Pro-Kurdish party seeks ‘confidence-building measures’ from Ankara as PKK disbands

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) said Tuesday that it wanted to see “confidence-building measures” from the government a day after the Kurdish militant group, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), announced the end of four decades of armed conflict.

Tuncer Bakırhan, co-chair of the DEM Party, which played a key role in facilitating contacts with the PKK, urged the government to take concrete steps before the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which starts on June 6 in Turkey.

“Taking some humane, concrete and confidence-building steps without postponing them until after the holiday is the right way for Turkey to move forward,” he told reporters.

“We expect the government to fulfil its duties and responsibilities in this regard.”

His remarks came a day after the PKK said it was disbanding following seven months of shuttle diplomacy in which the DEM Party passed messages between jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan and Turkey’s political establishment.

So far, it is not clear how the PKK’s declaration will benefit the Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Turkey’s 85 million population, nor what the DEM Party will get in exchange for facilitating the process.

But observers are expecting the government to show a new openness to the Kurds.

Many are hoping the move will result in political prisoners being freed, Bakırhan said.

“The demands we hear most are about releasing sick prisoners before Eid al-Adha. … That would turn it into a double holiday,” he said.

“It would be reasonable to expect some steps, even symbolic ones, from the government,” Adnan Çelik, an expert at the Paris School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), told Agence France-Presse.

“Freeing [Selahattin] Demirtaş would be a strong gesture likely to speed up implementation of this historic decision,” he said, referring to the former leader of the first pro-Kurdish party to hold seats in Turkey’s parliament.

Meanwhile, Öcalan hailed the decision of his Kurdish militant group to disarm and disband in a statement on Tuesday.

“I respectfully salute the decisions taken at the [PKK’s] historic 12th congress,” Öcalan said in a message transmitted by the DEM Party, after the militant group heeded his call to end its insurgency.

© Agence France-Presse