PKK's Withdrawal From Turkey Shows Peace Process On Track
Murat Karayilan, a leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), is taking the peace file with Turkey from imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan, signaling normalization of the process, writes Kadri Gursel.
The speech by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, chairman of the Turkish parliament’s main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party [CHP], on May 7 to his party’s members of the parliament included tempestuous references to the peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK, but also had certain elements of truth.
I am quoting from the May 8 edition of the daily Milliyet: “I repeatedly asked [Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, ‘Why aren’t you talking?’ We are learning the facts from AKP’s [the ruling Justice and Development Party] spokesman at Kandil [the PKK command base in northern Iraq]. [Bulent] Arinc may be the government spokesman but they now also have a spokesman abroad. I am asking if what Karayilan said is true or not? We know he is telling the truth. Why should he lie? He says he was resolute and he [Erdogan] buckled under the presence of guns. What else can he [Karayilan] say?
“A prime minister of a country can’t be a captive of a terror organization. You are a prisoner, you don’t know what you are saying and that is why you are not speaking out because you don’t know what to say: 76 million citizens are learning the truth from Kandil. It is Erdogan who is responsible for this shame.”
Although I am inured to crude and offensive language used in Turkish politics, I still couldn’t believe these words from Kilicdaroglu. I couldn’t be sure if Kilicdaroglu really described the PKK military-political chief Murat Karayilan as ”AKP’s Kandil spokesman” or if it was a typing error.
