A Century of Betrayal and Abuse for Kurds in Turkey

Introduction
The Treaty of Versailles opened an age of broken promises. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points elevated self-determination into a universal principle, and the world’s stateless peoples believed it applied to them. The Kurds were betrayed and paid the highest price.

Today roughly 40 million Kurds — the largest stateless nation on earth — live in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Their homeland has been carved in European capitals. The Sykes-Picot Agreement partitioned Kurdistan between Britain and France. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres affirmed minority rights and self-government. Three years later, the Treaty of Lausanne erased the promise. In that text, the words “Kurd” and “Kurdistan” do not appear. An entire people were legislated out of existence.

What followed was not merely political defeat but a century of erasure: Turkification and the National Pact, banning the Kurdish language and Kurdish names, the Resettlement Law of 1934, the slaughter at Dersim, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands, and measures that criminalized Kurdish identity itself. Resistance was met with repression and violence.

This essay traces that arc from Sèvres to the disarmament ceremony of the PKK at Sulaymaniyah in July 2025. Today’s events offer a genuine opportunity, but only if disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration are matched by real democratization, transitional justice, and the restoration of rights denied for a hundred years.

End of the First World War
The Treaty of Versailles signaled a struggle between the principle of self-determination, exemplified by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and the forces of state nationalism. Decolonization movements further complicated this period of transition, setting the stage for a confrontation between emerging states and entrenched imperial powers.

Kurds were caught in the middle of these upheavals. Kurds are the largest stateless people. Approximately 40 million Kurds inhabit a region known as Kurdistan, spanning Turkey (North Kurdistan), Iraq (South Kurdistan), Syria (West Kurdistan), and Iran (East Kurdistan). Historically, Kurdish interests were managed under the Ottoman Millet System. At the end of the First World War, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was focused on state-building and had little interest in the social and economic development of the Kurdish region.

Most Kurds opposed inclusion in the newly formed Turkish national state. They rejected the partition of Kurdistan into British and French spheres of influence under the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. Kurdish independence was their preferred choice. There was discussion about creating a federation of Kurdish territories across Mesopotamia and Anatolia, but ultimately partition seemed unavoidable.

Kurdish Divisions
About 22.5 million Kurds reside in Turkey, where kinship ideology and tribal organization play significant roles. Kurdish identity is defined by tribal, linguistic, and religious differences. Kurds in Turkey and Syria speak the Kurmanji dialect, while those in Iraq and Iran speak Sorani. Additional divisions exist between Kurds of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

Wilson’s Fourteen Points formed the basis for the German armistice after the Great War. However, Turkish nationalists rejected the peace terms in a bid to retain control of former Ottoman territories.

Sivas Congress
When the Society for the Defense of Rights in Eastern Anatolia met in Erzurum in July 1919, the delegates dismissed Kurdish nationalist claims. They affirmed that Kurdish-majority regions belonged within Turkey’s future borders. Atatürk, emboldened by the Erzurum and Sivas Congresses of 1919, promulgated the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî) on January 28, 1920, as a blueprint for Turkish nationalism. The Sivas Declaration affirmed:

• The integrity of all territories inhabited by “an Ottoman Islamic majority”
• Popular plebiscites to determine the future of territories whose status was in doubt (Kars, Ardahan, and Batum in the Caucasus, western Thrace, and areas with Arab majorities)
• “Protection” of the city of Istanbul and the Sea of Marmara and negotiation regarding trade and commerce in the Bosporus and the Dardanelles
• Recognition of minority rights, providing reciprocal rights that were extended to Muslim minorities in other countries
• Full independence and sovereignty for “the country” (i.e., Turkey)

Atatürk consolidated his nationalist agenda and policy of Turkification. Kurdish issues were a flashpoint. Kurdish efforts to realize their goal of self-determination were suppressed. A 1937 letter to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden purportedly written by Kurdish political leader Seyit Rıza assessed Turkey’s approach: “The government has tried to assimilate the Kurdish people for years, oppressing them, banning publications in Kurdish, persecuting those who speak Kurdish, [and] forcibly deporting people from fertile parts of Kurdistan to uncultivated areas of Anatolia where many have perished. The prisons are full of non-combatants; intellectuals are shot, hanged, or exiled to remote places. Three million Kurds demand to live in freedom and peace in their own country.”¹

Treaty of Sèvres
The Treaty of Sèvres was signed on August 10, 1920. It stipulated that within one year of the Treaty’s entry into force, the Kurds could address the League of Nations to demonstrate that a majority of the Kurds desired independence from Turkey. Only the rump of Anatolia would remain under Turkish control.

