Ocalan Urges 'All out' Kurdish Resistance against IS
The jailed leader of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) urged Kurds to join "all-out resistance" against Islamic State militants advancing on Kurdish areas in northern Syria, the pro-Kurdish Firat agency reported Tuesday.
IS extremists have closed in on the strategic Syrian town of Ain al-Arab near the Turkish border, called Kobane in Kurdish, and have seized dozens of villages in the past week, prompting an exodus of refugees into Turkey.
"I call on all Kurdish people to start all-out resistance against this high-intensity war," Abdullah Ocalan said in a message relayed by his lawyer Mazlum Dinc, who visited him on his island prison in the Sea of Marmara off Istanbul.
"All our people should shape their lives in line with the war going on in Kurdistan at the moment," Ocalan said in his first comments on the current crisis.
Ocalan urged all Kurds -- who have no state of their own and are spread between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran -- to join the fight.
The standoff over Kobane and the influx of over 130,000 Kurdish refugees into Turkey in a few days has added a new element of complexity to efforts to end the 30-year conflict between the Turkish authorities and the PKK, which wants self rule for Turkey's Kurds.
It also coincided with the release of dozens of Turks held hostage by IS -- reportedly after secret talks with the jihadists ended in a swap of captives.
Ocalan accused the Turkish government of dragging its feet in restarting the peace talks when he was ready to "take every step possible" for a democratic solution.
"The Turkish state made the public know that it had openly negotiated with the IS, while it failed to start the peace talks" with the Kurds, Ocalan charged.
Held in a Turkish jail since his capture in 1999, Ocalan remains the number one figure in the PKK and an icon for many Kurds.
The PKK's military chief Murat Karayilan, who leads the armed rebels at their Kandil Mountain base in northern Iraq, went even further, saying that the peace process has "ended" and accusing Turkey of collaborating with IS.
"The peace process in the north (Turkey) has ended with the Kobane assault. But Ocalan has the final say," Karayilan was quoted as saying by the Firat news agency.
Source: Agence France Presse
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