ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) will begin a phased withdrawal from Turkey starting next month, the group’s military leader Murat Karayilan said Thursday, warning Ankara against any attempts to disrupt the pullout.
Speaking to reporters at the PKK’s mountain base in the Qandil mountains of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region, Karayilan said the withdrawal is part of the peace process agreed last month between the Turkish government and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
“Though we are withdrawing from areas that we consider rightfully ours, we still do as the peace process requires,” Karayilan said. “Also, this does not mean putting down our guns. It only means pulling out our fighters,” he clarified.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned earlier this month that PKK fighters would “have to bury their weapons in caves” before being allowed to leave. “They can cross the border of our country only after laying down their arms,” he had vowed.
Karayilan said that the withdrawal would begin May 8, and will be completed in stages.
Answering a question from Rudaw about why Ocalan’s release is not among PKK’s preconditions for peace, Karayilan said, “We have always asked for his release, but the reality is as we see it now.”
“The PKK will try to withdraw to pre-arranged areas without any clashes and as part of our peace initiative,” he said, adding that the pullout would be discrete, orderly and according to party discipline.
Meanwhile, he called on Turkey to understand the delicacy of the situation.
“The Turkish military must be careful and considerate of the stages of this withdrawal,” he said.
“If during this process any attack or military operation happens, we would immediately stop the withdrawal and take a defensive position,” he warned.
After months of negotiations on the Imrali island prison between Ocalan and top Turkish intelligence officials, both sides reached an agreement to pursue a lasting peace, ending a three-decade armed conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.
Through members of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Ocalan announced a ceasefire, which was read to tens of thousands of his followers in the city of Diyarbakir on the Kurdish New Year last month.
"We want to rapidly solve the arms problem without losing time or another life," Ocalan said in his Newroz peace message. “Now it is time for our armed units to move across the border. This is not an end but a new beginning,” he added. “This is not abandoning the struggle, but a start to a different struggle."
Karayilan’s message on Thursday echoed Ocalan’s call that the Turkish government should reciprocate this “historic” chance for peace.
“The Turkish military should prevent any clashes so that the first stage of this peace process goes successfully,” Karayilan said.
He also suggested that independent organizations should monitor the withdrawal, from areas of southeastern Turkey that Kurds call North Kurdistan.
Ocalan, the 65-year-old founder of the PKK, was abducted by Turkish Special Forces in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in February 1999, and is currently serving a life sentence in Turkey for terrorism.
Last week, Time magazine in the United States included him in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Meanwhile, members of the Parliamentary Council of the European Union on Wednesday suggested that PKK members should no longer be referred to as militants, but as “activists,” seen by some as a first step towards removing the organization from the EU’s list of terrorist organizations.
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