Sèvres was a forward-leaning document that included provisions for minority rights. It affirmed the multiethnic character of Kurdistan, control over natural resources, and cultural rights, such as the use of minority languages. However, it was immediately denounced by Atatürk and never ratified by the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA). It fueled national fervor among Turks and ignited the Turkish War of Independence from 1919 to 1923. Sèvres led to the National Pact, which served as a declaration of independence by nationalist Turkey.

Ataturk called for new negotiations, which led to the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923. The Allies – Britain, France, and Italy – betrayed the Kurds at Lausanne. In a dramatic departure from Sèvres, the words “Kurd” or “Kurdistan” did not appear anywhere in the text. Britain petitioned the League of Nations, ignoring Turkey’s claim of racial unity between Turks and Kurds.

Kurdish language rights were restricted through ordinances that forbade Kurdish language in official proceedings. Newborn babies were not allowed to be given Kurdish names; Kurdish village names were changed to Turkish ones; Kurdish cultural festivals such as Newroz, the celebration of the Kurdish New Year, and the singing of Kurdish folk songs were forbidden. Republicanism actively promoted a cult of Atatürk, which was called “Kemalism.”

Assimilation Policies
The TGNA passed the Resettlement Law on June 14, 1934, authorizing forced relocation of Kurds and seizures of their properties. Atatürk intensified crackdowns, especially in Dersim. In 1936, the name of Dersim was changed to Tunceli, and a new military governor, General Abd Allah Alp Dogan, was appointed to orchestrate the forced deportation of Kurds.

The army employed coercive measures, burned down Kurdish villages, and arrested men, women, and children. Abuse, torture and rape of women and girls were widespread. Families who escaped the villages and hid in caves were attacked with chemical weapons and murdered. Said Raza and other Dersim leaders surrendered and were executed. The number of Kurds killed in Dersim is estimated at around 40,000.

A nationalist constitution establishing Turkey’s second republic was adopted by referendum on July 9, 1961. It enshrined “Turkishness” and the supremacy of the state. It defined the Turkish republic as a nationalist, democratic, and social state (Article 2). The Turkish state is an indivisible whole comprising its territory and people. Its official language is Turkish (Article 3). Similar language would reappear in Article 301 of the Penal Code, which justified a crackdown against the PKK in the 1980s.

The PKK
Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was part of the widespread leftist movement sweeping the country in the 1960s. Öcalan understood the value of class warfare to mobilize grassroots Kurdish support against oppressive Kurdish feudal landlords.

The PKK charter called for a Marxist proletarian revolution and envisioned the PKK as the “vanguard of the global socialist movement,” in which the revolution’s fundamental force would be a “worker-peasant alliance.” The charter condemned “the repressive exploitation of the Kurds” and called for a “democratic and united Kurdistan.” With an ideology blending radical Marxism-Leninism and Kurdish nationalism, its founding charter enshrined armed struggle to support a worker-peasant alliance. Öcalan viewed the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Southeast Anatolia as the first step towards a “greater Kurdistan” embracing Kurds from Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq speaking different languages – Kurmanji, Sorani, and Zaza.

The PKK’s popularity surged after the December 1978 Maras massacre, in which over 100 Kurds and Alawites were killed amid escalating political violence. Öcalan emerged as a protector—his name, meaning “avenger,” took on symbolic power. Maras became a turning point, radicalizing Kurdish youth and fueling recruitment into the PKK.

Banners and billboards echoed Atatürk’s nationalist message: “Happy is he who can call himself a Turk.”

Öcalan fashioned the PKK as a rigid hierarchical organization that operated with Stalinist discipline. Öcalan cultivated a cult of personality, brutally suppressed dissent, and purged opponents. In response, Turkey declared martial law in several southeast provinces in the late 1980s, using the rule of law to justify its crackdown. Article 14 of the constitution heralded “the indivisibility of the state.” Article 125 of the penal code stipulated, “Any person who carries out any action intended to destroy the unity of the Turkish state or separate any of its territory shall be punishable by death.” Article 8 of the Law for Fighting Against Terrorism was broadly interpreted to suppress free speech and discussion of Kurdish issues. Southeast Turkey became a security zone. Army camps, police checkpoints, and military airports spread from the Semdinli Mountains in the southeast to Siirt near the border with Syria.

