 founder Abdullah Öcalan has called for a way to address the Turkish public directly, saying his views on Turkey's peace initiative with Kurdish militants need to reach a wider audience as talks move into what Kurdish political actors describe as a decisive phase.){kind=link}
Jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder Abdullah Öcalan has called for a way to address the Turkish public directly, saying his views on Turkey’s peace initiative with Kurdish militants need to reach a wider audience as talks move into what Kurdish political actors describe as a decisive phase.
In a message released Tuesday by a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) after a March 27 prison visit to İmralı Island, where the PKK founder has been held since 1999, Öcalan said the period of armed conflict was over and that there could be no return to the past. He said he wanted to reach the broader public “through appropriate means” so his views on the process would be understood correctly.
Öcalan also urged Turkish authorities and parliament to move quickly to build what he described as a comprehensive and inclusive legal framework for the next phase. The DEM Party delegation said the process had reached an important threshold and that parliament had a historic responsibility to put the peace efforts on a legal footing without delay.
The message adds pressure on Ankara at a time when Turkey’s peace initiative with the PKK has shifted from the question of PKK militants’ laying down of arms to the question of legal and political guarantees. On February 27 Öcalan had already said a “peace law” was needed for “democratic integration,” one year after his call for the group to end its armed campaign and dissolve itself.
The process gained formal shape on February 18, when a parliamentary commission approved a roadmap linking legal reform to the PKK giving up arms. The move was seen as one of the clearest institutional steps in years toward ending a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
But the latest developments have also exposed the limits of the process. During Nevruz celebrations this month, Kurdish political leaders and allied leftist groups demanded concrete democratic steps, including an end to the removal of elected mayors, compliance with Constitutional Court and European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rulings and speedy action by parliament. Turkish authorities, meanwhile, detained 170 people in operations tied to Nevruz events on allegations mainly involving PKK propaganda, and a court in İstanbul later jailed nine people pending trial in one of those cases.
In his latest message Öcalan framed the peace effort as part of a broader struggle over the future of Turkey and the Middle East, saying democracy was the only solution that could strengthen the republic. He said the state needed to recognize that the process posed no destructive activity or security threat, while calling for a model based on identity, freedom of thought, freedom of organization and women’s freedom for all citizens, not only Kurds.
© Agence France-Presse