Kurds were demeaned as "mountain Turks" and their language banned in a vain effort to evade the national question in Turkey. Since Öcalan and his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms three decades ago to demand Kurdish autonomy, the European Union and the US have echoed Ankara's description of the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
Such slander has not diminished Kurdish support for the PKK, as shown by the attendance of hundreds of thousands of people in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir to hear Ocalan's message. It is clearly time for a negotiated solution to Turkey's Kurdish dilemma. As with Britain and the IRA, it is self-evident that neither side can win a military victory. PKK unity and morale have not been diminished by Ocalan's incarceration for 14 years.
Turkey sought to capitalise on what it saw as weakness in 1999 and 2004 when it took advantage of unilateral ceasefires to launch an eradication campaign against PKK armed forces retreating into northern Iraq. Whatever Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan decides in response to Ocalan's call, elements within the Turkish state reject reconciliation and would opt for continued war.
Erdogan should be decisive in acceptance of the Kurdish side's olive branch by agreeing to make progress on a new constitution that guarantees Kurdish national rights and by facilitating the release from jail of hundreds of Kurdish political prisoners.
He should also move beyond suggestions that he agree to improve the PKK leader's conditions in jail in favour of securing his liberation to personally lead peace negotiations. Ocalan's observation that "a door is opening from the armed struggle toward the democratic struggle" should be welcomed by all friends of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples.
Source: The Morning Star 22-03-2013
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