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Good news indeed. Enough of senseless bloodshed.
souce
LONDON — Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the rebel Kurdish Workers Party, or P.K.K., called for a ceasefire Thursday in the three-decade war between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state, giving a new impetus to New Year celebrations by Kurds.
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds gathered in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir to observe a holiday that they were long forbidden to celebrate publicly in Turkey.
In a message to pro-Kurdish legislators, Mr. Ocalan called for thousands of his fighters to withdraw from Turkish territory: “We have reached the point where the guns must be silenced and where ideas must speak.”
The truce marks the culmination of intensive negotiations between Mr. Ocalan and Turkish officials on ending a conflict that cost 40,000 lives.
The breakthrough will reverberate beyond Turkey’s borders to neighboring Syria, Iraq and Iran, all countries with large Kurdish minorities.
The estimated 30 million Kurds of the Middle East —official figures are deliberately vague — represent the largest nation in the world without a state of its own.
Although linguistically related to the Persians of Iran, which was also celebrating the pre-Islamic New Year festival of Norouz on Thursday, the Kurds have maintained a distinctive culture that has survived centuries of division and repression.
Their fortunes have seen a sharp change in the past decade, with the war in Iraq, the Arab Spring and Syria’s descent into civil war.
Ten years ago this week, Kurds were fleeing to the mountains from the cities of northern Iraq in anticipation of attacks by the forces of Saddam Hussein following the U.S.-led invasion.
Kurdish forces held the line in the north on behalf of the international coalition after Turkey refused to join the invasion.
A decade on, an autonomous Kurdistan is now the most secure and prosperous region of Iraq and enjoys close relations with a formerly hostile Turkey.
In Syria, Kurdish forces, including those allied to the P.K.K., have taken over territory and frontiers abandoned by the retreating troops of the Damascus regime.
Fears of a Kurdish contagion have now spread to Iran, where the pro-Syrian Tehran regime is concerned that a P.K.K. peace agreement will not only strengthen Turkey’s hand in the region but might also encourage unrest among its own Kurdish population.
“A P.K.K. that suspends its operations in Turkey is most likely to support the armed struggle of the Iranian Kurds and fight against Iran, or to go to Syria to boost and consolidate the gains of the Kurdish people there,” according to Bayram Sinkaya, writing for Turkey’s Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies.
For centuries, and before the creation of the modern Iranian, Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian states, rival powers used the Kurds to fight their wars with little benefit to the divided Kurdish nation.
In modern times, movements such as the P.K.K. have been used as proxies in conflicts between hostile neighboring states.
Analysts believe Turkey was prompted to make its own accommodation with a rebel movement it had failed to crush in response to the increasing influence within Syria of the P.K.K.-linked Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D.
“The Kurdish issue is Turkey’s Achilles heel,” Kadri Gursel wrote at Al Monitor, which covers trends in the Middle East. “It is its bleeding wound and as long as it remains as such Ankara cannot maintain an ambitious policy that would mean challenging regional powers.”
The ultimate success of Turkey’s attempt to solve its Kurdish question will doubtless depend on its readiness to recognize the democratic and cultural rights of its Kurdish population.
Kurdish movements in the Middle East, including the P.K.K., have broadly abandoned the objective of creating a pan-Kurdish state, an aspiration that was denied to the Kurds in the post-World War I settlement imposed by the world powers.
They now seek broader autonomy and equal rights within the established borders of existing states. The Turkish-Kurdish truce might bring them one step closer to that goal.
Within a changing Middle East, the Kurds might well discern a symbolic spark of freedom from the Noruuz bonfires they light on Thursday.
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds gathered in the eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir to observe a holiday that they were long forbidden to celebrate publicly in Turkey.
In a message to pro-Kurdish legislators, Mr. Ocalan called for thousands of his fighters to withdraw from Turkish territory: “We have reached the point where the guns must be silenced and where ideas must speak.”
The truce marks the culmination of intensive negotiations between Mr. Ocalan and Turkish officials on ending a conflict that cost 40,000 lives.
The breakthrough will reverberate beyond Turkey’s borders to neighboring Syria, Iraq and Iran, all countries with large Kurdish minorities.
The estimated 30 million Kurds of the Middle East —official figures are deliberately vague — represent the largest nation in the world without a state of its own.
Although linguistically related to the Persians of Iran, which was also celebrating the pre-Islamic New Year festival of Norouz on Thursday, the Kurds have maintained a distinctive culture that has survived centuries of division and repression.
Their fortunes have seen a sharp change in the past decade, with the war in Iraq, the Arab Spring and Syria’s descent into civil war.
Ten years ago this week, Kurds were fleeing to the mountains from the cities of northern Iraq in anticipation of attacks by the forces of Saddam Hussein following the U.S.-led invasion.
Kurdish forces held the line in the north on behalf of the international coalition after Turkey refused to join the invasion.
A decade on, an autonomous Kurdistan is now the most secure and prosperous region of Iraq and enjoys close relations with a formerly hostile Turkey.
In Syria, Kurdish forces, including those allied to the P.K.K., have taken over territory and frontiers abandoned by the retreating troops of the Damascus regime.
Fears of a Kurdish contagion have now spread to Iran, where the pro-Syrian Tehran regime is concerned that a P.K.K. peace agreement will not only strengthen Turkey’s hand in the region but might also encourage unrest among its own Kurdish population.
“A P.K.K. that suspends its operations in Turkey is most likely to support the armed struggle of the Iranian Kurds and fight against Iran, or to go to Syria to boost and consolidate the gains of the Kurdish people there,” according to Bayram Sinkaya, writing for Turkey’s Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies.
For centuries, and before the creation of the modern Iranian, Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian states, rival powers used the Kurds to fight their wars with little benefit to the divided Kurdish nation.
In modern times, movements such as the P.K.K. have been used as proxies in conflicts between hostile neighboring states.
Analysts believe Turkey was prompted to make its own accommodation with a rebel movement it had failed to crush in response to the increasing influence within Syria of the P.K.K.-linked Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D.
“The Kurdish issue is Turkey’s Achilles heel,” Kadri Gursel wrote at Al Monitor, which covers trends in the Middle East. “It is its bleeding wound and as long as it remains as such Ankara cannot maintain an ambitious policy that would mean challenging regional powers.”
The ultimate success of Turkey’s attempt to solve its Kurdish question will doubtless depend on its readiness to recognize the democratic and cultural rights of its Kurdish population.
Kurdish movements in the Middle East, including the P.K.K., have broadly abandoned the objective of creating a pan-Kurdish state, an aspiration that was denied to the Kurds in the post-World War I settlement imposed by the world powers.
They now seek broader autonomy and equal rights within the established borders of existing states. The Turkish-Kurdish truce might bring them one step closer to that goal.
Within a changing Middle East, the Kurds might well discern a symbolic spark of freedom from the Noruuz bonfires they light on Thursday.
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