PKK is not planning an immediate attack..
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), now renamed KADEK, announced Monday it was ending its 1999 unilateral truce on the grounds that Ankara had failed to respond with reciprocal goodwill. The group said it would stick to the truce if Ankara also agreed to stop hunting rebels. “Our basic objective will be to impose a bilateral ceasefire through a democratic struggle,” Karasu said.
But he warned the PKK would give “tough responses” if attacked by the Turkish army.
The group declared a ceasefire in September 1999 shortly after the capture of its leader Abdullah Ocalan, Turkey’s public enemy number one, and said it would henceforth use political channels to resolve its conflict with the government, which has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984.
Turkey, which considers the PKK a “terrorist” organization, has repeatedly rejected calls to negotiate a solution to the Kurdish conflict and has stepped up its campaign to stamp out remaining armed Kurdish gunmen.
Eager to advance its bid to join the European Union, Ankara has granted Turkey’s Kurdish minority a series of cultural freedoms. But the Kurds complain the reforms are not properly implemented and oppression persists. Ozgur Politika said the PKK has adopted a three-stage strategy to introduce a bilateral ceasefire by December 1; confidence-building measures by April 1, 2004; and an ultimate settlement of the Kurdish conflict by September 1, 2004.
