Since July 2015, the conflict between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has taken more than 4,600 lives in Turkey and northern Iraq. The conflict is 35 years old, but battlefield dynamics are changing, according to open-source data on fatalities collected by Crisis Group and presented in its unique visual conflict explainer. 

Crisis Group’s Analyst for Turkey, Berkay Mandıracı, says the data shows that while the government sees recent battlefield and electoral gains as vindicating its hardline policies toward the PKK, these same policies fuel the Kurdish grievances that keep the fighting going. 

At a time when Turkey is grappling with a myriad of security and economic challenges, open war with a PKK-linked militia in northern Syria, and weakening relations with traditional Western allies, Ankara should consider reopening avenues to de-escalating this destructive conflict.