Notes

Live to fight another way. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish militia that has battled against the Turkish state for greater Kurdish rights and sovereignty for more than 45 years, announced on Monday that it would disband and give up its weapons. The group, known by its Kurdish initials PKK, said it had “carried the Kurdish issue to a level where it can be solved by democratic politics, and the PKK has completed its mission in that sense.”

But the PKK made the decision unilaterally—there was no ongoing dialogue with the government. Turkish officials said they hadn’t made any concessions to get the PKK to disarm, and there aren’t any proposed laws to expand Kurdish rights, whether linguistic, educational, cultural, or political. The group’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, remains in an island prison on the Sea of Marmara off the coast of Istanbul.

What’s going on?

—Michael Bluhm