Öcalan evolved over time, preferring politics over armed struggle. The PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire on March 20, 1993. Öcalan challenged Turkey to give up military operations and emphasized cultural rights such as free press and media, as well as the use of the Kurdish language in education. He also demanded freedom of expression and association, constitutional recognition of Kurdish identity, and legalization of Kurdish organizations. Öcalan also proposed compensation for Kurds who were driven from their homes and whose property was confiscated or destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Turkish government adopted a displacement policy to deprive the PKK of shelter and local support. About 378,000 villagers were forcibly evacuated, and cities such as Diyarbakir, Cizre, and Nusaybin more than doubled in size. After military pressure forced Öcalan to flee Turkey in the late 1990s, the PKK found safe haven in Syria. Turkey threatened to cut off water supplies from the Atatürk and Birecik Dams on the Euphrates River unless Syria severed ties with the PKK. In October 1998, Syria signed the Adana Memorandum, which designated the PKK a terrorist organization, and committed to expelling it from Syrian territory. Öcalan then began an odyssey through Moscow, Rome, Amsterdam, Athens, and Nairobi, where Turkish Special Forces, working with U.S. intelligence, finally apprehended him.

Öcalan realized that the best way to end the PKK’s armed struggle was through negotiations. “The democratic option is the only alternative to solving the Kurdish question. Separation is neither possible nor necessary. We want peace, dialogue, and free political action within the framework of a democratic Turkish state.” He pleaded, “Give me a chance. In three months, I will bring all Kurdish fighters down from the mountains.” While in prison, Ocalan realized that political mobilization was more effective than armed struggle.

Peace Partner
Erdoğan wasn’t looking for a partner; he was looking for a subservient Kurd he could control. Erdoğan focused on Selahattin Demirtaş, who was so charismatic that people called him the “Kurdish Obama” and the “Kurdish Mandela.” He was also known as the “thousand hopes candidate” for inspiring the party’s rank and file. Demirtaş was far from subservient. He was the HDP’s presidential candidate in the 2014 election, finishing third with 9.77 percent of the vote.

During the Turkish general election in June 2015, the HDP placed fourth with 13.12 percent of the vote. The HDP broke the 10 percent electoral threshold for the first time and won 80 out of 550 seats. Demirtaş was a real threat to Erdogan’s hegemonistic pursuit of power. Demirtaş was sentenced to 40 years in prison for allegedly inciting the deadly Kobani riots in 2014.

In April 2024, Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), offered an olive branch by inviting 76-year-old Öcalan to renounce “terrorism” in exchange for possible parole. Dialogue ensued that led to a decision by Öcalan to order the PKK to disarm.

The PKK issued a statement that it had “completed its historical mission” and would “end the method of armed struggle.” The statement affirmed that the Kurdish issue “can be resolved through democratic politics.” From his prison cell on Imrali, Öcalan called on the organization to lay down its arms and dissolve. He wrote, “There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realization of a political system. Democratic consensus is the fundamental way.” The first group of PKK fighters to surrender their weapons arrived during a solemn ceremony in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq, on July 11, 2025. One by one, they lined up and deposited their arms in a giant fiery cauldron.

According to the theory of “ripeness,” armed conflicts end when the fighters are exhausted and decide they have had enough. The key to a successful resolution of conflict lies in the details of proposals for a solution.

Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
Erdoğan’s political future rests on his ability to resolve the Kurdish issue. As a violent armed conflict comes to an end, countries confront the challenge of how to handle armed combatants. DDR programs (disarmament, demobilization, reintegration) emerged as a response to this challenge. The United Nations defines DDR as a process that contributes to security and stability in a post-conflict recovery context by removing weapons from combatants, removing them from military structures, and helping them integrate socially and economically and find livelihoods.

• Disarmament is the collection, documentation, control, and disposal of small arms, ammunition, explosives, and light and heavy weapons from combatants and also from the civilian population.
• Demobilization is the formal and controlled discharge of active combatants from armed forces or armed groups. The first stage of demobilization may extend from the processing of individual combatants in temporary centers to their cantonment in designated areas.
• Reintegration is the process by which ex-combatants acquire civilian status and gain sustainable employment and income. Reintegration is a social and economic process with an open timeframe, primarily taking place at the local level, thereby making local communities stakeholders in peace.

DDR requires Turkey’s continued democratization and improved living standards for all citizens. Full implementation of political and cultural reforms and the abolition of regressive legislation, such as the Anti-Terror Act and Article 301 of the Penal Code, are needed. These reforms will address Kurdish grievances and strengthen the rule of law by advancing Turkey’s overall democratization.

