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29 March 2015

How the Kurds' Power Play Backfired in Turkey

March 27, 2015 

The HDP's attempt to refashion itself as the new, broad liberal force for Turks and Kurds might have done more harm than good.

Imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s recent calls for the Kurdish militants to end the armed struggle inside Turkey seemed designed to show that they were on the brink of a peace deal. It didn’t work. The likelihood of a formal peace settlement has never been worse, and for now this may suit both the PKK and the Turkish government.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gambled that Ocalan’s announcement, first delivered by members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in a televised meeting with senior government officials, would give his party a boost before June national elections. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been negotiating with Ocalan since a ceasefire took hold in 2013 and has little to show for it. Turkish soldiers, who have been withdrawn to fortified bases outside city centers in the country’s Kurdish southeast, no longer carry out military operations, giving the PKK de facto control over the region.

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