A surprise reshuffle in the top leadership of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has prompted fresh worries that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)'s efforts to solve Turkey’s most complex problem may be doomed.

In a statement carried by the pro-PKK Firat news agency on July 10, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group for the rebels, announced that its long-serving Chairman Murat Karayilan had been replaced by Cemil Bayik and female militant Bese Hozat. Karayilan, who remains a member of the KCK leadership council, was the government’s chief interlocutor among rebel commanders based in Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq. Talks with Karayilan were mostly conducted via Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The KDP, which is now closely allied to Turkey, hails Karayilan as a “moderate” who “genuinely wants peace.”

Bayik, on the other hand, is often described as a “hawk” with close ties to Iran. He is also known to be on good terms with the KDP’s chief rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose ailing leader Jalal Talabani is also the president of Iraq. Does the apparent ascendancy of Bayik signal a toughening in the PKK’s stance?

Turkish governmental officials insist it does not. As Yalcin Akdogan, an AKP lawmaker who is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief adviser on the Kurds, noted in a recent column, “The organization’s decision to end the fighting and to withdraw from Turkey was decided by all of the aforementioned individuals” long before the reshuffle took place.