EIGHT KURDISH rebels handed themselves over to the Turkish authorities at the Turkish-Iraqi border yesterday, in the first concrete sign that months of efforts by Turkey’s government to end a 25-year Kurdish insurgency might be bearing fruit.
Accompanied by 26 Kurdish villagers who were among thousands who fled Turkey for Iraq more than a decade ago, the members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were immediately detained by police and taken in for questioning by four prosecutors.
In a three-page letter destined for the Turkish authorities, the group said they were handing themselves over “to assist in ending bloodshed . . . and to strengthen the foundations of a peaceful solution”.
“We want to show that we are on the side of peace, and we call for all sides to support the peace process,” a spokesman for the PKK, seen by the European Union as a terrorist organisation, said in a telephone interview from the group’s headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan.
One of 45 lawyers who travelled to Turkey’s Habur border crossing to represent the group, Nusirevan Elci, said the 26 civilians would be likely to be questioned and set free.Last evening, the fate of the eight PKK militants remained unclear. The party says none took an active part in the war which has killed more than 40,000 since 1984, and they are expected to benefit from a law pardoning rebels not involved in violence.
But prosecutors could charge them with membership of a terror organisation.
A former adviser to the Turkish prime minister, Mehmet Metiner says their release would constitute “a historic turning point, the start of the PKK’s descent from the mountains”. Since May, when Turkish president Abdullah Gul talked of “a historic opportunity” to bring peace to Turkey’s impoverished and war-torn Kurdish regions, Turkey has engaged in an unprecedentedly open debate on the Kurdish issue.
Details of what has come to be known as the “democratic opening” remain vague, however, despite months of high-level discussions inside Turkey and with neighbours in the region.
Yesterday, politicians from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) reacted cautiously to the news of the PKK group’s arrival.
“This should not be turned into a vehicle for propaganda,” AKP’s deputy chairman Huseyin Celik told the private broadcaster NTV, as Turkish televisions showed tens of thousands of Kurds waving PKK flags and dancing as they waited for the group to cross the border.
Turkish nationalists have opposed the government’s initiative from the start. “The aim . . . is not a democratic opening, but the dissolution of Turkey,” Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Action Party, said on Sunday.
Analysts say conditions inside Turkey and in the region have never been more favourable for a solution. In the past, the PKK received support from Syria, Greece and Iran. Now, Turkey has close relations with all three. With its troops due to leave Iraq in 2011, the United States upped efforts to remove a potential bone of contention between Iraq and Turkey.
For two years, it has provided Turkey with satellite imaging of PKK movements in Iraq. Last week, Washington froze the assets of three senior party commanders it accused of involvement in the drug trade. The PKK spokesman denied the allegations, adding that it was “too early” to say whether yesterday’s “peace group” would be followed by others.
Several party members who surrendered in similar circumstances in 1999 are still in prison. Cevat Ones, former deputy head of Turkey’s national intelligence services, says Turkey has changed since then. “On one side, you have a country which is ready for peace and a government with the will to push it through; on the other a terrorist group which knows that war is no longer an alternative.”