Kurdistan is back in the news and one of its historical leaders, Ocalan, announces the decline of the PKK, asking militants to lay down their weapons and break ranks. It is a decision that surprises the West but certainly not those who follow Kurdish events and Ankara's political acrobatics.
The first consideration concerns Ocalan himself, now for many a former pasionario who, realistically, perhaps saw a political entity certainly different from the one he originally was and no longer so dedicated to the Kurdish cause.
Erdogan certainly also has a part in the affair; it cannot be ruled out that the moral suasion on Ocalan, bring the Kurdish actor together to recover the political space endangered by the Israeli-Saudi liaison.
There remains the Syrian space, dangerously open and to be controlled before some other aspiring hegemon fills it.
The scenario in its volatility to difficult hypotheses, to impervious roads. Erdogan currently has a grenade in his hands; Ocalan the possibility, if he is ever truly free again, to reconstitute a political entity that would go to pulverize the old PKK.
But who would so easily give up such deep-rooted and widespread power?
A new dance has begun in the East; we should start looking really carefully at the Mashreq* and its instabilities.
* Set of Arab countries that are east of Cairo and north of the Arabian Peninsula
