The Weekly Lift: March 13, 2025

This week's selection of headlines and articles*:

Peacemaking: Jailed Kurdish Militant Leader Calls On Followers To Disarm, End Forty-Year Conflict With Turkey

The Wall Street Journal (US) reports, "An imprisoned Kurdish militant leader urged his followers on Thursday to give up their weapons, opening an opportunity to defuse a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people in recent decades, and destabilized Turkey and the wider Middle East.

Abdullah Öcalan, who is in his mid-70s, is the leader and founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK. He also called for the group to disband and for its allied factions to disarm after some 40 years of violence.

“All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself,” Öcalan said in a statement written in the island prison off the coast of Istanbul where he has been held since 1999, when he was captured in Kenya by Turkish intelligence officers. He also called on his movement to use democratic means to achieve their aims.

The statement follows months of negotiations and was read on his behalf at a news conference in Istanbul, after pro-Kurdish officials brought it from the prison. The message could have far-reaching consequences for Turkey, Syria and the broader region.

The PKK, designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and the U.S., has fought a slow-burning war with the Turkish state, including gun and bomb attacks and years of guerrilla warfare, since the 1980s. The group initially fought for an independent Kurdish state and later demanded greater rights for Kurds, a broad ethnic group of tens of millions of people spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The PKK has affiliates in all four countries.

In Turkey, an end to the conflict with the PKK could resolve a top security threat and help settle one of the country’s most important political questions after decades in which millions of Kurds have demanded recognition and language rights. Öcalan’s statement is also likely to strengthen President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who could claim the call to disarm as a domestic victory that boosts Turkey’s security.

Öcalan’s call to disband his group comes after more than a year of conflict that altered the balance of power in the wider Middle East, including Israel’s war with Hamas militants in Gaza and Iranian-allied militias across the region. The weakening of Iran contributed to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria late last year, further realigning the region and removing a key opponent of Turkey.

A resolution to the conflict with the PKK could help remove an irritant from Turkey’s relationship with the U.S., which has been strained by an American military partnership with some Kurdish fighters in the battle against Islamic State extremists.

“It’s a significant development and we hope that it will help assuage our Turkish allies about U.S. counter-ISIS partners in northeast Syria. We believe it will help bring peace to this troubled region,” said National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes, referring to Islamic State.

In Syria, Öcalan’s call, if implemented, could help the country’s fragile transition away from autocratic rule. Kurdish-led Syrian militias allied with the PKK are among the main obstacles to the new government in Damascus consolidating power after rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad, ending some 14 years of rebellion and war in December. The militias control a swath of northeastern Syria where some of them are backed by U.S. troops and air power.

“The stars seem more aligned than ever to pursue an end to this conflict,” said Berkay Mandıracı, a senior analyst on Turkey with the International Crisis Group. “Regionally, colossal shifts in the Middle East create a host of incentives to end this conflict.”

The path to resolving the conflict remains uncertain, with no clear plan in place for a peace process and thousands of PKK-affiliated fighters spread across the region. Much will depend on how Erdogan and the Turkish government choose to respond to Öcalan’s message and whether Kurdish militants comply with the call to disarm.

Thousands of battle-hardened Kurdish fighters across the region would have to be demobilized. Key leaders of PKK affiliates in the region, including a political party linked to the group in Syria, have said in recent weeks they would comply with Öcalan’s message. It is also not clear what, if anything, Turkey has offered in return for the PKK laying down their arms. The Turkish government could free Öcalan or other Kurdish leaders from prison as a part of a possible future deal, analysts say.

The president’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment. “If the terrorist organization heeds this call, disarms, meets and dissolves itself, Turkey will be free from its shackles,” said Efkan Ala, a lawmaker and vice chairman of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party.

Erdogan in January called for a disarming of the PKK. “Let’s get the weapons out of the way and tear down the wall of terror,” he said. The conflict has also been a source of friction between Ankara and Washington for a decade, since the Obama administration partnered with some Syrian Kurdish militants in the war against Islamic State.

