“I have been to Washington numerous times before, but this time feels different,” Ahmet Turk, a pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) member said on May 22 in Washington at a small gathering of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I get a sense in this visit that Kurds are for the first time really recognized as an actor in Middle East politics. [US officials] wanted to learn about our opinions on this and that issue, which suggested Kurds are now regarded as a factor in discussions concerning Turkey and the Middle East.”

The BDP delegation’s visit to the capital of the United States came only a week after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the White House. There is evidently great interest inside the Washington beltway to learn more about the Erdogan government’s initiative to resolve the Kurdish issue. The White House, State Department and Congress were on a long list of Turk's meetings. “I believe that for the first time we’re engaged in a hopeful process,” he said. “But things have to show some progress for people to continue feeling hopeful. If and when that feeling is tarnished, people will also respond accordingly.”

As Turk talked about being hopeful for the first time, he also raised concern on two key issues — that the Turkish government does not really correctly comprehend the regional developments, and that it is implementing new laws that are in direct conflict with this process.

“The developments in the Middle East, the fighting in Syria, the growing sectarian rift in Iraq — all of these show that the circumstances compel the resolution of the Kurdish issue,” Turk said. “Kurds should be seen both as the sign of stability and instability in the Middle East. It’s not possible to ignore the Kurds who make up 15% of the population in Syria, topple the [Syrian leader Bashar al-] Assad regime, and establish a democratic state siding with groups such as al-Qaeda or Jabhat al-Nusra.”