Kurds Fear New Civil War May Be Brewing

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,790033,00.html

Since the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) ended its ceasefire in July, it has returned to carrying out attacks across Turkey, killing 30 soldiers and police officers, as well as 20 civilians. Several attacks have shaken the country, including one that killed three people in the heart of Turkey's capital, Ankara; one in which four Kurdish women were killed in the city of Siirt; and the murder in the city of Batman of a pregnant woman, whose unborn child was saved in an emergency operation, only to die two days later.

Markar Esayan, a journalist with close contacts to the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), writes that Kurdish people are afraid of a return to the conflicts of the 1990s. They are afraid they will once again end up caught on the frontline between the PKK and the Turkish Army, dying in the "crossfire," as Esayan puts it. This fear is justified, he writes, since at the moment the PKK is doing everything it can "to provoke a massive reaction from the government and the army." The situation today is even more complicated than it was in the 1990s, since it is unclear where the lines in the current conflict are drawn.

While hardliners within the PKK fan the flames, another faction, including the banned organization's imprisoned former leader, Abdullah Öcalan, remains interested in finding a political solution. Inhabiting a middle ground between the two is the BDP, a legal political party that managed to win 36 seats in the Turkish parliament this June. The party boycotted the parliament, allegedly because six of its parliamentary representatives, currently in detention and awaiting trial, were forbidden by a court order from assuming office. The real reason, however, seems to be that PKK leadership can't agree on whether or not it wants to see Kurdish representation in parliament. The BDP, Esayan writes, "is under enormous pressure from the PKK and is being bounced back and forth like a tennis ball."

Outrage over Kurdish Women's Deaths

For now, the side hoping for a political solution has won out. The BDP decided, after a great deal of back and forth, to end its boycott and participate in the parliament when it reconvened on Oct. 1 after the summer recess.