Washington in recent years has said it makes a distinction between the PKK and members of its Syrian branch that are partnered with the U.S. military. The Pentagon said in December that the U.S. had about 2,000 troops in Syria.

The leader of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Gen. Mazloum Abdi, on Thursday said that Öcalan’s call for disarmament didn’t apply to his organization, though he said he welcomed the initiative for a peace process with Turkey.

Turkey has launched a series of military operations in northern Syria aimed at creating a buffer zone between itself and Kurdish militants. In recent years, it has used drones and jet fighters to go on the offensive against the PKK in their stronghold in northern Iraq, where they are also a source of tension with the government in Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government of northern Iraq.

Some Kurdish citizens said they felt deflated because the statement lacked specifics about how the conflict would be resolved.

“We expected something concrete,” said Serhat Temel, a 39-year-old researcher living in Diyarbakir, a major Kurdish-majority city in southern Turkey. “There was nothing about that in the message.”

International Relations: More Than Thirty Nations Will Participate In Paris Planning Talks On A Security Force For Ukraine

The Los Angeles Times (US) reports, "Military officials from more than 30 nations will take part in Paris talks on the creation of an international security force for Ukraine, a French military official said Monday.

Such an international force would aim to dissuade Russia from launching another offensive after any cease-fire in Ukraine comes into effect.

The long list of participants in Tuesday’s discussions will also include Asian and Oceania nations that will join remotely, the French official said. The international makeup of the meeting offers an indication of how broadly France and Britain — which are working together on plans for the force — are casting their net as they aim to build what the French official described as a coalition of nations “able and willing” to be part of an effort to safeguard Ukraine in the event of a cease-fire.

The French military official spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the blueprint for the force that is shrouded in secrecy and the Paris talks that will consider it.

The force being envisaged by France and Britain would aim to reassure Ukraine and deter another large-scale Russian offensive after any cease-fire, the official said. It could include heavy weaponry and weapons stockpiles that could be rushed within hours or days to aid in Ukraine’s defense in the event of a Russian attack that shatters any truce, the official said.

The French-British blueprint will be presented to military officials from more than 30 nations in the first part of Tuesday’s talks, the official said.

The talks’ second part will include “more precise and concrete” discussions where the participants will be invited to say whether and how their militaries might be able to contribute, the official said.

“It’s not, ‘This is what we need,’ ” the official said. “It’s more, ‘What are you bringing to the pot?’ ”

The official stressed, however, that the ultimate decision on whether nations take part in the force would be taken at a political level, by government leaders.

Chiefs of staff — or, in Canada’s case, their representative — from nearly all of the 32 nations of the NATO military alliance will attend the Paris discussions. Three NATO nations will be absent. They are Croatia and Montenegro, which were invited but didn’t respond, and the United States, the official said.

The official said the United States wasn’t invited because European nations want to demonstrate that they can take responsibility for a large part of the post-cease-fire security framework for Ukraine.

Also attending will be the chiefs of staff of Ireland and Cyprus and a representative from Austria — all nations that are not NATO members but are in the European Union.

Australia and New Zealand, which are Commonwealth nations, as well as Japan and South Korea, will listen into the talks remotely, the official said.

Ukraine will be represented by a military official who is also a member of the country’s security and defense council."

Society: "French Jews, We Call For The Fight Against Anti-Semitism By Refusing Its Instrumentalization"

Le Monde (France) reports, "In a forum published by Le Monde on March 1, personalities claiming Judaism and the left denounce the rise of anti-Semitism and the insufficiency of reactions to this danger. We unreservedly share this concern. However, we disagree with them on the diagnosis and answers.

The multiplication of anti-Semitic remarks and acts in recent months must be denounced. However, we do not think that France has become an anti-Semitic country in a few years.

We do not think that we can denounce the resurgence of anti-Semitism without mentioning the rise of the extreme right in the world. It thrives in Germany with AFD (Alternative for Germany) or in the United States with Elon Musk and Steve Bannon [respectively high advisor and former adviser to Donald Trump], but also in France, where it conveys and legitimizes all forms of racism in the name of national preference or the refusal of the "great replacement".

