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Kurdish rebels press Turkey for dialogue
after Hamas talks
21.2.2006
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ANKARA (AFP) -
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) called on
Turkey to agree to dialogue with their group,
accusing Ankara of "double standards" since it had
engaged in similar talks with the radical
Palestinian group Hamas.
"Is it not blood that is shed in the fighting
between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan freedom
movement, just like in the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict?" asked senior PKK commander Murat
Karayilan in an inteview with the pro-Kurdish Firat
News Agency.
"Why does not (Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah)
Gul spend efforts to stop bloodshed in his own
country? Is this not a contradiction?" he said in
the interview published on the agency's Internet
site. |
Photo: AFP |
"Maybe it is because Kurds have carried out fewer
suicide attacks (than Hamas). This is double
standards," he charged.
Karayilan argued that talks between Ankara and the
PKK were not an "imaginary" or "far-off"
possibility.
"They will talk to us. We are a people, we are a
reality. They may refuse to talk to us now, but
every refusal means wasting time," Karayilan
asserted.
Some 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when
the PKK began an armed campaign against the Ankara
government for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast.
The group, blacklisted by Turkey, the United States
and the European Union, has since abandoned its
claim for statehood and is now calling for Kurdish
autonomy within Turkey, an amnesty for PKK militants
guaranteeing their participation in politics, and
freedom for their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Turkey categorically refuses to have any talks with
the PKK and has brushed aside the group's latest
demands.
Last week's two-day visit by a Hamas delegation to
Ankara drew harsh criticism from the Turkish press
as well as Israel, Turkey's main regional ally,
which refuses to have any talks with a group
committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
AFP
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