First Published: 2010-09-28

 

Turkey in fresh drive to end Kurdish conflict

 

Ankara seeks contacts with Kurd rebels in fresh drive to reach peaceful end to 26-year conflict.

 

Middle East Online

Will the PKK opt for peace?

Turkey has launched a fresh drive to resolve a bloody Kurdish insurgency that has plagued the country for 26 years, seeking contacts with the rebels, and help from the United States and Iraq.

Boosted by its victory in the September 12 referendum on constitutional reform, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has since focused on the Kurdish conflict with a series of cautious steps aimed at convincing the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to lay down arms.

The authorities appear to have included jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in the effort, with his lawyers acting as intermediaries and holding meetings with him in his cell on the prison island of Imrali.

Erdogan has categorically ruled out "talks with a terrorist organisation or its representatives," but media reports say officials are also involved in direct contacts with Ocalan, who retains a strong influence over the PKK despite being behind bars since 1999.

Ankara's objective is to cajole the PKK into extending indefinitely a truce in place since August and press ahead with measures to expand the freedoms of the Kurdish community, estimated to number up to 15 million in a population of 73 million people, a source close to the government said.

The rebels, in the meantime, would leave Turkish soil and withdraw to their base camps in neighbouring northern Iraq until the next step in settling the conflict is decided, he said.

"We are closer to peace," one of Ocalan's lawyers, Aysel Tugluk, said late Monday after she visited the PKK leader on Imrali.

Ocalan asserted that his "efforts for peace will continue," she said.

"We want a settlement on a democratic and political ground... We are not looking for a solution by force," she quoted Ocalan as saying.

Last week, senior government ministers held rare talks with leaders of Turkey's main Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which is sympathetic to the PKK and backs rebel demands for Kurdish autonomy in the southeast.

Interior Minister Besir Atalay travelled to northern Iraq on Sunday for talks with Massoud Barzani, the head of the autonomous Kurdish administration of the region, to discuss cooperation in efforts to persuade the PKK to renounce violence.

Turkey is also in contact with the United States and its intelligence chief held talks on the issue in Washington recently.

Ankara estimates that about 2,000 PKK militants are holed up in remote mountains in northern Iraq, where Turkish cross-border military action against the rebels has proved to be of little effect.

Washington, which backs Turkey's struggle against the PKK, is concerned that the group, using northern Iraq as a launching pad for attacks on Turkey, may again poison recently improved ties between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds.

Despite the rare effort at dialogue with the Kurds, the Turkish government faces an uphill task and an ultimate settlement of the conflict is not seen as a short-term prospect.

Ankara has already ruled out Kurdish demands for a constitutional recognition of their community as a distinct element of Turkey's population and calls for Kurdish-language education in public schools in the southeast.

And despite the PKK truce, violence persists on the ground, fanning nationalist sentiment in a country where many are already hostile to the idea of seeking a negotiated solution with the rebels.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives, wrecked the economy of the already poor region and forced the displacement of thousands.

 

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