member Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, Ocalan did not tell the commission delegation that he would ask the SDF to disarm. Rather, he discussed the integration of the SDF and its internal security forces with the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior, respectively. This is closer to what the text of the March 10th agreement stipulates and what the SDF says it will do. Kocyigit also said that Ocalan identified democracy and Kurdish rights as conditions for ‘democratic integration,’ echoing SDF demands for a democratic, pluralistic constitution.

The government’s readout of the commission meeting said that Ocalan endorsed a unitary state in Syria. While most Syrian Kurds would prefer Iraqi Kurdish-style federalism, demographics and geography make it unworkable on the ground. SDF and DAANES leaders are willing to accept other forms of decentralization that can exist within a unitary state structure, like the devolution of certain powers to provincial, district, and local governments. The government readout highlighted Ocalan’s influence over SDF leaders and suggested that he might say something new about Syria in the coming days. Interestingly, days before the commission meeting, Mazlum Abdi told Mezopotamya Agency, a pro-Kurdish media outlet from Turkey, that he hoped to meet with Ocalan in person.

These interpretations of the meeting are consistent with each other, albeit framed for different audiences. They suggest that Ocalan is defending a Syria solution close to the compromise that the SDF has already arrived at and the international community already supports.

The fact that such a perspective is being presented to the public at this moment, through the framework of the commission, is also significant. In the ‘non-negotiation narrative’ that has shaped the process so far, steps that both sides have agreed to behind closed doors are often operationalized through a message from Ocalan, a delicately choreographed and highly publicized Kurdish action, and a quiet Turkish response. This is Ocalan’s first message to be conveyed through a medium as legitimate as a parliamentary body (as opposed to the intelligence services or a partisan Kurdish delegation). It comes as the ruling alliance has increasingly framed Ocalan as a legitimate and responsible interlocutor. These conditions would seem to enhance the value of any possible statement on Syria that he could make for Turkish audiences as well as Kurdish ones.

What’s Next

If progress is on the table, Ocalan could make a new call to the SDF prior to the end of the year, asking the SDF to take a step towards integration. The SDF and the transitional government could then take action on an achievable, symbolic aspect of the verbal agreements that they have already reached.

Turkish leaders could claim that Ocalan has made a satisfactory call through a legitimate parliamentary mechanism and that the SDF has produced an example of compliance. This would deflate the December 31st deadline, allowing the specifics of integration to be worked out without pressure. It would also create political permission for the integration of the SDF as brigades and divisions and accompanying political reform. This would satisfy the ‘non-negotiation narrative’ while buying time for talks to progress.

Concurrent developments in the domestic track of the peace process could help address other Turkish objections to the SDF model of integration. If the commission produces a legal framework under which PKK guerrillas can return to civilian life, for example, then Kurds from Turkey who joined the YPG to fight ISIS could likely also benefit. A long-time Turkish (and U.S.) demand could be met without casting men and women who contributed to the defeat of ISIS at great personal risk into legal limbo.

Ultimately, Turkey has legitimate reasons to accept the integration deal that is on the table. A scenario in which tens of thousands of Kurdish fighters with Coalition training are excluded from Syria’s new security forces and left in border towns with many grievances and few economic opportunities would be more dangerous for Turkey than the current status quo. A war between the SDF and the transitional government would end the peace process – and all the advantages Erdogan hopes to gain from it — and invite Israel, Iran, and Russia to expand their influence in Syria at Turkey’s expense. By accepting Ocalan’s terms on Syria, Turkish officials could demand more domestic concessions in return. Interestingly, the CHP has come out in favor of peaceful integration and the recognition of Kurdish rights in Syria, meaning that if the government wants to use this issue to split Kurds from the opposition coalition, it is in a race to the top, not a race to the bottom.

Photo: “Kurdish YPG Fighters” by Kurdishstruggle CC BY 2.0