Kurdish PKK rebels give 'Final Warning' to Turkey on peace p

[Aslan]

ISTANBUL,— Kurdish rebels issued what they said was a "final warning" to Turkey on Friday to take concrete steps to advance a peace process aimed at ending a three-decade insurgency, or be responsible for it grinding to a halt.

Jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and Ankara launched peace talks last October to halt a conflict which has killed over 40,000 people and blighted Turkey's Kurdish region (Northern Kurdistan) in the southeast.

Kurdish leaders have called on the AK Party (AKP) government to launch reforms set out under the talks, but Ankara has said the Kurds need to keep their side of the bargain by speeding up the withdrawal of their fighters to Iraq's Kurdistan region (Southern Kurdistan).

"As a movement we are warning the AKP government for the last time ... If concrete steps are not taken in the shortest time on the subjects set out by our people and the public, the process will not advance and the AKP government will be responsible," the PKK said on one of its websites.

The reforms include steps to boost the rights of the Kurdish minority, including abolishing an anti-terrorism law under which thousands have been imprisoned for links to the PKK,www.ekurd.net granting full Kurdish-language education and lowering the threshold of votes which parties need to enter parliament.

As the process has faltered, there has been an increase in militant activity in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, which commentators say will complicate the government's task of enacting reforms without inflaming nationalist sentiment.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has invested considerable political capital in the process ahead of elections next year and is facing the biggest test of his decade in power after weeks of often violent anti-government protests.

OCALAN'S HEALTH

The PKK said there had been repeated calls for Ankara to allow an independent team of doctors to visit Ocalan on the prison island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, but the government had failed to respond. Ocalan, known by his followers as APO, is known to suffer from an eye ailment.

"The sincerity in the settlement process of a government which approaches the Leader Apo's health in this way is now seriously being questioned and doubted by our movement, our people and democratic public opinion," it said.

The PKK also accused the government of supporting Islamist groups involved in clashes with Kurds in northern Syria (Western Kurdistan). Ankara rejects those accusations.

"We call on the AKP to abandon rapidly this hostile approach shown to the national democratic rights of the Rojava (Syrian) Kurds and to cut its links with al Qaeda groups," it said.

A Syrian Kurdish party with links to the PKK seized control this week of a Syrian Kurdish town on Turkey's border after days of clashes with Islamist fighters, prompting Ankara to repeat its opposition to an autonomous Kurdish region emerging there.

"We have always said that de facto situations on a sectarian or ethnic basis in Syria are unacceptable and will result in greater crises,"
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara that Turkey had always opposed the emergence from the conflict of autonomous regions along sectarian or ethnic lines, warning they would "result in greater crises".

Friday's statement from the PKK's umbrella political group came just over a week after a veteran militant viewed as a hawk was appointed as co-head of the group, stoking speculation it will take a harder line.

Since it was established in 1984, the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, , who make up around 22.5 million of the country's 75-million population, to establish a Kurdish state in the south east of the country. By 2013 more than 45,000 people have since been killed.

But now its aim is the creation an autonomous region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds who constitute the greatest minority in Turkey, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

The PKK wants constitutional recognition for the Kurds, regional self-governance and Kurdish-language education in schools.

PKK's demands included releasing PKK detainees, lifting the ban on education in Kurdish, paving the way for an autonomous democrat Kurdish system within Turkey, reducing pressure on the detained PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, stopping military action against the Kurdish party and recomposing the Turkish constitution.

Turkey refuses to recognize its Kurdish population as a distinct minority. It has allowed some cultural rights such as limited broadcasts in the Kurdish language and private Kurdish language courses with the prodding of the European Union, but Kurdish politicians say the measures fall short of their expectations.

The PKK is considered as 'terrorist' organization by Ankara and U.S. The PKK continues to be on the blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which overturned a decision to place the Kurdish rebel group PKK and its political wing on the European Union's terror list.

Top PKK commander Murat Karayılan on June 24, 2013 called on the EU to remove the PKK from the list of terrorist organizations.