Kurdistan Workers Party fighters stand in formation in northern Iraq yesterday.
HEROR: Weary and caked in mud, the first group of Kurdish militants to leave Turkey under a peace plan to end three decades of war descended a mountain into Iraq yesterday to be met with embraces from PKK comrades.
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters began leaving their positions in southeast Turkey last week following a March ceasefire declared by jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan to end a conflict that has killed 40,000 people, ravaged the region’s economy and tarnished Turkey’s human rights record.
The 15 men and women dressed in baggy green fatigues walked single file into a valley at Heror near Metina mountain. They carried Kalashnikov rifles and rucksacks with rolled-up sleeping mats on their backs.
“For seven days we were on the road and the conditions were very tough. There was snow, it didn’t stop raining and the road was muddy,” said one of the newly arrived guerrillas called Sorkhwein, a hand grenade visible inside her jacket. The PKK is deemed a terrorist group by the United States and European Union as well as Turkey.
Ocalan was sentenced to hang after he was captured by Turkish special forces in 1999 in Kenya but this was commuted to a life term when Turkey abandoned the death penalty as part of reforms intended to open the doors of the EU.
The peace plan is a gamble for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan who could face a nationalist backlash before elections next year. But opinion polls currently show a high level of public support for a process that could bring a degree of stability to a turbulent area bordering Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Television footage of the militants’ arrival in Iraq did not immediately feature on major Turkish broadcasters, apparently reflecting public sensitivities over the PKK issue.
“Our issue will be solved with the release of our leader Apo (Ocalan) from prison. Then everything will be solved,” Sorkhwein said as the rebels warmed themselves around a campfire on which tea was brewing. Red, yellow and green PKK flags and a banner bearing Ocalan’s moustachioed face hung in the background.
Sorkhwein was one of six female fighters in the arriving group, illustrating the important role played by women in the PKK insurgency and their wish to escape traditional gender-based roles in Kurdish society.
In some cases, a desire to avenge the killing of relatives was the motivation for women joining.
The PKK force is small but dogged, with 3,000-4,000 fighters in the mountains of northern Iraq and some 2,000 in Turkey, where they have targeted Turkish troops as well as bombed cities. The withdrawal is expected to take several months.
The group, accusing Turkey of violent repression of the Kurdish minority, launched its insurgency in 1984 with the goal of carving out a Kurdish state but subsequently moderated its aim to autonomy for the mainly Kurdish region of the southeast.
In talks pursued by Ocalan and Turkish officials since last autumn, Kurds have pressed for constitutional reform recognising the ethnic minority’s cultural, political and linguistic rights with an end to the stress on ‘Turkish identity’ that marks the current charter.
Sorkhwein said the group did not see any Turkish military on the way but 21-year-old Welat Afrin, a Syrian Kurd who has been with the PKK for seven years, said Turkish reconnaissance drones had hovered overhead.
Reuters
