{"id":5648,"date":"2025-04-20T13:52:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T13:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/?p=5648"},"modified":"2025-04-20T13:52:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T13:52:14","slug":"whiff-of-fresh-air-in-turkiye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/?p=5648","title":{"rendered":"Whiff of Fresh Air In Turkiye"},"content":{"rendered":"
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    Whiff of fresh air from T\u00fcrkiye<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

    It appears that one of the Middle East\u2019s most intractable conflicts might be nearing its end, and its ramifications will be felt far and wide, following the call for peace by PKK leader Abdullah \u00d6calan<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    It appears that one of the Middle East\u2019s most intractable conflicts might be nearing its end, and its ramifications will befelt far and wide, following the call for peace by PKK leader Abdullah \u00d6calan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For half a century, Kurdish militants have fought T\u00fcrkiye for independence in the southeast of the country, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives and has rippled beyond T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s borders into Iran, Iraq, and Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On Thursday last (27 February), Abdullah \u00d6calan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), called on its members to lay down arms and dissolve the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    However, the call\u2019s success now hinges on sustained cooperation among the various parties involved, but political analysts are far from confident that the PKK militants, based in mountainous northern Iraq, will heed the appeal of \u00d6calan, who has been held in an island jail near Istanbul for a quarter of a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, called \u00d6calan\u2019s message the start of a new phase for peace efforts, although his government has publicly rebuffed suggestions that \u00d6calan\u2019s call could be followed by peace talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Analysts say that for now, Erdo\u011fan, 71, is focused especially on the domestic political dividends that peace could bring as he looks to extend his two-decade rule beyond 2028 when his term expires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The announcement created ripples across the Middle East, and may affect an array of Kurdish militia groups with long-held but varied ties to the PKK. The group, which is classified as terrorist in T\u00fcrkiye, the US, and the UK, called \u00d6calan\u2019s announcement part of \u201ca new historic process\u201d for the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The group\u2019s executive committee also called for \u00d6calan to be freed from his island prison, to \u201cpersonally direct\u201d a meeting that would prompt them to lay down their weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    According to the New York Times, PKK launched an armed insurgency against the Turkish state in the early 1980s, originally seeking independence for the Kurds, who are believed to make up about 15% or more of T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Initially the insurgency started from the mountains in eastern and southern T\u00fcrkiye, PKK fighters attacked Turkish military bases and police stations, prompting harsh government responses. Later, the conflict spread to other parts of the country, with devastating PKK bombings in Turkish cities that killed many civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In 1999, T\u00fcrkiye captured \u00d6calan and convicted him of leading an armed terrorist group. He received a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison.Since his incarceration, \u00d6calan has shifted its ideology away from secession and toward Kurdish rights inside T\u00fcrkiye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Kurds are an ethnic group of roughly 40 million peopleconcentrated in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and T\u00fcrkiye.Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Kurds were promised a nation of their own by world powers after World War I, but that was never granted. There were Kurdish rebellions in various countries over the following generations, and Kurds have faced state suppression of their language and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Since the 1991 Gulf War, the largely Kurdish northern region of Iraq has been semi-autonomous.Multiple efforts to freeze or end the T\u00fcrkiye-PKK conflict have been made, starting with a ceasefire in 1993 and talks in 2009-11 and 2013-15. But all of them collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In this context, Dr Medhat Hamad, a professor of Iranian and Asian Studies at Tanta University in Egypt and head of the FarabiCentre for Political and Development Studies, told T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s Hawar News that Abdullah \u00d6calan’s announcement is of utmost importance, as it reveals a political, ideological, and even a new national self-review that he conducted after a thorough analysis of the entire global and regional scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This also reveals that there has been a genuine review in the Turkish political mindset that manages the affairs of the Turkish state on one hand, and the conflict with the Kurds in general and \u00d6calan in particular on the other hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Therefore, Dr Hamad said, \u00d6calan would not have issued this statement unless he had Turkish assurances, promises, and commitments to open the space and provide a sound democratic life for the Kurds to achieve what they could not achieve through arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Dr Hamad explained that the PKK leader \u00d6calan has read between the lines regarding what the future holds for the Kurdish issue on one hand, and perhaps some Western plans, especially American ones, which could strike at the strategic and vital interests of both the Kurds and the Turks together in the coming years, extending what happened in Syria, and this is very important and extremely dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Dr Hamad said that\u00d6calan has a realistic understanding of the regional and international scene. He said, \u201cAbdullah \u00d6calan perhaps wanted to save the future of the Kurdish cause, unlike some other political organisations, and he read the scene well and he wanted to preserve the existence and essence of the Kurdish cause for the next hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Meanwhile,T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Erdogan\u2019s right-wing ally, has become a staunch supporter of the peace process and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bah\u00e7eli, who started the new process after his unexpected call suggesting that \u00d6calan announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release in October 2024, has welcomed the recent call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Yet, restoring peace might not be that easy, the Washington Institute\u2019s Turkish research programme director Soner Cagaptay told Reuters that the PKK leaders holed up in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq remain deeply suspicious of Ankara\u2019s intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cElderly commanders might also object to disbanding the PKK entirely or immediately without achieving any of its original goals – an outcome that could suggest they have thrown their lives away for nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The details of Ocalan\u2019s announcement were \u201cpurposefully shrouded in mystery, in part because Ankara\u2019s two previous dialogues with the PKK failed miserably\u201d, said Cagaptay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Indeed, if \u00d6calan\u2019s followers heed the new call, it would mark a turning point for T\u00fcrkiye and have far-reaching implications for the Middle East, as Erdogan looks to capitalise on the upheaval in Syria and military gains against the PKK fighters based in northern Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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     61 total views https:\/\/clarionindia.net\/whiff-of-fresh-air-in-turkiye\/ https:\/\/ummid.com\/news\/2025\/march\/03-03-2025\/whiff-of-fresh-air-from-t%C3%BCrkiye.html https:\/\/theindianawaaz.com\/whiff-of-fresh-air-in-turkiye\/ Whiff of fresh air from T\u00fcrkiye It appears that one of the Middle East\u2019s most intractable conflicts might be nearing its end, and its ramifications will be felt far and wide, following the call for peace by PKK leader Abdullah \u00d6calan It appears that one of the Middle East\u2019s most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[83,179],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5652,"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5648\/revisions\/5652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asadmirza.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}