By Bosphorus News Türkiye Desk
Türkiye published the full legal text of its PKK disarmament framework in the Official Gazette on Monday, August 18, confirming a mechanism that suspends prosecutions only after security institutions certify the group has disarmed.
The Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integration takes effect immediately but activates nothing on its own. Its deferral track covers founding or leading the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), membership, knowingly aiding the organization, propaganda, offenses committed within its activity, and financing offenses under Türkiye's terrorism-financing law. None of it starts until security institutions confirm the organizations have ended their existence and surrendered all weapons and ammunition, and a National Security Council decision to that effect is published in the Gazette. From that point, prosecutors can defer investigations and prosecutions for five years on offenses carrying up to 15 years, ten years on offenses carrying more or a life sentence, with intentional killings tied to the group's activity and pre-2005 aggravated life sentences excluded outright; statutes of limitation freeze and case files are preserved for the deferral period, and confiscated assets are liquidated into the Treasury. Deferral decisions can be appealed to a magistrate judge within two weeks, and cases already under appellate or cassation review for covered offenses get sent back for reversal. A parallel track applies to those already convicted: an enforcement judge can defer the sentence itself on the same five- or ten-year split, with the sentence deemed served if the period passes without a new terrorism offense, and reinstated in full, including for any resulting conviction, if it does not. New investigations into pre-ruling conduct opened after the Council's decision require the Board's permission, and officials implementing the law carry no legal, administrative or criminal liability for doing so.
The Board overseeing the law, chaired by Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz with the justice, foreign, interior and defense ministers, the presidency's secretary general, the intelligence chief and the National Security Council's secretary general, can request the removal of rights lost through prosecution or conviction under the law, but only two years after a five-year deferral or three after a ten-year one. Weapons, ammunition, vehicles and other equipment surrendered or declared by members are registered under procedures the Interior and Defense Ministries are to set, and the Board reports regularly to parliament, which runs its own separate Monitoring Commission.
Yılmaz set the Board's first meeting for Monday, August 24, saying its member ministries and institutions had already begun work in their respective areas without waiting for that date. He said the meeting would take up the Board's own working procedures along with the sub-commissions needed for the disarmament and dissolution process, plus any coordination issues member institutions raise. Yılmaz's post also described the law as passed by 467 votes in parliament, a figure that differs from the 468-88-6 tally recorded in the Assembly's own record of the August 10 vote.
Sources: Türkiye's Official Gazette, TRT Haber, Bosphorus News review and reporting.