Does Turkey Have a Roadmap For Peace With the PKK?
Orhan Kemal Cengiz is not sure that the Turkish government has a comprehensive peace plan, and says that if they do the PKK is certainly unaware of it.
I have always doubted whether the Turkish government has a comprehensive peace plan with the PKK, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, whose war with the state has claimed more than 40,000 lives in the past three decades. After reading some statements of Murat Karayilan, acting leader of the PKK on Kandil Mountain in Northern Iraq, my curiosity peaked. Karayilan, in his statement published by T24 news portal on March 24, said, “They do not know if the government has a project for the solution.” Yet still, he also said that they will follow the call of Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned leader of the PKK, and they will leave the country.
Karayilan was unsure of the process, for neither government nor Abdullah Ocalan explained any comprehensive road map leading to the peace. We can detect some elements from various statements of the parties but no one knows how Turkey will complete this process.
What are these elements that we can try to bring together to have, albeit vaguely, a picture of the peace process that Turkey will probably follow?
There are various statements by Ocalan. He is basically talking about the need for the introduction of a new constitution which will not refer to any ethnic identity in Turkey, instead of the current emphasis on Turkish identity. He is also talking about recognition of linguistic and cultural rights of Kurds. We can understand that in his road map, at least for the time being, there is no demand for regional autonomy or separation. So, in Ocalan’s "peace plan" this process is framed as tantamount to achieving liberal democracy, as the leaders of the armed groups did in El Salvador and Guatemala before.
