By Eelaththu Nilavan
July 12, 2025
Writer, Researcher, and Analyst on Tamil National History and Global Resistance Movements
❖. Introduction: A Moment That Echoes Beyond Kurdistan
On July 11, 2025, in the historically complex and politically sensitive region of Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq, an emotionally charged and symbolically powerful scene unfolded. Thirty members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), clad in uniform but unmasked, stood solemnly before an assembled audience. In a quiet but potent gesture, they placed their weapons into a pit and destroyed them, marking one of the most visible acts of disarmament in the PKK’s decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.
This event was not merely a disarmament; it was a ritual of transition, a deliberate move from militant resistance to political engagement, from hidden warfare to visible identity, from violence to symbolism. For the world, it was a reminder of the unresolved ethnic conflicts buried under modern nation-states. For the Eelam Tamil people, it stirred historical memory and raised profound questions.
✦.The PKK’s Journey: From Armed Rebellion to Political Recalibration
Formed in the late 1970s under the leadership of Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK launched its armed struggle in 1984 with a call for Kurdish autonomy, cultural rights, and political self-determination, primarily within Turkey. Over four decades, the conflict claimed more than 40,000 lives, affecting not only Kurdish and Turkish civilians but the entire geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
The PKK evolved ideologically from Marxist-Leninism to democratic confederalism, advocating decentralized governance and grassroots democracy. Despite being labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU, it maintained strong support among Kurds and Kurdish diaspora networks.
In recent years, however, military setbacks, political fatigue, and changing regional dynamics—especially the shifting priorities of global powers and the imprisonment of Öcalan since 1999—led the PKK to reconsider its strategy. Analysts believe the Turkish government’s controlled outreach, coupled with growing pressure within Kurdish civil society, pushed the organization towards a symbolic disarmament to regain legitimacy and relevance.
✦. The July 11 Ceremony: A Controlled Symbolism
Set in front of a prehistoric cave in Kesane, the location itself served as a metaphor — from caves where guerrillas once hid to an open stage where they now exposed their identities. The group of 30 included both men and women, reflecting the PKK’s long-standing emphasis on gender equality within the struggle.
Importantly, their faces were not hidden — a striking deviation from past appearances. No longer masked fighters, they were unapologetic individuals, claiming public space in defiance of decades of Turkish state suppression.
This disarmament did not come under duress, nor under international peacekeeping supervision. It was a self-staged, self-imposed ritual — simultaneously resisting the state’s narrative of surrender and announcing their own vision of political transition.
✦. A Gift to Erdoğan or a Reclamation of Agency?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, long known for his harsh policies toward the Kurds and authoritarian grip on Turkish politics, may claim this as a victory — the defeat of an armed rebellion, the fulfillment of “Turkey’s indivisible unity.”
But to see this as purely Erdoğan’s triumph is strategically naive. For the PKK, this may represent not surrender but recalibration. Disarmament does not imply dissolution; rather, it signals a potential shift from battlefield legitimacy to political maneuvering in a changing regional context.
Analysts warn that while the PKK’s military power has waned, its ideological and cultural influence among Kurds, especially in Iraq and Syria, remains potent. Disarmament may open doors to new legitimacy, perhaps even new forms of international engagement, especially with Öcalan’s continued symbolic presence despite isolation.
✦. Parallels to the Eelam Tamil Struggle
For Eelam Tamils, particularly those who bore witness to the genocidal end of the Tamil armed struggle in 2009, the PKK’s ceremonial disarmament evokes complex emotions.
The Tamil Tigers (LTTE), like the PKK, rose as an ethno-nationalist response to state oppression, seeking an independent homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka. But unlike the PKK’s symbolic transition, the LTTE was militarily annihilated, its leadership wiped out in a brutal final offensive, and Tamil political agency crushed under a Sinhalese-dominated state narrative.
There was no opportunity for the LTTE to evolve into a political entity, no international platform to surrender arms with dignity, no symbolic closure. Instead, Tamil memory remains suspended, frozen in trauma and the absence of justice.
The PKK’s transition thus raises haunting questions:
What if the LTTE had been allowed a dignified withdrawal and transformation?
Why did the international community enable the violent decimation of the Tamil movement, yet acknowledge the PKK’s evolving legitimacy?
Why is symbolic disarmament accepted for Kurds, but not for Tamils?
✦.International Double Standards and the Politics of Who Gets to Transform
The contrast highlights international hypocrisy in dealing with stateless peoples. Both the Kurdish and Tamil peoples were denied statehood during the 20th-century formation of nation-states, despite clear historical, linguistic, and cultural identities.
Yet global powers — driven by strategic alliances, resource interests, and geopolitical bargains — determine which rebel group can be rehabilitated, and which must be crushed, erased, and forgotten.
The PKK’s evolving legitimacy is closely tied to their utility in Western military strategies (e.g., against ISIS), their geo-strategic position in the Middle East, and the presence of autonomous Kurdish regions like in Iraq. In contrast, the Tamil homeland lies under the grip of a centralized, militarized Sinhala state, with no external power willing to challenge the status quo.
✦.Conclusion: Will the World Listen to Stateless Nations?
The July 11 disarmament by PKK fighters is not just an act of ending war. It is a performative gesture of survival, adaptation, and hope. It shows the importance of narrative — that a movement is not simply defined by weapons, but by its ability to reshape itself.
For the Eelam Tamil nation, it offers both inspiration and mourning: a glimpse of what might have been, and a warning of how international legitimacy is rarely given to the most just causes — unless it aligns with powerful state interests.
The path forward for Tamil political revival may not lie in replicating the PKK model, but in understanding the value of public narrative, dignity in transition, and the strategic use of symbolism and visibility — the very tools that once kept Tamil identity alive through oral history, poetry, resistance, and armed rebellion.
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『 © 2025 Eelaththu Nilavan
Writer, Researcher, and Analyst on Tamil National History and Global Resistance Movements 』
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Amizhthu’s editorial stance.
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