ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) umbrella organization on Thursday declared a resumption of a deadly conflict with the Turkish government, formally ending a unilateral truce.
"We are going to resume our military activities in northern Kurdistan and Turkey," said the leadership of the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), which was founded by the PKK to put into practice jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan’s ideas.
The statement said that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is unwilling to solve the Kurdish question in Turkey, and is demonstrating "the will to fight.”
It added: “We are always ready for a bilateral ceasefire; when we declared a unilateral truce the Turkish army kept attacking us in northern Kurdistan."
"Turkey does not take any initiative to solve the Kurdish question in Turkey because they are not serious," it said.
The KCK praised the role of other democratic parties in Turkey: "through struggle we will fulfill a free and a democratic environment and all democratic parties should ramp up to stand against the Fascist AKP."
The KCK’s announcement followed Turkey’s declaration of a curfew on parts of its southeastern Kurdish Diyarbakir province on Wednesday, reportedly ahead of an expected major crackdown against the outlawed PKK.
Meanwhile, at a security meeting Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that weeks-long assaults on the PKK would continue during the winter.
“It is decided to continue the operation against the separatist terrorist organization by Turkish armed forces without slowing down," the official Anadolu Agency quoted Davutoglu as saying.
Following the meeting, Diyarbakir governor Huseyin Aksoy declared a curfew in the town of Lija in Diyarbakir, with media reports saying it was in anticipation of an expected major military campaign.
At a conference in Erbil, Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu on Wednesday ruled out that the PKK should be part of a peace process between Ankara and the country’s large Kurdish minority.
“PKK is in the business of terror, and terrorist groups like PKK should not be part of the peace process,” Sinirlioglu said on the second day of the annual MERI Forum 2015, sponsored by the Erbil-based Middle East Research Institute.
The Turkish government reignited a war with the PKK after the militants claimed responsibility for the deaths of two army officers in late July.
The renewed fighting ended a 2013 ceasefire that was meant to resolve a three-decade conflict in which some 40,000 people have been killed.
The crackdown came just weeks before snap general elections Sunday, in which the pro-Kurdish HDP party suffered a setback blamed on Ankara restarting the war with PKK.
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