PKK skeptical of Turk pledges

Rebel chief says promises of reform on Kurdish rights are a ‘comedy,’ an attempt to ‘deceive’ the Kurds

A Kurdish refugee stands in front of his shop at the Makhmour refugee camp in Arbil, northern Iraq, on October 29. Nearly 12,000 Turkish Kurds live in the temporary camp and some have been waiting for 15 years to return home.

By Nicolas Chevron - Agence France-Presse

QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq – Holed up in the rugged mountains of northern Iraq, Kurdish rebels are determined to fight on, viewing Turkey’s pledges to broaden Kurdish freedoms with mistrust.

Murat Karayilan, Number 2 of the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), says Ankara’s promises of reform are a “comedy” and an attempt to “deceive” the Kurds and the international community.

“It is just a show. The mentality remains the same – refusing to recognize the Kurdish people’s identity, refusing to recognize them as interlocutors,” Karayilan told AFP in the Qandil Mountains, the PKK headquarters.

Ankara says it is working on fresh reforms to improve Kurdish rights in a bid to end 25 years of bloodshed. But it rejects dialogue with the PKK, which it considers a terrorist group, urging the rebels to either surrender or face the army.

Details of the reform plan are likely to emerge next week when parliament is expected to debate the issue.

Karayilan insisted Turkey should end military action, negotiate with Kurdish representatives on the terms of settlement, grant the Kurds constitutional recognition and free PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, serving a life sentence for treason since 1999.

“We trust our leader Ocalan. If a dialogue begins with him, the process will advance,” he said.

Other rebel commanders or the Democratic Society Party, Turkey’s main Kurdish political movement, may be alternative interlocutors, he said, adding that no secret talks had so far taken place with Ankara.

In an extraordinary gesture, Turkey last month let free eight PKK militants who left Qandil and turned themselves in to the authorities in a show of support for a peaceful solution to the conflict.

But the hero’s welcome Kurdish crowds gave the rebels sparked nationwide protests against the government for tolerating “terrorists,” prompting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to halt the arrival of a second such group.

If Ankara insists on rejecting dialogue, Karayilan said, the PKK would fight on.

“The Kurdish people are with us and we can continue to resist from Kurdistan’s mountains for decades,” he said, adding the PKK will only act “in self-defense.”

PKK militants have long taken refuge in northern Iraq, relying on the rough terrain and their Iraqi Kurdish cousins who run an autonomous administration in the region.

Ankara has often accused the Iraqi Kurds of tolerating and even aiding the PKK, but a marked improvement in bilateral ties since last year has added a new element of pressure on the rebels.

However, PKK leaders remain defiant, boosted by the knowledge that neither Turkey’s numerous cross-border operations in the 1990s nor its frequent air raids since December 2007 have succeeded in uprooting them from Qandil.

“We control hundreds of mountains in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. The Qandil Mountains alone are the size of a European state, twice as big as Luxembourg,” boasted Sozdar Avesta, a veteran militant. “We can continue the war for 30, for 50 years, if need be,” she said, escorted by two guerrillas in baggy khaki pants and Kalashnikov rifles strapped on their shoulders.

Avesta spoke in a so-called “political zone,” where PKK rebels mingle with Iraqi Kurdish villagers and meet journalists. They keep their communication infrastructure and even run a hospital there.

Combat units are up in the hills, adhering to a rule of “permanent mobility” as a precaution against the fire of Turkish warplanes and cannons of the Iranian army.

Visitors to the rebel-controlled territory are stopped at a small building adorned by Ocalan portraits and PKK flags, where armed “customs clerks” search vehicles before waving them in.

Turkey’s appeals to the rebels to lay down arms and “return home” under a law that reduces sentences and even ensures that many go free are met with skepticism.

Ankara “prefers to handle the situation with small arrangements rather than confronting the real problem: a reform that will recognize the Kurdish reality in the constitution,” Avesta said.

For Roj Welat, the PKK’s “foreign relations” officer, “returning home” is also a distant option. “Our home is the freedom of the Kurdish people,” he shouted.