What is the PKK leader saying?
The winds that have been blowing against Turkey were partially reversed thanks to the Euphrates Shield operation. Turkey’s hands have seen strengthened.
Turkey is controlling a territory that spans 845-square-km. The most important political and humanitarian outcome of this is the return of the locals to Jarablus; in fact, the locals of Jarablus celebrated the Eid al-Adha holiday in their hometown for the first time since 2011.
Remember the period when Turkey isolated itself with its Syrian policy and, when strengthened by the support it received from the United States and Russia, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) started to establish “totalitarian” cantons which they call democratic autonomy.
The Rojava revolution and the Kobane resistance had created tremendous enthusiasm among Kurds which were on the same line as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
The strategy of Kandil (where the military leadership of the PKK is located) was to export the Rojava revolution to Turkey. The PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, saw that would be impossible.
On March 21, 2013, his statement that “arms should be silenced and politics should speak” was read in southeastern Diyarbakır. Öcalan asked for the armed forces to leave Turkey. But the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), in other words Kandil, did not implement that demand. Cemil Bayık, the head of the KCK, said, “We stopped the withdrawal,” on Sept. 9, 2013.
They were encouraged by the developments in Syria.
The PKK’s declaration of terrorism
At that time the KCK intensified the preparations for “Rojava” in the region by digging trenches, building barricades and making road blocks. The government did not interfere for the sake of the solution process. Then on July 10, 2014, Bayık said this: “Those who say the time for armed struggle has passed, that it’s time to leave arms, should look to the Middle East and Rojava.”
Thinking that the conditions matured following the June 7, 2015, elections, where the HDP got 13 percent of the votes, the KCK declared a “people’s revolutionary war” on July 14 through a statement by Beşe Hozat.
The government started an operation on July 25 and it is still continuing. Unfortunately many people are crying, especially mothers that lose their sons to the fight against terror, but the PKK is to blame for that. They did not even listen to Öcalan.
Öcalan and arms
I have read most of Öcalan’s books. He believes he is a big leader. A person who is a prisoner on İmralı Island can expect a political future for himself only through a process where arms are left outside of the equation.
This is what he said the other day: “It is not us who abolished the process. We can solve this problem within six weeks. This is a blind war; a war with no winners. It has been going on for 30–40 years and perhaps it will go on for another 80 years. Such a pity… all those people dying. This blood, these tears should stop.”
Yet Turkey tried exactly this during the solution process. But the PKK sabotaged it with its obsession to turn Turkey into another Syria.
Today Turkey has a stronger hand in Syria. Indeed, the Kurdish issue has become an important factor in the Middle East. It is now obvious in Turkey that totalitarian and violent methods bring blood and tears instead of a solution. Öcalan should think about how it can convince Kandil.
Turkey on the other hand needs to increase the quality of its democracy and increase its friends while continuing its fight against terror.