Didim Today

Turkey is currently debating placing outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving a life sentence on İmralı island, under house arrest, a proposal made by the Democracy Society Congress (DTK) and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin ruled out such a possibility, saying current laws do not allow for Öcalan to be granted house arrest. “Neither our laws nor regulations allow this,” he said.

Interestingly enough, the proposal to place Öcalan under house arrest came just as the outlawed PKK ended a unilateral cease-fire it had announced on Aug. 13 of last year and several months before general elections, which has raised the eyebrows of many.

Milliyet’s Fikret Bila finds the timing of the BDP and DTK proposal very meaningful in that it coincides with the PKK’s declaration of an end to its cease-fire. “This timing gives us clues of a demand for bargaining based on threats between Öcalan’s demand for house arrest and the possible extension of the PKK cease-fire.

Another coincidence is the approaching general elections. The DTK, the BDP and Öcalan have voiced the PKK’s demands more strongly before every election. This has also been the case this time around. On the one hand they say they expect Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government to take steps towards finding a solution to the Kurdish problem, while on the other they aim to garner more support from their grass roots through their radical statements,” says Bila.

He thinks the BDP will base its election strategy on Öcalan’s prison conditions, and Öcalan is saying on every occasion that his prison conditions should be improved for the bloodshed to end. In Bila’s view, the demand to put Öcalan under house arrest is most likely to be followed by a demand for general amnesty for PKK terrorists.

Zaman’s Mümtaz’er Türköne also thinks Öcalan and the BDP are planning to use weapons in their election campaign by ending the PKK cease-fire and bringing forward proposals such as placing Öcalan under house arrest. In his view, such a strategy, nourished by violence, is unlikely to bring more votes to the BDP because the public has high expectations about maintaining a peaceful environment in society.

Moves that will make this impossible will have the opposite effect. Another Milliyet columnist, Derya Sazak says the PKK ending its cease-fire just three months before the general elections and demanding house arrest for Öcalan, which is unacceptable for Turkish society, shows that the PKK has no intention of laying down its weapons and aims to close the path to all democratic and political solutions.

Sazak says he wishes very much for the Kurds to make their political demands known without the shadow of Öcalan and the PKK. “Is it realistic to base peace on Öcalan’s rights?” he asks.

F Disli Zibak reported for Todays Zaman