Conflicts over identity, belonging, and political participation in the twenty-first century are no longer resolved exclusively through overt repression. Increasingly, they are managed through more complex forms of governance, strategies that combine integration, visibility, and the simultaneous containment of political claims. Recognition and control are no longer opposites; they operate in tandem.
A similar shift can be observed in the handling of the Kurdish question. While repression, prosecutions, and the imprisonment of Kurdish political actors remain a reality, a longer-term strategic recalibration is also emerging. Recognition, dialogue, and cultural visibility now coexist with ongoing security measures, embedded within a preventive order policy aimed at control, depoliticization, and the preservation of regional influence.
The return of the Kurdish question in a changing order
Turkey finds itself in the midst of a strategic repositioning within a rapidly transforming regional and global order. The political architecture of the Middle East, established after 1923, is increasingly losing its stability. Borders once considered immutable are being challenged by war, state fragmentation, resource scarcity, and geopolitical rivalries. In this context, the Kurdish question is once again moving to the center of political and strategic calculations.
With a population of around forty million, the Kurds constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in the Middle East, and, in the long term, potentially the largest within Turkey itself. They inhabit contiguous border regions across Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, areas rich in oil, gas, water, and mineral resources. Military conflicts have shown that these territories can neither be permanently controlled nor politically pacified. At the same time, new forms of cross-border Kurdish solidarity, self-organization, and political imagination have emerged, particularly in northern Syria.
This creates a structural dilemma for Turkey: domestically, the Kurdish question remains framed as a security issue; regionally, it is evolving into a significant power factor. The response is no longer purely repressive, but increasingly strategic and multifaceted.
Repression and dialogue: Negotiations without publicity
Despite new formats of dialogue, repression persists. The arrest of elected Kurdish politicians, the dismissal of mayors, the prosecution of activists, and restrictions on Kurdish media and civil society structures continue to shape reality. The security logic has not been abandoned.
At the same time, contacts between the Turkish state and the imprisoned former PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan have resurfaced. Little is publicly known about the content, scope, or objectives of these discussions. Transparency is largely absent. It remains unclear whether Ocalan acts as a political interlocutor, a symbolic figure, or a strategic instrument.
Yet precisely this coexistence of repression and dialogue suggests a strategic recalibration. From an analytical perspective, Öcalan may serve a functional role within a preventive order policy: as a reference figure to channel Kurdish demands, discipline political actors, and mitigate potential radicalization. These talks thus represent less a break with past policy than its extension.
Preventive order policy: Integration without sovereignty
Preventive order policy describes a strategy aimed at incorporating potentially influential actors into existing structures at an early stage in order to limit future shifts in power.
In the Kurdish context, this means political integration without collective self-determination. Kurdish participation is permitted as long as it remains within the framework of the existing state order. Kurds may act as individuals, found parties, hold office, participate politically, provided they do not advance structural demands such as autonomy, federalism, or constitutional recognition. Such demands are not treated as legitimate democratic claims but are instead framed as security risks.
For younger generations, this produces a subtle yet powerful learning process: success is achieved not through collective rights, but through individual adaptation. The Kurdish question is thus decollectivized and translated into personal life strategies.
The Regional dimension and the question of power
This preventive order policy is not confined to domestic politics. It is closely tied to regional ambitions. From Ankara’s perspective, the emergence of a durable Kurdish self-administration in Syria, similar to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, constitutes a strategic threat.
Such a development would internationalize the Kurdish question, institutionalize Kurdish political agency, and exert long-term influence on Kurds within Turkey. Accordingly, Turkey has sought to prevent the consolidation of an autonomous Kurdish entity in northern Syria through military interventions, diplomatic pressure, and political influence.
At the same time, more subtle instruments are being developed: internal strategies of political integration, cultural recognition, and psychological management aim to ensure that external Kurdish governance models do not become attractive reference points. Preventive order policy thus operates simultaneously as domestic and foreign policy.
Exporting order: The Syrian model
A further development is becoming visible: elements of Turkish order policy are being transferred to regional contexts. In Syria, in particular, a model appears to be taking shape that formally acknowledges Kurdish presence while rejecting collective political self-determination.
In the course of the re-consolidation of state structures in Damascus, an approach is emerging that prioritizes individual integration over institutionalized autonomy. Kurds are to be included as citizens, but without their own political institutions, territorial self-administration, or independent security structures.
The logic is clear: recognition, but without structural consequences. Kurdish identity is culturally tolerated, yet politically constrained. For Turkey, such a development offers strategic reassurance, as alternative Kurdish governance models lose their appeal and cross-border political imaginaries weaken.
This points toward a converging regional order in which different states arrive at similar responses to the Kurdish question.
The Iranian perspective: A transferable model
Against this backdrop, it appears plausible that a comparable approach could, over time, gain relevance in Iran.