We cannot pass over in silence the raised arms and other nods to Nazism when we analyze the resurgence of anti-Semitism. Even if anti-Semitism is not its prerogate, it is still on the extreme right that racist, anti-Arab, anti-Black, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic prejudices and acts abound. It is among them that we find the many people convicted by the French justice for racism, anti-Semitism and denialism.

By questioning the "extreme left" that "does not want peace (...), feeds on hatred and feeds hatred", this forum chooses another target, without specifying who or what positions it targets. The only words mentioned is a sentence taken out of context and diverted from its meaning, from which Rony Brauman, whose career and commitments are irreproachable, is impechable, without naming him but in a transparent and infamous way. The former president of Doctors without Borders explained this on his blog on Mediapart.

We challenge the assimilation of any criticism of Israel and of zionism to anti-Semitism. The March 1 forum asks "if making Israel a pariah state is not the contemporary substitute for the familiar and ancient banisming of Jews as a pariah people".

We believe that when the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant against Benyamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant (his former Minister of Defense [2022-2024]) by accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, it aims neither to "make Israel a pariah state" nor a "ban Jews as a pariah people". It is a work of justice in the name of international law.

Saying this, we are fighting anti-Semitism that relies on unbearable amalgams. We fight anti-Semitism by refusing to suggest that every Jew would be in solidarity, and therefore complicit, with the crimes against humanity in Gaza. We fight anti-Semitism by condemning a policy of permanent colonization and the denial of the national rights of the Palestinian people, and therefore their right to a state.

The authors of the forum ask: "How did a part of the left come to delegitimize the only Jewish state in the world? We ask them how, by being on the left or simply faithful to republican principles, can we not criticize a state founded on an ethnic-religious basis?

Because, since its creation, Israel has been caught in a fundamental contradiction: is it, as its declaration of independence affirms, a democratic state that "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, without distinction of belief, race or sex", or a Jewish state that would have a vocation to bring together the Jews of the world?

The State of Israel was born from a process of colonization, like other states. All the states of the American continents, Australia and New Zealand were born from a colonial event that led to the creation of nations in complex processes where the struggle for the recognition of indigenous populations remains unfinished.

The Sionist colonial fact also turned into a national fact with the birth of the Israeli state, with its own culture - music, cinema, literature - and with Hebrew as a language. But the original contradiction was decided in the wrong direction in 2018 by the law making Israel "the nation-state of the Jewish people".

This logic was summarized at the time by the Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked [2015 to 2019]: "Israel is a Jewish state, not a state of all its nationalities. Citizens are all equal, but they do not have equal national rights. "

Because we are attached to respecting the national rights of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, we believe that the path of an ethnic-religious state is a dead end. It is that of the far-right government that denies the rights of the Palestinian people and threatens to expel the Arab inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, illegally occupied since 1967.

We are outraged by the deafening silence, denial and indifference of so many intellectuals and politicians on the massacres accompanied by torture and rape committed in Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli army and the settlers.

We, French Jews, consider that our place is here to participate in the fight against anti-Semitism, against all racism, for a fairer and more supportive society. The essential fight against anti-Semitism, in France and around the world, involves the condemnation of hatred fueled by religious fundamentalism and the use of terrorism shared by Hamas leaders and Israeli leaders. It also presupposes refuting the essentialization of Palestinians assimilated to Hamas and that of Israelis (and Jews) assimilated to Netanyahu.

We refuse that the denunciation of anti-Semitism serves to legitimize the criminal policy of the Netanyahu government, as we denounce the instrumentalization of the genocide of the Jews of Europe to justify the massacre by tens of thousands of Gaza and West Bank civilians."

Climate Change: Norway To Ban Fossil Fuel Cars From ‘Zero Emission Zones'

The Telegraph (UK) reports, Norway will ban petrol cars from net zero zones under plans to encourage sales of electric vans and trucks.

