Commentary Magazine: Turkey-PKK peace will fail
Turkey-PKK peace will fail, says an article in Commentary Magazine.
“On March 21, 2013, the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan released a letter to his supporters in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) calling on them to lay down their arms, and for PKK fighters to withdraw to Iraq.
At President Obama’s joint press conference last week with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Obama praised the Turkish-Kurdish peace process.
Obama may be optimistic, but if the Turks believe that PKK withdrawal was the end-all and be-all of any peace process, they are sorely mistaken.
After all, the Kurdish fight has not been simply to listen to Kurdish music on the radio or learn Kurdish in schools, but has been a battle for functional autonomy.
Whether the talks succeed or, more likely, fail, Öcalan is now the undisputed leader of Turkey’s Kurds.
Erdoğan may soon discover that the price of insincere talks is quite high indeed,” says the article.