Nov 12, 2014

What peace means in the context of the Turkish government's negotiations with the Kurds — mainly represented by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — has been a big mystery since the beginning of these talks over two years ago. Yet, the siege of the Kurdish Syrian town of Kobani by the Islamic State (IS) for over a month has changed the parameters of the negotiations.

While Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu insists that the PKK should disarm for the negotiations to advance, the Kurdish side asserts that it would be suicidal for the PKK to quit fighting at this time. The talks came to a halt after the call by the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) to bring people to the streets on Oct. 6-7 to protest the government’s refusal to open a corridor from Turkey to Kobani. Although many have found ways to cross over to the Syrian side, the protests on Turkish streets killed 40.

Despite this puzzling background, Davutoglu headed the Nov. 11 meeting of the Council of the Resolution Process, sending a clear message that the government is determined to stay in the negotiations. All the top state bureaucrats, including HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas, participated in this meeting, which lasted over four hours. Pervin Buldan of the HDP said at a Nov. 12 news conference that it had also decided to continue with the talks. Yet he called on the government to stop threatening the HDP and to act responsibly to so they could reach a successful outcome.

“Despite our delegation’s consistent desire for peace, the government has kept on responding to us with a threatening, interventionist and negative rhetoric. What is needed is to rapidly open the communication channels that are being closed,” Buldan said, implying that they are waiting to visit imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to hear his say on the latest. “The government and state authorities know too well that we did all we can in a constructive way to achieve peace. And our determination to do that will continue.”

Dogu Ergil of Ankara University, a member of the government-selected Wise People Council who has decades worth of expertise on the Kurdish issue, expressed reservations about the end result of the negotiations. He argued that the government and the PKK still lack a mutually agreed-upon definition of the problem they are trying to resolve. “The government looks at this issue only as a security dilemma, while the Kurds approach it with a broader political evaluation. While we don’t know what the government has in mind as the final outcome of these talks, the Kurdish side mainly represented by the PKK has made their expectations picture clear. They want recognition, participation and autonomy,” Ergil told Al-Monitor.