Resolution process at heart of AKP meeting

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The course of an ongoing peace process was at the center of closed-door sessions of a gathering of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), with senior executives directly involved in the process assuring the rest that the government has had the upper hand in the process.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also attended his ruling AKP’s working camp in Ankara’s Kızılcahamam on its third and last day, yesterday. The meeting came days ahead of a planned withdrawal by members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as part of the process aiming at ending three decades of conflict between Turkish security forces and the group.

Informing the participants of the current phase of the process, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay underlined that the government has been holding control of the entire process so far.

Ankara deputy Yalçın Akdoğan, also a key adviser to Erdoğan who has frequently made public statements concerning the process, responded to claims that bargaining was taking place between the government and the PKK. Any such bargaining is out of the question, Akdoğan told the party members, while he also defined the current phase of the process as “a success.”

On April 25, at a press conference held in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq, senior PKK leader Murat Karayılan ordered his fighters to begin leaving Turkey on May 8, in a step toward halting a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and scarred the nation.