Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition party said the government must not waste the chance to draw a line under the decades-long Kurdish insurgency, and show its willingness to achieve a “democratic solution.”
“The government must show political will,” Tuncer Bakırhan, co-president of the pro-Kurdish DEM party, said in a TV interview aired Friday, February 28.
“There is a Kurdish problem and it’s not enough to lay down arms,” he told Haberturk TV.
Kurds, he said, were waiting for “a democratic solution” and “concrete measures.”
The comments came after jailed militant leader Abdullah Ocalan issued a landmark declaration this week calling for his Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to disband and lay down arms after more than 40 years of fighting the Turkish state.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, has waged an insurgency since 1984 with the aim of carving out a homeland for Kurds, who account for around 20% of Turkey’s 85 million people.
Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999 there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed, which has cost more than 40,000 lives. After the last round of peace talks collapsed in 2015, no further contact was made until October when a hardline nationalist ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan offered a surprise peace gesture if Ocalan rejected violence.
While Erdoğan backed the rapprochement, his government cranked up pressure on the opposition, arresting hundreds of politicians, activists and journalists.
After several meetings with Ocalan at his island prison, DEM on Thursday relayed his appeal for PKK to lay down its weapons and convene a congress to announce the organisation’s dissolution. There has been no immediate response from the PKK commanders’ headquarters in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Partner service
Learn French with Gymglish
Thanks to a daily lesson, an original story and a personalized correction, in 15 minutes per day.
Try for free
Erdoğan said it was a “historic opportunity to advance towards the objective of destroying the wall of terror.”
