This week’s disbanding of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) could see its ailing 77-year-old founder Abdullah Ocalan, who has been in jail for 26 years, “get house arrest in the sunny Turkish Riviera”, while a deeply ideological and violent “Real PKK” splinter group, opposed to ending the four-decade-old conflict with Turkey, could emerge in the short to mid-term.

Those are two projections advanced by prominent historian and Turkey analyst Soner Cagaptay in a thread (@SonerCagaptay) on X, in which he also observed that “Ankara believes it can mop this splinter up”.

Whether the disbanding of the PKK will also lead to it genuinely disarming is a question preoccupying those following the bid to find a peace, but, introducing the May 12 thread, Cagaptay writes: “The PKK has disbanded itself, ending its long, violent campaign against Turkey. But will it work? For the most part, yes.”

Looking at the wider picture linked to the disbanding of the PKK and the Turkish government’s likely response to it, Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, predicts that in Syria—where a Turkey-backed administration in Damascus has been in power since December—the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), “whose core group YPG is a PKK off-shoot, will be offered access to Syria’s political system, with the renamed Kurdish party participating in local elections there—a la DEM Party in Turkey. However, key hardliners linked to PKK leadership in [the] Qandil [mountains of Iraq, where the PKK is based] will slow things down”.

He adds: “The PKK’s rank-and-file, haunted by Turkey’s drones daily and squeezed by its military ops deeper and deeper into Iraq, will receive a generous amnesty offer: ‘continue fighting and die, or drop your weapons and live—with no charges pressed’. This cohort will come on board.”

The PKK leadership that hides out on the Qandil plateau “is the weakest link”, says Cagaptay. “Having fought Turkey since the 1970s, this cohort may get a loose amnesty-in-exile deal, suggesting they threw their lives away in vain. Expect some to continue fighting, even if paying lip service to Ocalan at first.”

Cagaptay also concludes: “The challenge for U.S. is to help Ankara isolate Qandil/YPG hardliners, whilst not hurting America’s relationship with SDF. A guideline to this end is Turkey’s Gray List of designations. The prize? Fortified ties with Turkey, Syria’s stability, and success of D-ISIS [Defeat ISIS] campaign.”

Looking at how events might unfold in Turkey, Cagaptay anticipates that the pro-Kurdish DEM Party will witness its elected mayors, sacked by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reinstated to their posts, “and the faction will receive a broader welcome into the Erdogan administration. Excluding the party’s weaker democracy-before-Kurdish-rights wing, DEM is also [on] board [with the unfolding process].”