Adnan Boynukara
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations consists of the notes a ruler kept about his own duty, judgment, and the common good. For that reason, I return to Aurelius from time to time. This time I read his thoughts through the historical meaning, for Turkey, of the process shaped around the goal of the PKK laying down its arms and dissolving itself.
Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful ruler of the Roman Empire. Yet the text we know as Meditations consists far more of notes a ruler kept for himself than of lessons in rulership addressed to the world. A significant portion of these notes was written during the long wars on the Danube frontier. In other words, Meditations is a text that shows how a ruler in the midst of war tried to think not only about fighting, but about the order beyond the war and about his own conduct. For him, a person’s true test is not to display the power he possesses to others, but to govern his own reason and behavior. Perhaps that is why these notes can shed a surprising light on the issues facing Turkey today.
In the process shaped around the goal of the PKK laying down its arms and dissolving itself, Turkey is not managing merely a security issue. The relationship between the power of the state and the realm of politics, between the pains of the past and the possibilities of the future, between the need for security and the law, and between the end of arms and a new political order is being re-established. It is precisely here that the question Aurelius frequently dwells on in his notes gains importance: How should a person fulfill the duty he can control in the face of outcomes he cannot control? Turkey cannot by itself determine how all elements of the organization will behave or where developments in the region will lead. But it can determine how it will establish verification, the law, and its own manner of conduct. That is Turkey’s present test.
Uncertainty Does Not Eliminate Responsibility
According to Aurelius, a person cannot control all outcomes in the world. But this does not eliminate the responsibility to do one’s own part. The same holds for the government of a state. The inability to guarantee the outcome of a process entirely does not eliminate the responsibility to manage that process. The PKK’s will toward laying down arms and ending its organizational existence is not under Turkey’s control. Reliably monitoring and supervising whether that will is translated into practice is the state’s responsibility. The ending of the pressure of arms on politics, law, and social life may open the door to a new period. But whether that door truly opens will be understood not by declarations of good will, but by what happens on the ground.
Indeed, in the Commission text of the Turkish Grand National Assembly dated 18 February 2026, the most critical threshold of the process was defined as the determination and confirmation by state institutions that the PKK has laid down its arms with all its elements and has dissolved itself. The same text states that this mechanism must rest on objective, measurable, transparent, and auditable criteria. This corresponds, in fact, to another fundamental principle of Aurelius: to see reality as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Look Not at Words, but at Truth
Aurelius thought that a person should not immediately surrender to his first impression and should evaluate correctly in his mind what he sees. One of the warnings he gives himself in Book VIII is this: the mind should not easily assent to what is incorrect or uncertain. The issue is not only what we think, but what we truly know and how measured we are when we pass judgment. Today this principle is especially important. Saying “arms are being laid down” is not the same as verifying that arms have truly and completely been laid down. Saying “the organization is being dissolved” is not the same as the organizational capacity actually disappearing. Saying “a new period has begun” is not the same as all the mechanisms of the old period coming to an end. What Turkey needs in this process is neither preconceived distrust nor preconceived optimism. What is needed is judgment based on evidence.
The Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integration, adopted in the Turkish Grand National Assembly on 10 August 2026 and published in the Official Gazette on 18 August, constitutes a noteworthy step in this regard. The regulation makes the determination by security institutions that the PKK/KCK has ended its de facto existence and surrendered its arms, and the confirmation of that determination by National Security Council decision, a precondition for the legal consequences it envisages. Therefore, in the subsequent stage, the issue is not the intensity of political rhetoric, but the reliable demonstration of actual transformation.
Here it is necessary to return once more to the distinction of control mentioned at the beginning of the article. To what extent should the legal future of an individual who wishes to lay down arms be tied to a collective outcome he cannot control? Collective determination is a meaningful threshold for the process as a whole. Yet keeping individual paths open for those who wish to lay down arms prevents a small segment that insists on arms from holding everyone back. It is important that this possibility also be taken into account in the implementation of the law.
The Obstacle Can Become Part of the Road Itself
One of Aurelius’ most powerful thoughts is that the obstacle is not merely an object standing in front of the road, but can, when rightly used, become part of the road itself. In Book V he expresses this with the idea that the obstacle in front of action can be transformed into material that advances the action. For Turkey, the name of this obstacle is the failure of the previous Resolution Process. When this failure is read not as an assumption that a new initiative will also fail, but as a way of seeing how the new period should be designed, it can turn into a roadmap showing which mistakes must not be repeated.
Yet this roadmap cannot be drawn with general expressions such as “more security” or “more political will.” The lessons are more concrete: Trust must not take the place of the verification mechanism; the fact that the withdrawal announced in 2013 was never reliably verified is the clearest example of this. Law must not trail behind political intention. Political expectation must not be placed ahead of actual development. The state’s security responsibility must not become a reflex that narrows the democratic political space of the new period. And no side should regard its past position as an unchanging condition of the future.
State Reason Is Not Only Security Reason
Marcus Aurelius sees the human being as part of a larger community. In Book VI, while relating his citizenship to Rome and his humanity to a broader world community, he does not think of the individual’s benefit independently of the common good. The common good, however, is not limited to security. This thought can help us make an important distinction for Turkey: state reason is not only the elimination of the threat, but also the ability to manage the new social and political order that emerges after the threat is eliminated. Therefore, the success of the process of laying down arms cannot be measured solely by the success of security institutions. The long-term test is how politics will function in an environment without arms. If arms truly leave the scene, politics must also emerge from the shadow of arms. This does not mean only the transformation of the PKK. It means that the state, political parties, social actors, and the entire political field act according to the new conditions.
