Turkey’s government has failed to take basic steps on rights and political freedoms during its peace process with Kurdish militants, Tuncer Bakırhan, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), told his party’s lawmakers in Ankara on Tuesday.
“Even the simplest steps are not being taken,” he said, calling for the reinstatement of academics and other public employees dismissed by emergency decrees.
The academics were targeted after signing a 2016 petition opposing military operations in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast, with hundreds losing their jobs during the purge that followed a coup attempt that year.
Bakırhan also demanded an end to media censorship and the replacement of elected mayors with government-appointed administrators.
The peace effort seeks to end a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group designated a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, began fighting the Turkish state in 1984.
PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned on İmralı Island near İstanbul since 1999, called for the group’s dissolution in February 2025, and it agreed that May.
A law that took effect on August 18 allows investigations, trials and sentences for certain PKK-related offenses to be suspended once the group’s dissolution and laying down of arms have been verified.
The suspensions require confirmation from the National Security Council (MGK), Turkey’s top security advisory body, that the PKK and its affiliates have ended their activities and surrendered their weapons.
Bakırhan questioned why reinstating dismissed employees should have to wait for those security assessments.
He urged the body overseeing the laying down of arms to begin work under Öcalan’s guidance and demanded that the imprisoned leader be allowed to communicate and meet with people involved in the peace effort.
He also called for parliament to establish the monitoring commission required by the law to review its implementation and propose further legislation.
Bakırhan demanded the release of Kurdish politicians imprisoned in the Kobani case, speaking on the 12th anniversary of the protests at the center of the prosecution.
The case concerns protests in Turkey in October 2014 over the government’s response to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) siege of Kobani, a Kurdish town across the border in Syria.
Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, former co-chairs of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the DEM Party’s predecessor, were sentenced in May 2024 to 42 years and 30 years, three months, respectively, for their alleged roles in the protests, accusations they denied.
The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, which monitors compliance with European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings, called for their release last month, citing judgments that found their detention was intended to silence opposition voices and restrict political debate.
