The most visible issue in almost every peace process is the weapon. Who will disarm? When will they do it? What will happen to members of the armed organization afterwards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s emerging \u201cTerror-Free T\u00fcrkiye\u201d process is understandably dominated by precisely these questions. After more than four decades of conflict with the PKK, credible and verifiable disarmament would represent an extraordinary achievement. Yet experiences of conflict resolution elsewhere point to an uncomfortable reality. Protracted conflicts do not produce only armed organizations, security institutions and political grievances. Over time, they also generate economic relationships, interests and dependencies. And sometimes removing the weapons is easier than dismantling the economic structures that have grown around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One question in MetroPOLL\u2019s September 2026 Pulse of T\u00fcrkiye<\/em> survey therefore deserves particular attention. Respondents were asked whether they believed some sectors, companies or groups had economically benefited from the prolonged conflict and security environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some 45.9 percent said yes. Another 39.2 percent believed there had been no such economic benefit, while 14.9 percent expressed no opinion. We need to be very precise about what this finding does and does not tell us. It does not identify who may have benefited from conflict. Nor does it establish that particular economic interest groups actually exist. Public perception is not empirical proof of war profiteering. However, the result tells us something else that matters: almost half of Turkish society believes that a conflict lasting more than forty years has produced economic winners as well as losers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes the finding even more interesting is that this perception does not appear to belong exclusively to one political constituency. The proportion agreeing that some sectors, companies or groups economically benefited from the conflict stands at 48 percent among AK Party voters, 51.7 percent among CHP voters, 44.4 percent among MHP voters and 41.2 percent among DEM Party voters. It is important to note that voters with very different political identities share this perception. Therefore, the question we should be asking is: Can a conflict continue for more than forty years without creating a war economy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Do We Mean by a War Economy?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When we hear the term \u201cwar economy,\u201d we tend to think first about arms manufacturers and the trade in weapons. The reality is much broader. Protracted conflict can transform economic activity across numerous areas: security expenditure and public procurement, border economies, informal trade and smuggling networks, land and property relations, patterns of forced migration, employment, transportation and local investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some economic activities disappear because of conflict. Others emerge precisely because conflict exists. Over time, individuals, institutions and communities adapt to these circumstances. Ways of earning a living develop around insecurity. Public and private institutions acquire particular functions. Networks are established. Resources flow through particular channels. Economic expectations adjust to what was initially an exceptional situation but has gradually become normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point is not to make a moral accusation. Most people adapting economically to conflict are not deliberately seeking its continuation. They are responding to the environment in which they live. The point is to recognize a political-economy reality: the longer a conflict lasts, the more embedded its economic ecosystem can become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That changes the questions a peace process needs to ask. \u201cWho will put down the weapons?\u201d remains essential. But another question eventually becomes unavoidable: Who stands to lose what if the conflict ends?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Economic Spoilers of Peace<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Peace and conflict studies have long used the concept of the \u201cspoiler\u201d: an actor who believes that a peace process threatens important interests and therefore seeks to obstruct or derail it. We often imagine spoilers in political or ideological terms. A leader may fear losing authority. An armed faction may reject compromise. A political movement may consider an agreement a betrayal of its objectives. However, spoilers can also have economic motivations. For an actor whose income, influence, status or privileged access to resources depends upon the continuation of conflict, peace may represent more than the cessation of violence. It can represent material loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why successful peace processes cannot focus exclusively on changing the behaviour of armed actors. They must eventually change the incentive structures surrounding conflict. Put differently, peace needs to become more economically attractive than war. That means understanding how the transition from conflict changes livelihoods, markets, institutions and access to resources, and managing those changes before they generate new grievances or resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Creating More Winners from Peace<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Other findings from the September MetroPOLL survey provide an important complement to this picture. Some 52.6 percent of respondents believe that complete PKK disarmament would positively affect T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s economy. When asked where resources allocated to the armed struggle should be directed if the conflict ends, the largest group, 34 percent, chose education, healthcare and social support. Another 21.2 percent chose economic development and employment. Read together, these findings reveal an important tension, but also an opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A significant part of Turkish society believes that prolonged conflict has produced economic beneficiaries. At the same time, a majority expects peace itself to generate economic benefits. The real transformation facing T\u00fcrkiye may therefore be understood as a transition from a war economy to a peace economy. This should mean much more than reducing security expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It should mean expanding legitimate economic opportunities in regions that have endured decades of conflict. It should mean attracting investment, increasing trade, improving infrastructure and creating employment. It should mean ensuring that young people can build their futures through ordinary economic and social opportunities rather than within an environment whose possibilities have been distorted by conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a simple peacebuilding logic behind this. One of the strongest safeguards of peace is the existence of a large constituency that benefits from its continuation. The more people who acquire a stake in peace, the harder peace becomes to reverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You Cannot Close a War Economy Overnight<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n T\u00fcrkiye should nevertheless resist the temptation to believe that economic structures created over forty years will disappear within months of disarmament. Experiences from post-conflict societies show that economic networks associated with war frequently survive the violence itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Informal markets do not automatically formalize. Smuggling networks do not simply dissolve. Economic actors who acquired influence during conflict may seek new ways to preserve it. Armed networks can mutate into criminal ones. Property disputes can intensify when displaced populations return. Expectations of a rapid \u201cpeace dividend\u201d can produce disappointment when investment and employment take longer to materialize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, a war economy can survive peace by changing its form. That is why economic transformation should eventually become an explicit component of T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s process. Which provinces and communities have borne the greatest economic costs of conflict? What new opportunities can be created for young people? How can returning investment be encouraged without creating new forms of inequality or allowing outside capital to capture most of the benefits? And perhaps most difficult of all: how can the incentives of actors who may lose economically from the end of conflict be transformed? These are not questions to be answered after everything else has been settled. They are part of the architecture of sustainable peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It Is Time to Discuss the Political Economy of Peace<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n T\u00fcrkiye has so far rightly concentrated on disarmament. But another heading should be added to that agenda: the political economy of peace. A conflict lasting more than four decades does not have only weapons, fighters and political narratives. It has budgets. It has markets. It creates habits and dependencies. It changes property relations and investment decisions. And inevitably, it produces economic winners and losers. Peace does the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The strategic challenge, therefore, is not to imagine a transition in which nobody loses anything. That is rarely possible in a transformation of this magnitude. The challenge is to reshape incentives so that the social and economic constituency benefiting from peace becomes far larger and more powerful than any constituency attached to conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That requires economic planning to begin before the last weapon is surrendered. Because the real transformation will not be completed on the day the last gun is put down. In some respects, that may be the day the harder work begins. T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s success will ultimately depend not only on whether it can reduce the number of people who benefit from the continuation of conflict, but on something far more important: how many people it can give a genuine stake in peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The most visible issue in almost every peace process is the weapon. Who will disarm? When will they do it? What will happen to members of the armed organization afterwards? T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s emerging \u201cTerror-Free T\u00fcrkiye\u201d process is understandably dominated by precisely these questions. After more than four decades of conflict with the PKK, credible and verifiable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":17414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[486],"tags":[936,650],"class_list":["post-17412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-dissolution-of-pkk","tag-turkiye"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17416,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17412\/revisions\/17416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalpanorama.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}