GOTHENBURG, Sweden — Many commentators have interpreted the decision of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to restart the war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., as designed to undo the results of the June 7 general election. The ruling Justice and Development Party, also known as the A.K.P., was deprived of its majority in Parliament when the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or H.D.P., surged at the polls.

On July 28, Mr. Erdogan broke off negotiations with Kurdish leaders. “It is not possible for us to continue the peace process,” he declared on national television. Not only were talks between the government and the militants over, he said, but Turkey was now engaged in a long war against the Kurdish separatist movement.

But it is wrong to view Turkey’s war against the Kurds as Mr. Erdogan’s. The restart of hostilities against Kurdish militants represents a grave defeat for the Turkish president because, in reality, he has ceded political control to the Turkish military.

Mr. Erdogan’s problem was that he couldn’t obtain the absolute power he craved without eliminating his main political rival, the Kurdish H.D.P. This he could achieve only with the army’s help in imposing de facto emergency rule in the Kurdish region. So even if this scheme works in the short term, it will ultimately be a Pyrrhic victory for the president.