Turkey: Kurdish Peace Initiative Builds Momentum

Turkey's government is vowing to push forward with an initiative aimed at ending a 25-year Kurdish war. Changing geopolitical circumstances are helping to make Kurdish militants more open to a lasting peace deal.

"We will press ahead with this process ... and with luck we will complete it," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a mid-October visit to Siirt, a majority Kurdish district in southeastern Turkey.

The appearance of a "peace group" that included eight PKK members at a Turkish-Iraqi border post on October 19 offered the first concrete sign that efforts by Turkey's government to end a war that has killed more than 40,000 since 1984 were bearing fruit. Carrying a three-page letter asserting that they had "come to assist in ending bloodshed ... and to strengthen the foundations for a peaceful solution," the militants were met by prosecutors led by a senior Interior Ministry bureaucrat.

It is not the first time the PKK -- which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union -- has used "peace groups" to probe the Turkish government's intentions. But unlike previous initiatives, Turkish officials responded to the October 19 initiative in a way that appeared to build trust. Two militants who were part of a peace group sent in 1999 are still in prison. But on October 19, prosecutors told members of the group that they were free to go home.

The lenience of officials won praise from many analysts. "This is a historic turning point, the start of the PKK's descent from the mountains," says Mehmet Metiner, a former advisor to Erdogan.

The former head of a Kurdish party opposed to the PKK, Sertac Bucak compared the PKK to "a fraying sock."

"They want to return to their old lives," he said. "Even if they do not say 'we are putting down our guns,' break-aways will accelerate."

But many Turks were angered at the hero's welcome the eight were given by many Kurds. On Wednesday in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, the group was greeted by a fireworks display and a crowd of about 100,000 people.

Crowds chanted "long live peace" as songs praising the 25-year insurgency blared out from loudspeakers. "Fighters of the free people, welcome to your capital," one banner proclaimed.

An association of families of the estimated 6,000 soldiers killed by the PKK accused the government of helping to arrange "a state ceremony to welcome the terrorists." The association also lashed out at Ankara's plans to improve Kurdish rights. "The politicians who prepared the ground for this initiative are committing treason," said association chairman Hamit Kose. "The nation will hold them accountable."

The leader of the Nationalist Action Party, Devlet Bahceli, staunchly opposes the government's "democratic opening." On October 18, as the "peace group" began to make its way towards the Turkish border, he characterized the PKK initiative as threatening "the dissolution of Turkey."

Speaking in Siirt, Prime Minister Erdogan warned that the scenes of jubilation were "like putting salt on a wound." But he added that "we think this is a last chance. If we succeed now, we will succeed."

It remains unclear what the government plans to do next. With the exception of small domestic moves aimed at winning over the country's estimated 15 million Kurds, Turkey's efforts to marginalize the PKK so far have largely been limited to the foreign policy realm.

Changing circumstances are encouraging the PKK to make peace. Up until 1998, the PKK maintained a headquarters in Syria. Today, however, Damascus is Ankara's closest ally in the region. Turkey's relations with Iraqi Kurds, whom Ankara had long criticized for turning a blind eye to PKK camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, have also improved dramatically. Turkish officials recently hinted that Ankara was preparing to open a consulate in Erbil, regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurds have reciprocated by offering to help in the return of an estimated 11,000 Turkish Kurds living in refugee camps in northern Iraq.

The government "has succeeded in weakening international support for the PKK by replacing rhetoric about 'being stabbed in the back' [with] economic and political diplomacy," said Mazhar Bagli, a Kurdish sociologist recently appointed to the managing board of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP). "Today, international and domestic dynamics, as well as the internal dynamics of the PKK, clash with the idea of using violence as a tool for seeking political rights."

Interior Minister Besir Atalay predicted in mid-October that dozens of PKK members would soon begin surrendering. Cevat Ones, a former deputy head of Turkey's domestic intelligence service, thinks the group "could be persuaded to disarm completely within six months."

PKK leaders say the Turkish government must complete a series of domestic reforms before any substantive discussion on disarmament can begin. "How could [PKK fighters] come down from the mountains if the mentality does not change in Turkey, if the Kurdish will and identity is not accepted," PKK commander Cemil Bayik said in an interview with the pro-Kurdish Firat News Agency.

Many analysts in Turkey believe the government is working on a package of domestic reforms aimed at persuading the PKK to disarm. Kurdish politician Hasim Hasimi disagrees. "You cannot end a 25-year war with a package," he says.

Instead, he expects gradual implementation of reforms. Such a cautious approach might begin with the restoration of Kurdish place names Turkified from the 1950s onwards, then extend to new legislation permitting private Kurdish broadcasting. More controversial reforms, such as constitutional recognition of Kurds and Kurdish education in Turkish state schools, could only be pushed through when the guns have fallen silent, Hasimi acknowledged.

Behind the sometimes harsh rhetoric, Kurdish nationalists appear to have accepted a similarly realistic approach. "If the state takes one step, the PKK is willing to take 10," Ahmet Turk, the head of the pro-PKK Democratic Society Party, said recently.

"The paradigm has changed," political analyst Asli Aydintasbas wrote in her column in the daily Aksam on October 20. "Today, the state no longer prefers the Kurdish movement to be armed and therefore illegitimate. Today, Turkey no longer fears a political Kurdish movement."