Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will defend his Kurdish peace initiative in a parliamentary debate tomorrow against nationalist opponents who accuse him of caving in to terrorism.
Lawmakers in Ankara will discuss proposals aimed at ending a 25-year war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK that has killed 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, and cost billions of dollars. Erdogan’s initiative aims to get the PKK to lay down its arms on a promise of wider rights for the nation’s estimated 12 million Kurds.
The project hit trouble after Turks objected to the heroes’ welcome given to a PKK delegation from the group’s bases in the mountains of northern Iraq who handed themselves over to Turkish authorities last month. The backlash prompted Erdogan to reject the return of more PKK members, amid signs political support for the plan and his government is wavering.
“The transformation of the PKK away from armed conflict is a good idea,” said Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey in Ankara. “But the timing, the way it’s organized, the preparation of public opinion has all been wrong.”
Success in ending the PKK war may boost Turkey’s candidacy for the European Union, the main export market for Turkish companies such as Ford Otomotiv Sanayi AS and appliance-maker Arcelik AS, Istanbul-based broker Finans Invest said in a report last month.
