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Kurdish peace process is on knife edge — again

Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) members kidnapped four Turkish soldiers on Sunday only to release them early Monday; this has caused people to question the progress of talks with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Protesters shout slogans during a demonstration against Turkish security forces, after an incident in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province killed one person and wounded seven on Friday, in Istanbul June 29, 2013. Turkish security forces killed one person and wounded seven on Friday when they fired on a group of people protesting against construction of a new gendarmerie outpost in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, security sources said. The incident happened in the village of Kayacik in the Lice di

Late Sunday afternoon, Dec. 8, militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) kidnapped four Turkish soldiers on the highway from Diyarbakir to Lice, at the intersection of Fis Ovasi, where this terror organization was born in a meeting at a small village house. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan instantly reacted when the news broke: “Those who want to harm the process [of negotiations with the PKK] cause these events. The events in Hakkari were also caused by the same kind of people,” he said. “We won’t fall into this trap, but will continue with the process. There is nothing else to say besides that we expect our soldiers to be released soon.”

Not so long after, in the early hours of Monday, the PKK released the kidnapped soldiers — Melih Dikyol and Hakan Ozer, both sergeants, and Ugur Sert and Ali Akdemir, both specialized sergeants. One local in Lice told Al-Monitor in a telephone interview, asking that his name not be revealed, “At least a thousand people went to the area where it was thought that they might be holding these soldiers. It is a location around the Yolcati village of Lice where the PKK has its own cemetery,” he said. “People don’t want a new round of fighting and they are angry with both sides — the government and the PKK. And it was the people who forced the PKK to release these soldiers without being harmed.”

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