468 to 88: parliament casts its first vote on ending a 40-year conflict

The Turkish Grand National Assembly has passed the first component of the legislation drawn up under the "Terror-Free Türkiye" process. Lawmakers approved the text — which suspends prosecutions and prison sentences for some members of the outlawed PKK — by 468 votes to 88.

The vote is regarded as the first legislative step in a process aimed at ending a conflict that has lasted more than four decades. A 12-article bill establishing the legal framework for the organisation's disbandment is now on the parliamentary agenda and is expected to be taken up in the coming sittings.

The scope of the measure, which categories of offence fall outside it, and how implementation will be supervised remain at the centre of debate. Political parties differ over the detail of the text, and the timetable depends largely on the bill's passage through committee and the general assembly.

MHA Analysis

The significance of this vote is in its sequence, not its arithmetic. Parliament approved the suspension of sentences first — politically the hardest step to reverse — while the bill framing the organisation's disbandment is still in committee. That ordering makes the process expensive to unwind and turns the coming sittings into the real threshold. How the excluded categories of offence are defined will be the technical detail that determines whether the process holds public support.