"Kurdish Issue Is Bigger Than Disarming the PKK"

Hakan Tahmaz from Turkey's Peace Assembly, which brings together intellectuals demanding a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue, thinks that disarming PKK militants is an important step but the problem can't be reduced to this.

According to Akşam daily, the government is planning to make amendments to the "effective penitence" law. Article 221 of the Penal Code allows militants to walk away freely if they express penitence and provide intelligence. Now, allegedly this wording might change and the condition to provide intelligence might be withdrawn. Yet, Minister of Justice Mehmet Ali Şahin denied such an initiative.

Tahmaz regards such an approach as useful but not enough. "What about the rights of the Kurdish people?" he asks. "The chief of General Staff uses the word Kurd but doesn't go beyond that. There are universally acknowledged cultural and identity rights of people. To provide such to Kurds and to end discrimination, there must be political will."

He reminds that 52 people, among them responsibles of the Democratic society Party have been taken under custody recently. "State policy is to create a group of loyal Kurds and avoid the demands of all others. In order to accomplish that, the government is trying to introduce conservative and Islamic policies in the region. Neither the state, nor the courts recognize people's will expressed at the polls. What if the Kurds respond by not recognizing state authority? There's this danger."

Following the police operation against the DTP, rebel group PKK stated that it would reconsider the declared ceasefire until June. Tahmaz says that the government failed to see the mark of good will by the PKK.

Moreover, Fırat News Agency repots that the Kurdish conference to be held in Iraq is postponed.

Tahmaz quotes rumors that the government's reaction towards the conference changed following the local elections on March 29. "The conference might benefit a solution to the Kurdish issue. DTP demanded it in the first place. The problems of all Kurds in the regions would be discussed at the conference –PKK's disarmament included. But their priority is determining the Kurdish policy for Kirkuk."(TK/AGÜ)