The Kurdish militant group known as the PKK announced this week that it would end its "work under the name of PKK." The announcement has been hailed as the end of a decades-long armed insurgency, one that has cost an estimated 40,000 lives, between the Turkish state and those fighting for Kurdish rights or independence inside Turkey.

But this week's announcement won't just impact Turkey. The Kurds are an around-40-million-strong ethnic group. If they had their own country, it would be located around the point where the Syrian, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish borders meet. As an ethnic minority in each of those countries, various Kurdish resistance groups and political parties have also pushed for Kurdish self-determination, some violently, some non-violently. Many have been connected with the PKK, or Kurdish Worker's Party, one way or another.

"Without a doubt, this is a very important announcement," Yusuf Can, an expert on Turkey and former analyst at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank recently shut down by the Trump administration, told DW. "But I think the more important part is what happens next. It's the million-dollar question because the PKK is only one of the organizations within the Kurdish movement in Turkey and beyond Turkey, there are also other components of this movement."

Syrian Kurds: Wanting autonomy

After the 2011 Syrian revolution turned into a brutal civil war, Kurdish groups were able to gain control of northeastern parts of the country, where many Syrian Kurds live. Kurds make up somewhere between 8% and 10% of Syria's population.

Those areas, now known as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or DAANES, are controlled by a group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

"The SDF has a military force of roughly 100,000 men and women, and its self-declared autonomous administration covers a third of Syria's territory and 70% of oil and gas resources," Asli Aydintasbas, an associate senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign relations, explained in a February commentary.

The SDF also cooperated with American troops in fighting against the extremist group known as the "Islamic State" in Syria.

The SDF regularly denies any PKK affiliations and SDF commanders have said that PKK co-founder Abdullah Ocalan's calls to disarm the PKK don't affect them directly.

But observers say it's well known that veteran PKK fighters form an integral part of the military leadership and that PKK members from Kurdish populations in Iran, Iraq and Turkey also play a significant role there.

Turkey has accused the SDF of simply being a PKK proxy. As a result, Turkey and the groups it supports inside Syria have regularly bombed or attacked the SDF.

Changing fortunes for the SDF

At one stage during the Syrian civil war, the SDF was in a powerful position — the authoritarian Assad regime left them alone and they had the US as an ally. However ever since the ousting of dictator Bashar Assad last December, the group's fortunes have changed for the worse.

US President Donald Trump says he plans to pull American troops out of Syria; they previously prevented Turkey from fighting more harshly against the SDF. And the new Syrian government, which is supported by Turkey, wants to ensure that valuable, Kurdish-controlled areas don't break away from Syria altogether.

In March, the SDF and the government in Damascus agreed that wouldn't happen and to work together. Experts say there's no doubt Turkey was watching carefully from the sidelines to see if the SDF called for more Kurdish autonomy, something it doesn't want to see on its border with Syria.

But the PKK's announcement this week will reassure Turkey, experts argue.

The deal between the SDF and Damascus would "be facilitated by a successful peace and reconciliation process between Turkey and the PKK," Wladimir van Wilgenburg, coauthor of a recently published book, "The Kurds of Northern Syria," wrote for the Washington Institute think tank recently. "The SDF… claims that the PKK disarmament process is unrelated to its negotiations. Yet it also acknowledges that a PKK deal could bring a halt to Turkish attacks in Syria, since Ankara would theoretically be less concerned about a continued SDF presence along the border."

Things could still go wrong.

"Some of the PKK's supporters are not really happy with what's happening," Turkey analyst Can told DW. 

So there's potential for more militant members to continue fighting, which could disturb or derail the new Damascus-SDF detente.

Iraqi Kurds: Turkey or PKK?

Since the early 1980s, PKK members have sought shelter in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq. Qandil is part of a larger mountain range that extends into southern Turkey, and northeastern Syria.

The PKK's relationship with local authorities in Iraq is a complicated one. The northern, Kurdish-dominated part of Iraq is a semi-autonomous region — that is, it's still part of the country but has its own parliament, military and elections. The two dominant Iraqi Kurdish political parties there have differing attitudes on the PKK.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, is closer to Iran and the PKK. PUK founder Jalal Talabani once famously said he wouldn't even hand a "Kurdish cat" over to Turkey.

The other party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, is closer to Turkey and has allowed the Turkish military to build more than 100 military outposts in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Through these, and with drones and fighter jets, the Turkish army has regularly attacked alleged PKK sites in Iraq. Local authorities in both Iraqi Kurdistan and federal Iraq regularly complain about this.

"Resolving the [PKK-Turkey] conflict would open the way to an eventual Turkish military withdrawal from Iraqi territory," analysts from the think tank Crisis Group wrote in March, "helping improve Ankara's overall relations with Baghdad and enabling the two to move forward."

Iraqi national security adviser Qasim al-Araji has said his country now wants to see the full withdrawal of Turkish and PKK forces.

It's hard to know how fast that would happen.

"They might eventually negotiate a pullback but that is unlikely in the short term," Can explains. "Because this is a major change in Turkish foreign policy and I don't think the Turkish military or intelligence would want to give up that leverage."

In fact, "the KDP's leadership may still welcome a limited Turkish military presence as a counterbalance to Iranian influence," specialist outlet, Amwaj Media wrote earlier this year. "Especially as US forces continue to negotiate their withdrawal from Iraq."

Both the Iraqi Kurdish political parties and the SDF may also end up playing a role in the future of fugitive PKK fighters after the group disbands, Can concluded. There's a lot of speculation that some of the fighters may well be able to stay in Iraqi Kurdistan or move to the SDF in Syria, he noted. 

Edited by: Carla Bleiker