Daily Headline – 21/03/13

Kurdish independence bid from Turkey over?

It seems that the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) has given up on its 30 year guerilla campaign for an independent Kurdish state.

Abdullah Ocalan the imprisoned PKK leader will announce today, the day of Newroz (Kurdish and Persian new year), that there will be a ceasefire between them and the Turkish authorities.

Ocalan has stated that in his ‘peace roadmap’ that the Kurdish people did not demand a separate independent state, but that substantial constitutional and judicial changes that would guarantee Turkey’s Kurdish population all cultural rights and give more power to local authorities.

There is still uncertainty about what will happen next as negotiations between Ocalan and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan continue. One hope is that Abdullah Ocalan will be released from prison and take up party politics for the 2015 Turkish general elections. This could lead to a democratic independence bid.

Turkey has 3 major parties:

1st AKP – similar to UKIP (right-wing)
2nd CHP – similar to Labour (centralist)
3rd MHP – similar to the BNP (far-right)

Turkey has 3 left-wing parties, the BDP, TKP and EMEP. At the 2011 elections the BDP didn’t take part and their candidates all stood as independents as their former incarnation, the DTP had to disband due to being pro Kurdish.
If the BDP stood as a party they would be the 4th largest with TKP and EMEP both being very small parties.

Whatever happens with Ocalan and the Kurdish situation one thing is for sure, Turkey will continue to be incredibly right-wing and extremely religious and reactionary for a long time to come.

Kurdish activists murdered in Paris

By Leon J Williams

News is filtering through the media of three female Kurdish activists being murdered in Paris.

One of the murdered is Sakine Cansiz a co-founder of the Kurdish separatist group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The other two are:
Fidan Dogan a Paris representative of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNC) political group and Leyla Soylemez a diplomatic relations junior activist.

For more details click here.

Who murdered them and why?

Initial suspicions will undoubtedly point to the Turkish government who have been at war with the PKK for 25 years and have been known in the past to murder people who disagree with the government such as journalists and communists.

On the 1st of January the Turkish government announced that it was in talks with imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah öcalan after admitting that they couldn’t defeat the PKK.

Is this a sign that the Turkish government is turning to more desperate measures?

You cannot defeat a local opposing force purely by armed struggle

By Leon J Williams

The Turkish government is in talks with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan after Prime ministerial advisor Yalcin Akdogan effectively admitted that Turkey couldn’t defeat the PKK through purely military means. He said:

“You cannot get results and abolish an organisation only with armed struggle”

The PKK are fighting for the creation of a homeland for Kurdish people which currently span across the current borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

What strikes me about what the advisor has said is that it has taken the Turkish government over 25 years to realise this yet the US still doesn’t as it continues its warmongering, failure after failure.
If the US could realise this and like the Turkish government turn to dialogue with their enemies then the world would instantly become a little safer as well as bolstering America’s international image and credibility.

For more on this story click here.