The Policy of the Justice and Development Party Towards the Kurds in Türkiye

Abstract

The Kurdish issue in Turkey has passed through complex and bloody times, which has led to political and security instability in Turkey. In this negative atmosphere, the Justice and Development Party was able to win the elections in 2002 and reach power, forming the government alone without resorting to alliances. Therefore, the Justice and Development Party tried to find a solution to the Kurdish issue by taking some bold steps and starting to announce the project of openness to the Kurdish issue. But the stages that followed these steps proved that the main goal of the Justice and Development Party was to try to find a solution to the Kurdish issue in a way that the party would control the direction of the issue and win the majority of the votes of the Kurdish voters. On the other hand, there was no unified Kurdish will to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue, although the Kurdistan Workers Party announced the cessation of armed operations, but it was later found that it had exploited that truce to gather its forces and store ammunition and weapons. In addition to the regional relations of this party in neighboring countries such as Iraq and Syria, the presence of armed factions affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party in these countries helped to end the process of opening up to the Kurdish issue. From the foregoing, we can reach a conclusion that the parties did not have a sincere intention to resolve this issue, and that it was found that there is a fundamental problem in the Kurdish issue, which is that the only legitimate representative of the Kurds is not the Kurdistan Workers Party.