Jon-Ivar Nygård, the country’s transport minister, said the Norwegian government planned to push through laws letting cities establish areas where only electric and hydrogen vehicles can drive.

Norway is the world’s most enthusiastic electric car market, with 96pc of new vehicles registered last month being battery-powered. However, they still make up less than a third of all existing vehicles on the road.

Mr Nygård said electrification in goods and commercial transport “has not progressed as far as for passenger cars”. Seven in 10 vans sold in Norway are powered by diesel fuel. The government has asked Norway’s Public Roads Administration to put forward laws for consultation that would allow cities to establish “zero emission zones” as soon as possible.

Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim have requested new powers to be able to introduce the zones. It comes as the Norwegian capital pushes ahead with a programme to gradually shift away from motor vehicles, called “car-free liveability”. This includes removing hundreds of parking spaces, while Oslo has said it wants to ban petrol vehicles as soon as this year.

The new rules outlined by the government may allow cities to make exceptions for passenger cars. However, opposition parties have criticised the Labour government’s plans, claiming they would make people’s lives more difficult.

Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, of the Centre Party, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK he was concerned that people with petrol or diesel cars would be “shut out”. The Progress Party also criticised the moves as tokenism.

Cities in the UK have trialled small zero emission or ultra low emission areas, although these are typically confined to a handful of streets.

Oxford introduced a zero emission zone on nine streets in 2022, which is expected to have handed out £1.8m in fines by the time the trial ends next year. It plans to expand the zone to cover most of the city centre in the 2026/27 financial year.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, previously proposed introducing a zero emission zone in the UK capital by 2025. However, he later scrapped the plan to focus on a 2030 net zero target.

Some London boroughs have made certain streets ultra low emission zones, where only electric and the least-polluting hybrid cars can travel during peak hours, with exceptions for residents and emergency vehicles. Meanwhile, several European cities including Paris and Amsterdam have said petrol cars will be banned from 2030.

Despite Norway becoming rich on oil production, electric vehicle sales in the country have boomed thanks to heavy tax incentives and discounts on toll roads and parking. The main purchasers of petrol cars are car rental companies, since many tourists are still reluctant to embrace them.

Human Rights: The Bravest Woman In Latin America?

The Economist (UK) reports, "It is not unusual for Diana Salazar, Ecuador’s attorney-general, to be followed by unfriendly compatriots. Her security retinue—a squad of soldiers armed to the teeth and encased in Kevlar—recently spotted a motorbike tailing her car. Its driver was the sister of a drug lord whom Ms Salazar is investigating. She discusses the incident as you might speak of missing the bus. Such irritations are now routine.

Drug gangs have overwhelmed Ecuador over the past five years, turning it from a peaceful oasis into mainland Latin America’s most violent country. Ms Salazar is a target because she is investigating links between Ecuador’s politicians, its judges and the transnational crime groups that have caused that change.

On April 13th Ecuadorians will choose a new president in a run-off vote between the country’s current leader, Daniel Noboa, and Luisa González, a leftist lawyer whose mentor is Rafael Correa, a powerful former president. They will also, in effect, be choosing whether Ms Salazar’s investigations continue. Her six-year term ends on April 8th. Mr Correa and his allies hate her, and want to shut her up.

She lays out the scenario. In 2022 a drug financier, Leandro Norero, was killed in prison. Prosecutors seized his mobile phones and found much more than they bargained for. Thousands of encrypted messages showed that he had paid the police to tamper with evidence, and judges to release drug-traffickers from jail.

The messages also suggested that his confidants had paid a judge $250,000 to free Jorge Glas, Mr Correa’s former vice-president, who had been jailed for corruption. The messages said the confidants hoped the “little favour” would be repaid if Mr Glas became president. Mr Norero’s cellmate has said that Mr Norero called Mr Correa from prison, and that they discussed Mr Glas’s release. Mr Correa denies this.

Mr Norero’s phone offered the “first glimpse of what was happening in society”, says Ms Salazar. Eyefuls would follow. Since December 2023 she and her team have pressed charges against 76 people, including former legislators, judges, policemen and officials from high up in the prison system; 44 have been sentenced to jail. Two dozen were given reduced sentences after admitting their guilt and ratting on their fellows. Trials are continuing.

