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After four decades of violent insurgency that left thousands dead across southeastern Turkey, a landmark piece of legislation aimed at ending long-running conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has cleared parliament, triggering a complex mix of relief, optimism and unresolved concern among residents of the country’s majority-Kurdish southeastern region.

Lawmakers cast overwhelming votes in favor of the conditional pardon bill on Monday, a core step in advancing the ongoing peace process launched after the PKK announced last year it would lay down its arms. The legislation will not enter into force immediately: it only takes effect once Turkish authorities confirm the PKK has completed full disarmament, a key condition set by the state.

The bill outlines a clear framework for qualifying militants: it suspends prison sentences for convicted PKK members and pauses ongoing investigations and trials for other suspects for periods of five to 10 years, with the length determined by the severity of alleged offenses. If recipients do not commit any additional terror-linked crimes during the waiting period, all charges against them will be dismissed entirely. Turkish media estimates thousands of militants could benefit from the policy, including members based in exile across Europe, as well as those stationed in Iraq and Syria. Notable exceptions are militants convicted of intentional murder and those handed life sentences before 2005, a group that includes PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and other senior figures of the organization.

The PKK first launched its insurgency in 1980s, originally seeking to establish an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. Over decades of conflict, the group shifted its goals to demanding greater autonomy and expanded rights for Turkey’s Kurdish population, which makes up an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the country’s total population. Last year, responding to a call from Ocalan—who has been imprisoned since 1999—the PKK announced it would dissolve the organization, held a symbolic disarmament ceremony at its base in northern Iraq, and withdrew its remaining fighters from Turkish territory to northern Iraq.

In Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeastern Turkey, local residents greeted the parliamentary vote with cautious optimism rooted in decades of unfulfilled hopes for peace. Many voiced expectation that the end of violence would unlock long-stalled economic growth for the region, which has long lagged behind the rest of Turkey in development and prosperity.

Seventy-year-old retired resident Ali Akdogan called the vote a moment of personal joy. “I was really very happy. I even applauded the result in my own home,” he said. “The economy will improve, good things will happen, people will start doing business. I believe it will bring peace. Since the peace process began, we haven’t had any conflict-related deaths, and this conflict killed thousands of civilians, soldiers and militants over more than 40 years.”

Hasan Gecti, a 56-year-old shop owner in Diyarbakir, agreed that an end to violence would bring tangible economic and social benefits to local communities, but warned that core political demands of Turkey’s Kurdish population remain unaddressed by the pardon bill. Kurds have long pushed for expanded rights including broader access to Kurdish-language education and public services, as well as greater political autonomy, including an end to the central government’s policy of removing locally elected Kurdish mayors and replacing them with state-appointed administrators.

“Has the Kurdish issue been directly solved? That’s a bit of a question mark,” Gecti said. “In my opinion, only the terrorism problem has been solved. Unfortunately, the Kurdish issue still remains where it is.”

Local business leaders echoed this nuanced perspective. Mehmet Kaya, head of the Diyarbakir Chamber of Trade and Industry, welcomed the broad parliamentary support for the bill as a positive signal for the region. “It signals that violence is ending and the doors of politics are opening,” he noted. But Kaya emphasized the legislation alone cannot resolve decades of political tension, adding that further targeted reforms are needed to build lasting peace.

“If the step taken now leads to sustainable democratization, and the social and economic policies the region expects are put in place, then the region will enter an important new phase,” Kaya said.

The PKK itself offered a similarly mixed assessment in a statement published Monday by the PKK-linked ANF news agency. The group framed the legislation as a “beginning” toward resolving outstanding disputes between the PKK and the Turkish state, but criticized the bill for “serious shortcomings and deficiencies.” The PKK repeated its core demands, including the immediate release of Ocalan from prison, the implementation of broad democratic reforms, and formal recognition of expanded Kurdish rights.

France has enacted a landmark policy banning all unsolicited telemarketing cold calls from commercial businesses, a reform that consumer advocates are celebrating as a transformative win for personal privacy while triggering backlash from industry groups and raising economic alarms in neighboring Morocco.

The new regulation, which took effect on Tuesday, applies to companies across all economic sectors, though it carves out limited exceptions: cold calls remain legal only when the outreach relates to an existing active contract between the business and the consumer, or when the recipient has explicitly given prior written consent to receive marketing communications.

Leading French consumer advocacy organization Que Choisir Ensemble has framed the policy change as a long-overdue “small revolution” for household privacy and consumer rights. In an official statement, the group emphasized that the right to quiet privacy in one’s own home is non-negotiable, arguing that it was past time to end the constant bombardment of consumers with unwanted sales outreach. Group president Marie-Amandine Stévenin noted that intrusive consumer solicitation has become pervasive across all spaces, from in-person street pitches to online platforms, leaving people with little reprieve from constant demands to spend. Stévenin added that the organization has spent years pushing to end the widespread default assumption that any person in their private life is an automatic potential sales target. “This is a victory for consumers, the vast majority of whom do not want to receive sales calls,” she said.

