PKK ended its five year ceasefire a couple of days ago. This is very significant, and very terrible.

There’s been a lot of progress in Turkey, but the kind of moderation and impovement of the Turkish attitude and treatment of its Kurdish minority that would put the conflict completely to an end was several years away. Unfortunately, I believe those things, and democratic reforms in general, are now less likely. And of course, new hostilities will be very, very very bad for the poulation of eastern Turkey.

It’s likely the Turkish military will committ atrocities, which will make the prospect of opening negotiations about EU membership more remote, which will make the forces of reform weaker, which will make EU membership even more distant, etc ad infinitum.

One good thing is that a lot of reforms have already been implemented in the last year, most lately the military was stripped of their considerable political power, but the reforms need to be implemented on the ground, not just on paper.

As far as I can tell, the media hasn’t paid much attention to this story, which is sad and also odd since, unlike say the war in Congo, another (scandalously)underreported story, it has obvious geopolitical ramifications, even short-term ones, since, as Tacitus has pointed out it might further destabilize Turkey’s neigbour Iraq.

I’m hardly an expert on Turkey. I will look for quality analysis on the subject and update this post if I find something.