This one man is the key. He wields power and incredible loyalty. Now it is up to Turkey.
In Deepest Kurdistan: A Wary Welcome for Peace with the Turks | TIME.com
Tucked into Turkey’s south-easternmost corner, between Iran and Iraq, nestled by mountains studded with ghost villages, Hakkâri, a town of 70,000, is forlorn, violent and cold. It is March 21, the day local Kurds celebrate their new year and the coming of spring, but thick sheets of snow still cling to the mountains and fields. Usually, it’s after the snow melts that the fighting begins: when militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), ensconced in the mountains here or across the border in northern Iraq during the winter months, begin to launch attacks against Turkish military outposts. Last summer, PKK fighters attempted, in vain, to take control of parts of the province, inflicting significant casualties on Turkish troops and suffering tens if not hundreds of losses themselves, helping to make 2012 the bloodiest year on record in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict in more than a decade. This spring may yet turn out to be different. For once, the melting snow may herald peace, not war.
At the local headquarters of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey’s main legal Kurdish party, dozens of men gathered to wait for a statement from the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, or Apo, as he is referred to by most Kurds. Öcalan, who was captured by Turkish special forces in 1999 and is serving out a life sentence on an island prison near Istanbul, had been in talks with Turkish intelligence officials for the past half year, prompting anticipation of a ceasefire deal. Even here in faraway Hakkâri, as Kurds waited for his words, there was hope, moderated by past experience and caution, that an end to a conflict that has spanned three decades and claimed more than 40,000 lives was finally within reach.
eepest Kurdistan: A Wary Welcome for Peace with the Turks | TIME.com[/url]
Turkey's Kurds' Critical Hunger Strike - By Julia Harte | The Middle East Channel
Turkey's Deal With the Devil - By Piotr Zalewski | Foreign Policy
On the morning of Jan. 3, Kurdish politicians Ayla Akat Ata and Ahmet Turk boarded a ferry bound for Imrali, a prison island on the Marmara Sea, about 40 miles south of Istanbul. Waiting for them inside the maximum-security jail was Turkey's public enemy No. 1: the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan.
The PKK cease-fire and Syria's Kurds - By Gonul Tol | The Middle East Channel
After nearly three decades of bloody struggle with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey might finally be entering a post-conflict era. On Wednesday, the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence on Imrali Island since 1999, called for an immediate cease-fire and for thousands of his fighters to withdraw from Turkish territory. The call followed a round of talks that began in October 2012 between Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and Ocalan to convince the PKK fighters to lay down their arms and withdraw from Turkish soil. On Ocalan's counsel and in a gesture of good will, the PKK released eight Turkish soldiers and civil servants last week that had been abducted almost two years ago.
Ocalan's call could mark the first step in ending one of the world's longest running insurgencies. If it were to succeed, it would also favorably impact Turkey's democratization process, as well as possibly change the course of the Syrian uprising.
In Deepest Kurdistan: A Wary Welcome for Peace with the Turks | TIME.com
Tucked into Turkey’s south-easternmost corner, between Iran and Iraq, nestled by mountains studded with ghost villages, Hakkâri, a town of 70,000, is forlorn, violent and cold. It is March 21, the day local Kurds celebrate their new year and the coming of spring, but thick sheets of snow still cling to the mountains and fields. Usually, it’s after the snow melts that the fighting begins: when militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), ensconced in the mountains here or across the border in northern Iraq during the winter months, begin to launch attacks against Turkish military outposts. Last summer, PKK fighters attempted, in vain, to take control of parts of the province, inflicting significant casualties on Turkish troops and suffering tens if not hundreds of losses themselves, helping to make 2012 the bloodiest year on record in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict in more than a decade. This spring may yet turn out to be different. For once, the melting snow may herald peace, not war.
At the local headquarters of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey’s main legal Kurdish party, dozens of men gathered to wait for a statement from the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, or Apo, as he is referred to by most Kurds. Öcalan, who was captured by Turkish special forces in 1999 and is serving out a life sentence on an island prison near Istanbul, had been in talks with Turkish intelligence officials for the past half year, prompting anticipation of a ceasefire deal. Even here in faraway Hakkâri, as Kurds waited for his words, there was hope, moderated by past experience and caution, that an end to a conflict that has spanned three decades and claimed more than 40,000 lives was finally within reach.
eepest Kurdistan: A Wary Welcome for Peace with the Turks | TIME.com[/url]
Turkey's Kurds' Critical Hunger Strike - By Julia Harte | The Middle East Channel
Turkey's Deal With the Devil - By Piotr Zalewski | Foreign Policy
On the morning of Jan. 3, Kurdish politicians Ayla Akat Ata and Ahmet Turk boarded a ferry bound for Imrali, a prison island on the Marmara Sea, about 40 miles south of Istanbul. Waiting for them inside the maximum-security jail was Turkey's public enemy No. 1: the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan.
The PKK cease-fire and Syria's Kurds - By Gonul Tol | The Middle East Channel
After nearly three decades of bloody struggle with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey might finally be entering a post-conflict era. On Wednesday, the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence on Imrali Island since 1999, called for an immediate cease-fire and for thousands of his fighters to withdraw from Turkish territory. The call followed a round of talks that began in October 2012 between Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and Ocalan to convince the PKK fighters to lay down their arms and withdraw from Turkish soil. On Ocalan's counsel and in a gesture of good will, the PKK released eight Turkish soldiers and civil servants last week that had been abducted almost two years ago.
Ocalan's call could mark the first step in ending one of the world's longest running insurgencies. If it were to succeed, it would also favorably impact Turkey's democratization process, as well as possibly change the course of the Syrian uprising.
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