From Political Commitment to State Policy

In the history of the Republic of Türkiye, security issues are usually debated in the language of political rhetoric, rarely in the language of law. In this respect, the 12-article “Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Cohesion” adopted by the General Assembly of the Grand National Assembly on 10 August 2026 is an exceptional moment: the state has now bound a process that had been carried out on political ground for two years to a text framed by articles, exceptions and procedural provisions. A law can of course be amended, repealed, or become subject to Constitutional Court review; in this sense, speaking of an “irreversible” threshold requires legal caution. But a more accurate observation is this: the process has moved from the stage of political commitment to the stage of an institutionalized state policy; this transition markedly raises the political and legal cost of reversing course.

The law’s legal architecture rests on a carefully constructed sequencing. The process does not begin with the organization declaring its own dissolution; it is tied to the precondition that security institutions concretely establish that the PKK/KCK and affiliated structures have ended their de facto existence and that the weapons, munitions and other materiel in their possession have been handed over. Following this determination, the National Security Council will make a decision on the organization’s dissolution; with the publication of that decision in the Official Gazette, a six-month application-and-implementation period will begin running for those who wish to benefit from the arrangement. Indeed, the international press, too, is reporting the arrangement not as a classic general amnesty but as a conditional and individualized regime of sentence deferral/suspension; eligibility is tied to verified disarmament and individual case review. This structure evokes the internationally recognized “disarmament-demobilization-reintegration” (DDR) model, though it does not map onto it one-to-one: the classic DDR components of demobilization camps, cantonment and comprehensive economic rehabilitation are not envisaged in this arrangement; the law’s center of gravity rests more on verifying disarmament, its legal consequences, and individual reintegration.

The law’s scope also appears carefully bounded. While acts such as organization membership, founding or leading the organization, and knowingly and willingly aiding the organization, including financing crimes committed on its behalf, fall within the arrangement’s scope, grave offenses such as intentional homicide and torture are excluded from its scope. Supervised-release periods ranging from four years for offenses carrying sentences of less than ten years to six-to-seven years for offenses exceeding ten years have been envisaged; it has been decided that trials of persons within this scope will be conducted at the heavy penal courts in Ankara. Although the lifting of the “terrorist-organization membership” charge for more than four thousand organization members in prison has created broad public expectation of a wave of releases, this does not amount to an automatic, blanket release; a mechanism is envisaged under which each file will be assessed individually. The current arrangement contains no special provision benefiting Öcalan; this shows that the state has carefully separated, at the level of the text, the process’s political-symbolic interlocutor from those who will actually benefit from its legal consequences.

It is worth recalling the political background behind this legal architecture. Devlet Bahçeli’s call in October 2024 for Öcalan to “dissolve the organization” was assessed at the time as a tactical maneuver, but the point we have reached today shows that this move was an early sign that the state was now treating the PKK issue not merely as a public-order problem but directly as a matter of national-security architecture. Öcalan’s February 2025 call for dissolution, the organization’s May 2025 dissolution decision, the symbolic weapons-laying-down ceremony in July 2025, and the report adopted in February 2026 following roughly six months of work by the parliamentary commission established by the Grand National Assembly in August 2025 — all are different stages of the same strategic line. But today’s legal text clarifies one point: this is not an arrangement touching the constitutional status of Kurdish identity; it is a bounded security and criminal-law reform aimed at ending the existence of an armed organization. The dimension of social integration — headings such as political representation, local government, cultural rights — remains outside the scope of the law, preserved as a separate political-negotiation agenda.

On the foreign-policy front, the picture is far more complex than the starting point of 2024, and appears to be evolving in Türkiye’s favor. Following the collapse of the Assad regime at the end of 2024, the military-cooperation agreement signed in August 2025 between Ankara and the new administration established in Damascus has been expanded to cover counterterrorism, mine clearance, cyber defense and military engineering; the regional press regularly reports that Turkish military advisers are contributing to the rebuilding of the Syrian army’s command structure, that a military attaché has been posted to Damascus, and that a substantial Turkish military-logistics presence is deployed in northwestern Syria. Signs from early 2026 that the nature of US support for the SDG in Syria policy has changed, and the subsequent integration agreement reached between the Damascus administration and the SDG, can be read as an important step toward implementing the “one army, one sovereignty” principle Türkiye has long advocated; but it is still too early to say this integration has been completed fully and durably on the ground — sources indicate implementation remains fragile. Even so, this development stands out as an element supporting the cross-border dimension of the Terror-Free Türkiye process.

In terms of regional balances, the real inflection point was the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed on 7 August 2026 between Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This pact — resting on the principle that an attack on one of the parties will be considered an attack on all three — was met with open concern in the Israeli media and strategic circles; assessments have emerged that Türkiye’s cooperation network extending to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Libya and Somalia constitutes a new layer of deterrence that could increase Ankara’s regional bargaining power — though at this stage it is still too early to say the agreement has directly and measurably changed energy balances in the Eastern Mediterranean; the agreement is essentially a strategic signal built on joint defense and political-military coordination. This picture suggests that domestic-security consolidation and rising foreign-policy deterrence are not two entirely independent matters: if disarmament in the PKK issue becomes permanent, this could increase Ankara’s capacity to reallocate its security resources toward cross-border threats and regional positioning — though this should be assessed as a possibility the process has opened, rather than an outcome that has already materialized.

In the period ahead, the test facing Türkiye will be carrying the process’s success on paper into the field in practice. The speed at which security institutions confirm the actual dismantlement, including the PKK’s affiliated elements in Iraq and Syria; the state’s capacity to run supervised-release and judicial processes transparently; whether the central authority in Damascus can genuinely integrate the SDG; and the durability of the Mecca Pact’s regional deterrence — these four variables will determine, over the next few years, not only Türkiye’s counterterrorism capacity but also its position as a regional power. If these elements mature together, Türkiye could evolve into an actor markedly less fragile both at home and along its external borders, one able to convert its security burden into diplomatic and economic instruments. Otherwise, the legal text risks remaining a document that finds no counterpart on the ground. The process’s ultimate value will emerge not in the papers that have been signed, but in how borders, courts and social trust are actually shaped in the years ahead.

This article was first published on 15 August 2026 in Bursa Hakimiyet.