While Turkey celebrates the dissolution of the PKK, Iran faces a new chapter with PJAK — a Kurdish group with Turkish roots, Iraqi bases, and Iranian anxieties. Is it a PKK second volume?
Faezeh Ghasemi
Iran’s Kurdish dilemma offers a cautionary tale. Recent polls show that the majority of Iranian Kurds strongly identify as Iranian, with high rates of inter-ethnic marriage. Yet, they demand formal recognition of Kurdish identity — including mother-tongue education. Though no legal ban exists on Kurdish language, dress, or culture, and Kurdish literature is taught in universities, a persistent sense of marginalization lingers in Iran’s Kurdish regions. This identity gap creates fertile ground for Kurdish political narratives, often with military cores in Iraq’s Qandil mountains and ideological roots either in Iran’s own history or Turkey’s Kurdish struggle.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iran/140620251
History in the making
In May 2025, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) made history by announcing its organizational dissolution and the end of armed struggle — a decision endorsed by its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, at the group’s 12th congress in northern Iraq. Global media hailed it as the “end of a bloody era” in Turkey. But in Iran, the PKK’s Iranian branch, PJAK, swiftly declared: “We are not dissolving. We will continue.”
This divergence has left Iranian analysts grappling with a stark question: How did Turkey tame its Kurdish crisis while Iran remains entangled with Kurdish demands and PEJAK’s security fallout? Some wonder if the PKK is using PJAK as a lifeline for survival. The survival of PJAK means that a portion of the PKK’s members can remain active. Others suspect regional intelligence agencies benefit from keeping PEJAK alive while eliminating the PKK. These concerns reveal deep unease in Tehran about a group whose origins lie not in Iran — but in Cold War geopolitics and Turkey’s internal conflicts.
Asymmetry and history
To understand this asymmetry, we must return to the 1920s. Stalin’s policy of “national delimitation” fueled leftist Kurdish movements across the region.
In Iran, it culminated in the short-lived Mahabad Republic (1946), backed by the Soviet Union and crushed upon its withdrawal. Although the formation of the Mahabad Republic was not solely the result of the Soviet Union’s colonial policies, and the authoritarian centralization of the Iranian Shah also played a significant role,this trauma cemented Iran’s securitized lens on Kurdish activism for decades.
Mahabad left a lasting legacy: two enduring Iranian Kurdish parties — Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) — with competing ideologies and armed wings. Unlike the PKK, they never built transnational networks or charismatic leadership. Iran, too, failed to resolve the issue through military operations, cultural suppression, or limited border clashes.
Iran-Iraq Kurdish deal
In 2024, Iran secured a security agreement with Iraq, forcing KDPI and Komala to withdraw from border areas and disarm — a tactical win, but not a strategic resolution. These groups still recruit young Kurds annually for one-year training in Iraqi camps, often for economic reasons, before they return home. Their social roots run deep: families of fighters live in Iranian Kurdish cities, and public support surges reactively during crises — not out of ideology, but identity.
Yet PJAK is different. Born in 2004 as the PKK’s Kurdish Iranian arm, it has little organic connection to Iran’s Kurdish aspirations. Instead of cultural rights, it stokes ethnic tensions — especially in bilingual West Azerbaijan, inflaming the Kurdish-Azeri fault line. Its ideology of democratic confederalism feels alien to most Iranian Kurds.
Turkish hybrid diplomacy and Iranian trauma
Turkey, meanwhile, mastered hybrid diplomacy: intelligence infiltration (MIT), military pressure, cultural reforms, and making the Kurdish issue a precondition in every regional deal. It expelled the PKK from its soil and exported the problem to neighbors. The PKK’s dissolution was the crowning achievement of this strategy.
https://www.dw.com/en/kurds-in-the-middle-east-struggle-for-a-homeland/a-75612377
Iran, by contrast, remains trapped in chronic securitization. Historical traumas of territorial loss, porous borders, Qandil bases, and fears of foreign-backed separatism keep Tehran on edge. It watches the PKK’s closure like the end of one bloody chapter — only to see the next volume, titled PJAK, still open.
This trauma — unhealed — blocks meaningful political dialogue or cultural reform. Without a coherent policy toward the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, where Turkey wields economic and military influence (dozens of bases), Iran reacts rather than shapes.
Contrasts
The structural contrasts between Turkey and Iran could not be starker. Turkey faced a cohesive enemy in the PKK, wielded global leverage through its NATO membership and diaspora networks, and asserted regional dominance by exporting the conflict beyond its borders. Iran, by contrast, contends with fragmented Kurdish groups lacking unified leadership, suffers from diplomatic isolation amid strained Western ties, and adopts a largely reactive posture—responding to threats rather than shaping outcomes.
Kurdish dilema
To move beyond PJAK, Tehran must break free from its security monomania and engage Kurdish leaders in structured, transparent dialogue. It should craft an inclusive national narrative that embraces figures from Deioces—the first Median king revered by Kurds as a foundational Iranian ruler—to Cyrus the Great, bridging ancient Kurdish and Persian legacies. Equally critical is rebooting regional diplomacy, particularly with Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government, to counterbalance Turkey’s growing influence in Erbil and the Qandil mountains.
Until the Kurdish issue is resolved at a regional level and Iran reconciles with its neighbors, this crisis will not fade—it will fester into a chronic wound on national cohesion, draining resources and deepening internal divisions. The PKK’s dissolution marked a closed book in Turkey, a hard-won victory through hybrid statecraft. But in Iran, PJAK keeps the story alive—and the next pages may yet be written in blood.
https://thegatewayspi.org/kurdish-identity-in-turkiye-and-iraq/
Faezeh Ghasemi is an expert in International Relations focusing on MENA Studies & Public policies
GSPI does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of GSPI, its staff, or its trustees.
