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Kurds Accuse Turkey of Supporting Syria Extremists, Threaten It with New Fight

Kurds Accuse Turkey of Supporting Syria Extremists, Threaten It with New Fight
folder_openTurkey access_time10 years ago
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Kurdish rebels are ready to re-enter Turkey from northern Iraq, the head of the group's political wing said at his mountain hideout, threatening to rekindle an insurgency unless Ankara resuscitates their peace process soon.

Kurds Accuse Turkey of Supporting Syria Extremists, Threaten It with New Fight Accusing Turkey of waging a proxy war against Kurds in Syria by backing extremist armed groups fighting them in the north, Cemil Bayik, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK] told Reuters the group had the right to retaliate.

Bayik, the group's most senior figure at liberty, spoke at a small, heavily guarded house in the Qandil Mountain range in Iraq's Kurdish north, a badge featuring jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan pinned to a pocket on his guerilla uniform.
Imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul, Ocalan commands unswerving loyalty from a fervent cadre of guerillas - both men and women - who live in the mountains that straddle the borders between Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

Ocalan began talks with Turkish officials last year to halt a conflict that has left more than 40,000 people dead over the past three decades and earned the PKK a place on a list of terrorist organizations as designated by Turkey, the United States and European Union.
"The process has come to an end," Bayik said in the interview, which took place on Saturday. "Either they accept deep and meaningful negotiations with the Kurdish movement, or there will be a civil war in Turkey".

As prerequisites, Turkey must improve the conditions in which Ocalan is being held and deal with him on equal terms, guarantee amendments to the constitution and enlist a third party to oversee any further steps in the process, he said.
"Now we are preparing ourselves to send the withdrawn groups back to North Kurdistan if the government does not accept our conditions," said Bayik, who shares his position with a female militant. He said the direction of the process would become clear "in the coming days".

"That package has nothing to do with democracy," he said, accusing Erdogan of giving false hope. "There is no change in the mentality."
The reforms - which the government says are part of a broader "democratization" drive and not just aimed at solving the Kurdish issue - include proposals to change a vote threshold that kept Kurdish parties out of parliament in the past, and allow for privately funded Kurdish-language education.

But they stopped short of constitutional guarantees for Kurdish identity and culture, greater autonomy and native-language education, and did not touch anti-terror laws that have put thousands of political prisoners behind bars, Bayik said.
"We silenced our weapons so that politics could speak, but now we see that politics is in prison".
The PKK accuses Ankara and influential Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen of recruiting and training extremist "bandit groups" to fight Kurds in Syria on their behalf."

At a time when the Turkish government is helping the bandit groups and is waging a war on the people of West Kurdistan... it is the right of the Kurdish people to bring the fight to Turkey," Bayik said, referring to the northeastern corner of Syria, where a Kurdish group aligned with the PKK is in control.

Asked whether the PKK had sent guerillas to reinforce the ranks of fellow Kurds in Syria, or would consider doing so in future, Bayik said they did not need help.
"We don't want to send them to West Kurdistan," he said. "If the Turkish government wants to insist on fighting, North Kurdistan is the field of war".
However, he admitted some Kurds from Syria who had previously fought with the PKK in Turkey had returned home of their own volition, and that young Kurds in Turkey increasingly felt compelled to go to Syria and fight there.
"This is a very dangerous development".

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

 

 

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