Will Turkey’s Kurdish movement renounce violence?
If Turkey’s Kurdish politicians want more understanding from Turkey, they can help themselves by opposing the violence of their comrades.
On Oct. 25, three Turkish soldiers were shot to death in the back in Yukseova, a predominantly Kurdish town just miles from Turkey’s borders with Iraq and Iran. The killers were two masked men and no one has yet claimed responsibility. Yet the usual suspect for both the government and Turkish society is the PKK, the armed and outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, a group that Turkey identifies as terrorist and has fought for three decades.
This was just one episode in a series of violent acts committed by pro-PKK militants in the past several weeks. In fact, there has been a “peace process” between the PKK and the government since early 2013, and guns had been silent. Yet the Turkish government’s inaction to help Kobani, a Kurdish town on Turkey’s Syrian border, in the face of the onslaught by the Islamic State, frustrated and enraged Turkey’s own Kurds. In early October, Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the HDP, the People's Democracy Party, the implicit, legal arm of the PKK, called for street protests against the government for not helping Kobani. But some of the protesters turned violent, engaging not only in vandalism, but also lynching whomever they perceived as sympathizers of the Islamic State.
