COPENHAGEN — On the 31st anniversary of the first Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attacks on the Turkish military, experts say both sides bear blame for the recent failure of the peace process.
The Turkish government and Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK—which started its armed struggle on August 15, 1984—struck an agreement in 2013 which would gradually end the violence and pave the way toward a permanent peace.
Michael M. Gunter, an expert on Kurds and a professor at the Tennessee Technological University in the United States, put the most blame on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan, according to Gunter, is attempting to appeal to Turkish nationalist votes by attacking the PKK in order to then call a snap election in an attempt to regain the majority his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost in the June 7, 2015 parliamentary elections.
The AKP lost many votes because the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) won enough votes to enter parliament, and thus took potential parliamentary seats away from the AKP.
“So by blaming the PKK and thus implicitly the HDP for the failure of the peace process, Erdogan hopes to recapture Turkish nationalist votes and conservative Kurdish votes he lost in the June election,” Gunter told Rudaw.
On the other hand, Gunter also said that neither side was ready to compromise “enough to make the peace process successful.”
“Ocalan and the PKK asked for too much in the way of Kurdish rights and refused to disarm,” the professor said.
Huseyin Seyhanlioglu, a lecturer at Dicle University in Diyarbakir in Turkey, said both parties damaged the peace process.
"The PKK mostly ceased fire, but they were still present in and outside the cities during the process and sometimes blocked roads and established checkpoints,” he said, adding they failed to disarm.
The Turkish faction damaged the process by building new military bases in the Kurdish southeast, according to Seyhanlioglu.
Despite repeated attempts, it was not possible to get a comment from representatives of the PKK. However, Zeynel Celik, a former Scandinavian spokesperson for the Kurdistan National Liberation Front (ERNK), the political branch of the PKK, disagreed about the criticism of the lack of PKK disarmament.
“How can the PKK lay down their weapons? Who are then going to fight against Islamic State,” he asked referring to the Kurdish areas of Syria, known as Rojava, where PKK-affiliated militants are fighting ISIS.
According to Celik, the main reason for the failure of the peace process is the lack of “real reforms” by the AKP. In fall 2013, Erdogan launched a democracy package, which among other things gave the Kurds the right to Kurdish education in private schools. However, education in Kurdish in public schools is still illegal.
“In practice the AKP has not granted the Kurds any rights. It has been empty words,” Celik said.
Another reason for the failure was the battle for Kobani, Celik said. The Turks tolerating Islamist extremists crossing their borders to join the fight in Syria against the Kurds, and their refusal to give Turkish Kurdish fighters passage to the besieged Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani in 2014, “damaged the trust between the parties in the process,” Celik added.
He did however recognize that the PKK also bears some responsibility for the failure of the peace process.
Turkey responded to the killings of two policemen claimed by the PKK with a resumption of bombings against PKK targets in July. The group accused the policemen of having links with ISIS and masterminding a bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc that killed dozens of civilians.
"The PKK has not provided evidence that the policemen had links to ISIS," Celik said. "There was no reason to start attacks, it does not serve the interests of the Kurds."
In order to return to the peace process, the international community should encourage Turkey to end airstrikes, and the PKK to stop attacking government targets, Gunter suggested.
“This will take time and will not be possible until the present policy of fighting shows that it is leading nowhere constructively,” the professor said.
However, Turkey’s policy towards ISIS further complicates matters because the Kurds in Iraq and Syria are the “main boots on the ground fighting ISIS” with US air support, he said.
“So long as Turkey sees the Kurds more of a threat than ISIS, there is little chance to renew the Turkish-PKK peace process,” Gunter added.
For his part, Ocalan, imprisoned by Turkish authorities since 1999, has called on his group and the Turkish government to end ongoing clashes and resume negotiations, but so far to little avail.
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