Kurdish rebels extend ceasefire

Turkish prime minister says he is ready to inform parliament in a closed-door session about Ankara's efforts to end Kurdish conflict.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party de-facto leader, Murat Karayilan, second from right, on the way to a press conference near the Iraqi-Turkish border, has praised the Turkish state’s overtures.

ISTANBUL //Kurdish rebels fighting the Turkish state have extended a ceasefire and say they may declare an unlimited truce soon, in a new sign that Turkey's long-running Kurdish conflict may be moving towards a peaceful resolution.

One of the elements that has contributed to a "climate of peace", as Turkey's main Kurdish party calls it, is the state's official acknowledgement that it is holding confidential talks with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed rebel leader.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said yesterday he was ready to inform parliament, in a special closed-door session, about his government's efforts to end the Kurdish conflict.

"There is no problem as far as informing parliament is concerned," Mr Erdogan told reporters in Ankara before leaving on a visit to Bulgaria. "We can have a non-public session."

Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, said it had extended a ceasefire, which came into force in August, until the end of October. Speaking in the rebel headquarters in northern Iraq last week, Murat Karayilan, a high-ranking rebel who has emerged as the PKK's de-facto leader since Ocalan's imprisonment in 1999, praised the dialogue between Ocalan and the state as "a very important development".

Mr Karayilan said the ceasefire could be turned into an "indefinite truce" if there were confidence-building measures by Ankara in the coming weeks. He did not spell out what kind of steps he had in mind, but the PKK and Kurdish politicians have been calling for a halt of military operations in the Kurdish area for some time.

Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the Party for Peace and Democracy (BDP), Turkey's main Kurdish party, urged Ankara to seize the moment.

"We are not separatists," Mr Demirtas told the Sabah newspaper, adding that Kurdish children should have the chance to learn Kurdish alongside Turkish, which would remain the country's official language.

"The PKK has extended its ceasefire. A climate of peace has been established," he said. "This process must evolve into [a lasting] peace." The BDP also wants Turkey's election threshold to be lowered before the next general elections, scheduled for June 2011.

Currently, a party needs at least 10 per cent of the vote to enter parliament, which makes it difficult for smaller parties such as the BDP to succeed.

In the last elections, in 2007, Kurdish politicians stood as independent candidates, who are exempt from the 10-per-cent rule. Mr Erdogan's government is reluctant to change the rule and is also opposed to introducing Kurdish language courses for children in state schools.

Despite the political differences, the PKK's ceasefire, together with the talks between state officials and Ocalan and negotiations between the government and Kurdish activists, have given a new momentum to efforts to end the Kurdish conflict that began in 1984 and has cost tens of thousands of lives.

The PKK had all but ended its attacks after the capture of Ocalan 11 years ago, but took up arms again in 2005.

Mr Erdogan's government embarked on a plan to solve the Kurdish question by democratic means last year, but the strategy has mostly remained vague.

Now the government says it feels emboldened by its victory in a referendum about wide-ranging constitutional amendments last month.

"The result of the referendum has given us a new perspective," said Besir Atalay, the interior minister who coordinates the government's Kurdish initiative.

"There are positive developments."

At the same time, the strong influence of the PKK on Kurdish society in Turkey has decreased somewhat, forcing the rebels to be more conciliatory, observers say.

A leading pro-Kurdish official recently made headlines by publicly criticising the PKK for scaring off investors, a highly unusual development in Turkey's Kurdish area where the PKK has a tight grip on many politicians. Osman Baydemir, the mayor of Diyarbakir, the biggest city in the Kurdish region, reacted angrily after PKK rebels raided the stone-cutting factory of a local businessman nearby.

The factory owner, Raif Turk, had used a newspaper interview to voice support for the constitutional changes in the referendum, despite a PKK appeal that Kurds should boycott the poll.

On September 11, the eve of the referendum, a group of PKK members appeared in Mr Turk's factory, harangued the workers for two hours and set fire to machines and buildings before spraying the word "boycott" on a wall and vanishing into the night.

"All the time, we are saying [to the business world]: 'Diyarbakir is a safe city, come and invest.' What am I supposed to tell them now?" Mr Baydemir said, adding that the PKK raid on the factory had been "unacceptable".

There was also a public uproar in the region after suspected PKK members killed two imams in the Kurdish region shortly before the referendum. Thousands of people took part in the funerals of the victims.

The reasons for the murders remain unclear. In the referendum itself, many Kurdish voters ignored the PKK boycott call.

"The PKK has to wonder," said Ihsan Bal, an expert on the rebels at the International Strategic Research Organisation, a think tank in Ankara.

"In a Turkey that becomes richer and more democratic, the PKK will not be able to play its role the way it has done up to now."