The Turkish parliament has approved a 12-article framework law to ensure the disarmament and dissolution of the PKK terrorist organization with the votes of more than two thirds of the lawmakers, increasing hopes for the smooth continuation of the process.
Some 468 lawmakers voted in favor of, and only 88 against the Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integration on late Aug. 10 after almost 10 hours-long discussions. All the political parties, except for the İYİ (Good) Party, supported the bill with few defections.
“We will all together build a new era. Türkiye has enough ability to resolve its most difficult problem. The process will run afterwards in a smooth way,” Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş told the reporters after the vote.
“This is not just the success of a certain political party but the entire Türkiye. We’ll now carefully follow the next steps,” he added.
Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz also hailed the vote, stressing that the overwhelming support to the framework law demonstrates the existence of political consensus and people’s ownership for the resolve of the terror problem.
Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) parliamentary group leader Abdullah Güler thanked to all the lawmakers who approved the bill, saying “We want to open new horizons for Türkiye. We’ll accomplish all together this no matter what the cost is. Our objective is to silence the weapons permanently.”
The law will take effect after being signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and published in the Official Gazette.
The legislation sets out judicial and administrative procedures linked to the dissolution and disarmament of the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.
The measures can be applied only after security agencies verify that the PKK/KCK and affiliated formations no longer maintain an operational presence and have surrendered all weapons and ammunition.
The National Security Council must endorse that finding in a decision published in the Official Gazette.
Eligible applicants will have six months to apply. Depending on the offense and sentence, investigations, trials and the execution of sentences may be postponed for five or 10 years. Intentional killings committed as part of the organization’s activities and certain offenses committed before June 1, 2005, carrying life or aggravated life sentences are excluded.
The law also establishes an eight-member board chaired by the vice president to oversee implementation, along with a parliamentary commission that will monitor the process.
Dubbed the terror-free Türkiye project, the process begun in late 2024 after a historic call by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Chairman Devlet Bahçeli. PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan released a call on the PKK in February 2025 to give an end to its armed conflict and dissolve itself.
In line with this call, the PKK declared that it decided to drop the weapons and dissolve itself in June 2025. A month later the first batch of PKK members burned their weapons in a symbolic event in northern Iraq.
