PKK leader Ocalan Criticizes Peace Process, but Fails to Order New Action

TURKEY - In Brief 16 Oct 2013 by Atilla Yesilada
Despite the Id of Sacrifice, Turkish politics is in full swing.  A team of pro-Kurdish BDP representatives visited incarcerated leader Ocalan on 15 October who sounded extremely disappointed with the Reform Package and the progress of the Peace Process. Ocalan repeated his well-known demands.   More substantive reforms and a formal negotiation process that would appoint him and PKK as counter-parties in the Peace Process.  Judging by the subsequent statements of BDP delegates I also surmise he demanded improvements in his conditions, namely access to media and PKK leaders.  Yet he maintained his optimism that soon the government would undertake the measures he recommended. More importantly, to the extent I can decipher from the BDP speeches, he did not demand action in terms of civil disobedience to push the government to action.On the other hand,  AKP is very unhappy with BDP and PKK.  Erdogan’s advisor Yalcin Akdogan stated that BDP is too hawkish to be taken seriously as a formal partner in the Peace Process, predicting that it will soon splinter.  Pro-AKP columnists in the Turkish media leaked a spy agency (MIT) report that PKK is planning to escalate tensions and even resort to terror to raise BDP’s profile in the upcoming local elections. I need to research more thoroughly to see exactly what remedies Ocalan proposed to push the government to faster progress, but it is certain that-The Reform package has been unanimously rejected by the Kurdish actors—bad news.-There is no official plan for stepped-up street protests by Kurds-good news.

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