According to the government and several Kurdish political actors, “history is being written in the Grand National Assembly.” That is how Numan Kurtulmuş describes it. The reality, however, looks rather different: 20 meetings, 137 witnesses, 60 pages—and not a single new idea. A performance staged so that everyone can say a commission was formed.
The joint report adopted by majority vote in the Turkish Parliament’s Commission on National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy stands as an instructive—and official—document of what may be one of the most elaborate exercises in political window-dressing in recent years. After twenty sessions and testimony from 137 institutions and individuals, what has emerged is little more than a restatement of principles already enshrined in the Constitution and repeated for decades in rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and Turkey’s Constitutional Court—principles that have long gone unimplemented.
Promoted as a “Turkey Model” destined for the political literature, the document is in fact little more than a ledger of polite bargaining in which political parties recorded their respective interests. It offers no concrete solutions to the Kurdish question or to terrorism, relying instead on the same vague, circular formulations that have been repeated for years.
After thousands of pages of negotiation records, tens of thousands of hours of discussion, and decades of suffering distilled into a single text, the report ultimately tells us this: even pounding water in a mortar requires meeting halls, budgets, and the official seal of Parliament.
A Catalogue of the Already Known
A closer look at the recommendations reveals a tragicomic picture: compliance with ECHR and Constitutional Court rulings, ensuring fairness in sentencing, prioritizing pre-trial release, expanding freedom of expression… All of these are already guaranteed under Articles 10, 25, 26, and 28 of the Turkish Constitution.
The report even undermines itself by claiming that “Turkey implements approximately 90 percent of ECHR rulings.” The remaining 10 percent—issues such as Öcalan’s prison conditions, jailed journalists, and government-appointed trustees replacing elected mayors—are precisely the matters at the heart of the current debate. According to the report, there is no problem; in reality, the problem lies exactly there.
What does the report say about the lack of political will to implement these principles?
Nothing.
Because that very will is shaped—and often stifled—by the same parties whose signatures appear beneath the report.
The Fetishization of “Disarmament”
The report’s central impasse lies in its assumption that the PKK’s dissolution and disarmament will be verified by intelligence and security institutions. In other words, it is constructed upon an event that has not yet occurred. Does the symbolic burning of weapons by 30 PKK members in Sulaymaniyah constitute “dissolution”? Who will verify developments beyond Turkey’s borders, and according to which criteria?
Faced with such questions, the report retreats into silence. Perhaps understandably so: answering would mean accepting responsibility—something its architects seem keen to avoid.
The Real Agenda at the Table
The report’s underlying aim is widely understood: to secure DEM Party support for a constitutional amendment that would enable President Erdoğan to run again. Even the proverbial deaf sultan can hear this by now. Instead of stating it openly, the language of “brotherhood,” “national solidarity,” and the “Turkey Model” provides a more elegant cloak for political expediency.
Devlet Bahçeli’s walk toward DEM Party benches on October 1, 2024, followed by his call regarding Öcalan just 21 days later, may well enter political literature as “the evolution of opportunism.” A party that spent forty years declaring “there can be no negotiations with the PKK” now presents itself as the process’s chief architect. This is not ideological enlightenment; it is electoral arithmetic.
Yesterday’s “terrorist” becoming today’s “interlocutor” is yet another illustration of Turkish politics’ chronic moral flexibility.
DEM Party’s Dilemma
DEM Party’s demands—improving Öcalan’s conditions, restoring elected mayors removed by trustees, releasing politicians with no organic ties to the PKK—are in part understandable. Many of these are simply requirements of normal legal functioning.
Yet trading such demands for constitutional support for Erdoğan raises a deeper question: is this not sacrificing democratic representation to a personal political bargain? Reducing decades of Kurdish democratic struggle to a negotiating chip for a presidential election is, at best, political cunning; more bluntly put, it risks becoming a betrayal of the very constituency it claims to represent.
The CHP Paradox
The Republican People’s Party (CHP) offers a paradox of its own. How should one define “opposition” when party representatives take the floor to criticize the report’s shortcomings, only to approve it with 47 votes? Having demanded transparency and oversight, the CHP appears not to have noticed—or chose to ignore—that the proposed “monitoring mechanism” would merely inform Parliament, not be accountable to it.
In contemporary politics, the distinction between not noticing and not caring is increasingly blurred.
A Sanitized Version of History
One section of the report constructs a sweeping narrative of “shared history,” stretching from Saladin to Sultan Alp Arslan, transporting readers from the complexities of the 21st century into the comforting abstractions of the medieval past. But does that shared history also include Dersim, the banning of Kurdish, the emptied villages, and the burned settlements?
Here, history is not used as a mirror but as decoration. Pleasing fragments are framed; disturbing ones are stored away. This is not how history is written—it is how it is domesticated.
“A Terror-Free Turkey” — But Why Did Terror Arise?
While declaring the goal of a “terror-free Turkey” as state policy, the report carefully avoids asking why terrorism emerged in the first place. Claims such as “Had there been no terrorism, we would have built schools and hospitals earlier” invert historical causality.
These services were absent even before terrorism. The region’s neglect, poverty, denial, and marginalization preceded—and helped fuel—the violence. By reversing cause and effect, the report transforms political responsibility into rhetorical convenience.
Those who genuinely seek to end terrorism must first understand its roots. By refusing to confront that question, the report can do little more than imagine a future “terror-free” Turkey.
A List of Suggestions Without Commitment
The report’s democratic reform proposals—respecting court decisions, revising anti-terror laws, expanding freedoms of assembly and press—echo demands long voiced by civil society and international organizations but previously dismissed as “terror propaganda.”
What has changed? Only the election calendar.
None of the provisions are binding. Each is framed in cautious language: “should be considered,” “may be reviewed,” “is recommended.” In Turkish political grammar, replacing “must” with “should” effectively means: perhaps it will be done, perhaps not—we assume no obligation.
Four Portraits of Political Contradiction
- AKP: Once initiated the 2009–2013 peace process, later discarded it, oversaw urban destruction and mass prosecutions—now rediscovers the language of brotherhood.
- MHP: Long rejected negotiations outright; today positions itself as the process’s architect.
- DEM Party: Attempts to balance legitimate democratic demands with its own internal contradictions and political pressures.
- CHP: Criticizes, then approves; objects, then signs—an opposition uncertain of its own direction.
What Is Missing
This draft report is not a roadmap to peace or freedom, but rather an official record of political maneuvering. Pointing this out is not opposition to peace; on the contrary, it is to say that real peace will not emerge from such a document.
PKK disarmament is necessary—but it is only a precondition, not peace itself. A genuine solution requires addressing the Kurdish issue in its political, cultural, and economic dimensions; implementing court decisions in practice; ending trustee appointments permanently; and restoring the rule of law as more than a slogan.
None of these appear here.
The report concludes by stating that “the internal peace, the most valuable gain of the Turkey Model, will rise upon solid foundations.” Yet solid foundations are built not on intentions but on implementation, not on promises but on action, not on a 60-page document but on the presence of real political will.
And that will—the very element invoked in the report’s finale—is nowhere to be found.
In truth, what is missing is not the language of brotherhood, but political ethics.
