Kurdish militant officials said on Thursday that Turkey has stalled a peace initiative aimed at ending its decades-long conflict with Kurdish militants, contradicting the tone of optimism from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In an interview published through the PKK-linked ANF news outlet, Murat Karayilan, a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, said the initiative was effectively “frozen” and pointed to what he described as a failure by Ankara to enact legal and political changes.
Karayilan said the PKK had taken major steps as part of the peace effort, including declaring a ceasefire and an end to its armed struggle. The outlet quoted him describing the status as already known to the group and adding that, in its view, it had completed the responsibilities expected at this stage while awaiting government action.
There was no immediate reaction from Turkish officials to Karayilan’s remarks. The comments also came against the backdrop of earlier steps described in the report, including the PKK’s decision last year to disarm and disband as part of a new peace effort after a call by its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
The report says the PKK followed that call with a symbolic disarmament ceremony in northern Iraq and later announced withdrawing fighters from some locations in Turkey to Iraq. It also describes that earlier this year, a Turkish parliamentary committee recommended a series of reforms to advance the initiative, including reintegration of PKK members who renounce violence, while emphasizing that legal steps should be tied to state security institutions verifying that the group had surrendered its weapons.
Karayilan said Turkish government and ruling party officials had set April as the month when legislation advancing the process would be brought to parliament, and he said that deadline had passed without a bill being introduced. He accused Ankara of failing to implement even basic measures recommended by the committee, including releasing opposition politicians and activists from prison.
Karayilan also tied the next steps to Ocalan’s status in prison, saying the PKK’s internal decision at its 12th Congress to end its armed struggle and dissolve itself was approved on the condition that Ocalan personally manage the disarmament process. In his account, that arrangement prevents the group’s mandate from moving forward while Ocalan remains imprisoned.
In a separate statement to The Associated Press, Zagros Hiwa, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Communities Union, said his organization had taken steps in line with Ocalan’s call. Hiwa said, however, that Turkish forces continued to operate in parts of northern Iraq, that government-appointed administrators still occupied seats of elected Kurdish mayors in Turkey, and that thousands of Kurdish and Turkish political prisoners remained jailed.
Hiwa said the “Turkish state has taken no legal and political steps towards peace and has been continuing war-time policies under new rhetoric,” and he added that Ocalan remains under solitary confinement on Imrali island off Istanbul, where he has been imprisoned since his capture in 1999. He accused the Turkish government of “instrumentalizing” the process to consolidate the governing party’s grip on power and boost its standing in upcoming elections, warning that the impasse could carry “precarious implications.”
Karayilan’s account of a stalled process stood in contrast to Erdogan’s remarks a day earlier to his governing party’s legislators, when Erdogan said the peace efforts were moving in a positive atmosphere. Erdogan said, “The process is proceeding as it should,” adding that those who wrote pessimistic scenarios about the process were acting on delusions rather than facts.
The report said the PKK has waged an armed insurgency since 1984, a conflict that it said has claimed tens of thousands of lives and has spilled into neighboring Iraq and Syria. It also said the group is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, and that while it initially sought an independent Kurdish state, it later shifted toward demands for autonomy and expanded rights in Turkey.
This story was datelined from Erbil, Iraq, and reported by Stella Martany, with Suzan Fraser contributing from Ankara.