Istanbul : The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has backtracked on its threat to end the peace process with the Turkish government if Ankara did not take certain steps, the founder of the guerrilla group, Abdullah Öcalan, said in a statement Wednesday in the Hurriyet newspaper.
“It is our responsibility that the hopes we are regenerating end in practical reasons”, Ocalan said from the jail on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara where he is serving a life sentence.
Kurdish leaders had threatened to end the peace process Oct 15 after accusing Ankara of ignoring their demands although they had kept their promise to withdraw their fighters from Turkish soil and observed the ceasefire in place since March 2013.
Their main demands before handing over their weapons are the recognition of Kurdish cultural identity in the Turkish Constitution, Kurdish-language schools, the release of prisoners linked to the PKK and an end to Ocalan’s solitary confinement in jail.
Although they have also called for administrative “decentralisation”, it stops short of autonomy for the southeastern Turkish provinces where Kurds are a majority.
Over the past weeks, some leaders linked the future of the peace process with the fate of the Kurdish city of Kobane in Syria, just across the Turkish border, which has been under siege from militants of the Islamic State (IS) Sunni radical group for more than a month.
Ankara’s refusal to allow the arrival of military aid in Kobane sparked a wave of Kurdish protests in Turkey at the beginning of October that left nearly 40 people dead.
Tensions eased after Ankara said it would allow Iraqi Kurdish troops to cross its territory to help their fellow Kurds in Kobane.
The armed insurgency launched in 1984 by the PKK for greater autonomy in Turkey’s southeast has claimed more than 30,000 lives.