Police detain protesters at Turkey's decision to end PKK peace process, Istanbul. Demotix/Erhan Demirtas. All rights reserved.The elections Turkey held on June 7, 2015 have not changed the government yet, but it is a game changer in terms of Turkey’s foreign policies in the Middle East.
The AKP government has long been accused of active collaboration with ISIS allowing fighters, money, and munitions to move from one side of the border to the other. Even those analysts who consider such active collaboration anecdotal are clear that Turkey has been very reluctant to take direct action against the organization. In October 2014, when ISIS fighters surrounded the small Kurdish town of Kobane in Syria, the Turkish government refused to allow the Iraqi Peshmerga forces to cross through Turkish territory and denied Washington permission to fly offensive operations out of the US Air Force base at İncirlik in Southern Turkey.[1] Turkey has never been considered particularly supportive of the international coalition fighting ISIS. This policy changed on June 24, 2015, when Turkish fighter jets attacked ISIS targets in Syria.
The AKP government has also been in a negotiation process with the PKK since 2009. The first round of negotiations collapsed around 2010, and the second round of negotiations started in the beginning of the 2013. Right before the June 7 elections, in February 2015, the AKP government and Kurdish politicians came together in Dolmabahce Palace. After the closed meeting, PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan’s statement was read to the media calling on the PKK to convene a congress, take a decision “on ending the armed struggle” and take up democratic politics. Although President Erdoğan would explain his dissatisfaction with the meeting soon after, Prime Minister Davutoğlu described it as the beginning of a new phase in the peace process. However, just months after this historic meeting, the same day that the Turkish jets bombed ISIS targets in Syria, they also bombed camps of the PKK in Northern Iraq. This bombing, which happened for the first time in four years, effectively ended the ceasefire and the peace process.
