The “National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy Commission” in the Turkish Parliament approved a joint report by a large majority on February 18. It was formed as part of the negotiations between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), led by Abdullah Öcalan, who is in prison.
Established in August 2025, the commission defined its official purpose as “completely removing terrorism from Türkiye’s agenda, strengthening social integration, reinforcing national unity and brotherhood, and working in the areas of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.”
The joint report has declared that the commission’s main goals are “a Türkiye free of terrorism,” strengthening democracy, and increasing development and economic prosperity. However, there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the goal of democratization and social welfare, which expresses the interests and goals of the working class, and of the ruling class represented by the capitalist parties that formed this commission.
The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly explained that neither the negotiations with the PKK nor the commission’s function are about democratization and peace, but rather about the Turkish and Kurdish ruling elites developing their regional interests in collaboration with US imperialism.
The report expresses its focal point as the explosive situation in the Middle East, stating: “Changing global and regional conditions have made strengthening the internal front not a choice but a necessity. In a period when conflicts are spreading, identity-based fault lines are being provoked, and proxy mechanisms aim to weaken states from within, internal peace and democratic integration are also the main pillars of foreign policy capacity.”
This is a repetition of Erdoğan’s words from 2024, when negotiations began: “While the maps are being redrawn in blood, while the war that Israel has waged from Gaza to Lebanon is approaching our borders, we are trying to strengthen our internal front. We want 85 million of us to come together under the common denominator of Türkiye.”
The commission, established with 51 members comprising deputies from almost all parties in parliament, saw 47 members, including those from Erdoğan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), its fascist ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) voted “yes” on the report. One member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) delegation abstained, while the Labor Party (EMEP) and the Workers’ Party of Türkiye (TİP) MPs voted “no.”
The DEM Party expressed its dissatisfaction with EMEP and TİP not signing the report, while EMEP MP İskender Bayhan declared that their “no” vote and the DEM Party’s “yes with reservations” stance were aligned. This reflects EMEP’s efforts to remain allied with the DEM Party, with which it entered parliament, and to avoid breaking away from the capitalist establishment under any circumstances.
Broad parliamentary support for the commission and its report reflects the Turkish and Kurdish capitalist political establishment’s efforts to take a united stance abroad and pursue their reactionary interests amid the deepening war environment in the Middle East, led by US imperialism. At home, this translates into open or covert support for the Erdoğan government’s gradual elimination of democratic rights and escalation of social attacks on the working class.
As the US prepares to wage war on Iran, with the goal of securing complete domination in the Middle East, its main ally in the region, Israel, has been increasing its influence since it launched the genocide in Gaza in October 2023. While providing logistical support for the genocide, Ankara is in a growing competition with Tel Aviv in Syria and the broader region. it has responded with efforts to turn the PKK-led Kurdish movement from a 40-year enemy into an ally and strengthen Türkiye’s hand in the Middle East, with Öcalan’s help. Erdoğan and Öcalan have advanced a “Turkish, Kurdish, Arab” alliance, aligned with US objectives, against Israel’s growing influence in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and the Middle East.
With the support of Erdoğan’s “friend” Trump, Türkiye is seeking to advance this policy in Syria and the entire region. This policy is not directed against imperialism and Zionism; it is in strategic alliance with them. Its aim is not to mobilise the Turkish and Kurdish workers against imperialism, but rather to subordinate them to the alliance of the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie with imperialism.
During the negotiation process, ongoing for approximately 1.5 years, the security-oriented approach represented by the AKP and MHP has been to push their weight in the commission report under the slogan “Terror-Free Türkiye.” The “opposition” parties, which are pro-European Union (EU) and NATO, legitimize the negotiations and the commission with a false claim of democratization and peace.
The CHP, which came first in the 2024 local elections and which the government tried to sideline through the judiciary, is fully supporting negotiations and the commission, amid the construction of a dictatorship, within the framework of the common interests of the ruling class.
CHP Deputy Group Leader Murat Emir stated that “With the CHP’s resolute stance, we have added a democracy reservation to the commission report, which was intended to be written in the ideological language of the ruling party! We ensured that the end of the trusteeship absurdity, the full implementation of the Constitutional Court and European Court of Human Rights decisions, and the principles of fair trial were included in the report. We will follow up on this report to the end to ensure that it does not remain mere words on paper!”
The DEM Party is also contributing to the spread of similar illusions among the Kurdish people. Its reservation to the report is, in fact, an admission that this process has nothing to do with democratization. So much so that the report fails to even define the issue as a “Kurdish question” and focuses instead on “terrorism.”
It explains its reservations as: “We do not consider it appropriate to use concepts such as ‘terror-free Türkiye,’ ‘terrorist organization,’ or ‘terrorist scourge’... There is a Kurdish issue, and it cannot be viewed as a terrorist problem. It is not a one-dimensional problem in terms of its root causes; it is a matter of rights and freedoms with a political, social, economic, cultural, and historical background. The process that is insistently defined as ‘terrorism’ today is a conflictual process brought about by policies based on denial. In this respect, the Kurdish issue is as much a systemic problem as it is an identity and cultural problem.”
The criticism of the report by the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the umbrella organization of which the PKK is a part, also indicates how difficult it is for the Kurdish movement to defend the report. Demanding that “Öcalan be given the conditions to work freely to fulfil his role,” the KCK adds, “The report does not name the Kurdish issue. It is impossible to solve a problem without naming it.”
The TİP and EMEP, which claim to be socialist, play a particularly critical role in legitimizing the imperialist-backed negotiation process. By participating in this commission, they spread the illusion that the right-wing bourgeois parties in the commission could bring about democratization and peace, at a time when dictatorship was gaining momentum in Türkiye and US imperialism, with which not only Erdoğan but also the CHP and DEM Party were allied, was preparing to attack Iran. Their “no” vote on the report has no connection to a principled break from pro-imperialist capitalist politics and the state. By expressing their support for the process, they are providing assurances on this matter.
These parties, regardless of their “working class” rhetoric, act as the political mouthpieces of the affluent middle class. By continuing the tradition of class collaborationism of Stalinism and pursuing alliances with the so-called “progressive” factions within the national bourgeoisie, they are hindering the development of the working class’s independent revolutionary politics. Their orientation toward the CHP and the DEM Party is accompanied by a significant abandonment of “anti-imperialist” rhetoric and the adoption of identity politics.
The political perspective of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal’s (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) is guided not by Stalinism, but by Trotskyism, which has defended and developed the theoretical and political legacy of the October Revolution of 1917 against Stalinism and all anti-Marxist political tendencies to this day. As Leon Trotsky explained in his Theory of Permanent Revolution, which guided the October Revolution, the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie, like other bourgeoisies in the Middle East and other parts of the world with a belated capitalist development, are structurally incapable of opposing imperialism or establishing a democratic regime. These tasks fall to the working class.
The democratic solution to the Kurdish question and the end of genocide and war require the international working class to unite and mobilize based on an anti-war, socialist program to seize power from the imperialist powers and their bourgeois proxies. This means fighting for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East.