ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, warns that his continued imprisonment in Turkey will hamper progress in the peace process now underway with Ankara.
Meanwhile, the PKK claimed that since the beginning of the peace process its popularity had been skyrocketing, with young Turks joining the group in large numbers from across Turkey.
“As long as I am kept within four walls, the peace process in Turkey will not move forward,” the PKK leader told his brother Muhammad Ocalan.
“You see my place. In conditions like this, that is all I can do,” the PKK leader told his brother, referring to the landmark peace process with Ankara that he has steered from his jail cell.
Ocalan was captured 14 years ago in Nairobi by agents of the Turkish intelligence, and is serving a life sentence on Turkey’s Imrali island.
The PKK leader initiated the peace process in March, when he asked his fighters to withdraw from Turkish territories to mountain bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, a first step toward lasting peace and the fulfillment of Kurdish cultural and political rights in Turkey.
He complained to his brother that he could not speed up the process, given the restrictions imposed on him by the Turkish prison authorities.
“The Turkish government is the one deciding whom I meet and whom I talk to,” Ocalan explained to his brother.
In the meantime leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which has mediated the talks between Ocalan and Ankara, said that his freedom is essential for the peace process. It urged the Turkish government to make his release a priority.
“It has been about two years that the BDP is calling for Ocalan’s freedom,” said Ayla Akat, a BDP parliamentarian from the Kurdish city of Batman. “We have emphasized Ocalan’s importance for peace from the beginning of this process.”
Also, on Friday, co-chairs of the BDP Ahmet Turk and Gulten Kisanak began an official visit to the Kurdistan Region to meet with Iraqi Kurdish officials and PKK leaders to report on the latest developments about the peace process.
Meanwhile, a report given to the Turkish government by the intelligence service last week warns that so far only 200 PKK fighters have left Turkey. Early reports had said that about 2,000 fighters were expected to withdraw.
The intelligence report came just days after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that, “Fifteen percent of all PKK fighters have withdrawn and we are in the beginning of the process.”
BDP parliamentarians were quick to dismiss the intelligence report, saying that the withdrawal is in its final stages.
“Sixty percent of the withdrawal process has been completed,” said Hasip Kaplan, a Kurdish MP in the Turkish parliament.
The Turkish intelligence report, which was published by the Taraf newspaper, also says that the PKK has exploited the peace process to strengthen itself.
“Since the peace process the PKK has become stronger in terms of activities and style of work,” reads the report. “Its sources of income have also increased in this process.”
A PKK spokesperson in the group’s Qandil Mountains base in Iraqi Kurdistan told Rudaw last week that, since the beginning of the peace process, a great number of young people have joined the PKK from across Turkey.
“I don’t have an exact figure for the youth who have joined the PKK,” he said. “But it is true that many people have started joining us. They also come to the Kurdistan Region because that is where our forces are based.”
In a recent report the Turkish Zaman newspaper wrote that in the past three months close to 2,000 people, mainly young university students, have joined the PKK.
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