Turkish media has spent years demonizing the PKK as terrorists and “baby killers.” Normalizing relations will be a hard pill for the Turkish public to swallow. Terminology is critical: the term “General Amnesty” (Genel Af) is too contentious. Instead, the term “Winning to the Society” (Topluma Kazanma) would be a more palatable way to refer to the DDR process.

Any amnesty program would need to proceed in phases. First, eligibility should be offered to PKK members who joined after 2002. Cadres without command responsibility would be next. PKK leaders will scuttle the DDR package unless it has an advantage for them. While senior commanders who have been given “red bulletins” by Interpol would not be eligible for amnesty, they could apply for asylum in their country of residence. To create and implement a successful amnesty program, it would be useful for Turks to study the experience of other countries that have faced post-conflict challenges.

Peacebuilding
Turkey faces a difficult legacy from its conflict with the PKK. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) could help build confidence and end the cycle of violence. It would also combat the culture of impunity and help entrench the rule of law. Adapted to Turkey’s requirements and culture, a balance between accountability and truth-telling can advance society’s needs.

Getting to the truth will not be easy. “Multiple truths” often exist. Both sides have their own version of “what really happened” and are adamantly convinced they have the only answers. Rather than wait for the post-conflict phase, Turks should start studying how other countries have developed systems for transitional justice following a period of protracted violence. An examination of relevant international experience could begin by sending Turks overseas on fact-finding trips and bringing TRC experts to Turkey.

Parties often focus on the initial disarmament and demobilization phases. They must be careful not to shortchange reintegration, which is less glamorous but essential. Additional investments in the Southeast could enhance social services such as health and education and subsidize return and resettlement efforts targeting civilians displaced by conflict.

Projects should aim to evolve the tribal and feudal character of Kurdish society, which impedes development. Women can play a crucial role in improving social welfare services and enhancing civil society. Efforts should be made to help women shed the oppressive yoke of the patriarchal system. Girls would benefit from expanded educational opportunities that offer them more choices. Activities should emphasize women’s employment. Financial support through rural credit would generate small-scale industries benefiting women. Given the large family sizes, population-planning programs are also needed.

Assistance would support the Back to Village Program and compensate homeowners if their property has been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. The special administrative status of provinces in the Southeast should be revoked and the village guard system abolished. With international donor support, projects should focus on reintegrating the village guards and providing pensions.

The disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of the PKK represent an extraordinary opportunity to move from conflict to coexistence. The DDR implementation board met on August 24, 2026, and agreed to establish four subcommittees covering legal affairs, monitoring, social integration, and disarmament.

Conflict in Turkey with the PKK is inextricably linked to developments in Syria. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced dissolution on August 25. Mazloum Abdi was appointed a Syrian presidential adviser on August 28. After decades of war and oppression, the Kurds and other Syrians are ready for peace.

What can realistically be done?
Realism means separating what is achievable within existing legal and institutional channels from what would require redrawing borders that no state would accept. Kurdish Statehood is off the table. Redress is not. Here are six measures that can be adopted within the current governing authorities in Turkey:

1. Convert the disarmament law into rights, not just clemency
Turkey’s parliament passed a framework law on August 10, 2026, providing legal protections and suspended sentences for former PKK members. Still, it deliberately left out expanded Kurdish political and cultural rights, anti-terror law reform, and Ocalan’s status. The parliamentary commission that preceded it likewise recommended freedom-of-expression measures and an end to the trustee system while insisting “the report is not an amnesty arrangement.” The goal of peacebuilding would be advanced through expanded Kurdish-language education and public services; repeal of Article 301 and anti-terror provisions; and constitutional language recognizing Kurdish identity.

2. Empty the prisons of political cases and honor the Strasbourg judgments.
The ECtHR ruled again on July 8, 2025, in Demirtaş v. Türkiye (No. 4) that his detention violated the Convention and exposed systemic judicial abuse of political dissidents. Yet, a Turkish court refused to order his release days later. Devlet Bahçeli has since called release “advantageous” for Turkish courts and the Ministry of Justice. The judgment can be leveraged by the EU accession framework.

3. Truth-telling: Dersim, the mass graves, and the disappeared
Erdoğan’s 2011 apology for Dersim was a gesture without a mechanism; Kurdish civil society still demands the archives, the restoration of the name Dersim, and disclosure of Seyit Rıza’s burial site. Turkey’s prior transitional-justice experiments were narrow and state-protective. Parliament must create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with forensic exhumation and involvement by the International Commission on Missing Persons, archival declassification by the General Staff and Interior Ministry, and a documentation partnership with the Human Rights Association (İHD) and the Diyarbakır Bar Association.

