PKK Burns Weapons in Bid for Integration Into Reactionary States
Following a call from PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, to lay down its arms, the PKK held a disarmament ceremony in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) on July 11th.
Besê Hozat, co-chair of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council, led the group of 15 male and 15 female guerrillas who burned their weapons and belts.
Speaking at the historic ceremony, Besê Hozat said: “We are taking this step in response to Leader Apo’s call, the February 27 call, and the decisions of the PKK’s 12th Congress.”
Kurdish militants want to return to Turkey and enter mainstream politics, one of the PKK’s joint leaders told AFP on Friday after the group’s fighters began destroying their arms at the ceremony.
Speaking to AFP after handing in her own weapon alongside 29 of her comrades, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s top female commander Bese Hozat said if Turkey were willing, the disarmament process could be completed very quickly.
But the 47-year-old militant also warned the fragile peace process risked being derailed if Ankara fails to free the PKK’s jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, also known as ‘Apo’ — Kurdish for ‘uncle’.
“If Apo were freed tomorrow and… Turkey made legal and constitutional arrangements the next day, within a week we could return to engage” in bourgeois state politics, she said of a process which Ankara expects to last for months.
Hozat said it was essential Turkey put in place mechanisms to allow them to return without fear of prosecution or reprisal.
“We do not want to wage armed struggle against Turkey, we want to come to Turkey and do democratic politics. In order for us… to achieve democratic integration with Turkey, it is imperative we can freely travel to Turkey,” she said.
“If Turkey takes concrete steps, enacts laws and implements radical legal reforms… we will go to Turkey and engage in politics. If (not)… we will end up either in prison or being killed.”
Asked whether she now expected Turkey and its Western allies to remove the PKK from their blacklists of terrorist organisations, Hozat said the issue was irrelevant.
“Right now, the PKK no longer exists, we’ve dissolved it. We are a freedom movement.. advocating for peace and a democratic society.
“The PKK has achieved its main goal: the existence of the Kurds has been recognised.”
The PKK dissolution represents a severe turning point for internationalist politics, as the organization that permitted revolutionary collusion in the region speed walks its way into collaborationist politics.
Democratic integration into Turkish politics is essentially an oxymoron as class politics and reactionary parties dominate the state.
Furthermore, the PKK’s posture in Syria has also drifted into collaboration as the new regime continues its massacres and clearly settles into a riole as a gendarme for US and Zionist imperial schemes. The PKK’s attempt to join this regime is damning, even if minor concessions are wrangled out in the negotations.
abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=…
#disarmament #iraq #pkk #turkey #westAsia
