The Fruit of Patience: How Regional Shifts Ripened Turkey’s Path to Kurdish Reconciliation

On Aug. 25, at the People’s Palace in Damascus, Mazloum Abdi announced the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which he had commanded for a decade. Speaking first in Arabic and then in Kurdish, he said the force had joined the Syrian army and would no longer operate independently. 15 days earlier, Turkey’s parliament had passed a framework law for the disarmament of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The group has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, which have waged a brutal campaign ag