Kurdish Globe
Aug 8 2009
Turkey seeks end to Kurdish conflict
The Kurdish Globe
Turkish PM met with DTP Party leader, hopes to end Kurdish conflict
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey met the leader of the
country’s main Kurdish party Wednesday, signaling a new drive to end a
25-year conflict that has hobbled Turkey’s status as a rising regional
power and slowed its efforts to join the European Union.
"Our people want unity… and an end to blood and killing," said
Mr. Erdogan, describing the hourlong meeting with Democratic Society
Party head Ahmet Turk as "very, very important."
More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party, or PKK, took up arms against the Turkish state in
1984. The war has cost the country an estimated $300 billion and
fueled opponents within the EU to Turkey’s membership bid.
Mr. Erdogan repeatedly turned down earlier requests for a meeting with
Mr. Turk, because the Kurdish politician wouldn’t declare the PKK a
terrorist organization. Mr. Turk’s party has 21 deputies in Turkey’s
parliament and controls most municipalities in the mainly Kurdish
southeast.
The prime minister’s reconciliation effort is the latest in his
government’s policy of trying to neutralize disputes around its
borders. Those attempts have had mixed success.
In April, the government looked close to securing a deal with Armenia
to reopen their common border, which Turkey closed in 1993 to protest
Armenia’s war with Turkish ally Azerbaijan. Although it was strongly
backed by the U.S. — President Barack Obama praised the effort when
he visited Turkey in April — those efforts collapsed when Mr. Erdogan
backed away from the deal under pressure from Azerbaijan.
Turkish efforts to resolve the dispute over divided Cyprus in 2004, 30
years after Turkey invaded the island, also ran aground, due to Greek
Cypriot opposition. That failure has left in place a larger hurdle to
Turkey’s bid for membership in the EU.
Mr. Erdogan in 2005 broke with Turkey’s traditional policy of seeing
the Kurdish issue as a simple matter of fighting terrorism when he
promised "more democracy" for Turkey’s Kurds. Like Turkish leaders
before him, however, he didn’t follow up words with policies.
Mr. Erdogan’s Kurdish initiative faces opposition and long odds. The
leader of a Turkish nationalist party, Turkey’s third largest, accused
the government Saturday of "surrendering to terrorists" bent on
dividing the country.
Yet many analysts say the new Kurdish opening is qualitatively
different from anything that came before.
"For the first time ever, Turkish state institutions are working in
synch to solve the problem," said Henri Barkey, a Turkish expert at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based
think tank.
The main catalyst for Turkey’s new sense of urgency is Washington’s
announcement that it plans to pull its soldiers out of Iraq, Turkey’s
southern neighbor, by 2011.
The planned withdrawal has speeded up a rapprochement between Turkey
and Iraqi Kurds, whose relations have been blighted for years by the
PKK’s use of Iraqi Kurdish mountains for its military bases.
In 2007, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, turned down
Turkish demands for cooperation over the PKK, saying that he would not
expel "even a Kurdish cat." Today, Iraqi Kurds increasingly see Ankara
as an alternative to Washington in its struggle to maintain autonomy
from an increasingly powerful Baghdad. Both sides agree the PKK’s
presence in Iraq is an obstacle to closer relations.
There is an economic side to the rapprochement. "Turkey wants to use
northern Iraqi gas for Nabucco," says Bayram Bozyel, a Turkish Kurdish
politician, referring to a pipeline project that the U.S. and EU hope
will help break a Russian stranglehold on European natural-gas
supplies. "And the [Iraqi] Kurds want to pump gas north." That would
be risky in the midst of a guerrilla war. The PKK claimed
responsibility last year for a bomb attack on a major oil pipeline
that passes through the same region.
Details of the government’s Kurdish initiative remain sparse. In
mid-July, Mr. Erdogan’s chief political adviser proposed opening
Kurdish language departments in universities, giving Kurdish names
back to villages, and setting up a parliamentary commission to
investigate the unsolved murders of Kurdish civilians at the height of
the PKK war.
Turkey continues to rule out the possibility of a general amnesty for
the estimated 4,000 PKK members holed up in Iraq and southeastern
Turkey. But many analysts believe a preliminary package could be
designed to enable the PKK to put down arms without losing face.
Said Mr. Bozyel, the Kurdish politician, said: "There are huge hopes
this time. If they are disappointed, God only knows what could
happen."
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress