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  • Turkey seeks end to Kurdish conflict

    Kurdish Globe
    Aug 8 2009

    Turkey seeks end to Kurdish conflict

    The Kurdish Globe

    Turkish PM met with DTP Party leader, hopes to end Kurdish conflict

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey met the leader of the
    country's main Kurdish party Wednesday, signaling a new drive to end a
    25-year conflict that has hobbled Turkey's status as a rising regional
    power and slowed its efforts to join the European Union.

    "Our people want unity... and an end to blood and killing," said
    Mr. Erdogan, describing the hourlong meeting with Democratic Society
    Party head Ahmet Turk as "very, very important."

    More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the Kurdistan
    Workers' Party, or PKK, took up arms against the Turkish state in
    1984. The war has cost the country an estimated $300 billion and
    fueled opponents within the EU to Turkey's membership bid.

    Mr. Erdogan repeatedly turned down earlier requests for a meeting with
    Mr. Turk, because the Kurdish politician wouldn't declare the PKK a
    terrorist organization. Mr. Turk's party has 21 deputies in Turkey's
    parliament and controls most municipalities in the mainly Kurdish
    southeast.

    The prime minister's reconciliation effort is the latest in his
    government's policy of trying to neutralize disputes around its
    borders. Those attempts have had mixed success.

    In April, the government looked close to securing a deal with Armenia
    to reopen their common border, which Turkey closed in 1993 to protest
    Armenia's war with Turkish ally Azerbaijan. Although it was strongly
    backed by the U.S. -- President Barack Obama praised the effort when
    he visited Turkey in April -- those efforts collapsed when Mr. Erdogan
    backed away from the deal under pressure from Azerbaijan.

    Turkish efforts to resolve the dispute over divided Cyprus in 2004, 30
    years after Turkey invaded the island, also ran aground, due to Greek
    Cypriot opposition. That failure has left in place a larger hurdle to
    Turkey's bid for membership in the EU.

    Mr. Erdogan in 2005 broke with Turkey's traditional policy of seeing
    the Kurdish issue as a simple matter of fighting terrorism when he
    promised "more democracy" for Turkey's Kurds. Like Turkish leaders
    before him, however, he didn't follow up words with policies.

    Mr. Erdogan's Kurdish initiative faces opposition and long odds. The
    leader of a Turkish nationalist party, Turkey's third largest, accused
    the government Saturday of "surrendering to terrorists" bent on
    dividing the country.

    Yet many analysts say the new Kurdish opening is qualitatively
    different from anything that came before.

    "For the first time ever, Turkish state institutions are working in
    synch to solve the problem," said Henri Barkey, a Turkish expert at
    the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based
    think tank.

    The main catalyst for Turkey's new sense of urgency is Washington's
    announcement that it plans to pull its soldiers out of Iraq, Turkey's
    southern neighbor, by 2011.

    The planned withdrawal has speeded up a rapprochement between Turkey
    and Iraqi Kurds, whose relations have been blighted for years by the
    PKK's use of Iraqi Kurdish mountains for its military bases.

    In 2007, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, turned down
    Turkish demands for cooperation over the PKK, saying that he would not
    expel "even a Kurdish cat." Today, Iraqi Kurds increasingly see Ankara
    as an alternative to Washington in its struggle to maintain autonomy
    from an increasingly powerful Baghdad. Both sides agree the PKK's
    presence in Iraq is an obstacle to closer relations.

    There is an economic side to the rapprochement. "Turkey wants to use
    northern Iraqi gas for Nabucco," says Bayram Bozyel, a Turkish Kurdish
    politician, referring to a pipeline project that the U.S. and EU hope
    will help break a Russian stranglehold on European natural-gas
    supplies. "And the [Iraqi] Kurds want to pump gas north." That would
    be risky in the midst of a guerrilla war. The PKK claimed
    responsibility last year for a bomb attack on a major oil pipeline
    that passes through the same region.

    Details of the government's Kurdish initiative remain sparse. In
    mid-July, Mr. Erdogan's chief political adviser proposed opening
    Kurdish language departments in universities, giving Kurdish names
    back to villages, and setting up a parliamentary commission to
    investigate the unsolved murders of Kurdish civilians at the height of
    the PKK war.

    Turkey continues to rule out the possibility of a general amnesty for
    the estimated 4,000 PKK members holed up in Iraq and southeastern
    Turkey. But many analysts believe a preliminary package could be
    designed to enable the PKK to put down arms without losing face.

    Said Mr. Bozyel, the Kurdish politician, said: "There are huge hopes
    this time. If they are disappointed, God only knows what could
    happen."

    http://www.kurdishglobe.net/d isplayArticle.jsp?id=BFA2A8A1DCB7EAA776FA6A7DDB7E4 FF8

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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