Hope, fear and anger for families awaiting war ends

When the banned PKK (PKK) announced last month that it would determine and end its rebellion for decades against Türkiye, Laila hopes to reunite her with her son soon.

Three years ago, the former Sandwich seller left home to join the group – banned as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union – in the remote mountains of Qandil, near the borders of Iraq with Iran.

Regardless of two syllable clip, the last of which was in March, Laila has not seen it since then.

“When I first heard about the advertisement that I was very happy,” says Laila, who has changed her name because she is afraid to take revenge on the group.

“But with the passage of time, nothing has changed.”

For 40 years, the PKK was in war with Türkiye in a conflict that killed more than 40,000 people, and many of them are civilians, one of the tallest schools in the world.

Some families spoke to the BBC to the PKK bitterly spoke, while others spoke proudly about how family members were fighting for the group and felt that this sacrifice paved the way for peace talks.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party declared it was seen that it would stop fighting as a historic moment for Turkey, its Kurdish minority, and the neighboring countries that spill the conflict.

But since then, no official peace operation with Türkiye has not started and there is no official ceasefire, with reports of continuous killing on both sides.

Initially, it was prepared with the aim of fighting for an independent Kurdish state in Türkiye, since the 1990s, the Kurdish Workers’ Party has focused on calling for more cultural and political autonomy of the Kurds.

Laila, who lives in the Kurdistan semi -self -self in Iraq, which borders Turkey, says that she has not even heard about the PKK until her son, from Iraq in his twenties, returned to the home one day talking about the ideologies of the group.

She accuses the “brainwashing” group, and convinced him of defending the ethnic Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have no national country.

Laila says over time, her son started becoming more independent, making his bed, washing his clothes and making dishes. It now believes that the PKK was preparing for it for the difficult life that he would soon live in the mountains.

On the day he left, he returned to the house 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 join the PKK but was determined to go.

“He was determined to do so. The controversy was of no use.”

Since then, Laila says she has regularly visited the Qandil Mountains in the hope of taking a look at her son, but she has never seen him.

“If they allow me to see it once a year, I will be happy,” she says.

BBC traveled to the Qandil Mountains, after giving a rare arrival by the PKK for photography there.

Mountains, known as population and known for their natural beauty, help protect thousands of Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters from Turkish air strikes.

The journey took hours from driving to the highest narrow roads, in an area where there are no signs of housing, regardless of a handful of farmers and sponsors.

With the BBC approaching the PKK checkpoint, we saw big pictures of the group leader and founding member Abdullah Oaklan – imprisoned by Turkey in solitary confinement since 1999 – a width across the mountains. But when the BBC reached the checkpoint, the PKK deprived us of our entry.

The PKK authorities later told us that the talks are ongoing with the group and that they did not want the media’s attention.

They did not say what the talks revolve around it, although the Foreign Minister in Iraq, Muhammad Hussein, last month, told BBC discussions that will take place with the PKK, Turkey, Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government to discuss how to hand over the group’s weapons.

So far, the conditions for a possible peace agreement between Türkiye and the PKK are unknown.

In a written statement, it told the PKK in a written statement that it is honest and dangerous in this process, and insists on its leader, Oaklan, to be released.

“The ball is now in the Turkish court. The peace process cannot develop on the basis of one side steps,” said Zagros Hiwa, a spokesman for the Union of Democratic Societies in Kurdistan (KCK), a group of an umbrella of regional organizations.

But on a possible mark on the upcoming obstacles, he told a senior local leader, who is part of the second line of the leadership within the group in Iraq, BBC in a written statement that in his opinion, “not from discussion.”

He is still skeptical of Türkiye’s intentions, and he adds that “when we address the reasons for armed conflict, weapons will not be beneficial to both sides.”

The President of Türkiye, the clear Tayyip Erdogan, was explained to end the conflict with PKK by some as an attempt to attract Kurdish support for a new constitution to extend his 22 -year -old base, which he denies.

He described the decision of the PKK to solve it as an important step towards “our goal in Türkiye without terrorism.”

Writing on X, the Turkish president said that a new era is about to start after “eliminating terrorism and violence.”

For some families whose loved ones have been killed for the Kurdistan Workers Party, the idea of ​​the conflict may end closely bitter.

Kawa Takor was 21 when he was killed two years ago. His sister, Rondak Takor, who lives in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Soleimania, saw him last time in the Qandil Mountains in 2019.

Speaking from the family home, where Kawa’s pictures are adorned with the walls of the living room, Rondak says that the death of her brother changed the family’s life. “I always dream of it,” she says with tears.

Rondc, who is in her twenties, remembers her last conversation together.

She says, “I asked him if he wanted to go home with me and said,” Never. “He even asked me to join him in the mountains.”

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

She believes that “they are the sacrifices that we made and the martyrs we lost, who paved the way for leaders to talk about peace.”

What happens after that is not certain.

There are questions about what will happen to thousands of Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ fighters and whether they will be allowed to re -merge into Turkish society.

Turkish officials still have to say whether these fighters would be dealt with as criminals and face the prosecution. However, Turkish media reports suggested that fighters who have not committed crimes in Turkey may return without fear of prosecution, although the leaders of the Kurdistan Workers Party may have to exile to other countries or are required to stay in Iraq.

It is also unclear what the group that has been resolved for other Kurdish groups means, especially in northeastern Syria, which is considered to be outside the Kurdistan Workers Party.

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

The People’s Protection Units dominate an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias called the Syrian Democratic Forces, which led to the removal of the Islamic State from a quarter of Syria with the help of a multinational alliance led by the United States.

YPG says it is a distinguished entity from the PKK, but Türkiye rejects it and bans it as a terrorist organization.

Erdogan said that the decision of the Kurdistan Workers Party to “must” cover all the organization’s accessories in northern Iraq, Syria and Europe. ” SDF Mazloum ABDI said that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party decision “will pave the way for a new political and peaceful political process in the region.

However, he also said that the disarmament of the PKK does not apply to SDF, which signed a separate deal to integrate with the Syrian armed forces in December.

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

PJAK was appointed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye and Iran. There has been an actual stop between the group and the Iranian government since 2011.

Türkiye says that PJAK is the Iranian arm of the PKK, but the Kurdish groups deny this.

For mothers like Laila, all the complexities of politics and the complex balance of military forces throughout the region are not related. What she cares about is her son’s presence with her again.

“He will return to the house when he gets tired of the harsh life in the mountains, at some point he will realize that he cannot take it anymore.”

If this happens, Laila plans to leave their original city, as her son was recruited by the PKK.

“This city only brought me pain.”