For greater than 4 many years, Turkey has been combating an armed insurgency by the Kurdistan Employees’ Celebration, or P.Ok.Ok., a militant group that claims it seeks higher rights for the nation’s Kurdish minority.
Greater than 40,000 folks have been killed within the battle, in each P.Ok.Ok. assaults on navy and civilian targets, and Turkish navy operations in opposition to the militants and the communities that harbor them. Turkey, the USA and different international locations take into account the group a terrorist group.
Now, the group’s founder, Abdullah Ocalan, has called on Kurdish fighters to lay down their arms — though it stays unclear how efficient his plea will probably be and what, if something, the Turkish authorities is providing the group in change for ending the combating.
Here’s what to know in regards to the P.Ok.Ok. and its battle with Turkey.
Who’re the P.Ok.Ok.?
The group launched an armed insurgency in opposition to the Turkish state within the early Nineteen Eighties, initially in search of independence for the Kurds, who’re believed to make up about 15 % or extra of Turkey’s inhabitants.
Ranging from the mountains in jap and southern Turkey, P.Ok.Ok. fighters attacked Turkish navy bases and police stations, prompting harsh authorities responses. Later, the battle unfold to different elements of the nation, with devastating P.Ok.Ok. bombings in Turkish cities that killed many civilians.
In 1999, Turkey captured Mr. Ocalan and convicted him of main an armed terrorist group. He acquired a dying sentence that was later commuted to life in jail. He stays revered by the group’s members.
Since his incarceration, Mr. Ocalan has shifted its ideology away from secession and towards Kurdish rights inside Turkey.
Over the past decade, the Turkish navy has routed P.Ok.Ok. forces from main Kurdish cities in southeastern Turkey, whereas utilizing drones to kill its leaders and fighters, hindering its capacity to arrange and perform assaults.
The battle has been on a low boil for years, though occasional P.Ok.Ok. assaults have revived fears of a wider battle. Final yr, a small squad of its militants stormed into the headquarters of a state-run aerospace firm armed with rifles and explosives and killed five employees earlier than the safety forces regained management.
Who’re the Kurds?
The Kurds are an ethnic group of roughly 40 million folks — there are extensively various estimates — concentrated in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
They converse a number of dialects of Kurdish, a language indirectly associated to Turkish or Arabic. Most are Sunni Muslims.
The Kurds had been promised a nation of their very own by world powers after World Warfare I, however that was by no means granted. There have been Kurdish rebellions in varied international locations over the next generations, and Kurds have confronted state suppression of their language and tradition.
In Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, whose leaders have roots within the P.Ok.Ok. and observe Mr. Ocalan’s ideology, controls the northeastern a part of the nation. They’ve been backed for years by the USA and performed an important position in defeating the Islamic State, however the fall of the Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad in December has left their future status unclear. They’re clashing with Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, and stay outdoors of the management of the brand new Syrian authorities in Damascus.
For the reason that 1991 Gulf Warfare, the largely Kurdish northern area of Iraq has been semiautonomous. The P.Ok.Ok. management is now based mostly within the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. Lately, Turkey has attacked the group and affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria whereas lobbying the Iraqi authorities to expel it.
How did earlier peace efforts fare?
A number of efforts to freeze or finish the Turkey-P.Ok.Ok. battle have been made, beginning with a cease-fire in 1993. However all of them collapsed, typically resulting in higher bloodshed.
Violence flared on and off till a brand new spherical of peace talks started in 2011. At the moment, Turkish intelligence officers met with Mr. Ocalan in jail to map out a plan for his fighters to disarm, and Kurdish politicians ferried messages between him and his associates in northern Iraq.
However the course of collapsed in mid-2015, with both sides blaming the opposite for the failure. One of many battle’s most threatening phases adopted, with pitched battles in cities in Turkey’s southeast that killed greater than 7,000 folks, according to the International Crisis Group.
Will this time be completely different?
Though Turkey nonetheless considers the P.Ok.Ok. a separatist terrorist group that doesn’t characterize the Kurdish folks, it has acknowledged some historic violations of Kurdish rights and widened the margins for Kurdish language and tradition.
It has licensed Kurdish-language tv and radio broadcasts and allowed Kurdish language as an elective course in some faculties.
On the similar time, nevertheless, the federal government has eliminated greater than 150 elected Kurdish mayors from their posts since 2015, in accordance with the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Celebration, which represents the pro-Kurdish motion politically and has seats in Parliament.
A lot of the eliminated mayors had been accused, and a few convicted, of crimes associated to the P.Ok.Ok.
Human Rights Watch has called the removal of Kurdish mayors politically motivated and a violation of voters’ rights.
