In recent weeks, fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who’ve waged guerrilla war in Turkey for generations and been branded terrorists by much of the world community, have overcome differences with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq that is heavily supported by the United States, several European countries and, indeed, by Turkey.
They have joined forces to fend off an ISIS advance threatening Kurdish territory and they have come to the rescue of thousands of Yazidi refugees, besieged by ISIS fighters in the nearby Sinjar Mountains; and they are helping defend the many Americans in the Iraqi Kurdish capital.
At the same time, the PKK’s 30-year conflict with Turkey is supposedly coming to an end.
The Kurds’ deadly battle against jihadists from the self-declared Islamic State is also raising prospects for a fully independent Kurdish nation.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s 30-year conflict with Turkey is supposedly coming to an end, according to the group’s jailed leader on Saturday, hailing the start of a new democratic process in the country.
The PKK, which for three decades fought the Turkish authorities in a bloody insurgency seeking greater autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, launched its armed struggle with coordinated attacks on police and security forces on August 15, 1984.
But the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan said in a statement from his prison island of Imrali on the Sea of Marmara that Turkey was now on the verge of “historic developments” after its August 10 presidential elections.
“On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of our struggle, I want to state that we are on the verge of historic developments,” Ocalan said in a statement quoted by the Firat news agency which is close to the PKK.
“This 30-year-long war is — through a major democratic negotiation — at the stage of coming to an end.”
OK, Fine. 