PKK | Yüksel Koç: Detention instead of hope

On Tuesday, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) arrested Kurdish politician Yüksel Koç in his Bremen apartment. The Federal Prosecutor General's Office accuses the 61-year-old Turkish citizen of having served as a full-time cadre of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), which is classified as a "terrorist organization," from June 2016 to July 2023. He is said to have been responsible for coordinating and carrying out "propaganda activities" and to have had close ties to the PKK's European leadership. On Wednesday, the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice served Koç with an arrest warrant .

Indeed, Yüksel Koç is a prominent figure in the transnational Kurdish movement. He was co-chair of the Congress of the Democratic Society of Kurds in Europe until 2023. His lawyer, Fatma Sayin, emphasizes that the charges under Section 129b of the German Criminal Code, which covers terrorism, relate to Koç's work within the umbrella organization—but that these activities were "legal, public, and political in nature."

Koç first encountered the German judiciary as a victim and witness in 2017, when it became known that he had been spied on for years by the Turkish intelligence agency MIT. The alleged agent, Mehmet Fatih S., disguised as a reporter, is said to have even plotted to murder the Kurd. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court sentenced S. to a suspended sentence for intelligence agency activity, but dropped the charge of involvement in a murder plot due to a lack of evidence.

Koç's current arrest came at a time of intense debate about how to deal with the PKK in Germany. In 2022, the Workers' Party filed a motion to lift the ban on its activities, which had been in place since 1993, but the German government rejected the motion three years later, citing foreign policy interests and German-Turkish relations. This week, the PKK filed a lawsuit against the decision with the Berlin Administrative Court.

The background is also the changed political situation: On February 27, 2025, PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, who was being held on the Turkish prison island of İmralı, initiated a new peace initiative. After a congress, the organization announced its intention to dissolve itself and lay down its weapons.

Despite this historic development, Koç cannot hope for an early release or even a reprieve from prison. Thirty-two years after the PKK was banned, the German government continues to play for time regarding its classification as a terrorist organization: In response to a Bundestag inquiry by Left Party MP Gökay Akbulut, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, now led by the CSU, responded on Wednesday that the PKK's announcement must first be followed by action.