Kurdish separatist guide calls for disarmament to terminate the conflict
Kurdish separatist guide calls for disarmament to terminate the conflict
The Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan
The call to laying the weapon
"I call to put down the weapons and I take on historical responsibility for this call," said the detained leader in a statement on Thursday, which was read out by Turkish MPs. "All groups have to put down their weapons and the PKK has to dissolve." Öcalan said that for more than a thousand years "the relationships between Turks and Kurds were shaped by mutual cooperation and alliance", which has broken in the past 200 years. "Today the main task is to restructure the historical relationship that has become extremely fragile."
The longstanding conflict with Turkey
Turkey and the PKK have been in war for almost five decades. A large part of this conflict focused on the group's request to found an independent Kurdish state in the southeast of the country. In recent years, however, the PKK has instead demanded more autonomy within Turkey. "There is no alternative to democracy in the persecution and realization of a political system. The democratic consensus is the fundamental way," emphasized Öcalan in his explanation and added that the PKK has gained support among the Kurds in the past because "the ways of democratic politics were closed for them".
new Friedenshoffen
In the past few months, the prospects for peace between Kurds and Turks have been revived by an unusual initiative by the right -wing extremist Devlet Bahçeli, an ally by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Bahçeli invited Öcalan to come to parliament and "to explain that he laid down the weapons". Öcalan had directed a similar call to his followers about a decade ago, but the 2013 peace process soon collapsed when the tensions flared up again, which led Turkey and the PKK back into a bloody war and ended a two -year ceasefire.an outlook on the future
Some experts suspect that the years of fighting have exhausted the PKK and Erdogan takes the chance to end the conflict in a way that ensures that Turkey emerges as the winner. Berkay Mandiraci, a Turkey analyst of the International Crisis Group Think Tanks in Brussels, explained that Turkey tries to end the conflict "mostly according to its own conditions", and added that "the group is significantly weakened after a decade". "Ankara pursues a double strategy: to maintain military pressure while it falls into political maneuvers," said Mandiraci, adding that the message shines: put your weapons down unconditionally or see the consequences. "
regional effects
It remains to be seen which concessions will make the Erdogan government of the PKK or the Kurds in Turkey in return. Öcalan's explanation could also have far -reaching regional effects, especially in Syria, where a Kurdish militia associated with the PKK, the folk defense units (YPG), forms the backbone of the armed forces supported by the USA who fought against ISIS. Supported militias of Türkiye have run intensive battles with the YPG since the fall of the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December. It is unclear how a call to the peace of Öcalan will arrive at Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq.
reactions from the YPG
In an explanation of CNN, a YPG spokesman Öcalan's "historical message" praised on Thursday as one that "serves the interests of all people in the region; the Kurdish people, the Turks, the Armenians and all other communities in the Middle East". "The message will certainly have a significant impact, especially on the insoluble crises in the region," said spokesman Siyamend Ali. "We hope that this message will be a guide to solve the existing crises, especially in Syria, where we have reached a new phase. It is our hope that conflicts end up, the democracy will be solved by dialogue and enjoy their rights in the region on an equal footing."
The influence on the Syrian army
The new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has asked all the armed factions in the country, including the YPG, to integrate into the national armed forces, which is supported by Turkey. However, the YPG has requested the formation of special units within the military as a condition for its participation. The Turkish military said on Thursday that operations against "terrorist groups" in Syria and Iraq continued. The USA, the European Union and Turkey classify the PKK as a terrorist group.
The origins of the conflict
Öcalan founded the pkk 1978 Larger separatist movement of Kurds that are scattered in the region. Violence began in August 1984 when PKK fighter killed two Turkish soldiers. Over time and increasing death figures, the PKK developed into a militant arm of an ethnic struggle to preserve Kurdish culture.
The Kurds are the largest minority in Turkey and make between 15% and 20% from the population, as the Minority Rights Group International organization reports. They also have a significant presence in northern Syria, in the north of Iraq and Iran.
Öcalans detention and the relationship with the government
Öcalan was caught in Kenya in 1999 by Turkish authorities, apparently with the help of the CIA. The Kurdish leader was sentenced to life in Turkey for treason and was the only inmate in the Imrali prison for years-an Alcatraz-like island south of the Marmarameer. He has had extremely limited contact to the outside world since then, but in the past few months at least three delegations have visited him in prison.
The Kurds have a complicated relationship with Erdogan. The Turkish leader tries the Kurds in earlier years by granting them more rights and taking restrictions on the use of their language. In 2013, Erdogan worked with the Pro-Kurdish Party for Democracy and Progress (HDP) on a short peace process with the PKK. However, these conversations collapsed and the relationships deteriorated in 2015. In the past few years, Turkey's war against the PKK has led to a comprehensive confrontation against pro-Kurdish parties that were accused by the Turkish government to have related connections to the group and its supporters.
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