Jailed rebel chief: Turkish-Kurdish conflict could be resolved in 6 months

Jailed rebel chief: Turkish-Kurdish conflict could be resolved in 6 months

PanARMENIAN.Net - A three-decade conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish militants could be resolved within six months if talks were to be revived, the jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan said, according to remarks by his brother on Monday, September 12, Reuters reports.

They were the first public comments from Ocalan in more than a year, after the government suspended visits to his island prison in April 2015, and they come at a time of violence and political upheaval.

"He said that if the state is ready for this project, we can finish it in six months and that the previous (peace) process has not been completely wiped out," Mehmet Ocalan quoted his brother as saying, at a news conference in Diyarbakir on Monday.

"'This is not a war that one side can win. It's time for the bloodshed and tears to end,' he said."

Thousands have died since July 2015, when a ceasefire with the armed PKK, which Ocalan founded, collapsed. Ocalan had negotiated that truce from his prison cell, where he's been kept since 1999 on a treason conviction.

In the latest violence, suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants set off a car bomb on Monday near government offices in the city of Van, wounding scores of people. The attack came a day after the mayors of 24 Kurdish-run municipalities who were suspected of PKK links were stripped of office.

So far, the Turkish government has shown little sign it will seek a negotiated solution to the latest spasm of violence. The crackdown has coincided with a purge of journalists, politicians, government workers, soldiers, teachers and others after a failed coup attempt in July.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed two-year peace talks with Ocalan before the fighting re-ignited, has said the campaign against the PKK - called a terrorist group by the United States and European Union - was now Turkey's largest ever, Reuters says.

Mehmet Ocalan, who is the first family member to see his brother in two years, said that the 68-year-old was in good health. The Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture saw Ocalan in April 2016.

The government allowed the family visit before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and after about 50 Kurdish activists began a hunger strike, demanding an end to Ocalan's isolation. The group said at the news conference they would abandon their eight-day action after the visit took place.

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