TURKEY: Long criticised for their silence, Turkey's most influential Kurdish nationalist politicians have joined calls for an end to the separatist violence which has killed hundreds over the past year.
"Without the creation of a non-violent political climate, the possibility of debating the [ Kurdish] problem is unfortunately zero," the Democratic Society Movement (DTH) said in a statement released yesterday.
Co-founded last year by Leyla Zana, winner of the European Union's Sakharov Prize for Peace, the group called on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to declare an "immediate and unconditional ceasefire". Analysts describe the declaration as potentially the most crucial response to promises made last Friday by Turkey's prime minister to find a democratic solution to the Kurdish problem.
While the DTH looks set to garner about half the votes in Turkey's Kurdish heartlands when it becomes an official party in September, its leaders have long been perceived to be insufficiently independent of the PKK's line. Their sudden change of direction now has not gone unheeded by the militants.
The PKK's Europe-based leader, Zubeyir Aydar, told the Turkish daily Milliyet that the organisation had been watching peace efforts in Turkey closely. Many expect Mr Aydar to declare a ceasefire at a press conference in Brussels today.
With an end to fighting now a distinct possibility, Turkish reactions to developments nonetheless remain ambiguous.
On the same day it called for an end to hostilities, the DTH issued a statement criticising the conditions in which the PKK's founder, Abdullah Ocalan, is being kept in his island prison off Istanbul.
Suspicions of Kurdish politicians were deepened yesterday when Turkey's largest Kurdish political party released a statement announcing its merger with the DTH. Even liberals were angered by the party's comment that it had played its part in ensuring that Abdullah Ocalan was "taken as an interlocutor in the solution of the Kurdish problem".
It is not just the implication that the state should negotiate with a man most Turks see as a baby-killer which riles them. It is the fact that, at a time when Turkey finally appears to be willing to tackle the political, economic and social foundations of Kurdish unrest, some Kurdish politicians still seem intent on reducing the issue to one man.