Middle East
Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Rudaw during the Erbil Forum 2025. Photo: screengrab/ Rudaw
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Expressing support for a sustainable peace process following Abdullah Ocalan’s call for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to disarm, a human rights researcher said that for sustainable peace, the “root causes” of the conflict must be addressed.
“We have hopes that the peace process will result in a lasting, sustainable peace, that the dialogue that comes out of it is one that will be inclusive, respectful of all people's rights, be they Turkish, Kurdish, whoever, and one that will essentially ensure stability for years to come,” Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Rudaw during the Erbil Forum 2025.
In a letter that was shared with the public on Thursday, imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan urged the group to disarm and disband.
The PKK was founded with the goal of an independent state for Kurds who faced systemic discrimination in Turkey, but later changed to demand autonomy. The group has engaged in four decades of struggle against the Turkish state. The conflict has also spilled over international borders into the Kurdistan Region where the PKK has bases and into northern Syria where Ankara alleges Kurdish armed forces are an offshoot of the PKK.
Sanbar said that if the root causes of the conflict are not addressed, it is likely to happen again.
“So we're going to want to see from Turkish, from Syrian, from any authorities, a willingness to reconcile with and deal with the root causes that led to the conflict in the first place and address them in a way that is respectful of human rights,” she said.
Focusing on Syria, she said that Western media often under reports that, despite the end of the Assad regime, the situation is far from resolved with respect to the Kurds.
“The Syrian National Army [SNA] in particular, which is a Turkey-backed coalition of armed groups, has continued the fighting, pushing a front line that has reached up to Tishrin Dam. So there is still ongoing hostilities that has been particularly affecting the Kurds in northern Syria as the SNA fights against the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] who control the northeast,” she said.
Violations along the frontline continue, and monitoring efforts persist, with hopes that Turkey and the SNA will ensure accountability, she said.
For the past three months, Turkey and the SNA have carried out intense attacks on the Kurdish-led SDF near Manbij, including Tishreen Dam and Qere Qozaq bridge on the Euphrates River.
The SNA seized control of the towns Manbij and Til Rifaat from the SDF after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 8.
Turkey has carried out three major military campaigns against the SDF since 2016 on the grounds that the People’s Protection Units (YPG) are the Syrian offshoot of the PKK and pose a threat to Ankara’s national security. The YPG is the backbone of the SDF.
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