The New York Times

Wednesday, February 9, 2000

Kurd Rebels End Armed Struggle, Pledge to Pursue Peace With Turkey

By STEPHEN KINZER

ISTANBUL, Feb. 9 -- Kurdish rebels who have been fighting for self-rule in Turkey since 1984 announced today that they had given up their war and would press their cause "within the framework of peace and democracy."

Since their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured a year ago, he has repeatedly urged his fighters to lay down their weapons.

The statement issued today by his Kurdistan Workers Party was the first that officially declared their willingness to do so.

The statement said that the party held an "extraordinary congress" at an undisclosed location last month, and that delegates "confirmed the decision of the party leader to stop the armed struggle."

"It is in everyone's interest," the statement said.

"It means paving the way toward peaceful and democratic unity in the Middle East."

The rebels asserted, however, that their decision is "inseparable" from Mr. Ocalan's fate.

He has been sentenced to death, but the government has said it will not carry out the sentence before it is reviewed by the European Court of Human Rights. The review is expected to take at least a year.

Mr. Ocalan's group is believed to have about 4,500 active fighters.

Most are considered loyal to him and therefore likely to accept the decision announced today. But a few have denounced him as a turncoat and vowed to continue fighting.

Combat has already subsided in the mostly Kurdish provinces of southeastern Turkey. Today's statement suggested that the region might slowly return to a semblance of normality after a conflict that has taken more than 30,000 lives.

But there was no sign that the Turkish authorities were prepared to accept the disarmed rebels into the political system.

Military commanders and their civilian supporters, including Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, have rejected overtures from Kurdish nationalists in recent months. They consider the rebels to be terrorists and insist they must surrender unconditionally and face prosecution.

There have been a few vague signs, however, that the climate may be starting to change.

In a recent case before the State Security Court, where suspected rebels and their sympathizers are tried, military judges allowed a Kurdish woman who spoke no Turkish to be accompanied by a translator. Lawyers said it was an extraordinary concession, since the use of Kurdish in courts and other public offices is normally forbidden.

Foreign Minister Ismail Cem recently amazed many people here when he told an interviewer that he believed Kurdish-language television broadcasts, which are now forbidden, should be allowed.

Several dozen Kurdish intellectuals and politicians announced last month that they plan to form a new political party.

They said it would provide Kurds with a new way to express their views within the political system.

The existing pro-Kurdish political party, People's Democracy, shocked the political establishment last April by winning mayoral races in nearly every important city in the southeast.

Prosecutors are seeking to shut the party down on the grounds that it supports separatism.

Kurds traditionally use the word "Kurdistan" to describe the region of Turkey where they live, along with mainly Kurdish adjoining regions of nearby countries.

But that word is anathema in Turkey, where the authorities interpret it as an implicit call for separatism.

Evidently reacting to that concern, the rebels announced in their statement today that they would drop the word from the names of their various wings.

The party's fighting wing, which was officially known as the Kurdistan People's Salvation Army, is now to be called simply the People's Salvation Army. The Kurdistan National Salvation Front, one of its political arms, has become the Democratic People's Union.

But political analysts said that the country would have to recover from the war's trauma before former rebels could be welcomed into the political arena.

"It will happen, because it has to happen," predicted a retired diplomat who spent years defending his country's uncompromising position against Kurdish nationalism.

"But it will take time. It took a long time for Israel to bring itself to sit down and talk with terrorists. It took a long time for Spain and also for England. Here in Turkey, I don't think it can happen with Ecevit and this group in power. They're too emotionally involved in the whole thing. But in the long run, that's the direction things have to move."