Murat Karayılan (KCK) : Government needs to recognize Kurdish interlocutors

04 October 2012 – ANF – Karayılan spoke to ANF about recent developments – In an interview to ANF, Kurdish Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council President Murat Karayılan assessed recent speculation about the possibility of the Turkish state talking with the Kurdish side. Karayılan also assessed PM Erdoğan refusal to talk with the BDP (Peace and Democracy Party) and the ongoing war in Kurdistan.

Pointing out the long-standing isolation on PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) leader Abdullah Öcalan, Karayılan underlined that talks with the Kurdish leader could only take place on condition of him being granted a free and safe environment and added this was the only way to find a permanent solution to the Kurdish problem. The KCK president noted that “the Kurdish movement was ready to decide to lay down arms forever but this changed when the Oslo talks were suddenly ended by the AKP government.”Referring to PM Erdoğan saying he would not talk with the BDP, Karayılan remarked that the Kurdish problem cannot be resolved without its interlocutors: the PKK, Öcalan and the BDP.

Commenting on Öcalan recent meeting with his brother in Imralı, Karayılan said that the government allowed a one-off meeting in the face of recent demands and pressures about the situation of prisoners in Imralı. He however underlined that this meeting didn’t mean the ending of the isolation regime Öcalan is subjected to. “The AKP government wants to create the impression of a new negotiation process despite having no substructure ready to come up with a solution to the Kurdish issue”, said Karayılan and evaluated this attempt as the typical AKP tactics of rising hope without substantiate it. The KCK president pointed out that the Turkish state should present a project to show that it is genuinely determined to solve the Kurdish issue.

Referring to the possibility of BDP deputies being tried because of their talks with Kurdish guerrillas they met at a road control in the Şemdinli highway in mid-August, Karayılan warned that the arrest of BDP deputies would deepen the war and noted that; “It is a great contradiction for the Turkish state to mention negotiations with the PKK while refusing to sit at the table with the legal representative of the Kurdish political life.”