Turkey Considers New 'Peace Process’ With PKK
Mustafa Akyol analyzes the prospects for a new peace process using imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, an approach that failed two years ago.
In the past thirty years, more than a dozen governments and myriad political realities changed in Turkey, but one trouble has remained constant: The armed conflict between the state and the PKK, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, a guerilla army driven by a blend of Kurdish nationalism and utopian socialism. Since 1984, when the PKK began attacking Turkish targets, more than 40 thousand lives perished — more than some 30,000 PKK militants, 7,000 members of the Turkish security forces, and a few thousand civilians. It is a huge death toll that is at least ten times more than that of the Northern Ireland conflict.
However, these days there is some hope in Turkey that, finally, 2013 might be the year of a farewell to arms. As the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan announced right before the New Year, a “dialogue” has begun with Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, springing a new expectation for peace in the air.
It should be noted that this will not be the first effort for peace, though. In 2009 as well, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government had initiated a process called “democratic opening”, including more reforms for Kurds’ cultural rights and a negotiation with the PKK. As part of the latter effort, the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (or MIT, with Turkish initials), Hakan Fidan, a confidant of Erdoğan, met with both the jailed Öcalan and some PKK representatives in Europe. These series of secret meetings would later be called “the Oslo Process,” and, just like the more famous Oslo Process between the Israelis and the Palestinians, they would fail.
