MESOP : BACKING APO – ÖCALAN’S UPGRADING MEANS A STRATEGIC COUP BY ERDOGAN

Not PKK gets a status as ‘official negotiator” – Öcalan as a single person receives solely this honor  – ÖCALAN gets a secretary and an office  

Ocalan will be given status ‘official negotiator’ in peace talks: daily

The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will be given the status of “official negotiator” in talks as part of a settlement process launched to resolve Turkey’s decades-old Kurdish issue, a daily said on Friday.

 “Following the protests [recently held in solidarity with the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani], it has been agreed that the PKK leader be given the status of ‘negotiator’,” the Taraf daily said. The daily, which maintained that it had received insider information about the deal between the government and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, said, “From now on, Ocalan will be the official negotiator of the Kurdish people.”

A “truth commission,” which Ocalan has long demanded, will also be established if all goes according to plan, the report also said.

According to Zaman daily After the commission is formed, representatives from the Turkish security forces and leading PKK commanders will appear before the commission for “self-criticism,” criticizing themselves for what wrongs they had committed in the past, such as killing civilians. Turkey saw violent demonstrations by sympathizers of the PKK who protested the government’s inaction towards members of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) who have been defending the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani against the terrorist Islamic State (IS).

Following the widespread protests last week, in which 37 people died, two of them police officers shot dead by the PKK, both the government and deputies of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) announced that the settlement process was still intact.

The messages Ocalan sent, whilst in jail, to HDP Co-chairman Selahattin Demirtas played a major role in appeasing the violent protests. According to the report, the settlement process was discussed between Ocalan and state officials ahead of Ocalan’s message calling for calm. Some points under consideration in the peace process are providing Ocalan with a secretary to make it easier for him to conduct settlement negotiations, and the removal of Ocalan from prison on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara to a prison in the province of Ankara to facilitate his communication with representatives of the HDP and the press. The report said state officials agreed that his demands would be realized stage by stage, but Besir Atalay, spokesman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), dismissed on Thursday speculation that Ocalan would be moved to a prison in another city. “This is out of the question,” he said at a press conference, but added that there would be “developments” concerning the process “in the coming days.” “I don’t want to discuss elements of the roadmap before a government announcement,” he said.