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Kurdish PKK Declares Halt to Attacks Against Turkey |
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Written by Bloomberg
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Sunday, 01 October 2006 07:21 |
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The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, will halt attacks against targets in Turkey in a move designed to end two decades of hostilities with the Turkish military, the group said.
The cease-fire will come into force tomorrow, the PKK said in a statement published by the Netherlands-based Firat news agency, used as a mouthpiece for the organization. The PKK is labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. and European Union.
``Force will no longer be used unless the Turkish army launches attacks aimed at annihilation,'' the PKK's leadership council said in the statement, issued from a base at the Kandil mountain in northern Iraq. ``The length of this truce depends on the steps that are taken and developments that occur.''
The PKK has fought a two-decade war for autonomy from Turkey at the cost of almost 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. Turkey has said the U.S. isn't doing enough to eradicate the threat to its security posed by some 4,000 PKK members based in Iraq's Kurdish-controlled north.
The PKK's declaration follows an appeal for an end to the group's attacks by its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan and Kurdish political parties in Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday urged the PKK to lay down its arms permanently.
Turkey has spent $10 billion fighting the PKK, Turkish General Osman Pamukoglu said in March last year. Turkey, bordering Iraq, has the second-largest army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The PKK has a total of 7,000 fighters, the general said.
The PKK last called a cease-fire in 1999 after Ocalan was captured and imprisoned. It lasted five years, during which clashes with the Turkish army dropped significantly.
Bush Meeting
Erdogan will meet President George W. Bush on Oct. 2, when he is expected to urge the U.S. to clamp down on the PKK in Iraq. Turkey in the past has refused to respond to PKK cease-fires and halt its hunt for the rebels. The U.S. has said it will only use force against the group as a last resort.
The EU, which started membership talks with Turkey in October last year, has urged the government to resolve Kurdish unrest in the nation's southeast via peaceful means. During the past three years Turkey has bolstered democracy for the nation's 12 million Kurds, including rights to education and broadcasting in the Kurdish language, as it chases membership of the EU.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a splinter group of the PKK that recognizes Ocalan as its leader, claimed responsibility for three bombs attacks last month in Istanbul and the Turkish resort town of Marmaris and Antalya. The bombs killed three people and injured more than two dozen, including 10 Britons. |