MIDEAST : Kurds’ Cease-Fire Offer Raises Peace Hopes in Eastern Turkey

Tantalizing hopes for peace in one of the Middle East’s bloodiest but least-known conflicts have been raised by Kurdish guerrilla chief Abdullah Ocalan’s offer of a cease-fire with the Turkish government.

“I hope it will be the beginning of a process of peace, friendship, historic brotherhood between Turks and Kurds,” Ocalan told reporters in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. “Let us immediately end this war and start negotiations.”

More than 5,500 people have been killed since Ocalan’s Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, launched an armed struggle in 1984 for an independent Marxist state for the 20 million or so Kurds, an ancient mountain people whose tribal dialects are related to Persian and who are split among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. About half of all Kurds live in Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel spurned Ocalan’s plea for negotiations but has not brushed aside all hope of some gesture toward the Kurds if Ocalan keeps his promise of a cease-fire from Saturday to April 15.

Both sides have appealed for calm during this year’s celebration of Nowruz, the spring festival this Sunday that Kurds treat as their national day. Turkish security forces killed almost 100 people during Nowruz demonstrations last year.

Kurdish nationalist members of the Turkish Parliament have begged the government to take Ocalan’s offer seriously.

“Regardless of whether (Ocalan) is sincere or not, we must develop a new approach in order to expand rights and freedoms and embrace the country’s entire population,” said pro-Islamic commentator Fehmi Koru.

Such hopes seem premature, although Turkey has liberalized some laws against Kurdish culture since 1990.

Interior Minister Ismet Sezgin cautiously welcomed Ocalan’s offer of a cease-fire. But he ruled out any concessions to “the bandits,” demanding that Ocalan’s estimated 5,000 guerrillas come down from the mountains and surrender.

Ocalan, who ruled out any talk of surrender, had earlier voiced his wish to return as a politician to the region. But Sezgin said that if Ocalan was found anywhere in Turkey, he would be arrested.

The war has gone badly for Ocalan in the past year, especially since Syria, once his main sponsor, is now eager to be seen as a responsible partner by the United States and Turkey, a key regional U.S. ally.

Syria forced Ocalan to close his main camp in the Bekaa Valley in September and is reported to have put tight restrictions on his movements.

Turkey also went on the offensive last October, forcing guerrillas out of camps in a no-man’s-land on the mountainous border with Iraq during what amounted to a small-scale invasion.

When warplanes from Iran attacked Kurdish bases in northern Iraq last weekend, the U.S. State Department warned Tehran that it was violating a “no-fly zone” north of the 36th Parallel.

But the West remained silent, in a symbol of general support for Turkey’s fight against the PKK, when Turkish warplanes led the October attacks.

After Turkey’s successful Iraqi incursion, undertaken in conjunction with conservative Iraqi Kurdish guerrilla groups, Turkey unleashed armored units and warplanes against PKK camps in a continuing campaign in eastern Turkey.

BACKGROUND

The Kurds are a people of Indo-European origin who have lived in the mountains along the borders of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey for 4,000 years. They are a distinct national group, mainly Sunni Muslim, with their own language and history. Their homeland was sliced apart when the World War I Allies carved up the Ottoman Empire.