Murat Karayilan says the PKK has abandoned armed conflict as a strategy and will pursue political, legal and social methods as Türkiye’s peace process advances.
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – The Kurdistan Workers’ Party has abandoned armed conflict as its strategic method and is moving toward political and social struggle, senior PKK figure Murat Karayilan said on Friday, describing the transition as a fundamental change in how the organization intends to pursue its objectives after decades of fighting.
“We are moving from the phase of armed conflict to a phase of political and social struggle,” Karayilan, a member of the PKK’s People’s Defense Center Command (YPG or in Kurdish Yekîneyên Parastina Gel), told PKK-affiliated media.
“We have abandoned the strategy of armed conflict, but we have not abandoned the struggle,” he said.
Karayilan said the next phase would concentrate on democratic politics, legal methods and grassroots social organization, placing his remarks within what the organization calls the “Peace and Democratic Society Process.”
His comments represent one of the clearest descriptions from the PKK leadership of how it views the transition away from its decades-long armed campaign.
Karayilan argued that armed struggle had fulfilled the role the organization assigned to it historically and that political methods should now become the principal vehicle for pursuing Kurdish demands.
“From now on, we will pursue the struggle through political methods and within a legal framework to achieve greater successes,” he said.
Nearly five decades of losses
Karayilan accompanied the strategic announcement with the PKK’s most detailed public accounting to date of its losses since the 1970s.
According to figures he provided, the organization recorded 25,922 deaths between 1976 and 2026.
He said the true total was likely close to 27,000 because approximately 1,000 or more deaths, particularly during periods of intense conflict, had never been formally recorded.
The figures are the PKK’s own accounting and have not been independently verified.
Karayilan broke the recorded number down into several periods, saying 173 members were killed between 1976 and 1983, 13,778 between 1984 and 2000, and 7,949 between 2001 and 2026.
He also said 760 members of the YPS organization were killed between 2015 and 2026.
Another 3,262 deaths, according to Karayilan, occurred during fighting against ISIS in Kobani, other parts of Western Kurdistan and Sinjar.
He said the organization had recently disclosed the identities of 230 members whose deaths had previously not been announced publicly, including people from Amed, Van, Gever, Cizre and Mardin.
A further 520 names from northern Kurdistan remain to be released, he said, alongside smaller numbers from other parts of Kurdistan.
Karayilan attributed the delayed announcements largely to wartime conditions and restrictions on internal communications.
“During the coming weeks and months we will seek to disclose the identities of all our fallen members,” he said.
He acknowledged that the organization had shortcomings in informing families and said some information had reached commanders only after considerable delays.
From weapons to politics
The larger significance of Karayilan’s remarks lies in how he connected those decades of conflict to the organization’s intended future.
He said the PKK had conducted armed conflict for roughly four decades, interrupted by extended ceasefires, but had now entered what he described as a strategic transformation.
The new period, he argued, would require political mobilization and community organization rather than military operations.
Karayilan repeatedly emphasized building what the movement calls democratic social structures and expanding political participation.
He also suggested the transition would eventually reduce the role of weapons altogether.
“If this phase is successfully concluded, weapons will eventually cease to play a role,” he said.
The statement stops short of saying that all arms have already been surrendered or that every military structure has already ceased functioning. Instead, Karayilan framed the change as an ongoing transformation whose success depends on the broader peace process.
That distinction is significant as political actors in Türkiye debate what legal and political arrangements would accompany a durable end to the armed conflict.
Karayilan said the organization intended to pursue its goals “within a legal framework,” language that places increased attention on whether Türkiye’s political system will provide mechanisms for Kurdish political participation and other demands to be addressed without renewed violence.
A wider regional transition
The PKK’s stated transition comes during a broader period of restructuring among Kurdish armed movements in the region, although the processes are politically and institutionally distinct.
Earlier this week, Mazloum Abdi announced the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces as an independent military structure following negotiations with Damascus.
The former SDF commander subsequently became an adviser to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as Kurdish-led military and security institutions were incorporated into Syrian state structures.
Abdi described that shift as a movement from the battlefield toward construction and political participation.
There is no basis in the supplied information to describe the SDF process in Syria and the PKK’s evolving strategy concerning Türkiye as a single coordinated initiative.
Both developments, however, reflect a wider moment in which prominent Kurdish armed actors are publicly presenting politics, legal structures and institutional integration as alternatives to maintaining independent military organizations.
For the PKK, Karayilan’s statement makes that choice explicit.
After a conflict spanning generations and losses that the organization itself now estimates at nearly 27,000 members, its leadership says the next phase will be fought through politics and social organization rather than the armed strategy that defined much of its history.
Whether that transition becomes permanent will depend not only on declarations by the PKK but on the political and legal architecture that emerges around Türkiye’s peace process.
Karayilan nevertheless presented the change as strategic rather than temporary: the organization, he said, has not abandoned its political objectives, but has changed the means through which it intends to pursue them.
