Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Özeti
March 30th 2013
Turkey and the PKK
The war may be over
Will a Kurdish leader’s peace offering stick?
ANKARA
ABDULLAH OCALAN, the Kurdish rebel
leader and sole inmate of a Turkish island
prison since 1999, should by now “have
become a perfect irrelevance, the living
dead, a Kurdish Ariel Sharon. And yet he
had not. His every delusional sally, every
spasm of self-pity and promotion was
greeted by his supporters as evidence for
an ability to outsmart his jailers.” Thus
wrote a puzzled Christopher de Bellaigue,
a British author (and a former correspondent
for this paper) in “Rebel Land”, a tale
of eastern Turkey published in 2009.
Five years on, Turkey is banking on Mr
Ocalan’s continued grip to end the 29year-long
rebellion waged by his outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). On March
21st, in a calibrated message read out by
members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and
Democracy (BDP) party to over a million
Kurds gathered in Diyarbakir, in south-eastern
Turkey, Mr Ocalan heralded the dawn
of “a new Turkey”, saying it was time for
“the guns to fall silent and for ideas to
speak”. Assurances followed that the
Kurds no longer had designs on Turkey’s
borders. Turks and Kurds ought to “unite
under the banner of Islam”.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s mildly
Islamist prime minister, called Mr Ocalan’s
prose “positive”. Murat Karayilan, a senior
PKK commander in Kurdish-controlled northern
Iraq, swiftly declared a ceasefire.
The pro-government Turkish media were
awash with triumphalism. “The war is
over”, assorted screeds declared.
This may be premature. Mr Ocalan did
not set any deadlines for the withdrawal
of some 3,000 PKK fighters from the
mainly Kurdish south-east. Nor did he spe-
Tirs de l'artillerie turque
contre des bases du
PKK dans le nord de l'Irak
Erbil (Irak), 28 mars 2013 (AFP)
L'ARTILLERIE TURQUE a procédé à des tirs contre des bases irakiennes
du Parti des travailleurs du Kurdistan (PKK), une semaine après l'appel
au cessez-le-feu du chef des rebelles, ont indiqué un responsable du
PKK et une source au sein des forces de sécurité turques jeudi.
Les tirs d'obus, qui sont tombés dans la province de Dohuk, frontalière de la
Turquie, "n'ont fait aucun blessé. Nos membres n'étaient pas là au moment de
l'attaque" mercredi, a précisé un responsable du PKK à l'AFP sous couvert
d'anonymat.
Ocalan is still pulling the crowds
cifically say they should disarm. In a subsequent
interview Mr Karayilan was less
diplomatic. His men were as ready for
peace as they were for war. The ceasefire
needs to be mutually observed and the
government must embark on long-promised
reforms, he said. Among these is a
judicial reform package that would allow
thousands of Kurdish activists and politicians,
locked up on flimsy “terror”
charges, to walk free.
An amnesty for PKK fighters untainted
by violence and improved prison conditions
for Mr Ocalan are also on the list.
Above all, the Kurds want a new “democratic”
constitution enshrining their own
cultural and political rights. In short, any
withdrawal needs to be synchronised with
these reforms. None of this will be easy.
Seven previous ceasefires have come to
naught.
Mr Erdogan is no stranger to risk. He
has declawed hawkish generals and jailed
hundreds of those who plotted to unseat
him. His pro-secular and ultranationalist
rivals are pitifully weak. His national spy
chief and Mr Ocalan have stitched a deal.
(Mr Erdogan’s earlier threats to revive the
death penalty may have had an effect.) Its
terms were largely dictated by the
government. It is rumoured to include
assurances that the BDP will back Mr
Erdogan’s bid for the presidency next
year.
Should he fail, Mr Ocalan may get the
blame, which could lead to a splintering
of the PKK. “This is Erdogan’s true aim: to
drive a wedge between Ocalan and the
mountains,” a veteran BDP officials
claims. Others speculate that he wants to
buy temporary calm in order to secure an
easy ride to the presidency.
Mr Erdogan owes his unprecedented
heft to his vision and, most of all, to a
strong pragmatic streak. It prompted him
to embrace Iraq’s Kurds, whose vast
energy riches and seemingly limitless hunger
for Turkish goods and services are
expected to boost growth. In another dramatic
U-turn Mr Erdogan decided to
accept Israel’s apology on March 22nd for
its 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla,
which left nine Turks dead (see article).
Mr Erdogan, whose many ambitions
include hosting the 2020 Olympics in
Istanbul, must know that a divided and
more radical PKK is likely to resort to the
sort of terrorism that would make Turkey’s
relatively calm cities unsafe. “Solving the
PKK problem is not the same as solving the
Kurdish problem,” warned Safeen
Dizayee, a spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish
statelet. History has shown that until their
rights are granted, the Kurds will rise up
again and again. ■
Les tirs visaient des bases arrière du PKK et avaient pour but de "dissuader
les rebelles d'entrer en Turquie", a précisé une source au sein des forces de
sécurité turques.
C'est la première fois que l'armée turque visait des bases arrière du PKK en
Irak depuis l'appel du chef du PKK emprisonné Abdullah Öcalan au cessez-lefeu
et au retrait du territoire turc, rendu public la semaine dernière.
Le commandement militaire du PKK a officialisé samedi cette trêve et précisé
que le retrait ne commencerait qu'après la mise en place de mécanismes "ad
hoc" chargés de le surveiller.
Fruit de plusieurs mois de pourparlers avec le gouvernement islamo-conservateur
au pouvoir en Turquie, l'appel du chef historique du PKK a ravivé les
espoirs de paix dans un conflit qui a fait plus de 45.000 morts depuis 1984. ❍
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