MESOP : BUT CUMA’S (BAYIKS) HEADQUARTER IS ALWAYS NEAREST TO IRANIAN BORDER

NEW AUTHORITY IN PKK : BEFOR APO NEGOTIATES – BAYIK WANTS TO SPEAK WITH HIM ABOUT THE DIRECTION

Bayik denies he has taken refuge in Iran

Cemil Bayik, a senior member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) denies he hasn’t taken refuge in Iran, like the Turkish media has claimed.

“As you can see, I’m right here,” said Bayik, sitting on a white plastic chair set up in a wooded area in northern Iraq’s Qandil Mountains, where the PKK has its headquarters. “If you’re talking about war, that’s war — so are the attacks inside Turkey and the arrests of hundreds of people,” Bayik said about Turkey attacks against the PKK bases in the mountain. “The PKK has the right to defend itself.”

Over the past six weeks, southeast Turkey, where the PKK wants to set up self-rule, has been wracked by violence unseen since the early 1990s, when clashes shut down cities after dark and thousands of villages were forcibly evacuated by the military. Turkey says it’s killed more than 900 suspected rebels in northern Iraq and inside Turkey since late July. The PKK in turn says its forces killed hundreds of Turkish soldiers (Turkey put the number at closer to 65). Turkey was looking for an excuse to start fighting, Bayik said. Turkey never acted on repeated PKK proposals for monitoring commissions and road maps to lay out how negotiations would be organized and progress to a political solution. In February, Kurdish politicians held a joint press conference with Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan to announce a new plan for the rebel group to renounce its armed struggle while the government made democratic reforms. Erdogan quickly disavowed any deal. “The cease-fire didn’t end in July; Turkey ended it long before,” Bayik said. “We are in favor of negotiations, but until that happens, we will continue the war if that’s what Turkey wants.”

“A cease-fire needs to be agreed on by both sides, and we need a public statement from Turkey that they are ready for dialogue,” Bayik told Alisa Marcus the writer of Blood and Belief, the PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. Bayik insisted that the PKK leader’s imprisonment shouldn’t be a barrier to direct talks with senior PKK officials. “These are technical issues,” Bayik said, “let them first accept that Ocalan can meet with the PKK’s leadership and then we can work out how.” “Is it logical to ask us to give up our weapons after what happened in Shingal?” Bayik asked, referring to the PKK’s fight last year in northern Iraq that helped save thousands of Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar from massacre by Islamic State jihadists. “The international coalition that is now fighting against ISIS — while Turkey has probably been supporting ISIS — has to make a decision,” Bayik said. “Will the international community support Turkey or will it support the group that’s fighting against ISIS and has made sacrifices?”

“It’s not the HDP’s role to decide if it’s time for us to disarm,” said Bayik about Turkey pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) that asked the PKK to lay down arms. “They can request it, as they have, but we have made clear that it won’t happen until our conditions are met.” “We can continue this war if necessary for a long time,” he was quoted by Foreign Policy as saying.