Turkey's Kurdish Rebels Say Solution Comes before Disarmament

W460

A leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said on Thursday that Ankara would have to come up with a solution to end Turkey's long-running Kurdish insurgency before the rebels heed calls for disarmament.

Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the PKK imprisoned on an island near Istanbul, had at the weekend urged the separatists to hold a congress on disarmament in the coming months.

Cemil Bayik, one of the founders of the PKK, called Ocalan's call a "historic step" but warned that disarmament would not be achieved until the government took the necessary step towards a solution. 

"These things work the same way all around the world: First, a solution, and then disarmament," Bayik was quoted as saying by pro-Kurdish media.

"Only after this stage disarmament and non-violence can be accomplished," he said from PKK's bases in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq, the first comments by the group's leadership since Ocalan's call.

"The Justice and Development Party (AKP) should first take steps for the disarmament call to be heeded." 

The call was praised by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as by the European Union as a key step in efforts to end a 30-year Kurdish insurgency that has claimed some 40,000 lives. 

Interior Minister Minister Efkan Ala told the private NTV television on Thursday that the government would continue to take steps "without paying a price" to move the peace process forward.

"We have risked our own neck in the peace process and will try and find a democratic solution to all these problems," he said. 

The AKP is seeking support from Turkey's estimated 15 million Kurds in parliamentary elections in June in order to change the constitution and imbue Erdogan's office with more executive powers.

But at the same time the party is keen to keep violence at bay ahead of the election campaign and is introducing a bill that boosts police powers to crack down on protests -- a move the PKK has called on the government to abandon. 

The ostensible trigger for the bill was pro-Kurdish violent protests in southeastern Turkey and Istanbul last October that left scores of people dead. 

Immediately after Ocalan's call, lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said that some disputed articles of the bill, though already passed, would probably be amended based on a consensus with the AKP.

Comments 1
Default-user-icon john marina (Guest) 05 March 2015, 21:08

The Osmalies have to understand that we are in the 21st century just like the Jews occupied a land which was not theirs