Data from a 2025 French parliamentary report underscores the widespread public anger that prompted the reform: 97% of French adults report being annoyed by unsolicited telemarketing calls, a level of cross-demographic consensus that report authors called “one of those rare issues that unites people in France.” The survey also found that 72% of French consumers receive at least one unwanted marketing call to their mobile phone every week, with 38% saying they get such calls on a daily basis.

Not all stakeholders have welcomed the change, however. France’s direct-selling industry has pushed back against the new rules, with Frédéric Billon, head of the Fédération de la Vente Directe (FVD), France’s primary direct-selling trade group, criticizing the reforms for placing new heavy administrative burdens on small and large businesses alike. “You’ll have to obtain written consent from your customer, and you’ll also have to keep proof of that consent,” Billon told the *New York Times*, arguing that the added red tape will raise operational costs for firms across the country.

The biggest economic fallout is projected outside France’s borders, in Morocco, where the country’s large call center industry is heavily dependent on contracts serving the French telemarketing market. Local Moroccan newspaper *Le Matin* reports that one Moroccan government minister estimates the new French restrictions could lead to as many as 50,000 job losses in Morocco’s outsourced call center sector.

France is not the first European country to restrict cold calling: Germany, Austria and Italy already have strict limits on unsolicited telemarketing outreach. By contrast, the United Kingdom maintains a more permissive framework, where most telemarketing calls remain legal as long as the recipient has not opted out by adding their number to the national do-not-call register.

In a landmark step for Hungary’s new governing administration, the country’s national parliament voted Tuesday to confirm András Baka, a former chief justice of the Hungarian Supreme Court with a long history of pushing back against Viktor Orbán’s autocratic rule, as the nation’s new president. The vote caps weeks of political negotiation to remove an Orbán-era holdover from the presidency and advances the new government’s sweeping campaign to dismantle power structures built during Orbán’s 16 years in office.

Lawmakers from the ruling Tisza party, led by newly installed Prime Minister Peter Magyar, cast 140 votes in favor of Baka’s confirmation and just six against in a closed secret ballot, with no abstentions. Orbán’s far-right Fidesz party, which held power for more than a decade before Tisza’s landslide April election victory, boycotted the entire voting process. Baka is scheduled to be formally sworn into office on August 19.

While Hungary’s presidency is a largely ceremonial position, it carries meaningful legislative checks: the office holds the authority to send proposed legislation back to parliament for reconsideration or challenge bills before the Constitutional Court for judicial review. Baka’s ascension to the post follows a months-long power struggle to remove his predecessor, Tamás Sulyok, an Orbán nominee who retained his seat after refusing to step down at Magyar’s request. Tisza ultimately resolved the standoff by passing a constitutional amendment to end Sulyok’s term, which he reluctantly signed into law in July.

Magyar’s administration, which took office in May, has moved rapidly to dismantle what it labels Orbán’s “mafia state” by removing hundreds of political appointees and institutional leaders tied to the former prime minister’s government. Key changes so far include suspending the public television and radio news service — which Magyar has described as a state-run propaganda outlet for Fidesz — shutting down the Sovereignty Protection Office, a body widely criticized by Orbán’s opponents as a tool to intimidate government critics and silence independent media. The new government has also passed sweeping judicial reforms, established a special task force to investigate allegations of financial corruption and abuse during Orbán’s tenure, and imposed strict new term limits: 12 years for members of parliament and an eight-year cap for the office of prime minister.

Magyar’s government has framed these sweeping changes as a necessary step to restore democratic norms and institutional integrity that eroded significantly over 16 years of Fidesz rule. In response, Orbán and Fidesz have attacked the new administration’s policies as “tyrannical,” a claim that Magyar and Tisza have repeatedly rejected.

In remarks delivered to parliament shortly after his election was confirmed, Baka criticized the record of Orbán’s four consecutive governments, identifying deep social and political polarization as one of the most urgent challenges facing the country after the former leader’s long tenure. While the new president acknowledged that past cases of illegal activity and financial misuse must be properly investigated and prosecuted to repair democratic institutions, he emphasized that Hungary’s political transition cannot be rooted in retaliation.

“This country cannot build a common future while its citizens see each other as enemies,” Baka told lawmakers. “Political change should not mean that from now on people will have to be afraid, be silent, or feel like outsiders in their own country.”

Baka, 74, brings decades of legal and judicial experience to the presidency. He served as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights from 1991 to 2008, before taking on the role of chief justice of the Hungarian Supreme Court in 2009. His relationship with Orbán’s government turned bitter early, when he was removed from the Supreme Court post three years before his term was set to end. Baka challenged his dismissal at the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2014 that Orbán’s government had violated Baka’s legal rights, finding his removal was directly tied to his public criticism of the administration’s controversial judicial reforms. Outside of his judicial work, Baka has also served as a visiting professor and lecturer at multiple prominent U.S. universities, including the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia University.