The PKK-linked Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) declared an “end to the cease-fire” first agreed in 2012 and warned it would target "all the dams” in the country’s southeast.
In the statement delivering a significant setback to the fragile off-and-on peace process, the KCK said Turkey's building of barracks, dams, and roads for military purposes had violated the truce.
"The Turkish State took advantage of the cease-fire conditions, not for a democratic political resolution, but to gain an advantageous position in preparation of war by building dozens of guard posts, roads for military purposes and dams in order for a cultural genocide," the statement said.
Unusual release
The statement was first released to the Firat, a PKK-linked news agency based in Amsterdam.
The PKK launched a three-decade-long self-rule insurgency in 1984. It tempered its aims subsequently and its imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan has been negotiating a resolution to the conflict. But in recent months the process has stalled with positions hardening on both sides.
Some senior PKK officials have been expressing deep reservations about the process; and some fighters told VOA recently that they no longer believe in Öcalan’s peace strategy.
“If he were released tomorrow, we would celebrate his freedom. But I can assure some fighters would try to assassinate him the following day,” one veteran fighter told VOA in the spring. He asked for his name not to disclosed in any reporting of his views.
Positions have also been hardening on the government side. In March, the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dismissed the idea there is even a Kurdish problem, prompting fears that talk of a breakthrough by his ministers was misplaced.
Erdogan argued Kurds already enjoy equal rights with the rest of the country and should not need anything else.
“The only thing in their eyes is the Kurdish question. What are you talking about? There is no such thing, there is no Kurdish question,” he thundered in a speech.
He added, “What Kurdish problem? ... What have you not got? ... What else do you want? For God's sake, what don't you have that we do, you have everything,” he said..............www.voanews.com
13/7/15
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Related:
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Turkish PM welcomes call by PKK leader for disarmament
Kurdish rebel leader in Turkey, Abdullah Ocalan, calls for disarmament congress
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Pro-Kurdish party leader calls on PKK to lay down arms...
ReplyDeleteThe leader of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) has called on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to lay down arms to move forward with the peace process aimed at ending Turkey's decades old conflict.
The Kurdistan Communities' Union (KCK), which is known for being associated with the PKK, said this week that it has brought the cease-fire enjoyed with the Turkish government to an end as the government did not abide by the cease-fire rules. Speaking on the issue, HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş told Habertürk on Tuesday that the Kurds do not want a separate state inside Turkey, but only demand expanded rights and freedoms for themselves.
When asked if the cease-fire has ended, Demirtaş, whose party captured a stunning 13 percent of the vote in last month's parliamentary elections and ended Turkey's ruling party's 13-year single-party rule, said the KCK needs to act in a "more patient" way.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said on Tuesday that Ankara has never recognized any cease-fire anyway and that the military will not tolerate the PKK from now on. "Hard days await the PKK," Arınç vowed.
"We do not ask that we establish a separate state," Demirtaş said, referring to Kurds. "Let us live together but expand freedoms. Our tentative plan in solving the Kurdish problem in Turkey is this."..............http://www.todayszaman.com/national_pro-kurdish-party-leader-calls-on-pkk-to-lay-down-arms_393741.html
15/7/15