Kurdish peace group arrived in Turkey
Ararat News-Publishing (ANP) – Fiona Lorin / Roni Alasor, Brussels – 20 /10/ 2009 - The second Kurdish Peace group of 34 members arrived in Turkey, welcomed by many ten thousand Kurds. All of them let free after several hours questioning. Now a new Peace Group is in the way from EU.
The Kurdish Peace Group of 34 members arrived in Turkey on Monday. 8 Kurdish guerrillas from the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK), 4 women and 4 men, came from the Qandil mountain in Federal Kurdistan (Iraq). The rest 26 people were from Mahmur refugees’ camp where the Kurds from North part of Kurdistan (Turkey) had to escape in the beginning of 1990s. 10 000 of refugees are still in this UN-controlled camp.
The Kurdish fighters and refuges have been welcomed by many ten thousand Kurds in the border gate near Silopi between Turkey and Federal Kurdistan. The Peace welcoming ceremony has been organised by the Kurdish legal party DTP and attended by all the mayors and parliamentarians from DTP.
The 34 Kurds from the Peace group have been questioned by the Turkish special prosecutors in near of Silopi on the Turkish-Kurdish border until midnight and afterwards let free except five people. But around 3,000 Kurds spent the night in tents to show support and to ask for the liberation of the rest five Kurds. On Tuesday they were also let free.
The Kurdish Peace members gave a clear message that: "We did not come to benefit from active repentance. We want the initiative to solve the Kurdish question to continue, we want to live together freely and equally".
Ahmet Turk, chairman of the Kurdish social-democrat party DTP, has said the move "shows that the PKK is insisting on peace not war".
The Kurdish Diaspora in Europe, mostly supporters of Abdullah Ocalan-PKK, is also preparing a third Peace group to Turkey. Several hundred volunteers have already asked to be sent as member of the Peace group. The final composition of the group will be decided by the end of this week.
The Peace group went to Turkey on the wishes of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to promote dialogue. Ocalan made the same suggestion to Turkey in 1999 as a test and round 15 members of PKK came from the mountains and from Europe. But all of them had been jailed to 10-15 years prison.
Today the Kurds are generally sceptical, but for first time they also have hope that the last developments in the Kurdish-Turkish relations can be the first steps on the way to the democratic solution of the Kurdish question in Turkey.
The Kurdish Peace Group bring also with them a list of requests below as follows in order that their message for peace may find life:
1. For the road map drafted by our leader to find its rightful addressees in order that a public debate be initiated.
2. For both sides of the conflict to observe ceasefires in order that a democratic and peaceful process to solve the Kurdish question be initiated.
3. On the basis of recognition of our Kurdish identity, that guarantee and protection of our identity be provided within the constitution to live freely, equally and together as part of a democratic Turkey.
4. To live our mother tongue Kurdish freely: to speak it, learn it, develop it, to live our historic values and culture within our geography in our own mother tongue.
5. To be able to name our children in Kurdish and to educate them in Kurdish.
6. To live our history, culture, literature and music as the Kurdish populace, and to develop and protect the same.
7. To be able to unite with our people as Kurds, and partake in the democratic political process and to freely express ourselves within this process.
8. For the villages, towns and the cities of Kurdistan to be free from village guards and fear of violence by governed forces, and to live in security.
9. For the democratisation of Turkey, with the construction of a democratic civil constitution.
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