The visit of Syria’s president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, to the White House has largely been framed as a turning point in Syria’s external relations and in the international management of the anti-ISIS campaign. Its more immediate and perhaps more disruptive impact, however, is visible in Ankara, where it intersects with the recalibration of Turkey’s Kurdish policy and the emerging PKK-Turkey peace process.

The clearest signal came from Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Long identified with an uncompromising anti-Kurdish, anti-PKK line, Bahçeli addressed parliament and urged his own deputies to authorise a visit by a parliamentary delegation to Imrali prison where Ocalan is jailed. He went further, stating that if no such delegation were formed, he would not hesitate to go himself, accompanied by a small group of MPs, to meet Abdullah Ocalan.

This was not an isolated remark. About thirteen months earlier, Bahçeli had already broken with his traditional rhetoric by calling for a political solution with the PKK and explicitly suggesting that Ocalan could become a partner in such a process. In the intervening period, the ceasefire and disarmament track has taken shape: the PKK has publicly declared the end of its armed struggle and the dissolution of its organisational structures; Ocalan has signalled acceptance of a democratic, unitary Turkey without demands for federalism or territorial autonomy; and parliament has established a commission tasked with managing the transition from armed conflict to political accommodation.

Yet the process has stalled at a politically crucial point. The commission has held hearings and consultations but avoided decisive steps. The missing element is the formalisation of Imrali as a negotiating venue. A cross-party delegation visiting Ocalan to discuss the contours of a final settlement would mark a qualitative break with forty years of Turkish state doctrine. It is precisely this step that President Erdoğan has declined to address directly, maintaining general support for the peace framework while refraining from endorsing any engagement with Ocalan beyond the existing carceral regime.

From Erdoğan’s perspective, the hesitation is understandable. Limited amnesties for rank-and-file militants or reintegration schemes have precedents. A formal political encounter with Ocalan does not. For four decades, the state has denied that the PKK represents any legitimate Kurdish constituency and has refused to recognise any collective Kurdish representative. Legal Kurdish parties have been tolerated at the margins but treated as extensions of a terrorist organisation rather than as independent political actors. An official delegation sent to Imrali to discuss the “Kurdish question” would, in practice, acknowledge three propositions: that Kurds constitute a distinct political subject within the republic; that this subject has a representative; and that, at least for the moment, that representative is Ocalan.

Such an acknowledgment alters the structure of the problem. Once Ocalan is recognised as an interlocutor, the state confers on him a form of authority that is difficult to retract. If, at a later stage, he were to articulate demands that go beyond Ankara’s current red lines, it would be far more costly to revert to the previous stance of outright denial. The issue of succession also arises: if Ocalan were to die, the logic of representation would imply the need to identify a new Kurdish figure to occupy that position. In other words, an Imrali visit is not merely a technical step in a peace process; it is the foundation of a new political architecture of Kurdish representation.

This domestic threshold is being approached in parallel with a profound reordering of the Syrian theatre. The Sharaa government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have concluded an agreement that, at least on paper, integrates SDF structures into state institutions, including a reconstituted national army and civilian administration. The SDF retains effective control over significant territory, energy resources and detention facilities for thousands of ISIS fighters and their families. The question is no longer whether the SDF exists as a force, but under which sovereign umbrella it operates and with what degree of autonomy.

Sharaa’s visit to Washington has accelerated efforts to move from a militia-centred to a state-centred security framework in eastern Syria. Incorporating the Syrian state into the anti-ISIS coalition provides a formal vehicle for this shift. For Ankara, which has long argued that a US-backed, PKK-linked Kurdish force on its border is unsustainable, this is both an opportunity and a risk. If the SDF is successfully subordinated to a central Syrian authority within a unitary constitutional framework, Turkey’s core demand of avoiding a de facto Kurdish statelet east of the Euphrates is partially met. If, however, the result is a rebranded but entrenched Kurdish-led structure with international backing, Ankara will perceive that its security dilemma has simply been repackaged.

In this context, Ocalan is being positioned in Ankara’s thinking not only as a domestic interlocutor but also as a lever over Kurdish actors in Syria. The PKK’s ideological and organisational influence within the SDF is real, even if the relationship is more diffuse and fragmented than Turkish commentary often suggests. The assumption is that a recognised Ocalan, operating within a state-sanctioned framework, could be used to steer both residual PKK cadres and segments of the SDF towards arrangements that accommodate Turkey’s red lines while facilitating SDF integration into the Syrian state and the broader anti-ISIS structure.

A further external layer complicates matters. In southern Syria, particularly in Druze-majority Sweida, a mixture of local uprisings, regime repression and Israeli intervention has produced an unstable situation in which notions of special status or de facto autonomy are openly discussed. For Ankara, the prospect of an Israeli-protected Druze zone in the south risks setting a precedent. As Turkish officials have reportedly put it, any formalised autonomy in the south will generate analogous claims in the north and the west, including among Kurds and Alawites. US officials’ references to the danger of a “Balkanisation” of Syria reflect a similar concern, even if Washington’s instruments and red lines differ.

The combination of these dynamics helps explain the urgency in Bahçeli’s intervention. From his vantage point, the window in which Turkey can shape the Kurdish dimension of the emerging Syrian order is narrowing. Formal engagement with Ocalan, however symbolically costly, is presented as the price of influencing outcomes in both Turkey and Syria before new facts on the ground harden under the aegis of the Sharaa government, the United States and, to some extent, Israel.

Against this backdrop, critical voices within the Kurdish movement in Turkey highlight a different tension. For figures such as Selahattin Demirtaş and many Kurdish parliamentarians, a narrow settlement between the state and Ocalan, even if it ends the PKK’s armed campaign and reorganises Kurdish armed actors regionally, does not amount to a resolution of the Kurdish question. They point to the continued imprisonment of opposition leaders, the persistence of sweeping terrorism prosecutions, constraints on media and political competition, and a judiciary whose independence is widely questioned. From this perspective, constitutional recognition of Kurdish identity or the introduction of elective Kurdish-language courses are insufficient if not accompanied by broader democratisation that guarantees equal citizenship, rule of law and meaningful political pluralism.

In that sense, the chain that began with Sharaa’s visit to the White House and continued with Bahçeli’s threat to go to Imrali now defines the contours of an emerging settlement: the demilitarisation and reintegration of PKK structures, the incorporation of the SDF into the Syrian state, and the elevation of Ocalan as a central Kurdish interlocutor for Ankara. Whether this settlement evolves into a more substantive political opening, or remains a controlled security arrangement designed to stabilise the map without altering the underlying power structure, will determine how it is ultimately judged by Kurdish constituencies and by Turkey’s broader opposition.