The American left-wing philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky urged Turkey on Friday to end its “malignant” war with Kurds, saying recent peace efforts offered a real chance of a settlement.

Chomsky, whose writings have in the past caused trouble for his Turkish publisher, said the growing independence of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the possibility that Syria’s Kurdish zone could break away if Syria’s civil war worsens meant Turkey must confront its own Kurdish problem fastTurkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is backing talks with Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and says he is sincere about trying to end a war with the PKK that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

“Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue,” Chomsky said in a talk at Bosphorus University.

“There do appear to be some real prospects with recent negotiations despite criminal efforts to disrupt them,” the academic said, referring to the assassination of three Kurdish activists in Paris last week.