Kurds propose settlement with Turkey

Times:

The Kurdish leader proposing to end a 25-year-long conflict with Turkey that has cost 30,000 lives believes his peace offer is a once in a generation opportunity that must be grasped by both sides.

In a unilateral gesture that has prompted a re-examination of strategy in Ankara, Baghdad and Washington, the guerrilla leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has extended an olive branch, offering to drop its aim of an independent state in return for a negotiated settlement to end its war with Turkey.

“We are at a turning point,” said Murad Karayilan, acting head of the PKK, in an interview with The Times at a secret location in the mountains of northern Iraq.

“Kurds do not want to continue the war. We believe we can solve the Kurdish question without spilling more blood. We are ready for a peaceful and democratic solution in Turkey — to be solved within Turkey’s borders.”

The potential breakthrough in the conflict came this month when Mr Karayilan, 52, deputy to the PKK’s imprisoned supremo, Abdullah Ocalan, agreed to meet a Turkish journalist in northern Iraq. During the meeting he highlighted the PKK’s willingness to drop its central demand for an independent state for Turkey’s 12 million Kurds, and proposed key steps towards peace, including an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the war.

“Britain accepted the will of the Scots by giving them a parliament of their own, and that’s what the Turks have to do with us,” Mr Karayilan said at the meeting with The Times in a wooded valley near the Qandil mountains, an important PKK area. “I’ve studied Irish history and talked with people who participated in it. I know the development and stages of that struggle. Turkey needs to solve our problem in the way that the British solved that problem.”

...

The deadline he has set for a response from Turkey is less than a week away. Nonetheless intense political debate is under way in Turkey over the unsolved Kurdish issue, which President Gül has called “Turkey’s biggest problem”.

Nationalist parties in Turkey have denounced the PKK offer and the Army has continued operations in southeastern Turkey. The political leadership, however, has described the overture as a “historic opportunity”.

...

This is an offer that deserves consideration. The war with Turkey has been counter productive for the Kurds and their original Marxist bent is no longer relevant, especially when the see the prosperity of the Kurds in northern Iraq that are operating in an autonomous capitalistic fashion.