4. Restitution, demining, and the actual return of the displaced
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were displaced in the 1980s and 1990s, and the 2004 Compensation Law (No. 5233) proved “unjust, restrictive, and inconsistent.” Ankara must reopen and reform Law 5233 with a fresh filing window, presumptive proof standards, and compensation for material loss. It should abolish the village guard system and offer pensions and reintegration. The EU, UNDP, and the World Bank can co-finance return, housing, health, and education in the Southeast — conditioned on measurable outcomes.

5. Make reintegration humanitarian, not merely security-driven
DDR collapses when reintegration is treated as an afterthought. The needs are concrete: psychosocial and trauma care for ex-combatants and villagers alike, civil registration for children born in camps and mountains, family reunification for fighters returning from Iraq and Syria, and targeted programs for the large cohort of women in PKK ranks who cannot return to patriarchal village structures. Resources should be provided to the DDR implementation board and its four subcommittees: (i) UNDP and IOM for reintegration financing and case management; (ii) the ICRC for family tracing and detainee visits; (iii) the KRG for those demobilized on Iraqi soil; and (iv) Turkish medical and bar associations with access to Kurdish-majority provinces.

6. Extend redress across borders
Kurdish suffering was never confined to Turkey. Anfal killed roughly 180,000 Iraqi Kurds, including some 5,000 gassed at Halabja, and survivors are still waiting: Kurdish leaders renewed reparations demands to Baghdad as recently as August 2026. In Syria, Mazloum Abdi announced on August 20, 2026, that civil and military integration with Damascus was complete, which makes monitoring and written guarantees a priority. Baghdad should support Anfal reparations and survivor pensions; Damascus should constitutionally guarantee Kurdish language, decentralized administration, and full citizenship for the stateless ajanib and maktumin. The UN, US, and EU should serve as guarantors of the integration agreement so “integration” does not become a euphemism for renewed erasure.

Every one of these measures is less expensive than conflict. None requires a new border. They require states to emphasize cooperation rather than confrontation.

Conclusion
No people in the modern Middle East have been betrayed as consistently, or as casually, as the Kurds. They were promised a nation at Sèvres and denied a name at Lausanne. They were bombed at Dersim and gassed in caves where their families had gone to hide, and some 40,000 died there while the world looked away. Their villages were burned, their language outlawed, their newborns forbidden Kurdish names, their new year criminalized. Some 378,000 villagers were driven from their homes to starve the guerrillas of shelter. When Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign turned chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds, Ankara said nothing, because a dead Kurd across the border served the same purpose as a silenced one at home. Their most gifted democratic leader, Selahattin Demirtaş, has languished in prison since 2016 for the crime of being electable.

A century of suffering has been inflicted not by accident but by policy—deliberate, legislated, and enforced by the state. The fires at Sulaymaniyah consumed weapons, not grievances. If Turkey now offers the Kurds nothing more than silence in exchange for their disarmament, it will be another betrayal of Kurdish aspirations for peace and social harmony.

Appendix
Necessary reforms in Turkey
Turkey’s ongoing challenges revolve around its democratization. Sustainable peace requires reforms strengthening the rule of law and the administration of justice.

Independence of the judiciary is paramount. Today, the judiciary has been captured and serves to preserve the regime’s power. This trend became more pronounced since the so-called coup in 2016. Institutions of the Turkish state – the courts, prosecutors, broadcast regulator, central bank, and electoral commission — have been used by Erdogan to preserve his power, rather than as an effective system of checks and balances.

The 2022 disinformation law and Article 299 of the Penal Code, which criminalizes insulting the president, are routinely used to restrict freedom of expression. Turkey ranks 159th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. Turkish authorities have suppressed dissent by shutting down more than 1,500 foundations and civil society associations since 2016.

Opposition leaders, especially advocates of Kurdish rights, are convicted on politically motivated charges. Selahattin Demirtaş, the former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, has been jailed since November 2016 and the CHP leader Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was arrested in March 2025.

The Interior Minister arbitrarily removes elected mayors accused of aiding terrorism. Turkey’s trustee system allows elections to be overturned by administrative fiat. Between July 2016 and July 2018, more than 130,000 public servants have been dismissed, losing not only their jobs but their passports, pensions, professional licenses, and social security.

^{1. David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), 208.↩}