Bahçeli says PJAK must dissolve and lay down arms, echoing Iran's interior minister
What happened
A post attributed to Devlet Bahçeli, leader of Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), reports that he said PJAK and all its branches must end their existence and lay down their arms. He framed this as a demand made by Iran's interior minister during a visit to Ankara in September, and said that fulfilling it would be one more step toward regional peace. The statement was published on X on 20 October 2026 at 08:18 UTC and was relayed by the account @ConflictTR. The quoted text is in Turkish, and the English rendering here is a translation of the reported wording. The report does not describe any action by PJAK, Iran, or Turkey in response.
Context and assessment
PJAK, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, is a Kurdish armed group closely associated with the PKK. It is active in Iranian Kurdistan and has long maintained a presence in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, which is why Tehran has repeatedly targeted Kurdish groups across the border. Turkey's own dealings with the PKK have been moving through a political track in recent years, so a Turkish nationalist leader calling for a related Kurdish group to disarm is notable as a signal of how Ankara's ultranationalist allies frame the wider Kurdish question. The statement also fits a broader pattern in the surrounding events. On 19 October, President Erdogan said that good news was coming from Syria and accused Israel of trying to stir chaos there, and later the same day he repeated the chaos claim. Taken together, these remarks show Ankara focusing on regional security and on its rivals' interference in neighbouring states. Operationally, a party statement of this kind is best read as political positioning rather than a sign of imminent military action. It may, however, reflect coordination on security messaging between Turkey and Iran.
Sources and confidence
The event rests on a single channel, X account @ConflictTR, with a source count of one. No other outlet in the dataset carries the quote, and the statement is not separately confirmed by an MHP official account, Turkish state media, or Iranian government channels. The confidence score of 6.3 reflects that single-source status, the direct attribution of the quoted wording, and the presence of an embedded link that could not be independently checked. Confidence would rise if the full text appeared on MHP's official channels or in Turkish or Iranian press with the same wording. It would fall if the quote were shown to be paraphrased, taken out of context, or attributed to a different speaker.
Location
The location is recorded at settlement level as Ankara, Turkey, with coordinates placed at the city centre. The place of the statement itself is not confirmed by the report, so Ankara is assumed from the event metadata and the reference to the Ankara visit. Ankara sits on the Central Anatolian plateau, a dry, high-elevation interior setting, and the city is the seat of Turkey's government and national parliament. Its geography does not tie the statement to any border area or conflict zone.
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Intel Mapper aggregates open-source reports from monitored Telegram and X channels, geolocates them, cross-checks duplicates across sources and assigns a confidence score. Entries are updated as new confirmations arrive. Read how we verify events.