“The problem of terror that has been lingering in our nation for 47 years has, God willing, entered the process of ending,” Erdogan said at a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). “The wall of terror is being obliterated.”
He accused previous Turkish governments of having oppressed Kurds instead of focusing on trying to end the PKK’s armed struggle and said that a parliamentary commission will be formed as a “first step” to resolving the conflict.
The PKK on Friday held a ceremonial disarmament in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province. Thirty fighters and commanders - divided equally between men and women - burned their weapons in a gesture of goodwill before heading back to their mountain hideouts.
The disarmament was a major step towards ending decades of a conflict that has spilled out of Turkey’s borders and into the Kurdistan Region and Syria.
“In recent years, we almost put an end to the maneuverability and the operational capacity of the terrorist organization… thanks to our cross-border operations in Iraq and the revolution in Syria on December 8,” Erdogan stated.
The PKK was founded in 1978 in response to discrimination against Turkey’s Kurdish population. The party launched its armed struggle several years later.
Erdogan admitted that Ankara had relied on “wrong policies” in dealing with the PKK.
“We paid a huge price for wrong policies. We did not only lose civilians and security forces as martyrs, but the Republic of Turkey has been destabilized by the terror attacks,” Erdogan said, adding that some 10,000 members of security forces have been killed in the conflict.
In his speech, he also thanked his party, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) for their efforts, saying that they will collectively “cherish” the Ankara-PKK peace process.
DEM Party has mediated talks between the PKK and Ankara after MHP leader Devlet Bahceli in October invited PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan to address the parliament. In February, Ocalan, who has been in jail since 1999, called on the PKK to lay down arms and pursue a political path to securing Kurdish rights in Turkey.
In a video message released Wednesday, Ocalan reaffirmed the PKK’s historic departure from armed conflict and called for the formation of a parliamentary commission to guide the peace process.
