Orientul Mijlociu

A group of 30 Kurdish fighters clad in camouflage fatigues burned their weapons in a large cauldron in northern Iraq on Friday, in a symbolic gesture marking the first concrete step in an effort to end one of the Middle East’s longest-running insurgencies.

The ceremonial laying down of arms by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK — including 15 women — comes months after the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, called on it to disarm and disband as part of a new peace effort with Türkiye. Ocalan repeated that call in a video message to his fighters this week.

The process in Türkiye was initiated in October by Devlet Bahceli, a firebrand ultranationalist politician who has usually opposed any concessions to Kurdish identity or rights.

While Turkish officials have welcomed the first step toward the PKK’s disarmament, questions remain about the future of Kurdish fighters in Syria.

What is the PKK? The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has waged an armed insurgency against Türkiye since 1984, initially with the aim of establishing a Kurdish state in the southeast of the country. Over time, the objective evolved into a campaign for autonomy and rights for Kurds within Türkiye.

The conflict between militants and state forces, which has spread beyond Türkiye’s borders into Iraq and Syria, has killed tens of thousands of people. The PKK is considered to be a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.

Who is Ocalan? Abdullah Ocalan, who as a student of political science in Ankara became deeply involved in leftist movements, formed the PKK in 1978 as a Marxist organization. He fled to Syria in 1979, along with other PKK members, where he remained until 1998, when Syria expelled him under intense pressure from Türkiye.

Ocalan was captured in Kenya in 1999 and imprisoned on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara, where he remains to this day. His death sentence for treason was commuted to a life term in prison after Türkiye abolished the death penalty.

The 76-year-old endures as a symbol for Kurdish independence and rights and continues to wield influence over the Kurdish movement, with past messages relayed through family members or lawyers resonating beyond Türkiye, in Iraq and Syria.

Push for peace

In October, Bahceli, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested Ocalan could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands the PKK.

It was a major shift for the hardline politician who had previously strongly supported the state’s military action against the militant group and its affiliates in neighboring Syria and rejected any notion of negotiation.

In a message delivered through senior officials of the pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, Ocalan called on the PKK leadership to take the decision to disband and disarm in February.

The PKK announced a unilateral ceasefire in March in response to Ocalan’s call and later announced its decision to disarm.

It was not immediately clear what concessions, if any, the Kurdish groups would get in return. PKK officials have said they expect former fighters to be given a path to integrate into the political system in Türkiye.

There are also concerns that some splinter groups may emerge within the PKK and that attacks may continue.

Soon after Bahceli’s announcement, the PKK claimed an attack on Türkiye’s key aerospace company outside of Ankara that killed several people.

Previous attempts

There have been several peace efforts between the Turkish state and the PKK over the years, including secret negotiations held in Oslo, Norway from 2009 until 2011. However, none have yielded results.

The last attempt to reach a peace deal took place between 2013 and 2015 with a series of talks between Turkish officials and Ocalan, who declared a ceasefire and withdrew fighters to bases in northern Iraq.

Turkish officials took steps to improve Kurdish rights, including allowing Kurdish-language broadcasts. The process collapsed in July 2015, after a series of violent attacks, including one by the ISIS group that killed 33 pro-Kurdish activists.

Since then, Türkiye has cracked down on its pro-Kurdish movement and has jailed thousands of people, including the former leader of the main pro-Kurdish political party, Selahattin Demirtas, over alleged links to the PKK.

Reshaping the region

The latest peace effort comes at a time when Türkiye and the Kurds are both seeking security to face the challenges in the Middle East.

The renewed peace initiative unfolds amid fundamental changes reshaping the region, including the reconfiguration of power in Syria after the toppling of President Bashar Assad, the weakening of the Hezbollah militant movement in Lebanon, and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Türkiye strongly supports a deal reached between Syria’s new administration and the Kurdish-led and US backed Syrian Democratic Forces under which the SDF forces would merge with the new Syrian national army. The US envoy to Syria told The Associated Press this week that the sides remain at odds over the merger.

Hamish Kinnear, Senior Middle East and North Africa Analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said Ocalan’s decision to abandon the armed struggle coincides with a period when the PKK’s leverage is weak due to military setbacks and regional isolation.

“The PKK’s armed struggle was already faltering in the face of advances by Türkiye’s military, while its popularity among its traditional base was in decline,” Kinnear said. ”Ultimately, the peace talks were a useful off ramp in which improvement of Kurdish rights could still be pursued.”

However, some believe the main aim of the reconciliation effort is for Erdogan’s government to garner Kurdish support for a new constitution that would allow him to remain in power beyond 2028, when his term ends.

Bahceli has openly called for a new constitution, saying it was essential to keep Erdogan in power for Türkiye’s future. Erdogan and Bahceli are reportedly seeking parliamentary support from the DEM.

Britain’s obedient defence correspondents are refusing to report a story of clear public interest in the middle of a genocide.

Britain’s mainstream media have not carried out a single investigation into the extent, impact or legal status of the more than 500 surveillance flights over Gaza that the RAF has carried out since December 2023.

The Ministry of Defence continues to insist that the operations, carried out by Shadow R1 aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, are designed purely to assist with the discovery of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023.

It appears that Britain’s obedient defence correspondents have no appetite to challenge this or even to raise the slightest concern about the legal or ethical implications of providing intelligence support to Israel in the middle of a genocide.

