Meghan Bodette

Abdullah Ocalan's 'Historic Call': What to Expect – Kurdish Peace Institute

CONTENT: While no one knows specifics, statements from Kurdish officials & Ocalan’s past peace proposals suggest that possible topics to be addressed may include a ceasefire; a legal framework for the process; changes in PKK’s structure; &the status of NE Syria.
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Abdullah Ocalan's 'Historic Call': What to Expect – Kurdish Peace Institute

CONTENT: The Turkish gov’t is talking about the declaration of an “end to terrorism.” DEM is talking about “a roadmap aimed at moving the resolution of the Kurdish issue from a violent base to a political, legal and democratic base.”

What does that mean?
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Abdullah Ocalan's 'Historic Call': What to Expect – Kurdish Peace Institute

FORMAT: PKK demands a video message. Turkey's Justice Minister says that’s not legally possible. DEM says it is possible and is encouraging a video message.
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Abdullah Ocalan's 'Historic Call': What to Expect – Kurdish Peace Institute

TIMING: Nothing happened on 2/15, the earliest date posited & the anniversary of Ocalan’s arrest. DEM says their delegation will go back to Imrali before a call is made. That visit has not yet been announced. The latest projected date is Newroz (3/21).
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Abdullah Ocalan's 'Historic Call': What to Expect – Kurdish Peace Institute

PKK founder and leader Abdullah Ocalan could make a “historic call” with serious implications for Turkey, Syria and the region in the coming days or weeks. What is being said about the timing, format and content of this message? My latest analysis here.
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Kurdish Peace Talks in Turkey and Syria: Feb. 24, 2025 -
DEM prepares to go back to Imrali; Syria's National Dialogue Conference opens with Kurdish parties left out.

Today's update: open.substack.com/pub/kurdishp...

Full timeline: www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Roundup for the week of February 17 - 23 🔽
open.substack.com/pub/kurdishp...

Roundup for the week of February 10 - 16 🔽
open.substack.com/pub/kurdishp...

Roundup for the week of February 3 - 9 🔽
open.substack.com/pub/kurdishp...

Peace timeline now up to date! Today's highlight: rather optimistic statements from both Erdogan and the DEM Party. www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Kurdish Peace Talks in Turkey and Syria, Jan. 25, 2025: Sozdar Avesta discusses PKK's historical reasons for taking up arms and Feb. 15th rumors; Erdogan says Turkey will be "completely saved" from the "scourge of terrorism."
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Thanks for sharing!

Highlights for Jan. 24, 2025:

- DEM shares insights on expanding the process, the disarmament issue, Syria, and next steps from Ocalan's Jan. 22 mtg
- SDF welcome UN envoy's call for dialogue w/ Damascus
- Masoud Barzani discusses Kurdish unity and his Jan. 16 mtg w/ Mazlum Abdi

Timeline: 2024-2025 Kurdish Peace Talks in Turkey and Syria – Kurdish Peace Institute

New KPI resource: A comprehensive timeline of the Kurdish peace talks in Turkey and Syria taking place over the past several months. Updated every day.

www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

In Northeast Syria, Solve The Whole Problem – Kurdish Peace Institute

Washington does not have to abandon Syria's Kurds.
There are options. My colleague @meghanbodette.bsky.social has some concrete suggestions

It does require however, that officials in the Biden admin pause their efforts on linkedin to find jobs

Newshour - Anger and retribution in Syria - BBC Sounds Syrians have been destroying remnants of the Assad regime, including the tomb of Hafez

Starting at 9:25, my colleague Aras Yussef at the Kurdish Peace Institute's Qamishlo office explains how Kurdish communities are seeing the fall of Assad and advances by Turkey-backed militias.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

In Northeast Syria, Solve The Whole Problem – Kurdish Peace Institute

No more stop-gap solutions in northeast Syria. Time to solve the whole problem and make the Kurdish issue a matter of democratic politics on both sides of the border.
www.kurdishpeace.org/research/con...

Back then, US/Coalition chose not to expand Turkey-SDF dialogue into a grand regional Turkish-Kurdish deal.

The result was Operation Peace Spring, widely considered a failure for everyone.

Will they take a different approach this time?

I’m interested to see how the nascent return to Turkey-PKK dialogue will play into all of this.

In 2019, we also saw Coalition mediation between Turkey and SDF in the context of a Turkey-PKK thaw (Ocalan meetings, Erdogan outreach to Kurd voters in Istanbul, Bayik op-ed asking for mediation).

SDF Commander-in-Chief Gen. Mazlum Abdi says the Coalition is assisting SDF w/ evacuations from Shahba and working to deescalate w/ Turkey over Manbij.

If those efforts can get IDPs safety to NES and well cared for while there, and prevent Turkish/SNA advances, that’s a good sign for stability.

Accede Or We Burn The Country Issue #237

This week's recap is out! Inside, @ingridwoudwijk.bsky.social interviews Suhail al-Ghazi and Shiler Sido.

- Syria offensive updates
- Van gets new trustee
- Erdoğan pressured on Gaza
- Turkey reportedly hosts Israel-Hamas talks
- Domestic and diplomatic wraps
- İstanbul unrolls Uber-ish taxi system

There, we feature comments from Hevi Mustafa, the first president of Efrin Canton and an Alevi Kurdish woman.

Her story would not be possible anywhere else in Syria. No actor but the DAANES would allow a non-Sunni Muslim, non-Arab woman to hold political power.

Institutionalizing Equality: Northeast Syria's Co-Chair System – Kurdish Peace Institute

We also wrote this brief history of how organized women fought for, and won, the institutionalization of the co-chair system in all DAANES structures, featuring interviews that didn’t fit in the original analysis.
www.kurdishpeace.org/policy/insti...

If they reach DAANES territory, these militias will take revenge on any woman who has ever stood up and said she wants to determine her own future. We know what they did to the women of Efrin. We know what they did to Hevrin Khalaf. They are proud of this and want to do it again.

The groups advancing now, HTS and SNA, offer women nothing. They do not believe women are capable of making decisions for their communities or defending themselves. They believe women are third class citizens and that this inferiority is simply the natural order of things.

In all of Syria, only the DAANES offers women a path to equality and political power. While they haven’t eradicated all oppression overnight, they’ve made incredible progress in conditions that usually set women back — a conservative, poor society surviving a brutal war.

A Model for Gender Equitable Leadership in Northeast Syria Meghan Bodette and Aras Yussef share the results of a survey of 31 women co-chairs in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. They find that while representation at all level...

🧵We did the research for this piece, a survey of the DAANES co-chair system, over the summer. It was published before recent events began. On the surface, it isn't about the war. But it has everything to do with the current crisis in north Syria.
www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/mo...

This is what the SDF’s victory over ISIS in Manbij and the DAANES’ experiment in equality and pluralism there meant for this one family — a normal life, a brighter future. Turkey and its proxies threaten to take that away from them and countless others.

She said she was proud that her daughter would grow up knowing about her work — it meant that she’d never know a world where women couldn’t be leaders.

One woman I interviewed there brought her young daughter to our meeting. That’s normal in DAANES institutions, especially women’s institutions. They don’t want women to be left out of local governance because of family responsibilities.