Mr Correa has not been helpful. He has published posts on X warning of raids hours before Ms Salazar’s team carried them out. Several correístaswere implicated in the investigations. Some fled the country. One former lawmaker, Ronny Aleaga, is thought to be living in Venezuela. Mr Glas was hiding in the Mexican embassy in Quito until police raided it last April and arrested him (the violation of the embassy was widely condemned).

Last year Mr Correa told The Economist Ms Salazar was “a puppet” of unnamed businessmen and said her investigations were politically motivated. She was the attorney-general in 2020 when Mr Correa was sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption. He says he is being persecuted; he now lives in Belgium, which granted him political asylum in 2022. Interpol has refused to issue a red notice for his arrest.

Mr Correa said he had never met Ms Salazar in person, called her “corrupt” and said right-wing politicians had “put her there” to “protect each other and go after us”. He noted that the murder rate was among the lowest in the region when he was in office and that his successors cut prison budgets and weakened the justice ministry. He listed reasonable initiatives to fight crime, including increasing the number of scanners in ports, co-operating with international actors and strengthening intelligence capabilities.

His portrayal of his time in office is incomplete. Mr Correa closed a military base run by the United States on Ecuador’s coast which used to monitor drug shipments. Former leaders of the farc, a Colombian guerrilla group that ran cocaine through Ecuador until it disbanded in 2017, have said they gave money to Mr Correa’s first presidential campaign. Mr Correa did not respond to a request for comment before publication. Instead, on February 26th, he said on X that an article would appear in The Economist the following day.

Correístas in Congress have twice tried to impeach Ms Salazar. When a vote was postponed because she revealed that she was in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy, they suggested she was lying; Ms González called the pregnancy “a show” because Ms Salazar kept working throughout and “wore high heels”. (Ms Salazar recently gave birth to a daughter; both impeachment motions failed.)

The correístas call her “the 10/20 prosecutor”, a reference to her marks in one part of the national exam for the profession. They omit that she got the highest overall marks in the country. She wonders if such attacks have anything to do with her being a black woman, rare in Ecuador’s halls of power.

She rebuts charges of bias, pointing out that she has also gone after senior officials from the administration of Guillermo Lasso, a right-wing former president, as well as his brother-in-law, for alleged corruption and links to gangs. Another investigation is looking into whether Lenin Moreno, Mr Correa’s successor, accepted kickbacks. She has a record of taking on the powerful of all stripes. In 2016 she helped send the football federation’s head to jail as part of an investigation into corruption at fifa.

But accusations of favouritism still swirl. Last year two left-wing media outlets, Intercept Brazil and Drop Site News, published screenshots which purportedly show text-message conversations between Ms Salazar and Mr Aleaga. The messages appear to show her admitting to delaying investigations in order to favour right-wing candidates in the 2023 presidential election. Ms Salazar says the messages are “false” and part of a “smear campaign”.

Corruption “does not have a white, yellow, green or red flag”, she says, referring to the colours of Ecuador’s political parties. If officials who have been involved in corruption are linked to a political group, “that is not the fault of the prosecutor, but of the officials committing the crimes,” she says. “We have no choice but to carry out the investigations. And whoever has to go down, should go down.”

Plain talk like this has won Ms Salazar respect in Ecuador. “She is a national treasure, almost more important than whoever is in power,” says a businessman in Quito. But she bats away the idea of running for political office: “The judiciary should not be in politics. And politicians should keep their hands out of judicial matters.”

Her team is still sifting through evidence. She says there is time to stop narcos irreversibly embedding themselves in Ecuador. “We are not like Mexico and we are not going to get there,” she adds, warning that cartels in that country operate like “a para-state”. Her investigations, and the purge they have led to are about leaving a message that “impunity cannot last forever.” Her successor will have the power to uphold that principle, or bury it."

*Please note that certain headlines and articles may have been modified or edited to fit the format of the newsletter