Ocalan said in a message delivered by his brother to a crowd of supporters in Diyarbakir on Monday that his party would take the initiative for peace, and he asked the Turkish government to follow suit. He said peace could be achieved “within six months” if the Turkish government were sincere.
A group of 50 politicians and supporters from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has since ended a hunger strike announced about two weeks ago.
They went on hunger strike to put pressure on the government to allow for Ocalan’s family to visit him in prison. The strike followed rumors that leaders of the failed July 15 coup in Turkey wanted to harm Ocalan.
The Kurdish Rights and Freedoms Party (HAK-PAR), a small nationalist party which is often at odds with HDP and PKK but keeps friendly ties with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said it welcomes any calls for peace.
“The war has destroyed our country. Our people have been damaged. Therefore, let the war stop in whatever way possible… let’s open the political door. Let’s leave the political democratic door open,” HAK-PAR president Refik Karakoç told Rudaw
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, and since then an estimated 40,000 people have been killed, many of them in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast.
“Every day about 30 or 40 people are getting killed, whether from the PKK, the government, or the people. At the end each person comes from a family who has parents, brothers and sisters. This has created an open wound. (That is why) peace would not prevail easily,” Muhamad Amin Kardas, the secretary general of Kurdistan Democratic Party – Turkey (KDP-T) said.
The Turkish government and the PKK were negotiating a peace deal that began in 2013, when the conflict resumed in mid-2015.
Wahid Abba, manager of the general center of PAK, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) - not to be confused with another armed Kurdish party with the same name but active in Iran -- believes the negotiations failed because they were carried out in secret.
This time, he said, the process has to be open to succeed.
