Fragile Hope for Peace: What Turkey’s Kurdish talks could mean for the Syriac people of Beth Nahrin

MEDYAD, Turkey — In Istanbul last week, a message from Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK), was read aloud at a peace conference. “Our call for peace and a democratic solution is not a passing political gesture,” he declared. “It is a strategy, a historic step.” His words coincided with new momentum in Turkey’s long-stalled efforts to end a conflict that has scarred the country — and its minorities — for decades.

Ankara has tasked a 48-member — revised down from 51 — parliamentary commission with laying the foundations for a peace process with the PKK by the end of the year. The group, which includes lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), its ally the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), the main opposition Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP), and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (Halkların Eşitlik ve Demokrasi Partisi, DEM Party), is charged with preparing the legal framework for reconciliation and deciding the fate of Öcalan, who has been held in isolation on Imrali Island since 1999.

The PKK, which fought a 40-year insurgency that claimed more than 50,000 lives, declared in May that it was abandoning armed struggle in favor of democratic politics. In northern Iraq, its fighters held a symbolic disarmament ceremony, and in early August, Öcalan himself stressed that “democratic society, peace, and integration” were the key pillars of the process.

Yet skepticism remains. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that if the PKK backtracks, Turkey will resume military operations. “If promises are not kept … we can’t be blamed for what happens,” he said.

For the Syriac (Aramean–Assyrian–Chaldean) people of Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia), who have endured displacement, massacres, and the quiet erosion of their communities for centuries, the possibility of peace holds profound meaning. Evgil Türker, president of the Federation of Syriac Associations in Turkey (SÜDEF), was among the minority leaders invited to the PKK’s disarmament ceremony earlier this summer.

He described the event as “a historic day for the Middle East.” For Syriacs (Arameans–Assyrians–Chaldeans), he said, armed conflict has always meant loss. “Wherever there is war, our people feel compelled to flee,” he told SyriacPress. “The losses for us are enormous — a recurring theme throughout our history.”

Today, only a fraction of Turkey’s Syriac (Aramean–Assyrian–Chaldean) community remains in its ancestral homeland of Tur Abdin, with many more in Europe, the United States, and Australia. For them, peace between the Turkish state and the PKK is not a distant matter of geopolitics but a chance for survival, recognition, and perhaps even return.

“Our issues are tied to the larger issues of Turkey,” Türker said. “A lack of democracy affects us, too. The constitution has denied the existence of peoples, cultures, and languages for a hundred years. Of course this is a Syriac issue. We, too, are denied and ignored.”

The Syriac leadership has therefore thrown its support behind the peace process, hoping it will lead to a new constitution that enshrines the rights of all communities. In such a framework, Syriacs could hope for basic guarantees: the freedom to worship, to educate their children in their own language, to reclaim confiscated properties, and to exist as a recognized people.

There are also hopes that peace could reconnect the diaspora to its roots. “If this process succeeds, Syriacs abroad will be able to visit and even return permanently to their homeland,” Türker said, urging the global Syriac (Aramean–Assyrian–Chaldean) community to back reconciliation efforts.

The risks, however, are undeniable. Mistrust between Ankara and the PKK runs deep, and hardline voices on both sides remain strong. But for a people who have seen their numbers dwindle with each round of conflict, even a fragile chance at peace is worth grasping.

As Öcalan wrote in his World Peace Day message, “True peace is not merely the silence of conflict. It is the creation of a time of freedom, democracy, and social justice.”

For the Syriac people of Beth Nahrin, such a time has been elusive for generations. Whether this process will bring it closer is still uncertain — but for once, the possibility is on the table.