The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going ahead with the much-heralded peace process that it hopes will end the terrorist war waged by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the past three and a half decades while questions remain about the fate of a huge army of village guards who have been recruited to fight the Kurdish militants along with the Turkish army.
In 1985, the village guards system was set up through a special law whereby villagers were recruited to assist the Turkish military in its fight against the militants in eastern and southeastern Turkey, where the PKK launched its terrorism campaign in 1984. Today, there are at least 59,000 armed village guards on the government payroll and an additional 23,000 volunteers who are also armed and have special privileges, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Along with family members of the guards, Interior Ministry sources estimate 500,000 people benefit from the village guards system.