With the removal of arms from politics, another distinction must also be preserved. The ending of the PKK’s armed and organizational existence is not the same as the resolution of the Kurdish issue in all its dimensions. The ending of an organization’s armed existence does not mean that different headings such as equal citizenship, representation, freedoms, local administrations, and economic and social inequalities will automatically disappear. On the contrary, the removal of arms from the scene creates an opportunity for these issues to be discussed no longer in the shadow of an armed structure, but within politics and the legal order.
This process is also not one that begins and ends within Turkey’s borders. Developments in Iraq and especially in Syria, the future of armed structures, and regional power balances will directly affect the new period before Turkey. Therefore, for Ankara the issue is not only the laying down of arms in Turkey, but also the ability to manage how armed structures in the region and new power balances will affect Turkey’s security and political stability. Aurelius’ approach of seeing the human being as part of a larger whole acquires another meaning here: a problem must be evaluated not only within its own borders, but within the broader reality that surrounds it.
Recognizing Pain, Not Surrendering to Anger
One of the most sensitive questions of the post-conflict period is how to live with the pains of the past. Aurelius’ thought on anger gains importance at this point. This thought does not counsel ignoring evil, but not allowing evil to seize control of judgment. When the rebellion of one of his commanders, Avidius Cassius, ended, Aurelius is reported to have ordered the rebel’s correspondence burned without reading it; this is associated with the same understanding. The issue is not abandoning accountability, but not allowing justice to turn into revenge.
This thought touches one of Turkey’s most difficult issues. The silencing of arms does not require forgetting what happened in the past. Yet the weight of what happened in the past also does not necessitate that the future be built forever within the logic of arms. The memory of martyrs, veterans, victims, and people who paid the price of conflict for years, and the search for a common life oriented toward the future, do not have to be enemies of each other. A lasting normalization may be possible not by asking victims to forget the past, but by recognizing the pains that were experienced and having them find a response in the moral and legal order of the new period.
Not Being Dyed in the Color of Conflict
Reducing the risks that may arise if arms are laid down solely to the questions “Will the organization take up arms again?” or “Will those who wish to disrupt the process through provocation succeed?” would be an incomplete reading. Of course these questions are important. For this reason, verification, intelligence, security, and legal mechanisms must be strong. But another question is equally important: After arms disappear, will politics truly be liberated? If the transfer of organizational tutelage to the political field by other means is a risk, the state’s continuation of the security reflexes of the conflict period into the new period is another risk.
In Book VI Aurelius reminds himself “not to become Caesarized, not to be dyed in that color.” He is aware that power can, over time, dye the one who uses it in its own color. The security reflexes of long periods of conflict dye the state in a similar way. For the state, a more difficult test begins here. The power of the state appears not only in its ability to eliminate the threat, but in its ability to change its own manner of conduct when the threat is eliminated. Continuing to manage a period without arms with the mentality of the period in which arms existed would mean confining the new possibility within the old order. Therefore, the success of the new period must be measured not only by the disappearance of an armed structure, but by the overcoming of the political and mental climate that formed around arms. The measure of this is not abstract either. The headings that also appear in the Commission report will be the first indicators of the extent to which the state has adapted to the new period.
Between Caution and Courage
In Book V Aurelius compares the person who does good to a vine that, after giving grapes, expects nothing in return. A person should care not about the applause for what he has done, but about the work itself. In the government of a state as well, what is important is not to proclaim the political success of a historic process, but to fulfill the duty before one as correctly as possible. In such periods, political moderation is as important as political will.
In some periods of history, what confronts rulers is not easy decisions, but moments that require striking a balance between caution and courage. Avoiding every risk can sometimes be more dangerous than managing the risk. Therefore those who manage the process must be able to see criticism as an opportunity that improves the quality of the decision, and must also be able to preserve the will to decide. It is necessary to proceed without turning the possibility of success into a subject of propaganda, and without turning the possibility of failure into a justification for doing nothing. True courage is the ability to act while seeing the risks and trying to manage them.
Turkey’s New Threshold
The issue before Turkey today is no longer merely the question “Will the PKK lay down its arms?” More difficult questions come after that. How will the completion of the laying down of arms be verified? How will the organizational structure be dismantled? How will armed formations and regional developments in Syria and Iraq affect this process? How will the state’s security institutions adapt to the new period? Will politics truly be able to take the place of arms? And while all this is being done, how will society’s sense of justice and trust be preserved? None of these has an easy answer.
As Marcus Aurelius reminds us, a person cannot control all outcomes; he can do his own duty as correctly as possible. For Turkey the issue is this. The silencing of arms is of course an important turning point. But to think that it will automatically produce a lasting peace would be a mistake. A dissolution decision will not automatically establish a new political order, nor will the enacted law by itself achieve social integration. All of these are possibilities. What is decisive is how these possibilities will be evaluated from now on and with what reason they will be managed.
Perhaps the most important lesson that remains from Aurelius’ world to today’s Turkey is this: the future cannot be built with the anger of the past, nor can reality be abandoned with the hope of the future. The possibility of a Turkey without arms can become lasting only to the extent that reason, law, justice, and politics can fill the place of arms. The true test is not the day the arms fall silent, but the day after the arms fall silent—what the state, politics, and society will do…
Source: https://perspektif.online/silah-sustuktan-sonra-bir-imparatorun-notlarindan-turkiyeye/