Yet thanks to dogged work by campaigners, independent journalists and pro-Palestine MPs, we know both that the flights are continuing to operate (as they did even throughout the ceasefire) and that spikes in the number of flights have coincided with especially deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza.

The lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream media is perhaps not surprising but it is deeply troubling.

What spy flights?

Action on Armed Violence, who have investigated the flights, point to the opacity of the intelligence and criticise the government for its repeated refusal to talk about how it has been used and who it has been shared with: “Once shared with Israel or the United States, Britain loses control of how the data is used.”

​​Israel’s incendiary attack on Iran on 13 June has led to a flurry of stories mentioning RAF Akrotiri as a potential target for Iranian retaliation given its status as the UK base for what the BBC admitted is a “rapid deployment force available for contingencies in the Middle East”.

The defacing of two military planes at RAF Brize Norton by members of Palestine Action – that has subsequently led to the unprecedented decision by the Home Secretary to proscribe the group – led to many mainstream news outlets briefly citing the activists’ claim that the RAF was involved in what most stories referred to as “military operations in the Middle East”.

Unusually, the BBC’s account did at least mention the activists’ claim that Britain was continuing to “fly spy planes over Gaza”.

However, neither these stories nor indeed any of the ones since the flights started operating in December 2023 have actually investigated these claims.

Of the 1,359 pieces in UK-based media between 2/12/23 and 24/6/25 referencing “Akrotiri”, none in the mainstream media have focused specifically on the spy flights.

This is in direct contravention of a significant public interest in covering the flights as an ongoing controversy. Even Google’s AI overview acknowledges this. Based on search results for “surveillance flights, Gaza AND Cyprus”, Google’s conclusion is that “it appears there has been considerable discussion and concern surrounding British surveillance flights operating out of RAF Akrotiri, a military base in Cyprus, and flying over Gaza”.

Despite the fact that independent sources like The National, Declassified UK and Middle East Eye have repeatedly drawn attention to the flights and the implications of supplying intelligence to Israeli forces, mainstream news media have refused to amplify this “discussion and concern”.

The vast majority of stories that reference Akrotiri are instead in relation to its role as a base for attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen in January 2024 (“Brits hits Houthis” was the headline in the Sun), the repatriation of UK citizens from Lebanon in summer 2024 and the surveillance of the base by an alleged Iranian spy in June 2025.

Hard news

This lack of coverage is certainly not because the flights exist only in the imaginations of Declassified UK journalists or pro-Palestine activists. When pressed, the Ministry of Defence admits they are taking place.

For example, on 2 December 2023, the BBC acknowledged the launch of surveillance flights to Gaza in order to “search for Hamas hostage locations”, still the official MoD narrative. The following October, the BBC reported that the UK was willing to hand over “Gaza intelligence” to the International Criminal Court, if requested, as part of the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes carried out by Israel.

Other than that, however, the BBC has remained silent on the nature of this “intelligence” and whether the flights may make the UK complicit with war crimes if found to be the case by the ICC. It has utterly failed to follow up the story. Search the BBC’s “Ministry of Defence” thread and you will find it bare.

When challenged about this by Declassified, the BBC’s director of news content Richard Burgess said: “I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel”.

The Guardian has published three comment pieces – by Jeremy Corbyn, Paul Rogers and Owen Jones and a joint signatory letter – all of which have made brief reference to the spy flights.

In hard news, however, the Guardian has barely acknowledged the existence of the flights, confined to one line in a Patrick Wintour story on Foreign Office staff being told to resign after challenging UK policy on Gaza, as well as a mention of “500 surveillance flights” in response to the activities of Palestine Action.

The i paper ran a single story in October 2024 stating that “British military aircraft have reportedly flown hundreds of reconnaissance missions over Gaza in the past year to gather intelligence for Israel” (my emphasis) but, like so many other outlets, have not returned in any meaningful way to the topic since.

Deafening silence

Despite official acknowledgement that the flights continue to take place and despite multiple questions raised in parliament by concerned MPs like Jeremy Corbyn, Shockat Adam, Scott Arthur, Brendan O’Hara and Calvin Bailey, the silence on the intelligence-gathering nature of the spy flights has been deafening.

It’s hard to reconcile this silence with the energy with which mainstream media have investigated Russian spy planes flying over Ukraine and other military manoeuvres related to Putin’s invasion.

It is all the more hypocritical considering their claim to be watchdogs scrutinising government actions. Only recently, Katharine Viner, the editor of the Guardian, wrote about her paper’s record in “scrutinising power with complete independence for decades”.

In reality, it’s precisely the opposite. Leading news organisations are amplifying MoD talking points and Foreign Office priorities but then remaining quiet and toeing the line when it comes to identifying potential military support for Israel’s genocide.

This is similar to the total lack of critical voices in their reporting of the Defence Review that was announced earlier in June by Keir Starmer.

Out of 993 stories on the “defence review” in UK media on 2 June, a tiny handful took the time even to acknowledge the existence of significant public opposition to increases in defence spending, particularly at the expense of cuts to public services.

The vast majority of published criticism of Labour’s defence plans come from the Tories or military voices arguing that “this is too little, too late” or that it isn’t clear where the money will come from. There is, apparently, no space for hard news content that investigates whether increased defence spending is either effective nor necessary.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media’s continuing silence on RAF spy flights over Gaza is a flagrant abdication of their stated responsibility to ask tough questions of military planners.

Far from holding power to account, mainstream media – through their silence and meekness – are allowing the government to get away with murder in Gaza.