For years, liberal observers and peace advocates have imagined a resolution to this conflict as a key step in Turkey’s democratization, one that would be accompanied by full civil rights for Turkey’s Kurdish community. The current peace process, by contrast, appears squarely aimed not at liberalization but at consolidating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s power.

In a carefully choreographed ceremony on July 11 in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, 30 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) symbolically burned their weapons. This unprecedented act was a signal of goodwill toward Ankara amid ongoing peace talks that both sides hope will end Turkey’s decade-long Kurdish conflict.

In a carefully choreographed ceremony on July 11 in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, 30 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) symbolically burned their weapons. This unprecedented act was a signal of goodwill toward Ankara amid ongoing peace talks that both sides hope will end Turkey’s decade-long Kurdish conflict.

For years, liberal observers and peace advocates have imagined a resolution to this conflict as a key step in Turkey’s democratization, one that would be accompanied by full civil rights for Turkey’s Kurdish community. The current peace process, by contrast, appears squarely aimed not at liberalization but at consolidating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s power.

The question now is whether Erdogan and the PKK can succeed in resetting Turkey’s state-society relations and reshaping the parameters of political inclusion, all without any meaningful steps toward democracy. Put differently, can Erdogan succeed in giving the country’s authoritarianism a multicultural veneer?

Turkey’s relationship with its Kurdish population has historically been shaped by the country’s nationalist and centralized ideology that suppressed ethnic