Ocalan has a role to play

This latest move by the PKK came as a response to its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan's call for peace. Ocalan, who is serving a life-term on the isolated island of Imrali, has been trying to play the role of the arbitrator. He hopes to convince Ankara that without him peace and stability can never find their way to Southeast Turkey — known by almost 17 million Kurds as ‘our Northern Kurdistan'.

Ocalan, unlike the influential military establishment, would have been buoyed by the reconciliation efforts of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has managed to neutralise the highly feared military network, which had dominated every aspect of the political arena in decades past, having the power to appoint or oust a whole government and jail its premier. The Turkish prime minister is seeking to tighten his grip on power while simultaneously diminishing the military in the eyes of the public, without affecting the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Erdogan showed further commitment to knocking back the military at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, receiving a hero's welcome from ordinary Turks for his firm stance on the Palestinian-Israeli struggle and the humanitarian situation in Gaza. His historic approach to Armenia, intended to close a bloody chapter with his neighbours, coupled with his ambitious initiative to solve the Kurdish issue, has antagonised the military.

However, the prospects of the process leading to PKK disarmament and the eventual granting of greater political and cultural freedom to the Kurdish nation are still unclear. The hawks in Ankara are showing fierce opposition to Erdogan's reforms, accusing him of putting the very safety of the nation in jeopardy, while PKK hardliners refuse to lay down their weapons and insist instead on the Turks issuing a pardon as a first step following a clear Turkish commitment to a ‘U-turn policy' towards Kurds.

Jamil Bayik, a top PKK military commander, asserted recently that "there will be no end to the exodus" of the 3,000 fighters in the Qandil Mountains in the Iraqi Kurdistan region "before Ankara changes its eradication tactics", a typical term used by Bayik to describe the exclusion of his party from peace proposals. The degree of assistance that Iraqi Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and President of the Iraqi Kurdistan region Masoud Barzani can contribute appears to be a crucial factor. Their national obligations as Kurds and political pragmatism as neighbours to Turkey mean that they should engage in a more profound involvement and not only facilitate the ‘peace ambassadors' return to Silopi, near the Iraqi border. Talabani himself mediated in 1993 between Ocalan, who was living at that time in the Lebanese village of Bar Eliyas, and the late Turkish president Turgut Ozal. At the time, PKK operations had reached their peak, to the extent that its fighters patrolled small southeastern cities at night, taking advantage of the army's continuous retreat.

Both Barzani and Talabani are now prominent politicians, enjoying support among Kurds and respect in Turkey. They could potentially persuade Ankara to include Ocalan, still seen by millions of followers as a beloved leader, in its plan to achieve peace and put the impoverished southeast back on the track of economic development — something which would certainly help the Turks in their bid to join the European Union. This would finally make a lie of the old proverb that there are no friends to Kurds but the mountains.

Rauf Baker is a Dubai-based journalist who specialises in Eastern European Affairs.