The government's attempts to resolve the country's Kurdish problem have stalled, reports Gareth Jenkins On Sunday, thousands of Turkish nationalists took to the streets across Turkey to protest their government's recent overtures to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) amid signs that the so-called "Kurdish Opening" launched by the Justice and Development Party (JDP) has stalled. The "Kurdish Opening", which the JDP subsequently renamed the "Democratic Opening" in response to criticism from Turkish nationalists, was publicly launched in June this year. It was the culmination of a gradual change in Turkey's strategy towards the PKK over the previous 15 months. Since spring 2008, both the government and the security forces have shifted from a policy of confrontation to engagement, starting with the launching of a dialogue with the Iraqi Kurds and then indirect contacts with sources close to the PKK itself. But, publicly at least, the Turkish authorities have adamantly refused to respond positively to the PKK's longstanding demands for direct peace negotiations. Since it returned to violence in 2004 after a five year ceasefire, the PKK's primary aim has been not a military victory but to force the Turkish state to sit down at the negotiating table and recognise the PKK as the legitimate representative of the country's Kurdish minority. On 19 October, a group of 34 ethnic Turkish Kurds, including eight serving members of the PKK, crossed into Turkey from northern Iraq. Before their arrival, the JDP had announced that the group was coming to Turkey to surrender. Under Turkish law, membership of the PKK is a crime. Anyone suspected even of being sympathetic to the PKK is usually arrested on charges of belonging to the organisation. But, when the eight PKK militants arrived at the Turkish border in their uniforms, they were not detained by the Turkish authorities. In public statements to the press, they declared that they had come to Turkey not to surrender but as emissaries from the PKK. Over the days that followed, the eight were paraded through the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP). Everywhere they went they were feted as conquering heroes. Many of the thousands of ethnic Kurds who turned out to greet them believed that the PKK had finally achieved its goal of forcing the Turkish state to enter into negotiations; and without the organisation even having to renounce violence. The result was uproar. Turkish nationalists and the relatives of soldiers killed by the PKK -- many of them clutching photographs of their loved ones -- took to the streets across the country. In some towns, Turkish nationalists clashed with ethnic Kurds and supporters of the DTP. Extraordinarily, despite the numerous public expressions of Turkish nationalist hatred of the PKK and rising social tensions between ethnic Kurds and Turks, the JDP did not appear to have foreseen the repercussions of allowing eight serving PKK militants to cross unhindered into Turkey and conduct what their supporters regarded as a victory parade. Amid fears of serious bloodshed, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the government had suspended any further returns to Turkey of PKK members. He furiously attacked the DTP, which has traditionally been regarded by both its opponents and many of its supporters as being sympathetic to the PKK, warning it not to treat returning PKK members as conquering heroes. "If it goes on like this, we shall go back to what we were doing before," Erdogan said. Not surprisingly, the DTP refused to back down. With a general election due to be held in mid-2011 at the latest, the DTP is anxious to be able to associate itself as closely as possible with a victory for the Kurdish cause. But the JDP's decision to freeze the return of PKK members has infuriated the organisation's leadership while providing it with a propaganda coup by enabling the PKK to present the Turkish state as the main obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue. On Friday, in a statement smuggled out of Turkey through his lawyers, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned on the Turkish island of Imrali since 1999, accused the JDP of being insincere. "All this talk of an 'opening" is just a story," declared Ocalan. "The JDP is not sincere. Their real aim is just to liquidate the PKK. They are not interested in peace. If there is a war then there are two sides. And any peace must be made between these two sides. I won't send any more groups to Turkey." In recent days, the first winter snows have begun to fall in the mountains of the PKK's main battlegrounds in southeastern Turkey, with the result that the organisation is unlikely to be able to mount any major attacks before the spring thaw starts in March 2010. But it is unclear whether, once the fury of the Turkish nationalist reaction has begun to abate, the JDP will have the political will or motivation to use the breathing space created by the winter weather to try again. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the JDP's repeated desire for an end to violence which has cost over 40,000 lives. But the JDP was already looking ahead to the next general election. It had originally calculated that, even if its "Kurdish Opening" lost it some Turkish nationalist votes, these would be more than offset by an increase in votes from the country's Kurds. Yet it has been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by the DTP, which has used the return of the PKK militants to boost its own popular support. Even if their fury subsides over the months ahead, it will be a lot longer before Turkish nationalists forgive the JDP for the scenes which were shown repeatedly on national television of serving PKK militants not only walking free but celebrating what they clearly regarded as a great victory.
