Hope, fear and anger for the families waiting for the war to end

When the outlaw of Kurdistan workers (PKK) announced last month that he would dissolve and end her decades of rebellion against Turkey, Leila hoped she could soon reunite with her son.

Three years ago, the former sandwich seller left home to join the group – prescribed as a terrorist organization from Turkey, the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU – in the remote Kandil Mountains, near Iraq’s border with Iran.

In addition to the two videos he sent, the last one in March, Leila has not seen it since.

“When I first heard about the message, I was very happy,” says Leila, whose name we changed because she was afraid of repression of the group.

“But over time, nothing has changed.”

For 40 years, PKK has been at war with Turkey in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people, many of them civilians and is one of the longest in the world.

Some families that BBC talk to PKK bitterly, while others proudly talked about how family members died, fighting the group and thinking that this victim made the way for peace talks.

The PKK’s message that it will stop fighting is regarded as a historic moment for Turkey, its Kurdish minority and neighboring countries in which the conflict has spilled.

But since then, no official peace process with Turkey has begun and there is no formal termination of fire, with messages on both sides.

Originally created to fight for an independent Kurdish state in Turkey, PKK from the 1990s has shifted the focus to require more cultural and political autonomy for the Kurds.

Leila, who lives in the semi-autonomous area of ​​Kurdistan in Iraq, who borders Turkey, says she didn’t even hear about PKK while her son, Iraq-Kurd of his twenties, one day, she returned home, talking about the group’s ideologies.

She accuses the group of brainwashing, convincing him of protecting ethnic Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but have no nation -state.

Leila says that over time, her son has begun to become more independent, making her bed, washing her clothes and making dishes. Now she believes that PKK prepares him for the difficult life that would soon live in the mountains.

On the day he left, he came home with three comrades to tell his mother that he was going to the mountains to start six months of training.

She says she has repeatedly tried to discourage him to join PKK, but he is determined to go.

“He was so decisive. Dispating him would not be helpful.”

Since then, Leila has said that she regularly visited the Mountain Mountain in the hope of throwing a look at her son, but she never saw him.

“If they just let me see him once a year, I’ll be glad,” she says.

BBC travels to Mount Candil, gaining rarely from PKK to capture there.

Mountains, which are rarely populated and known for their natural beauty, help to protect thousands of PKK fighters from Turkish air strikes.

The trip took hours of driving up the narrow, uneven roads, in an area where there are few signs of habitation, except a handful of farmers and shepherds.

When the BBC approached the PKK checkpoint, we saw large photos of the group leader and founder member Abdullah Okalan – closed by Turkey in seclusion since 1999 – exhibited in the mountains. But when the BBC reaches the checkpoint, PKK denied it.

We were later told by the authorities of the PKK that conversations were being held with the group and they did not want media attention.

They did not say what the conversations were, although last month Iraq Fuad Mohammed Hussein Foreign Minister told the BBC discussions would be held with PKK, Turkey, Iraq and the Kurdistan regional government to discuss how the group’s weapons would be handed over.

So far, the conditions of a possible peaceful deal between Turkey and PKK are unknown.

The PKK told the BBC in a written statement that he was sincere and serious about the process, insisting on his leader, Okalan, must be released.

“The ball is already in the court of Turkey. The peace process cannot be developed on the basis of unilateral steps,” said Varros Hiva, a spokesman for the Union of Democratic Communities of Kurdistan (KKK), an umbrella group of regional Kurdish organizations.

But in a possible sign of the obstacles forward, a senior local commander who is part of the second line of the leadership within the Iraq group, told the BBC in a written statement that he believed was “not discussing”.

Still suspicious about Turkey’s intentions, he adds that “when we turn to the causes of weapons, weapons will not be beneficial to both countries.”

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s obvious desire to end the conflict with PKK is interpreted by some as an attempt to attract Kurdish support for a new constitution to expand his 22-year-old, which he denies.

He described the PKK’s decision to dissolve as an important step to “our purpose of turkey without terrorism.”

Writing to X, the Turkish president said he would start a new era after “eliminating terror and violence.”

For some families whose loved ones were killed, fighting for PKK, the idea that the conflict may soon end is bitter-sweet.

Kava Takuor was 21 years old when he was killed two years ago. His sister Rondek Takuor, who lives in an Iraqi Kurdish city of Suleimania, last saw him in Mount Candil in 2019.

Speaking from the family home, where pictures of Kava decorate the walls of the living room, Rondek says that her brother’s death changed the life of the family. “I always dream of him,” she says with tearful eyes.

Rondek, who is twenty years old, still remembers the last conversation they had together.

“I asked him if he would like to return home with me and he said” never. “He even asked me to join him in the mountains,” she says.

For Rondek and her family, who are Pro-Pkk, the dissolution of the group will be both a moment of “pride and pain, especially after our huge loss.”

She believes that “these are the victims we have made and the martyrs we have lost, they made the way for leaders to speak peace.”

What happens afterwards is uncertain.

There are questions about what would happen to thousands of Turkish PKK fighters and whether they would be allowed to integrate into Turkish society.

Turkish officials still do not say whether these fighters will be treated as criminals and will be pursued. But Turkish media reports suggest that fighters who have not committed crimes in Turkey may return without fear of prosecution, although PKK leaders may be forced to exhaust to other countries or require to stay in Iraq.

It is also unclear what the group’s dissolution for other Kurdish groups would mean, in particular in the northeastern Syria, which Turkey considers to be out of PKK’s shooting.

During the Syrian Civil War, the Turkish forces and the Syrian -backed Syrian fighters began a series of offensives to capture the border areas held by the Syrian Kurdish militia called the individual units of humans (YPG).

YPG dominates the Union of Kurdish and Arab militia, called Syrian Democratic Forces, which expelled the Islamic State group of a quarter of Syria with the help of a multinational coalition led by the United States.

YPG says this is a separate formation from PKK, but Turkey rejects this and justifies it as a terrorist organization.

Erdogan said the PKK’s decision to dissolve should “cover all the expansions of the organization in northern Iraq, Syria and Europe.” SDF Commander Maslum Abdi said the PKK’s decision would “pave the way for a new political and peace process in the region.”

However, he also said that disarmament of PKK was not applied to SDF, which signed a separate merger transaction with the Syrian armed forces in December.

In Iran, the PJAK group, which is also part of KCK, told BBC Turkish that it maintains the “new process” in Turkey, but does not plan to disarm or dissolve.

Pjak has been identified as a terrorist organization from Turkey and Iran. Since 2011, there has been a factual termination of fire between the group and the Iranian government.

Turkey says Pjak is the Iranian hand of PKK, but Kurdish groups deny it.

For mothers like Leila, all the complexities of politics and the complex balance of military forces throughout the region are irrelevant. What she is interested in is to have her son with her again.

“He will return home when he gets tired of the heavy life in the mountains, at one point he will realize that he cannot take him more.”

If that happens, Leila plans to leave her hometown, where her son was appointed by PKK.

“This city brought me nothing but pain.”