E200 - The End of the PKK with Gönül Tol and Djene Bajalan

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

History, Politics, News

4.8 • 705 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Derek welcomes back to the program Gönül Tol, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and Djene Bajalan, associate professor of history at Missouri State University, to talk about leader Abdullah Öcalan’s call last week for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to disarm and disband. They talk about Öcalan’s history in this conflict, the need to manage his constituencies when announcing this ceasefire, how this fits into Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s plans, whether this move could broaden rights and protections for Kurds in Turkey, the potential implications for Syria, what this means for Kurds elsewhere in the region, and more. Read Gönül’s book Erdoğan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria. Listen to Djene’s radio show/podcast Talking History. Note: this was recorded before the ceasefire was declared. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to American Prestige. To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at Americanprostagepod.com. Find the link in our show notes.
0:11.8	This episode is brought to you by Vantar, stressing over cybersecurity. Whether you're a startup, growing fast, or already established. Vanta can help you get ISO-27,001 certified and more.
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0:35.4	Head to vanta.com slash Spotify to learn more. Hello American
1:02.3	American Prestige listeners, it's Derek, and I am very grateful to be joined on short notice today by two returning champions.
1:10.4	We've got Ganyl Toll Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute,
1:14.3	the author of Erdogan's War,
1:15.8	A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria.
1:18.4	And we've got Jean Bajalan,
1:20.0	Associate Professor of History at Missouri State University.
1:22.6	He's also the host of Talking History on KSMU
1:26.3	and we are going to talk about the PKK.
1:28.8	Thank you guys for coming on the program.
1:30.7	Thanks for having us.
1:32.1	Thank you for having us, yeah.
1:34.1	So just to catch people up, if they're not already aware, what we had on Thursday,
1:40.2	we're recording this on February 28th, so just yesterday, February 27th.
1:44.8	Abdullah O'Dhjalan, the imprisoned leader, founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.
1:50.5	It's been in prison since 1999, issued a statement calling on the organization to disarm, to hold a party Congress to dissolve.
1:58.0	This has been anticipated for at least a few months going back to the,
2:02.0	I guess, now famous incident where Devlet Pachali, the nationalist leader in the Turkish parliament,
	...

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