Turkey Kurdish Party to Meet Top Rebels as Deadline Passes
Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party said Wednesday it will hold talks with Iraq-based armed Kurdish rebels and jailed militant leader Abdullah Ocalan as a deadline passed for the Turkish government to come up with a roadmap for the peace process.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast, had given the government until Wednesday to show it is serious about peace.
Kurds are furious that Turkey has not assisted Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State (IS) militants for the Syrian town of Kobane and even blocked them from crossing into Syria.
The PKK has threatened to resume a campaign of violence if there is no roadmap for talks. Tensions have risen further after the Turkish military bombed PKK targets in Turkey on Monday.
The PKK said those strikes were a "breach of the ceasefire" that has largely held since March 2013.
The deadline passed Wednesday afternoon without a major statement from the PKK or the government about the progress of the peace process.
But indicating that the coming days would be crucial, the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) said a delegation of its MPs would hold talks at the weekend with armed PKK rebels at their base in the Kandil Mountains in Iraq.
The delegation -- consisting of MPs Idris Baluken, Pervin Buldan and Sirri Sureyya Onder -- would then meet Ocalan himself for talks on his prison island of Imrali on the Marmara Sea on October 21.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who on Tuesday said the government was committed to the search for peace, was to chair a new government meeting on the process later Wednesday, an official from his office said.
At least 34 people were killed last week in several nights of violent pro-Kurdish protests across Turkey, some of the worst rioting seen in the country in years.
At least 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK began the armed rebellion in 1984 with the aim of winning self-rule for Turkey's Kurds who make up 15-20 percent of the population.
Source: Agence France Presse
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